[specproc]

Interesting framing in "we should ask" and "social media companies should ban". We have sovereign states that make laws, companies must comply with them if they wish to make money in our markets.

Otherwise, I think my perspective here is very similar. I'd personally emphasise legal publisher responsibility, a repeal of Section 230 in American.

By absolving social media platforms of legal responsibility for the content they publish, we've allowed some very unpleasant scenes to flourish in the most mainstream of places.

Well with you on the issues of addictive design. I'd throw in data harvesting, sketchy advertising, and increasingly platform- level political bias.

Age restrictions simply increase the age at which users are exposed to harms, rather than addressing those harms themselves.

These platforms have become staggeringly wealthy and powerful, it is them what needs to be controlled, not kids.

[rpdillon]

Section 230 is very important for all website operators. It doesn't just protect big companies. If you repeal it, now you're making every blog owner responsible for whatever some idiot says in the comments section.

[specproc]

As noted elsewhere in this thread, scale is important: I think it's entirely reasonable to have different rules for platforms with millions of users.

[mrguyorama]

The real problem Section 230 was built to solve was the prevent email companies and places like Flickr being burned down by the feds for all the child porn in inevitably ends up holding.

Section 230 is not what allows Facebook to push lies.

Eliminating section 230 will fix the problem though, by banning all user generated content from the internet forever. No more SaaS in general.

[rpdillon]

That's worth discussing, but you recommended a repeal.

[duskdozer]

To me Section 230

    No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

seems less justifiable as an excuse for platforms that consist primarily of externally created content, have very large amounts of varied content, and select and target specific subsets of that content to present to specific users. It would seem more justifiable if it were random, or not individualized, or chronological.

[specproc]

Aye, it's the curation, innit. If the platform is making opaque decisions on what you see, then it should be accountable for what it's showing you.

I think scale is important here too. If you've got a user-base that's an appreciable proportion of a country's population, you're a utility. My energy supplier has a tiny fraction of the customers of say, Meta, and is subject to considerably stronger oversight.