I think social media is not directly comparable to television and radio broadcasts. The public square analogy makes much more sense here. But even then, in a lot of places there are impartiality requirements on media outlets, as flawed as they may be.

Let me use your analogy, though.

Let's say there are many newspapers in town. Is it fair for me to refuse to publish certain things? Sure.

What if I own the only newspaper in town? It gets more complicated. But hey, perhaps the town has a thriving samizdat culture, so maybe it's fine.

But then what if I start buying out every printing press in town? And on top of that, what if I'm pressured by the mayor to not publish something? This is a big issue now, right?

How can that situation be addressed? People often suggest regulating that sole paper, but to me the answer is taking steps to ensure that we never end up with one newspaper in town. And we definitely don't let that paper control all of the printing presses.

> The public square analogy makes much more sense here. But even then, in a lot of places there are impartiality requirements on media outlets, as flawed as they may be.

The "Public Square" assumes the space is owned by... well the public. Either the town or city. That's not the case here. Even if it were, the reach of a person in the public square is tiny... a few hundred people if they are absolutely lucky.

Besides... your rights in actual public squares haven't changed a bit. Save the fact that COVID has shut down many public spaces.

> But then what if I start buying out every printing press in town?

You mean the way Clear Channel has actually bought up a huge percentage of radio stations?

The way big right wing corporations have bought up the majority of local television stations in the country?

Is it "fair" that the majority of television broadcast stations are owned by a few right-wing media companies?

For what it's worth, all three "competing" local broadcast television stations are owned by the same company now.

I'd love to know why people think it's super important that Facebook and Twitter cease their supposedly "biased" curating while so many broadcast companies which reach 10s of millions of homes get a free pass.

So let's go after TV and radio stations too, then? I'm not opposed to that.

By the way, I don't think forcing broadcasters or social media to not police their content is the way to go - I'd much rather make sure they don't become monopolistic. The situation you describe with TV must not happen with social media too.

I think the point was that we didn't seem to mind that consolidation nor the censorship/biased reporting in those media sources yet want to ask Twittter/Facebook to hold themselves to a new standard.

Is it more because it's conservative views being censored now?

I think that consolidation was a lot less visible, plus people's attitudes are changing. Finally, this ship has not sailed yet, while TV is pretty much doomed.

American conservatives, being as... loud as they are, did make the issue more mainstream, but people have been bringing up these problems for as long as the internet has been around.

> I'd much rather make sure they don't become monopolistic. The situation you describe with TV must not happen with social media too.

I'd love to see more variety in social media. Unfortunately network effects favor big single player. Also, every time a new entrant threatens, they get sucked up by an existing player. Sadly, since we've allowed Facebook to swallow everything which isn't bolted down, the only real competition seems to be Chinese owned[0].

(And I sympathize with foreign governments struggling with Facebook & Instagram being US owned).

[0] I have no qualms about Chinese people or even Chinese companies in general. But the way the Chinese government operates, I am skeptical of platforms based on speech.

Funny thing is, there might be a way out if we changed the incentives. Because let's be clear: FB, Twitter, YouTube, ... (and to a slightly lesser degree, Google) - they are all media distributors and opinion amplifiers. Much like traditional publishers. Only instead of creating or sourcing their own content, they syndicate.

We also have to acknowledge that content moderation at scale is impossible.[ß] The lines are hazy and fluid, context matters, and incentives are outright perverse. The volume of incoming material is overwhelming. On top of that, people with money, fame or lulz on the line will game any rules based system.

But what if these online syndicates had to publish corrections for their worst offenses? News outlets have had to do that for decades, after all. We could as a society take this as an opportunity to move the goal posts for the better. Instead of allowing the correction to be buried in a dark corner nobody ever sees, specify that the correction itself has to be displayed as prominently as the original news itself.

You're doing print? Then that correction will eat up prime eyeball real estate from the publication. (And make it clear you messed up.) You're an online syndicate? The correction needs to go through the same amplification mechanism and get as prominently on top of the users' feeds as the original item did. It eats up prime screen real estate and makes it equally clear that you messed up.

This would have three benefits:

1) Content publishers become accountable for their actions. The US media in particular is obsessed with just throwing whatever they get their hands on out there and have the readers sort it out for themselves. To hell with accuracy.

2) The requirement to surface corrections as widely as the original item(s) provides a second-order incentive. Your publication forfeits revenue and opportunity from whatever other news are currently floating around, costing both money and reputation. Mess up more often, get punished more often.

3) The readers would benefit from increased media literacy education. Get bombarded with garbage and outright lies? Receive more fact-checks after the fact, published and syndicated through the same funnels that fed you the original trash.

Freedom of speech is not freedom from accountability.

ß: Mike Masnick has been saying this for years. For a longer take, see https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191111/23032743367/masni...

How would this even work with something like twitter?

Lets say Biden Tweets a big fat lie to his millions of followers. That lie in turn gets retweeted by millions of people. Next, Biden posts a retraction. Do all of his followers also have to post a retraction? Does Twitter have to implement some kind of retweet retraction mechanic?

What if the original user is obscure and someone famous quote tweets a big fat lie instead of inventing their own big-fat lie? Does it make a difference if the quoter was agreeing with the original?

How do you deal with users who refuse to post a retraction or even leave twitter entirely? Is there an auto-retraction? Who decides if and when something is retracted?

> The requirement to surface corrections as widely as the original item

Imagine for a moment you are running an obscure little website, "The 2nd amendment times", and you post a little story on your blog about how Obama is getting appointed to replace Biden in 2024 and he's coming to take everyone's guns. All 17 of your readers read your story and laugh it off except one passes it on to Rush Limbaugh who Tweets it.

Now 17 million people blow up your blog. You are featured on Fox News and dozens of top right-wing pundits repost your site.

Who is "accountable" here? How would this get retracted? If you post a new article on the front page of your blog saying you dreamt the whole thing after smoking too much weed, does that make it all good even though only your original 17 readers are likely to see this correction?