The USPS has a similar monopoly to YouTube, but they're obliged to transport any printed material that is legal. There's no hidden algorithm that shreds letters containing the wrong keywords. There's no team of Indian outsourcers searching your mail for content that breaches an arbitrary set of rules. Nobody but a court can prohibit you from using their service.
I think we collectively need to decide whether social media services are publishers or common carriers. The present ambiguity over their status gives them an unreasonable degree of power with unreasonably little responsibility.
No, the USPS has a legally-protected monopoly, where alternative services are prohibited from competing with certain core functions.
Alternative web video distribution services are not prohibited, and there are several that specialize in content that is unwelcome on YouTube.
> The present ambiguity over their status
What ambiguity? They are active distribution agents (neither publishers nor common carriers, in that regard, though they are often also publishers, more like bookstores).
It only seems “ambiguous” when framed with a false dichotomy.
Yet, even though they have many of the legal protections of being a pseudo common carrier, they have none of the obligations, such as the obligation to treat all content equally.
For example, it is illegal for your phone provider to eaves drop on your conversations and censor your phone conversations.
But it is NOT illegal for facebook to do the same thing. Why are they treated differently?
Taking that as unvarnished truth [0], for the sake of argument, that's not at all an ambiguity, it's a crystal clear status.
> Yet, even though they have many of the legal protections of being a pseudo common carrier, they have none of the obligations, such as the obligation to treat all content equally.
Again, taking that as true for the sake of argument, its not an ambiguity, but a crystal clear status.
Its a conflict with the false dichotomy of the idea that the only two roles in information dissemination are fully-liable non-neutral publisher and fully-immunized neutral common carrier. That model isn't true offline, and it's not true online.
[0] Which it isn't, because while the CDA and DMCA (and others) provide some limited/conditional protection, they are not a total bar to liability; but the still the status is not ambiguous, merely distinct.
I see no reason why 1:many platforms shouldn't have the same protections as a 1:1 platform.
It is in the public interest to prohibit moderation by 1:1 common carriers. It is not in the public interest to prohibit moderation by '1:many common carriers'. But by virtue of being 'simple' carriers, they should both be free from liability for the content.
Note, however, I don't think it is very good to have these companies moderating themselves, but it's better than nothing at the moment. I'd propose legislating the scope of the moderation according to standards set by some internationally recognized ethics committee (not a government decreed scope, they are likely just as biased as a company).
Alternatively, platforms could offer something like a complex filter system that allows users to implement their own moderation policies. But this would increase the burden (costs) of the provider.
There are tons of protections, already in place, on large networks.
If the price was reasonable people would go for it, as long as setup and maintenance is transparent (that's what the company's services help you achieve).
If the networks were federated .. like e.g. Mastodon ...
And then we come to hosting which is a gray zone in most retail contracts actually offering usable upload mostly because of bandwidth concerns and do we really trust the likes of Comcast not to play dirty when put under external pressure in regards to unpopular speech.
The problem is dependence on huge monolithic tech platforms, such that we feel that the societal value of free expression is threatened by the standard forms moderation that we had accepted as normal for most of the history of the internet.
Now, the ability to moderate carries a significant amount of power in a way that didn't use to be the case. And some people, looking over the available options and the effort required to pursue them, would now prefer to resign themselves to permanent dependence on huge monolithic platforms and just focus on making sure those platforms are not engaging in moderation.
But this is hugely problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that moderation at least sometimes offers a genuine good to users because toxic, manipulative, illegal behaviors that undermine the platform are removed. There's a "societal value" in having flourishing discourse that isn't compromised by the toxicity that would naturally occur without moderation. And there is good reason to not want to make that sacrifice.
Either side offers a distasteful sacrifice. So maybe the answer is to try and bypass the dilemma by making non-centralized communication more accessible, so that people like your wife (or my mom, or my dad's entire side of the family) don't have to make that kind of choice.