[paulgb]

They aren't in violation of current anti-trust laws (AFAIK), but if the problem is that companies have grown so powerful that they can control speech, that has parallels to the problem of companies growing so powerful they can control prices. So what I'm suggesting is, why not create new laws that target the biggest platforms, using the same framework as existing anti-trust laws?

[joshuamorton]

Can you explain how twitter is controlling the speech of a newspaper by blocking its article on their platform? Does twitter blocking the article suddenly unpublish it?

Should conventional printing press owners be considered utilities because you might want to post a bunch of posters somewhere, and by refusing to print your posters they censor you?

[paulgb]

It doesn't unpublish it, but in the long run it sets up Twitter and Facebook as de facto deciders of what type of content is created. To the extent that newspapers rely on social media for traffic, the editorial decisions of those platforms will silently shape the content of those newspapers. It's the “hidden” aspect of this control that worries me.

The difference in the printing press analogy is that if a printing company won't print my poster, I can take it elsewhere.

[joshuamorton]

Even if there's one poster printing company in town, they have first amendment rights.

You don't lose those for being too successful.

[juniper_strong]

If a poster printing company started making editorial decisions about which posters they printed, they would be at risk of being considered a publisher and as such being liable for the content of the posters they printed.

That isn't true for internet content providers due to section 230.

[joshuamorton]

They are already liable for such things because they make active editorial decisions.

If internet publishers make active editorial decisions, they are also liable. Consider the new york times online.

I gave an example elsewhere that the owner of a physical bulletin board wouldn't be liable for posters on it, even if they occasionally came by and took down ones that they felt should be removed (for any reason).

Section 230 claims that internet sites are more like a physical bulletin board then a newspaper, in that they are remove-later, not review-first models. Aa such they deserve the same liability as physical remove-later systems: relatively few.