Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

I think this is going to be a discussion thread that is almost inevitably going to be a shitshow, but anyway:

There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be applied universally rather than just to government. I don't agree, I think it's a vast over-reach and almost unachievable to have both perfect free speech on these platforms and actually run them as a viable business.

But let's lay that aside, those people who make the argument claim to be adhering to an even stronger dedication to free speech. Surely, it's clear here that having the actual head of the US government threatening to shut down private companies for how they choose to manage their platforms is a far more disturbing and direct threat against free speech even in the narrowest sense.

I have struggled with both points of the argument for a while now. In general, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment that this would be a glaring overreach on the side of the feds. It's also apparent that social networks have a tendency to cater massively to one side of the increasingly divided political spectrum, as proven with experiments like Gab. I've always liked the idea of having a Twitter clone that bases their philosophy on the 1st amendment, but in reality, all it did was to attract the polar opposite of the /r/politics subreddit (to put it lightly), rather than to facilitate free and open discourse.

On the other hand, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube et al are undoubtedly massively influential on the public opinion and their corporate position on political topics - Yoel Roth's recent tweets serve as a decent example, showing clearly that this person cannot be an objective "fact checker" - essentially create a public forum where I am not able to exercise my first amendment rights (and, legally speaking, rightfully so). I cannot help but to find this very concerning.

YouTube (despite numerous issues with their interpretation of free speech), for instance, starting linking Wiki articles under videos that cover certain topics or are uploaded by certain channels. Videos by the BBC show a notice that the BBC is a British public broadcast service, simply informing the viewer about the fact that any bias they might encounter can be easily identified (feel free to switch "BBC" with "RT"). I've found that to be a decent middle ground between outright suppressing views by a corporation pretending to be the authority on certain topics and broadcasting everything without any context.

You are missing other laws that already enforce standards on certain platforms, that are similar to the concept of free speech.

Those laws are called common carrier laws.

It is already illegal for many communication platforms, that a subject to certain classifications, to discriminate on the basis of the content of the speech that they distribute.

Common carrier laws are not controversial. Few people would argue that we should get rid of common carrier laws.

Common carrier laws apply to the unbiased transportation of information over networks, they do not guarantee hosting of information by private parties or access to their audience.

Example:

- CC laws guarantee that if you are able to host your speech on your own server that ISPs have to route information requests to it.

- CC laws do not guarantee you can force Reddit to host your speech on their own private servers or force Reddit to give you broadcast access to their audience.

The point being that phone systems really aren't that different than Twitter or Facebook.

I am arguing that common carrier laws already exist, and are not controversial.

And that it really isn't much of a stretch to change and expand our existing, uncontroversial, common carrier laws, so as to apply to other things that really aren't much different than our phone system.

Even if those laws have yet to be slightly updated to apply to the modern era yet.

Phones systems are information transportation systems that handle information requests.

Phones systems are are not platforms to host speech - i.e. CC laws can't force me to play your phone recording in my private home when someone calls me.

You talk about how established Common Carrier laws are, but that's precisely what they're established for - transportation. Hence the word carrier. CC laws were originally for unbiased trucking and rail transportation, and do not guarantee that you can force a private warehouse to store your goods.

> You talk about how established Common Carrier laws are

I am saying that these laws are uncontroversial, and it would only require a slight expansion and change to them, to order for them to cover very similar things, that aren't that much different than what CC laws currently cover.

Yes, I understand that CC laws don't technically apply to what I am talking about. I am instead saying that it would only be a slight change, to make them apply, and therefore not as big of a deal as people are making it seem.

> but that's precisely what they're established for - transportation

I don't see how telephone companies transporting your phone calls is much different than twitter transporting your tweets. Yes, it is not exactly the same. It is slightly different. But only slightly.

> CC laws can't force me to play your phone recording

> do not guarantee that you can force a private warehouse to store your goods.

The private warehouse, or end phone user, in the twitter example, would be the end user. Twitter, is arguably, transporting your messages. And then the end user is not forced to keep it.

So even if CC laws were changed to apply to twitter, the end user would not be forced to keep their tweet. They could delete it, or not follow you, or whatever.

Just like how if I make a phone call to someone, they still receive the phone call, but you don't have to pick of the phone. The same argument could be applied to tweets.

> Phones systems are are not platforms to host speech

They have to transport speech. In the same way that twitter transports speech.

There is about 70 years of established case law on this. For a primer, read Technologies of Freedom. (https://www.amazon.com/Technologies-Freedom-Belknap-Press-It...)

All that said, the concept of where and how to apply common carrier is of course controversial, hence the entire net neutrality debate. If an ISP isn't required to carry content the idea of an information service (ie Twitter) being required to is borderline absurd.