Quote (Doggyfood @ Aug 25 2021 07:20am)
Telephone companies in the US are common carriers and actively sought this legal status. As long as they do not monitor or restrict information sent over phone calls they are not legally responsible for that content. Their service is an A-to-B transfer of information.
Social media sites are content providers. They use algorithms to filter user information, structure it to maximize user screen time and sell user analytics to advertisers to generate a profit.
Their legal status is similar to a website like 4chan. They are not legally responsible for the content posted to their website so long as they make a “reasonable attempt” to remove content that violates laws in the jurisdictions it is viewed or posted in.
You cannot regulate them as a common carrier without removing their ability to remove obscene or illegal material like child pornography. These companies cannot exist as common carriers.
Within established law they are not doing anything wrong, aside from suppressing competition. If you think they need to be regulated differently it would require some pretty extreme legislation of how corporations are allowed to exert control over their own content.
Thanks for the detailed response.
And I don't see what's so difficult about these, "extreme legislations". If we really see facebook censorship as a problem, then we should change the laws to fix it. And it appears to me that writing up drafts of laws, trying to get them passed, are things that the elected officials are pretty good at. They pass all sorts of laws constantly. So I don't see why it would be an issue.
And why can facebook..etc not exist as common carriers?
This post was edited by JessiWan on Aug 25 2021 03:05pm