“They’re a Private Company.”

 

The fallacy of telling people that monopolies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google can do anything they want because they're a private company explained.

Section 230 is a law that protects public platforms from being held liable for user content. A public platform doesn’t exercise control over content and, therefore, is not liable for it. When you speak to someone on your phone, the carrier, whether ATT or Verizon or someone else, is not legally responsible for anything you say. You can make the most vile statement, even legally actionable statements, and the carrier is protected because they have no control over what you say.

Fair enough, but what happens when a “platform” starts controlling content–limiting some voices, promoting others, endorsing one, disputing another? At that point the rationale for Section 230 protection breaks down. Instead of being a platform, they are now acting as a publisher. They are picking and choosing what content will be allowed. And this means that they are now responsible for everything that they do allow on what they are trying to call a platform. After all, since they are removing things, if they don’t remove that, then it must be because they approve of it. And so, if, among the billions of posts on a social media site that controls content there is one that includes something actionable, then the people running the social media site are also legally liable for that content. Or they would be if the rationale behind Section 230 were consistently applied.

For a large site with millions, or even billions, of users, it would be far, far better for the folk running it to throw up their hands and say “Oh, no. We’re not even going to try to control content. If you don’t like it, scroll past.” After all, how could any automatic algorithm, or any reasonably sized group of moderators, ensure that no posts contained something actionable that would leave them liable. They would be best advised to stay safely behind Section 230 provisions.

That is if the rationale behind Section 230 were consistently applied.

So we have to ask ourselves why these companies have not been sued. 

To find out why they have not been broken up for being monopolies, read the whole thing.

Facebook “Controls” 69% of the social media market.

About 70% of all searches on Desktop computers use Google. About 90% of all mobile device searches.