If I’m not mistaken, this is similar to the anti-trust break-up of AT&T in 1982. Sue Facebook/Google/Twitter for anti-trust violations, win in court, break Facebook/Google/Twitter into smaller companies.
At the same time, define them as “common carriers” or “utilities”, at which point they’re no longer responsible for the content.
But at the same time they can’t look at content. Which might break their business model.
Not an ant-trust lawyer, even on the Internets.
My take is 180 from this article. I see these online services blocking offensive content as a sign the internet is starting to mature. Bad actors are finally be de-platformed. Online communities and services are making the moral decision to no longer be part of the problem and are becoming part of the solution. The rise of hate in this nation has been greatly spured by granting the veneer of legitimacy to toxic people and their toxic ideas. It’s high time these platforms did the right thing and stop giving soap boxes to bad people.
This is not really true.
I ran an Internet company through most of the 90’s – back when it wasn’t about money, when you could still register a domain for free be faxing network solutions, when no big companies had “internet presence.”
The money came later. And the Internet got a lot less interesting, even if it became more useful.
I’ve kind of given up on the new version ot the internet (this is the first post I’ve made anywhere in a good six months…).
So many disturbing things, so little time.
Maybe being a widely woke society might help, but that’s not happening.
sigh
As Jillian York wrote, “If there is a slippery slope of platform censorship, it didn’t start with Infowars. It started with the Moroccan atheists, the trans models, the drag performers, the indigenous women…” York continues “On a personal level, so am I [OK with Jones’s removal]. But I’m not okay with all of the decisions that came before it (the ones cited in that tweet) and I don’t see tech corporations as liberal when they police women’s bodies as they do.”
These days, just about everybody would like to see people they really hate be denied a soapbox. It seems a pretty common reaction.
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