Yes, private entities can choose who to do business with, and what speech to allow on their platforms. And IMO they should allow things that aren’t totally evil, and disallow things that are. I don’t think this should be required by law, but this is what I think they should do.
Concur. IANAL so what do I know, but ISTM there’s a case to be made for treating social media as a form of news media that has a public responsibility to show at least some regard for the truth.
Free speech is terrific, but free speech doesn’t entitle one to engage in libel and slander with impunity, for example. As you say, though, trying to regulate social media in a responsible and fair way is a can of worms.
Apropos of nothing whatsoever, now I really want ludicrously hedonistic crossdressing “drag stag” bachelor parties to be a thing, no matter whether the bridegroom and his friends are drag queens or gay or straight or whatever.
Also, I want such parties as they wander about the town to carry a characteristic banner, the “drag stag flag”. Somebody get to work implementing that, please.
That’s just silly as the barrier to entry to host a presence on the Internet is almost non-existent. Hell, you can actually get pretty close to your very own Twitter with shit you have laying around your house. You can install mastodon on a machine in your basement, get a domain name (or just use your static IP if you don’t care to name it and don’t want to spend the couple of bucks for one) and connect it to your internet-connected home network, opening port 80 (actually already open in most cases) on your firewall if you’re lazy or getting certificates and opening port 443 if you want it encrypted.
You now have your very own Twitter alternative and, for this one very brief moment, it will be free of the pornography, gold sellers and My Pillow ads of a Parler. Invite your friends, invite your family, invite QAnon, invite ISIS, invite Sidney “Looney fucking kraken monster” Powell, it’s all up to you. You won’t immediately have the reach of Twitter (although you could probably beat Parler pretty easily), but no one owes you an audience.
If the Internet itself booted you (it can’t really do that), you might have an argument, but Twitter can ban you for wearing ugly fucking shoes if they want (and probably should if you are wearing these or these).
And that’s it, they don’t want their own ‘Twitter’ they want unfettered access to Twitter’s audience and think they’re entitled to the means to be as big as it.
Toe shoes certainly make… a fashion statement.
~Max
There are a bunch of other social media options that would be somewhat analogous to local news, like the neighborhood sites, so I think the example still fits. Twitter was important for Trump because he chose it. If he had used instagram instead then it would have become just as important. If Parler can get it’s act together then Trump can use that.
I think the Turner example is a bit different because they are much more analogous to the public airwaves. I’m assuming that they weren’t required to have any particular view on CNN.
I think you are taking that old saw too literally. In some ways users of social media companies are both customer and product, but what they are really providing is a platform to communicate with other users.
I agree
We have tools manufactured by private companies that allow us to process, disseminate and amplify large quantities of unfiltered information.
Some people have proven, through their actions, that they do not possess the intelligence and discernment to use these tools in a manner that does not endanger public safety. I agree with these people not getting access to these tools.
They can speak all they want but we don’t have to give them a megaphone. No one has the “right” to be the loudest voice in the room.
All old saws are, of course, simplistic. In the case of social media though, they’re VERY close to truth. Twitter and Facebook don’t get a penny directly from me. They offer service to me because I am a product they sell to others.
In the case of Donald Trump, even more so. Trump was a very lucrative product indeed for Twitter. He brought them even more users and activity (hell, he raised the market awareness of Twitter) which made them lots of money, and when they got rid of him their stock price fell ten percent. Dumping Trump was a calculated move that his poison would eventually cost them more money than he made for them as a product. The “he violated our terms of service” bit is bullshit; he violated the TOS for years, and Twitter’s application of their TOS has always been inconsistent with anything except their money-making algorithms. They decided the Trump product wasn’t going to make them money, so they discontinued it.
So we’re in agreement that this is not a constitutional/fundamental rights issue, rather it appears to be a worrying effect from the power that social media companies have.
That still leaves open the question whether this is also ‘freedom of expression’ in a less legalistic sense, i.e. is it important that citizens have some means of addressing others, and to what extent are the large social media outlets required to respect that?
Personally I’m on the fence. On the one hand I agree that there is no actual monopoly: anyone can start a new website which allows anyone to reach you. I have a hard time seeing why you’d have a claim to the audience’s attention that specific social media have created. On the other hand I find it also worrying if social media can wield so much power with setting policies as they see fit.
Maybe there are two separate issues
As a non-participant in most social media (I’m not on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), I still find the power of social media worrying as it may ultimately affect me and society at large (witness recent political developments). That alone justifies some form of government intervention or influence in how social media operate. Consequently, government should also give social media some indication as to what is desirable and what is prohibited.
Secondly, for a person who would like to participate on social media to reach an audience, it seems again unfair if social media can discriminate at will. Again some kind of fair policy seems desirable. But this is not the same issue as the first one.
