You're comparing apples to oranges. We don't expect phone manufacturers or phone companies to prevent people from using phones to send death threats, but Facebook regularly removes death threats sent via Facebook.
The argument being argued here is that it's not viable in practice for Facebook to police every single post, not that it shouldn't do it in principle. Your argument seems to be that Facebook shouldn't police messages at all, like phone companies don't monitor conversations. That's a completely different position that even Facebook wouldn't agree on.
>The argument being argued here is that it's not viable in practice for Facebook to police every single post, not that it shouldn't do it in principle. Your argument seems to be that Facebook shouldn't police messages at all
I'm pretty unconvinced that they should in principle be able to both engage in content moderation and retain safe harbor.
Cellular providers do try to block spam and certain kinds of fraudulent/impersonated content.
A shopping mall isn't liable (in most cases) for the products or services sold by the individual stores yet it can choose to not allow certain businesses (tobacco, gambling, 18+ stores).
Have you seen a completely unmoderated social media site? It's either ultra niche or riddled with spam, fraud, and other low-quality content.
It's really simplistic to only bring up social media when the larger topic is "should private control of common platforms, markets, and network effect relationships be allowed"? The real estate and many critical B2B industries are FAR more insular and controlled by arbitrary groups.
Should McDonalds Inc. be liable for franchises selling expired food and/or should they not be able to control a franchise at all? Franchise contracts are way more controlling than any social media ToS yet people pay to join them.
There was another argument made, which I'm referring to.
> "If your business model doesn't work without doing unethical things, your business model should not work."
There's plenty of tools and business in real world where preventing the use of those tools for certain unethical acts is unfeasibly complex, impossible, costly or difficult.
You're ignoring the context in that comment. It was made in reply to "The platforms don't work if they have to police everything". That's what's being discussed; whether it's OK to give a pass to Facebook on some objectionable content because they can't possibly police everything.
In other words, it's understood that Facebook will police as much as they can (as they're already doing); one side is arguing that if they can't police everything they shouldn't exist, the other side is arguing that it's good enough that they police whatever is practical.
That's why your comparison with phone companies doesn't work: Facebook is already expected to monitor some content, the question is to what degree they should be held accountable.
I don't understand what difference it makes whether they are already monitoring certain part of something or not? The effect is still the same. You could also argue that some phones or comm lines provide a way to monitor or get alerts for certain cases such as terrorism etc, but not all lower level crimes.
And governments monitor people in the public, yet they are unable to prevent all crimes of happening. Should governments then not exist at all or the society in general? Should people not exist?
The phones allow them to make trades much more effectively.
In addition, they probably use their hands, feet, voice, maybe these should be disabled for people since birth.