Re:Facebook reverses on paid influencers after Bloomberg memes
by munk-a on Friday February 14, 2020 @02:40PM
(#22329583)
There is nothing forcing the allowance of campaign season debate on these platforms, I think it's reasonable to put our society above the health of these platforms and allow formal debate to only happen on the mainstream platforms - people can talk on other streams, but campaigns funding (either directly or through friends) discussion on those platforms can be pursued.
Bear in mind, it's not like we have no control over debate platforms now - the rule enforcement has been lacking but foreign money in campaigns is strictly verbotten, free speech has some limits.
They never applied to the Internet, cable TV, or cell phone bandwidth. And those have become the dominant forms of communication. Only around 15% of people get over-the-air TV. And while the numbers for radio are somewhat higher, it's competing against much more targeted messaging on social media and web advertising -- both of which are unregulated.
So even if you reinstated airtime laws, and actually enforced them, I don't think it would make much difference. It's not the loss of equal time that allows obviously-biased mass media TV "news" channels to exist, but the fact that they're not broadcast over the air.
Amending the laws to cover those would almost certainly run you afoul of the first amendment, since the equal time doctrines were only legal because the bandwidth was so restricted. The unrestricted bandwidth of the Internet will make it much harder to justify.