And to beat again on the analogy I used before, they are a bookstore/newsstand that is choosing not to put my scurrilous pamphlet on their shelves right between Car&Driver and the latest S.King paperback at their prime location on the High Street. They are not wronging me by denying me the eyeballs of their thousands of daily shoppers, leaving me to distribute it out of my car trunk at swap meets.
There seems to be a perception among many people out there that this is an either-or all-or-nothing proposition, in the case of social media platforms and internet forums that they must be either (a) a publisher with not just control but actual editorial responsibility for the content, or (b) a common space where anything the users want to send through goes through no questions asked. Doesn’t have to be that way, there can be the role of the retailer that provides a place to offer product/content, is not responsible for the creation of that product/content, but is not unconditionally obligated to give anyone the shelf space to promote theirs or to carry any product that any customer asks for.
(As I’ve mentioned before the way I see it, that (b) is the role of the Internet itself, the infrastructure of backbones and relays and the regulated phone/cable utilities for the “last mile” that do have a “universal service” (in the case of TV, “must-carry”) obligation. )
. . .
BTW, in the US “news media” are not “required to report the truth” as a legal mandate, it’s historically been a matter of whether you are up for (a) being sued by someone who claims you lied, (b) risking your credibility. Regulated broadcast media are required to “serve the public interest” as part of their franchise license, and even then as of the 80s were relieved of the “Fairness Doctrine” hence Limbaugh, Ingraham, et al.
I don’t know, but turns out the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law has been looking into big tech monopolies, and they do have some suggestions:
But none of those have anything to do with the discussion at hand. Twitter is only mentioned in that article as a counter to Facebook’s alleged monopoly status.
Again, banning some asshole from Twitter for wearing ugly shoes or having a spray-on tan complexion is legal, not an abridgement of free speech, not an abridgement of freedom of expression, and quite frankly easy for the banned person to work around. I can perform all of the Twitter clone creation steps I mentioned earlier in under an hour. The only thing the banned person loses is the platform’s audience and none of those protections is meant to guarantee an audience.
It’s not a freedom of expression issue, even in the broader sense, because freedom of expression has never included the right to be heard. It has does not force an entity, no matter how popular, to publish your speech to make it heard.
You can make the same argument in the past with the big publishers. Was not having your book published by them a freedom of expression issue? They were the only easy access to publishing books for large masses.
Was the newspaper not including your writing in their newspaper a freedom of expression issue? They were the only easy access to ads, news, etc. to be sent to the masses.
No, if you wanted to get your speech out, you could just speak, make pamphlets or flyers, etc. They may not have been as effective, but you could do so.
The same is true of the Internet. You can make your own website. You can send emails. You can host your own videos. It’s not as easy to get an audience as using the big platforms, but you can do it.
Freedom of expression is just that–about your ability to express yourself without being punished. It’s not about making sure that people hear what you have to say or making them aware of it.
That’s not to say there aren’t other reasons to argue that something should be heard, but it’s not a freedom of expression issue if you are not stopped from speaking or expressing yourself. You have to make a different argument–usually one based on the merits of the speech.
Drudge, with a mere website manages to make himself heard, so yes indeed.
Clearly, we must nationalize Drudge!
(I mean if that’s what has to be done to Twitter and FaceBook then fair is fair!)
No, we as customers* and users are demanding what they allow on their platforms.
Why not? If they are not serving the needs of their customers and users, then someone else can.
The difference is that there are thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of newspapers in your example. This messageboard here would be a newspaper.
What you are complaining about is that there are only a few popular newspapers. And since those are the popular ones, you think that they must publish your letter to the editor, or they are infringing your speech. You completely ignore the fact that there are countless other newspapers out there that would be willing to publish your letter, simply because those platforms are not as popular.
*I spend advertising dollars online, so I am a customer.
I’m afraid that reaching people i other ways has in itself chanfed somewhat.
Industrial practices have developed a long way from the days when Trade Union representatives were either given paid time off by the company to conduct Union business and make regular visits to all workplaces within their remit.
Many businesses have changed the facility offered to TU reps from paid time away from work, to the use of company networks and their in house distance conferencing systems.
In addition business are now more than ever scattered all over instead of on one or two factory sites, the older ways of contacting members have already largely been replaced with social media, and its impractical to go back - we can’t muddle through in the old way because the old ways just do not exist.
I know you can make all sorts of arguments and suggestions, but we are talking of a modern industrialised nation with electronic communications - its changed. I’ve tried other means - the old ways - of mass contacts and campaigning and it just does not work any more.
How so?
There are 3 bakeries within 15 miles of me that might make wedding cakes.
I have access to tens of thousands of messageboards or other social media sites from the comfort of my desk chair.