Quote:
Originally Posted by Rococo
FWIW, exposing social media platforms to liability as publishers strikes me as very much the wrong knob to turn if you are concerned about social media platforms censoring .content. If you think Twitter, Facebook, etc., are too aggressive in censoring content now, make them liable as publishers and see what happens.
I don't think there is an easy solution to this problem. At a 10,000 foot level, I am not eager to allow our tech overlords to write the history of the human race in real time. On the other hand, I have grave concerns about the impact on society of deliberate misinformation campaigns and luckboxing. (It's worth remembering that our own Luckbox is far more benign than most luckboxers.)
Good post.
I would start with oversight and transparency. With social media we have effectively finished the privatization of the public square. This isn't a completely new development, but rather a steady flow of technology going from the printing press, through radio and television and now social media has made it a reality. Meanwhile our constitutional rights are largely from an era where the actual public square and a still very limited use of the printing press was the name of the game.
This is hopeless. It's like trying to land a modern airliner at an airport that uses carrier pigeons, oil lanterns and draft horses for technology.
As a minimum starting point we need oversight and transparency into the algorithms that decide how this modern public square functions. I don't see this as intruding on property rights. For example when it comes to land development, even if we rely on private companies to develop an area, we generally don't think it is a good idea to give them complete control of how the infrastructure or logistics of it should work. We'd reserve control over the critical aspects of waterlines, sewers, power lines, roads and public spaces (to name a few).
Nobody bats an eyelid at the idea that a brick could be privately owned, just like nobody bats an eyelid that a computer can be privately owned. But most of us would probably still be miffed if a private company could just build a wall and checkpoints around your neighborhood without talking to anyone, applying for a permit or adhering to any kind of regulation. But this is effectively what we are now allowing some private companies to do in the modern version of the public square, but with computers and software rather than bricks and concrete.
Last edited by tame_deuces; 12-03-2021 at 05:32 AM.