> While the government can’t police private conversations, it can regulate the content of broadcasts to protect the public interest.
I've never agreed with this idea and I don't think I'm alone in that. Possibly "public interest" is the wrong word.
> It’s worth remembering that Congress’s decision to license radio operators after the Titanic disaster was about more than just allocating scarce spectrum. It was about bringing those who speak to the masses out of the shadows and into the daylight of the public square. It was about making broadcasters, whether individuals, businesses, or other organizations, visible and accountable. We may not need to establish a formal licensing program for social media, but we do need to bring the spirit of the common good back to broadcasting.
Except operating in the clear is a well-known danger as well. People using the words "accountability" and "consequences" almost never want to discuss the upper and lower limits of such ideas. If the concept of "punching up" is any indicator, it's at least partially a dog whistle for who it's okay to abuse these days.
Such a system would need to be private as well, instead of operating in full transparency to prohibit the litany of performative exercises people will undergo these days to make their point. The author seems to try to assuage that only "powerful private interests" would take issue with the proposed system.
> An ambitious Digital Communications Act along the lines sketched out here would be complicated and controversial. It would be resisted by many powerful private interests. It would not be a panacea. But we can no longer pretend that social media will fix itself.
At the core of social media problems is bad human behavior of all persuasions. Some people just manage to learn or detach themselves.
Personally, I partially blame public API concepts for most of this mess. Whether you're talking about limitless graphs for sharing "information" (in its most general definition) or API's which can be enumerated. Their legitimate use is finite and at worst it's entirely extractive. Better regulation, to me, would be the government regulating what sort of information you allow to be open and possibly the use/limits of virality.