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Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

www2.law.ucla.edu

21–30 of 95 posts

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#21

If social media becomes a common carrier, but ISPs do not, can Facebook just host their service on their own ISP and block unwanted users at the ISP level? "It's not Facebook blocking the user, it's the ISP, which happens to be the only ISP we host Facebook on." All just poking holes in the idea that social media can be a common carrier while the ISPs are not. Somehow the literal carrier avoided becoming the common c…

How can the ISP ban Facebook accounts, if they are separated entities? Or do you mean the ISP bans Facebook urls related to certain accounts / posts? Not sure how this gonna work.

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#22
My biggest technical issue with this "common carrier" movement is spam. The author mentions it, but seems to suggest that users can simply block or ignore spammers. As somebody who witnessed the commercialization of the internet, I find this extremely naive. We generally think of email as a "common carrier," but even there, spam is blocked. Blocking spam is censorship. Failure to automatically detect 1% of spam will still overwhelm non-spam content.

If I lose common carrier status because I'm blocking spam, and thus section 230 protections, am I on the hook if I fail to block a fraudulent spam comment that leads to a user being harmed?

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#23
post #22

My biggest technical issue with this "common carrier" movement is spam. The author mentions it, but seems to suggest that users can simply block or ignore spammers. As somebody who witnessed the commercialization of the internet, I find this extremely naive. We generally think of email as a "common carrier," but even there, spam is blocked. Blocking spam is censorship. Failure to automatically detect 1% of spam will…

I guess part of my question with spam lately is why can't we just go after the spammers? It seems to me that acting as a public nuisance would be enough for the government to take action.

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#24

If social media becomes a common carrier, but ISPs do not, can Facebook just host their service on their own ISP and block unwanted users at the ISP level? "It's not Facebook blocking the user, it's the ISP, which happens to be the only ISP we host Facebook on." All just poking holes in the idea that social media can be a common carrier while the ISPs are not. Somehow the literal carrier avoided becoming the common c…

How can the ISP ban Facebook accounts, if they are separated entities? Or do you mean the ISP bans Facebook urls related to certain accounts / posts? Not sure how this gonna work.

Facebook allows anyone to sign up and access the site through user.facebook.com. All actual hosting is outsourced to NotFacebook ISP because the cloud. NotFacebook totally at their own discretion null routes baduser.facebook.com.

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#25
post #22

My biggest technical issue with this "common carrier" movement is spam. The author mentions it, but seems to suggest that users can simply block or ignore spammers. As somebody who witnessed the commercialization of the internet, I find this extremely naive. We generally think of email as a "common carrier," but even there, spam is blocked. Blocking spam is censorship. Failure to automatically detect 1% of spam will…

User has control over what is marked as spam, and can see spam messages if needed. If you block some content the way gmail blocks spam, it won't be censorship.

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#26

If social media becomes a common carrier, but ISPs do not, can Facebook just host their service on their own ISP and block unwanted users at the ISP level? "It's not Facebook blocking the user, it's the ISP, which happens to be the only ISP we host Facebook on." All just poking holes in the idea that social media can be a common carrier while the ISPs are not. Somehow the literal carrier avoided becoming the common c…

How can the ISP ban Facebook accounts, if they are separated entities? Or do you mean the ISP bans Facebook urls related to certain accounts / posts? Not sure how this gonna work.

Maybe Facebook's ISP of choice requires handing over the TLS private keys?

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#27
I'm not seeing what problem is being solved here. If, as he points out early in the paper, common carrier status in the US would only apply to hosting, but not recommendation engines and the like, what is the gain? Anybody can already find hosting somewhere. It's the discoverability that the platforms provide that's the secret sauce.

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#29
Social media above a certain size should be treated as common carriers. There are no reasonable alternatives to them, and today, common public activities activities that are core to our life are conducted on these large platforms. This is not a matter of protecting the freedom of companies to do as they wish - we already regulate companies and restrict their activities in many ways. Private power utilities cannot discriminate against their customers based on their speech or political viewpoints, for example. The same regulations can be enacted to govern these platforms.

I often see arguments saying that someone who is deplatformed/demonetized on these service can just use an alternate service, but I find that to not be the case in practice. Consider that Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have more users than virtually all nations. Their network effects are core to what the product is, which is why there aren't suitable alternatives (especially when they enact censorship in unison). Telling someone to just go use a different platform is like telling someone that they don't need their power utility, since they can just stick a windmill on their property instead.

Finally, I am greatly concerned that these large privately-controlled platforms are essentially outsourcing government-driven censorship and also violating election laws. For example when conservatives did form their own platform on Parler, AOC called for the Apple and Google app stores to ban Parler after the Jan 6 capitol riot (https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-sho...). If a sitting member of the government pressures private organizations to censor others, it should be considered a violation of the first amendment. Leaving aside the technicalities of law, it is unethical and immoral even otherwise and completely in conflict with classically liberal values. Actions taken by these companies to suppress certain political speech in this manner also amount to a donation to the other side. This isn't recognized as "campaign funding" but it is probably more effective than campaign funding at this point. We need to do a better job of recognizing the gifts-in-kind coming out of Silicon Valley tech companies towards political parties based on the ideas they suppress/amplify/etc.

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#30
post #14

This can be viewed as an alternative under antitrust law. If you get big enough, either you get broken up, or you have to become a regulated monopoly. You get to pick. "Big enough" by EU standards is where there are less than four competitors of reasonable size and reach. The US tends to tolerate a higher threshold. Amy Klobuchar's "Antitrust" book suggests 40% market share as the threshold.

Would a regulated monopoly be subject to community decency rules? Would twitter be fined every time somebody posts Janet Jackson's nipple?
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