[throwaway894345]

Turns out the state has the power to regulate private businesses, and when a business has so much power that it can unilaterally influence (even threaten) democratic process, the state ought to regulate it (or else it regulates the state).

[rrauenza]

What are some precedents to this - specifically democracy?

I can think of union busting to protect national security / economy ... (air traffic controllers...) ... COVID shutdowns to protect health.

[throwaway894345]

I'm not an expert, but I believe the original "trusts" that spurred antitrust laws were so powerful that they were able to significantly influence government. As I understand it, this was (one of?) the motivation(s) for antitrust legislation.

[Fjolsvith]

Ma Bell.

[Natanael_L]

For internet services in general (and most other non-broadcast communications), free speech laws in many jurisdictions prevent most (or all) types of content regulation.

[throwaway894345]

Right, but if an individual spreads misinformation, child pornography, piracy, threats, harassment, defamation, etc they are liable. Social networks are uniquely not responsible for the content that they curate--they enjoy the best of both worlds, and they oughtn't. If their curation is "speech" they should be legally accountable to for their speech like the rest of us are. There's precedent here with telecoms--they're free from scrutiny because they're just dumb pipes.

This is one conceivable kind of legislation that doesn't run afoul of the first amendment. Another approach might be to require social networks to interoperate so consumers can choose between different networks. I should be able to leave Twitter without leaving my network. In this way, Twitter (et al) loses a lot of its power and thus its ability to threaten democracy.

There's more than one way to skin a cat.

[Natanael_L]

No. CDA section 230 covers all online services. There is no special social media exception.

The only way for the service to be a dumb pipe is to not involve any kind of promotion or ranking algorithms to it, other than spam filtering. In other words, you can't have a dynamic high quality forum that is open to the public, with focus on the best content displayed first, and also be a dumb pipe. To prevent all moderation and ranking based on quality and opinion would quickly turn most sites into pure trash.

It is unreasonable to apply such regulations to anything but the actual dumb pipe, the internet connection (net neutrality).

Federation is indeed a much better choice. Allows the host to still set a quality standard on their server, and is at the same time free from gatekeepers. See Mastodon, Matrix, etc. Go to whichever host will accept you, talk to anybody willing to talk to you, and bans only kick you off specific servers.

No regulation needed.

[throwaway894345]

> No. CDA section 230 covers all online services. There is no special social media exception.

Pedantry. My point was that these online services enjoy protections ordinary citizens (and other institutions) don't enjoy: they can choose what information people see even if it is illegal or factually incorrect and they are protected from any consequences.

> The only way for the service to be a dumb pipe is to not involve any kind of promotion or ranking algorithms to it, other than spam filtering. In other words, you can't have a dynamic high quality forum that is open to the public, with focus on the best content displayed first, and also be a dumb pipe. To prevent all moderation and ranking based on quality and opinion would quickly turn most sites into pure trash.

Right, so if Twitter (or whomever) wants to remain relevant (not become "pure trash" as you artfully put it), they need to own the consequences of their content curation. For the purpose of public good, I don't care much whether Twitter becomes an irrelevant dumb pipe or a responsible--and thus valuable--public service. Note that we needn't accept the law as-is; we could also change the exception from "dumb pipe" to "transparency of curation" to introduce a third option: Twitter can curate content how it likes but it must divulge its process.

> Federation is indeed a much better choice. Allows the host to still set a quality standard on their server, and is at the same time free from gatekeepers. See Mastodon, Matrix, etc. Go to whichever host will accept you, talk to anybody willing to talk to you, and bans only kick you off specific servers. No regulation needed.

How do you get to a federated world without regulation? Do you think 2021 or 2022 is going to be The Year of Mastodon like every year hereto has been The Year of The Linux Desktop? I.e., the "Free Market" is going to pack up and leave their existing networks on Twitter et al and move to federated alternatives? Regulation is needed to ensure fair competition; to prevent social media companies from holding your social network hostage ("if you want to communicate with your friends, you must go through us and whatever shady agreements we require you to make, and we may not even hold up our end of those agreements").

To be clear, these solutions have various tradeoffs--my point isn't that any or all of these are the right solution, but merely that if I can think of half a dozen approaches that bypass free speech laws then we should be able to work something out.