Category: Social Disease

“Congress … has given digital platforms ‘immunity from certain types of suits’ … but it has not imposed corresponding responsibilities”

Justice Clarence Thomas is a national treasure.

@JackPosobiec: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas finds social media companies do not have First Amendment right to ban protected speech and that Section 230 is unconstitutional

Much like with a communications utility, this concentration gives some digital platforms enormous control over speech. When a user does not already know exactly where to find something on the Internet—and users rarely do— Google is the gatekeeper between that user and the speech of others 90% of the time. It can suppress content by deindexing or downlisting a search result or by steering users away from certain content by manually altering autocomplete results. Grind, Schechner, McMillan, & West, How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 15, 2019. Facebook and Twitter can greatly narrow a person’s information flow through similar means. And, as the distributor of the clear majority of e-books and about half of all physical books, 4 Amazon can impose cataclysmic consequences on authors by, among other things, blocking a listing.
 
It changes nothing that these platforms are not the sole means for distributing speech or information. A person always could choose to avoid the toll bridge or train and instead swim the Charles River or hike the Oregon Trail. But in assessing whether a company exercises substantial market power, what matters is whether the alternatives are comparable. For many of today’s digital platforms, nothing is.

File is here, starting on Page 8..

If It Works Why Would They Stop?

There’s zero overlap between the responses from Dems and Reps. This indicates they weren’t offered the same items to choose from but each got an ideologically-framed plate of items. Put differently, we see which topics are triggering and persuasive, not necessarily which matter.

Indeed

First They Came For Milo

The business model switched from a free exchange of ideas to a protection racket so fast we never even noticed.

h/t

Social Disease

Finally, they do something right.

After blocking links to all news content in Australia, Facebook has reportedly “friended” the country again by coming back to the negotiating table, at least according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison. That doesn’t mean that Mark Zuckerberg has dropped his objections to Austrailia’s pending legislation that would force the social media giant to pay for links to Australian news content, however. Neither side seems to be backing down at this point. Australia may not be in this battle alone, though. We’re learning this weekend that Canada is drafting a similar measure and basically daring Facebook to impose a blackout on them as well.

But read it all.

Social Disease: Punching Back

Florida governor Ron DeSantis will be the GOP frontrunner for 2024, if he chooses to do so.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced a major push to curb Big Tech’s political bias and censorship today, with measures including a ban on the censorship of political candidates and mandatory opt-outs of content filters for citizens of the Sunshine State.
 
In a 45-minute speech, the governor identified Big Tech companies as the leading threat to American democracy and freedom of expression today, and pledged that Florida Republicans would take action.

The new regulations announced by DeSantis include:

  • Mandatory opt-outs from big tech’s content filters, a solution to tech censorship first proposed by Breitbart News in 2018.
  • A private right of action for Floridian citizens against tech companies that violate this condition.
  • Fines of $100,000 per day levied on tech companies that suspend candidates for elected office in Florida from their platforms.
  • Daily fines for any tech company “that uses their content and user-related algorithms to suppress or prioritize the access of any content related to a political candidate or cause on the ballot.”
  • Greater transparency requirements.
  • Disclosure requirements enforced by Florida’s election authorities for tech companies that favor one candidate over another.
  • Power for the Florida attorney general to bring cases against tech companies that violate these conditions under the state’s Unfair and Deceptive Practices Act.
  • He’ll be hard to beat.

    Follow up: Tucker Carlson interview with DeSantis.

    Social Disease

    Sebastian KaletaWhy I Decided To Regulate Big Tech in Poland

    In Poland, we have watched with alarm as a consortium of ever more powerful, monopolistic Big Tech companies have done what was once unthinkable: de-platforming a sitting U.S. president. For us, this example—which has alarmed presidents and prime ministers across Europe and, indeed, the world—is merely the straw that broke the camel’s back. The debate about who and what social media companies should be able to ban is now firmly in the public eye.
     
    For the citizens of Poland and other countries that value true democratic accountability, we have concluded that this situation can go on no longer. As media across the world have noted, Poland has proposed a law establishing a “Freedom of Speech Council” to guarantee that Polish citizens are not arbitrarily manipulated by Big Tech companies.
     
    At the heart of our proposal is an effort to guarantee Polish citizens their constitutional right to freedom of speech on major internet platforms. The Freedom of Speech Council we propose will decide what Big Tech can and cannot remove from its platforms, lest they attempt to impose restrictions beyond the laws that govern and protect speech in Poland. Far from a partisan or factional initiative, the Freedom of Speech Council will convoke members for six-year terms after they have been nominated by a three-fifths majority in Parliament.
     
    The remedy befits the magnitude of the problem. Two thousand years ago, the Roman comedian Juvenal asked, “Who will watch the watchers?” In the case of Big Tech, I believe that the answer lies with the people—not nameless moderators operating with no transparency and no ability for recourse. The Freedom Act I have proposed in Poland is not only a law that would guarantee Polish citizens their constitutional right to freedom of speech, but it provides a blueprint for how to confront the problem of unaccountable speech regulation by Silicon Valley oligarchs.

    Social Disease

    Daily Mail: Twitter saw its shares drop by 12 per cent Monday as the company braced for pro-Trump protesters outside its San Francisco headquarters.

    It rebounded, but is still down 5+ and shaky.

    More at Marketwatch;

    Twitter shares are off 6.6% in Monday morning trading, while Facebook shares are down 3%. Shares of Apple Inc. AAPL, -1.92% and Alphabet Inc. GOOG, -1.52% GOOGL, -1.50%, both of which pulled right-wing social-media app Parler from their app stores citing lax moderation policies, are off 2.2% and 1.7%, respectively. Shares of Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -1.03%, which booted Parler from its AWS web-hosting platform, are down 1.4%.

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