Does the “framework of laws” override the first amendment?
In theory it could very well. But first amendment obviously doesn’t allow businesses to operate exactly as they wish.
I has traditionally allowed businesses to chose who to publish and who not to.
So, are all theses social media companies neutral platforms or are they in the business of creating a narrative? If they are going to be actively censoring and promoting certain messages they ought to be held liable for taking such an active role.
Are you backing off on forcing companies to publish what they want now and moving on to removing their liability protection? At least that’s constitutional.
And I personally won’t cry when all these platforms close down as a result although others might.
They’re in the business of selling ads and personal info. If they are losing money because of backlash, why wouldn’t they be allowed to change their strategy?
Uh, that kind of is exactly their business. What you communicate on their platform is what they use to make money, by appealing to other potential users and advertisers.
As snfaulker pointed out, when the social media company thinks that the product you’re supplying to them with your volunteer labor doesn’t reflect well on their brand, they’re naturally going to discontinue it (i.e., you) in favor of content they like better.
Don’t pretend the free market has anything to do with it. Outrage and controversy drive clicks. What they are concerned about is currying favour with the new US government. Government censorship via corporate proxy.
Funny how your whole citeless argument is undone with your 2nd sentence.
Exactly. Note that I’m not arguing that social media companies, or any other companies, are operating by ideally pure free-market principles: there’s pretty much no such thing as a truly free market anywhere in real life.
However, social media companies’ desire to generate “clicks”, via outrage and controversy as well as by other means, is self-evidently a market incentive. They have apparently decided that the type of outrage and controversy they get from banning openly violent and incendiary accounts is better overall for their brand than the type they get from condoning such accounts.
And your claim that social media are “currying favour with the new US government”, besides being unsupported by cites, is just peculiar on its face. What do you imagine “the new US government” is planning or willing to do to social media companies if they don’t ban those accounts, or what “favors” do you imagine it’s planning or willing to bestow on them if they do?
After the live-streamed mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand last spring, Democratic lawmakers sought changes to 230 as a method of ensuring that terrorist content is removed from platforms. They’ve responded to Facebook’s refusal to remove misinformation peddled by politicians in digital ads with threats to carve holes in the law as well.
(My emphasis.) If the social media companies voluntarily censor things the government objects to, then they will be less likely to repeal this law or to create new regulations.
Trump also wants to repeal Section 230. Can’t you guys get your story straight?
IOKWATDI
(It’s OK When A Trump Does It.)
What makes you think that the Biden administration has changed its views on Section 230 based on recent actions taken by social media companies? Sounds like their Commerce Secretary nominee is still in favor of “holding companies accountable” via changes to Section 230.
Moreover, the social media companies didn’t embark on this ban-fest when Trump attacked Section 230 protections via EO last year. So your hypothesized “voluntary censorship” on the part of social media companies as an attempt to forestall government regulation really doesn’t seem to be operating the way you expect it to.
Banning Trump would hardly help social media companies persuade the Trump administration not to regulate them. 
Surprise, they didn’t do it until he was on the way out.
Actually, AFAICT you’ve got that exactly backwards. Trump’s proposed/attempted removal of Section 230 protections, had it been implemented to the fullest possible extent, would have made all Trump’s own libellous bullshitting on social-media accounts a HUGE liability for the companies hosting those accounts.
The best way for social-media companies to flex some antiregulatory muscle in that situation would have been to indulge in a few “precautionary bans”, along the lines of “Gosh we’re sorry Mr. President, we don’t want to stifle your freedom of speech, but your proposed changes are going to make it impossible for us to host you because of the massive liability we’ll incur!”
But that isn’t what they did. And now that they have banned Trump’s and many Trumpist accounts, the Biden administration doesn’t seem to be backing off on its criticism of Section 230 and its position on “accountability” for social media companies.
So if the social media companies’ recent choices about banning ToS violators are in fact attempts to influence the regulatory actions of government, then they’re doing about the shittiest job ever of influencing. Which is a bit surprising, given that PR and marketing is basically their entire business.
Seems to me that Ockham’s razor strongly suggests instead that what’s motivating the social media companies’ actions is, unsurprisingly, pursuit of profit. They have run the numbers on what’s going to hurt them most or least with advertisers and subscribers, and these policies are what they’ve come up with.
I do think it’s reasonable to infer that they figured (doubtless correctly) that hosting Trump’s own account would be less profitable to them in his post-Presidency period, so they had less to lose by booting him at the end of his term. But again, that’s more about profit than about direct antiregulatory influence.
I don’t understand how the same people who want less regulation on companies that pollute our air and water somehow want MORE regulation on companies that do nothing but post user messages.
The logic just escapes me.
What sort of cites are you looking for? A corporate memo stating a strategy goal to curry favor?
The case is circumstantial but as far as circumstantial cases go a pretty good one. Twitter allowed Trump to post horrific things throughout his presidency. Justification: he’s president.
Still president his tweets of:
“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!"
and
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
were suddenly way past the line. Clearly openly violent posts. MUCH worse than all the hateful vile crap he’d posted for over three years with no action at all, because he WAS IN POWER (with a GOP Senate at his beck and call).
Nothing at all to do with the GOP first losing the Executive and then, just a few days before, the Senate.
Nah. Just coinkydink!*
Specific actions? No idea what their lobbyists are working on. You think there is nothing, no reason for them to try to be positioned as “on your side” to those in power? Nah, they’d NEVER curry favor. Nope Nah. Silly to even think it!
Personally I (OP of one of the threads that merged into this one) want MORE regulation and enforcement of regulations for clean air, water, stewardship of our natural resources including protection of our forests and wildlife, food safety (gutted under Trump), drug testing, financial oversight, and more. And I think that decisions over speech, when power is concentrated to large degrees under the control of a very few, is not close to little ole “nothing but” anything. It is up there with the others. At least as fundamental.
My inspiration for the thread was the analysis by Alexis Nalvany, his warning that large companies that can control speech are a set up for becoming the willing censorship henchmen of those in governmental power. You know Navalny, right? The MAGAbot who since has returned to Russia, the country whose leader tried to have him assassinated, and who is now is jail there as an opposition dissident. Not sure his position on clean air and water, but since he is cautious regarding arbitrary control over speech by a few large companies, he must be agin’ clean air and water, right? Angela Merkel too. Trumpista she!
- Around here it is sometimes required to state what I think is obvious: sarcasm.
But this is predicated on the fact that you think these large companies control speech. I’m with others in this thread that posit that the very fact that you are posting on this message board that is not associated with Facebook or Twitter or any other “large company” proves that your hypothesis is wrong. I, along with any other American, can start my own web site, blog, or even a Twitter-like app and say whatever I want. To tell me that my speech is being controlled is ridiculous.
And I get that, and quite a way back had summarized as such.
Clearly we disagree, which is okay.
I do not believe that absolute control of the public square is required for a few individuals to exert dominant control over speech. I suspect that you do not either. And I suspect if the only other place was the SDMB and everything else was under the control of the oligopoly, that would be sufficient for you to agree that “these large companies control speech”.
Of course such is not the case. There are others, many others with small shares of the square, and there is a very low bar to entry into the space. But even with the low bar to entry and the presence of many with tiny shares of the space, I see the social media space overwhelmingly dominated by just a very few.
My question to you is, short of absolute dominance, what degree of dominance by the few would you consider worrisome for the concerns expressed by Nalvany?
ETA that this question is NOT the same as meeting the definition of monopoly for the purposes of regulation, which requires anti-competitive behaviors.