I agree!

Former U.S. President Barack Obama said that the extent to which social media companies claim they “are more like a phone company than they are like The Atlantic” is not “tenable,” he told the publication in an interview published Monday.

“They are making editorial choices, whether they’ve buried them in algorithms or not,” the former president said in the interview. “The First Amendment doesn’t require private companies to provide a platform for any view that is out there. At the end of the day, we’re going to have to find a combination of government regulations and corporate practices that address this, because it’s going to get worse. If you can perpetrate crazy lies and conspiracy theories just with texts, imagine what you can do when you can make it look like you or me saying anything on video. We’re pretty close to that now.”

Obama’s statement that social media platforms should be considered more like publishers than public utilities would have significant implications on how the companies are regulated.

[…]

President-elect Joe Biden has harshly criticized Section 230 and Facebook itself in an interview with The New York Times editorial board published earlier this year.

“Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms,” Biden said at the time, referring to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, taking a more extreme position than many of the Democrats and Republicans currently seeking to tweak the laws’ protections.

In October, I said:

In purposefully, actively, and personally deciding to stomp on a negative story about Joe Biden that was published by a reputable newspaper in the midst of a political campaign, Facebook and Twitter have definitively and unmistakably crossed the line from being internet platforms to publishers. As such, the legal protections granted to them under Section 230 must be withdrawn so that they can be regulated like The New York Times, Fox News, MSNBC, and all of the other publishers that filter, edit, and curate the information they provide to their subscribers.

Facebook and Twitter can’t have it both ways. If they want the legal protections provided under Section 230, then they must allow all information to flow freely. If they want to be information gatekeepers, then those protections must be withdrawn so that people have legal remedies against abuse.

Interesting 

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has criticized competitor Twitter for its decision to fact-check tweets from President Donald Trump.

In an interview with Fox News due to be broadcast on Thursday, Zuckerberg claims that it is not the place of private companies to interfere in what people say online.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey immediately fired back saying that the site would continue to call out ‘incorrect or disputed information’ about elections shared by users.

The spat between Zuckerberg and Dorsey came after Trump said he will sign some sort of ‘social media’-focused executive order on Thursday amid the rift with Twitter over the fact-checks on his tweets.

I’m very wary of things like this.

The order would push the Federal Communications Commission to write rules on when and how platforms can remove content from their platform and still maintain liability protection granted them under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The law as it stands largely exempts those publications from being held liable for much of the content on their websites.

The working order, which cites Twitter by name, would encourage the Federal Trade Commission to take action against companies that engage in “deceptive” acts of communication.

Outside of the current kerfuffle between Trump and Twitter, this debate has a deep history with huge implications. The debate revolves around the legal responsibility of people and companies who provide information platforms, carry/transport information, and perhaps operate a monopoly. Let’s take this blog, for example. Am I legally liable for what a commentator writes? In general, no. Part of what bolsters that relative protection is the fact that we don’t censor comments here. With rare exception – direct threat, spam, etc. – commentators can write whatever they want. If we got in the business of curating or filtering comments, then that liability potential increases. If I am curating the content, do I then own it? Someone might argue “yes.”

The discussion has roots back to medieval common carriage laws and norms. Here’s a great paper on some of the history and modern implications. It was written as part of the net neutrality debate, but has application here. Here’s a part:

Looking at the matter from a fresh perspective, it seems important to look at the entire regime of common carriage, not simply interconnection and non-discrimination—or even rate regulation and liability. And what emerges is a bargain that gives special legal liability in return for the carrier refraining from using some market power to further some public good. On one hand, the carrier gives away the right to discriminate on the basis of sender or content and in return receives immunity for liability for the content therein. On the other hand, the carrier agrees to moderate monopoly power against competitors, perhaps provides access to competitors in return for immunity from antitrust suit. Similarly, the increased standard of care reflects the market power of dominant communication and transportation firms enjoy vis à vis individual customers—and can be seen as a return for the privileges common carriers enjoy such as right of access etc.

In this regard, common carriage is a deal. The regulated industry has something the government wants—a universal communications platform that provides a valuable public good, notably free speech to further democratic deliberation. But, in return, the regulated industry receives preferential treatment from the government.

In the case of Twitter and Facebook, Trump is arguing, in his clumsy way, that those companies have surrendered their liability for content when they got into the business of regulating speech. If Twitter, for example, is going to curate, edit, and regulate content, do they also get to continue to enjoy liability protections for that content? If that’s the case, then shouldn’t such liability protections be extended to anyone to generates content?

Twitter, Facebook, and the like are going to have to make a choice. Either they can be agnostic platforms that carry content created by other people, in which case they enjoy certain legal liability protections for that content, or they can be content creators that create, modify, and curate content for consumption based on achieving their political or business objectives, in which case they are liable for the content. They can’t have it both ways.