[NCC1701DEngage]

Social media should be considered common carriers, like telephone companies, delivery services, or transportation services.

An airline or UPS cannot just say "We don't like your politics so we will not ship your packages."

Social media is extremely similar to all these common carriers in that they are a "content" delivery mechanism. They do not decide what item is in a box or what message is in a phone call, they just distribute the box or phone call from the originator to the consumers. Similarly with social media content the social media company distributes content they have little control over through its distribution network. There is little different from a social media account than a (teletype?) conference telephone call with answering machines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

[nickheer]

An airline or UPS can absolutely say “we don’t like the contents of what you are shipping so we refuse to transport it”. UPS will not ship marijuana, even for medical purposes, even in Canada where it is entirely legal. It won’t ship watches over $500 or ammunition.

I disagree with turning platforms into common carriers. As I wrote, I think this misses the issue: a protocol should be a common carrier, but a specific provider has no obligation to host things it doesn’t want to or do not make sense for certain territories.

[NCC1701DEngage]

>An airline or UPS can absolutely say “we don’t like the contents of what you are shipping so we refuse to transport it”.

Cf.:

>An important legal requirement for common carrier as public provider is that it cannot discriminate, that is refuse the service unless there is some compelling reason.

ibid

I suppose you can make "compelling reason" arguments for some things, but the default is carry.

Like, you may as well say "Well there are 'compelling reasons' exceptions so theoretically people can do the exact opposite of what the law says."

[triceratops]

Or...we can let ISPs be common carriers. As they used to be in the US, until the "free speech" party decided to kill it.

Surely you'd agree that ISPs are closer to telephone companies than social media is. So many telephone companies are ISPs.

I love another comment I read on here: "Speech is free, reach isn't." Your ISP shouldn't be able to disconnect you because of your words. But equally you aren't entitled to an audience on MyFaceTubeTwit.