@rysiek @redecentralize @tomasino

Excellent essay.

I do not favor more third-party moderation or more regulation.

Moderation is censorship.

Regulation is centralization.

Give folks the tools to filter their own input, privately on their own device.

Change section 230 so it only applies where ISPs are not acting to filter or moderate, ie, acting in an editorial capacity. They should not get to monetize & censor content while receiving safe haven traditionally reserved for common carriers.

@hhardy01 @redecentralize @tomasino regulation is necessary.

The problem with social media is that it pretends to be both media, and infrastructure. Because "it's media" people are afraid to regulate it, since that would affect all media.

Because "it's infrastructure" it gets to pretend it's "neutral", when it is anything but.

We need regulation to make social media into a standardized environment, which will give us the actual neutral infrastructure. And then treat social media like media.

@rysiek @redecentralize @tomasino

The internet is a voluntary association of Autonomous Systems.

Centralized government censorship of free speech on the net is the antithesis of that.

https://www.arin.net/resources/guide/asn/

@hhardy01 @redecentralize @tomasino we will not find common ground here. I am a strong supporter of Net Neutrality, for example, without which on higher levels of the OSI model you cannot have this "voluntary association of autonomous systems", because Telefonica will block Skype, as it's eating into their phone line business model.

Governments are not ideal, but are leaps and bounds more accountable than corporations.

@rysiek @redecentralize @tomasino

"Net neutrality" means "common carrier" status, ie no moderation or filtering, with equal access and no prior restraint or censorship or surveillance.

Government regulation of speech content and net neutrality are diametrically opposite and entirely incompatible.

Government content rules means no privacy, no security, no free speech, and no free internet.

You'll have reinvented television.

Television
Frank C. Waldrop, Joseph Borkin

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Television_a_Struggle_for_Power/miFDAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=television+a+struggle+for+power&dq=television+a+struggle+for+power&printsec=frontcover

@hhardy01 you explicitly said: "Regulation is centralization."

I gave you an example of regulation that brings more diversity in the network.

You are also ignoring the distinction I made between the "infrastructure" aspect of social media (that needs to be regulated and made into a common-carrier-like system), and "media" aspect that should be treated like all other media.

Not sure why you choose to ignore a rather crucial part of my argument there.

@rysiek

So are you regarding "net neutrality" as being in effect now, or not?

That's really not a well defined term, I prefer to talk about "common carrier" status which has a much longer history and a precise and well-agreed regulatory and legal meaning.

I did specifically talk about the distinction between ISPs who should be bound by common carrier rules, and receive safe haven under 230, and those which monetize and exercise editorial judgement and censorship of content, which should not.

@hhardy01 Net Neutrality is, to some extent, in effect, in some places. #ItsComplicated, and I might have been involved in writing a book about it:
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319264240

"Common carrier" has specific meaning in a specific regulatory environment, while Net Neutrality is specific to a network layer, so to speak, but is more broadly recognized as a particular idea. I'm fine with either.

@hhardy01 yes you did talk about such ISPs. I take "ISP" to mean "Internet Service Provider", meaning an entity offering Internet access services. This is lower level than social media companies/networks operate on.

What I am saying is that the term "social media service", especially when used to denote Fb and  , conflate two different things:
1. the *type of service* (think: "e-mail")
2. the *provider* of said service (think, "GMail").

(e-mail is just a metaphor here)

@hhardy01 we need to be able to demarcate the two to have a clear and meaningful conversation about regulating them.

We need to regulate the social media monopolists into having a common protocol, so that each separate service provider can be allowed to have (some?) editorial control because users are able to move between them freely.

@rysiek

So how does the regulatory agency know which type of site to regulate as?

Site registration & licensing, as w/ broadcast TV, you can no longer set up a website or publish anything without government prior review and approval and licensing of your site?

What if sites don't comply? What are the penalties, how applied? How appealed? Will small sites be driven out of existence by fees and regulations?

What about sites in non-US administered domains, or physically located outside the US?

@hhardy01 you regulate all social media sites as both.

Enforce the open protocol (with the caveats of size, defederation accountability for large sites, etc) to regulate the infrastructure aspect.

At the same time treat all social media sites as, well, media sites. Treat small instances similarly to how small blogs are treated. Treat large social media sites similarly to how large news sites are treated. The benefit here is that we already have the regulations, tools, precedents, etc., here.