This goes further -- in some states where such doctrine does not exist it was kind of synthesized because some electoral districts have, say, 80% of the electorate in an apartment building which a judge ruled must be accessible to candidates who run.
Or if the rule only applies to political expression, can spammers just adopt the formula: “I love candidate $X because he buys viagra at http:yyy”
Or, if the rule is that big enough sites suddenly become “town squares”, that seems like a major disincentive to American companies to grow. Others would walk in without these limitations, like Chinese already did with TikTok.
A blog comment section usually presents itself as a curated space, and the flip side is that blog owners take some level of responsibility for the contents of their comments.
You can be a private club, or you can be a public space. But you can't be both. We make that kind of distinction in the real world too.
> Or if the rule only applies to political expression, can spammers just adopt the formula: “I love candidate $X because he buys viagra at http:yyy”
Of course not, come off it, judges and juries are not actually complete idiots.
> Or, if the rule is that big enough sites suddenly become “town squares”, that seems like a major disincentive to American companies to grow. Others would walk in without these limitations, like Chinese already did with TikTok.
Then ban those sites from the US, like India does. If you can't support US-style freedom of speech then you shouldn't get access to the US market.
Usually you have multiple chances to fight it. The owner of a square continues to own it because it makes them money.
The best regulatory approach to social media is simple: any algorithmic newsfeed must be opt-in. It must default to a chronological option. The default preference must also be applied retroactively for all existing users.
Personally I feel social media sites have taken some of the moderation too far. I don't have a problem (in a legal sense) with the algorithmic feed downweighting various topics or adding links to countering sources or whatever, but I think if these sites don't want to be held liable for content they should error way on the side of allowing individual user pages to be uncensored.
What was even crazier to me was when Twitter blocked DMs containing that Hunter Biden story. The story was suspect obviously, but to moderate private messages like that is a huge overreach IMO.
As everyone here should know, it’s not like that: hosting can be awfully expensive, especially for media content. Social media companies receive money from advertisers, and use that money to host content from users and partners that hopefully makes those ads look appealing too. It’s that simple.
Should these companies be compelled by the government to display content that makes their customers (advertisers) look bad? That seems like an awfully deep intrusion into a private business.
If the social media companies truly were monopolies, that would be another thing. But it’s hard to make that argument when new entrants like Snap and TikTok are able to conquer entire market segments and reach $100B valuations in a matter of years.