Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)

Re:Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Fre... by throwaway894345 on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:19PM (#25947441)

While I agree, one predictable counter-argument is that Twitter et al are private organizations with a legal prerogative to ban whomever they like (freedom of association). This is true, but we should think about how this was intended to work and the property that this was designed to protect: the original idea was that you had a decentralized network of communities that could individually excommunicate whomever they liked (freedom of association) but any individual was still allowed to participate in the broader network, the public square. Now, social media has become the de facto public square--a small group of social media companies hold dominion over an overwhelming amount of our speech--worse, these companies coordinate with each other to behave as a single large entity. We shouldn't get distracted by the fact that Twitter is a de facto public square and not a de jure public square, because we want to protect the functional property. We can do that either by regulating Twitter like we would regulate the public square, or we can do it by breaking up this powerful trust of corporations (I favor the latter).

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Re:Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Fre... by fareesh on Thursday January 28, 2021 @03:51PM (#25949001)

I am curious as to whether the predictable counter-argument of "private organization with prerogative" will shift in the wake of the recent Robinhood fiasco.

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Re:Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Fre... by philipkglass on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:54PM (#25948065)

Twitter has a monopoly on things that work exactly like Twitter. That's all. I'm a lot more sympathetic to arguments about how Google and Facebook have a worrying degree of control online, because services owned by them are used by an absolute majority of English speaking people.

Twitter is only used by 22% of Americans as of 2019 [1]. If Twitter banned me I wouldn't even know about it for several months because that's about how frequently I log in. It's important to a certain kind of "very online" person but from my POV it's as inessential as Pinterest or Twitch.

I think that Twitter's perceived importance has been exaggerated beyond its actual user numbers because the previous US President used it so heavily. It was also an easy, cheap, reliable way for other publishers to churn out content. "Trump Tweets Something -- We React" was a daily staple for TV and written publications for 4 years. But 78% of Americans get along just fine without using Twitter itself.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-...

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Re:Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Fre... by throwaway894345 on Thursday January 28, 2021 @03:19PM (#25948445)

> Twitter has a de facto monopoly on things that work exactly like Twitter.

No, Twitter has a monopoly on people who use Twitter. If you decoupled the users from the technology (e.g., by way of some common protocol that allows human communication networks to span social media platforms), Twitter would probably vanish overnight (surely losing out to a competitor with an "edit" button).

> Twitter is only used by 22% of Americans as of 2019

In what world is it okay for one company to monopolize much of the communication of 22% of Americans? Especially since Twitter isn't some neatly isolated system, but rather its effects spill over into the outside world; consider how often traditional media cites Twitter (not only with respect to Trump's own Tweets) or even Twitter's role in BLM protests/riots and the Capitol Hill riot. Twitter's reach pretty clearly far exceeds its own user base.

Moreover, Twitter and other social media giants often act in concert, so it's not "just Twitter" or "just Facebook" that we need to be concerned about, but also these giants acting in their mutual interests.

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