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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

Why? What's your reasoning exactly?

Should private companies have any regulation at all? Should oil companies avoid pollution? Should ISPs ensure quality of service? Should medical companies ensure safety? Why is it that trillion-dollar companies that are larger and more powerful than anything else before should not be regulated when it comes to something as crucial as our freedom to communicate?

I find it ironic that another major HN story today is another instance of Google wiping out someone's account without any recourse, erasing their online presence and decades of data. Is that the new normal? Megacorporations ruling our lives without reason or appeal?

The world has changed. Social media is no longer just a website. It's communication fabric with network effects larger than entire nations that surrounds our lives. We either deal with it accordingly or risk losing much more.

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I fundamentally disagree with your premise that these incumbent commercial social media services are a communications fabric. These companies are in no way common carrier, critical communications media.

The underlying physical infrastructure, sure, the underlying standards like the TCP/IP stack, DNS, Ethernet, etc, well those are too, but these are categorically not quite same as what you are arguing should also be included in that group.

It is about political power, Facebook and Twitter shouldn't have the power to significantly alter elections by selectively choosing what information people see.

Facebook and Twitter make money through the sale of advertisements and the sale of data for market research purposes. If their power needs to be moderated, people can do like the old television days and boycott their advertisers:

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/28/arts/a-boycott-of-tv-adve...

The "old television days" are long over. Considering the size of these companies and their advertisers, there is no way that boycotting or other protest would make any impact.

You're dealing in fantasies from an obsolete era.

Basically everyone advertises there. So boycotting their advertisers is like boycotting earning money because your disagree with the government and want to hurt their tax revenue.

But why? You offer no explanation other than saying you disagree. What exactly is the difference?

More people communicate over social media than phone lines today. Why is the former not equivalent to the later? Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey said that he believes social media is a human right - do you disagree with him?

You keep talking about social media in general but the question is whether Twitter and Facebook specifically--just those two companies--are critical infrastructure.

Obviously Twitter is not because it has been down for about an hour now and life is going on just fine.

I'm not sure that "critical infrastructure" as regards to communications mediums and legislation should be understood in the terms of absolute necessity, rather by terms of popularity and wide usage. That wide usage brings with it a lot of power on the part of the platform owners and a certain immunity to being boycotted or replaced.

The critical question is if they ought to be allowed to wield that power unchecked, up to and including when that reach has progressed far enough to have real impacts on our political system, and so impacts on people's lives.

Remember, we're talking about what we'd like the law to be, not what the law is. These definitions are up for debate and redefinition.

Of course they ought to be allowed to affect the political system. The whole point of the First Amendment is to ensure that private citizens can act to change the government—the fundamental concept behind the design of the U.S. federal government.

News organizations have wielded this power for at least a century. Their decisions on what stories to publish obviously have political implications, and in some cases their editorial boards even explicitly endorse one candidate.

Facebook and Twitter are private entities, just like The NY Times or Fox News.

Social media are specifically not publishers, so no they're not "just like" the NYT/Fox.

They don't create content as an organization and only facilitate communication, which is exactly why section 230 is being contested.

Section 230 applies equally to any interactive computer service, whether it is operated by Twitter, Facebook, NY Times, Fox, Ycombinator, or even you or me.

The First Amendment applies to everyone in the U.S.

Yes, and since social networks are only third-party content, they should not be interfering with it otherwise they are exercising editorial control and are now first-party content.

So you see no problem whatsoever with large, nigh-monopolistic interests having absolute authority over how politics is discussed?

This is not a strawman, I simply see no other way to interpret this comment.

I said communications medium, not infrastructure. Life goes on fine when the internet is down or your phone is disabled, but they're still considered important and necessary.

Facebook and Twitter are just 2 of the biggest with many others like TikTok, Whatsapp, WeChat. It's the size and scope that should be used as a measure of when they cross over into public utility vs private project.

> Should private companies have any regulation at all?

I can actually get behind no regulation for private companies, twitter can censor who they like as I can drive my favorite tank registered as my company vehicle and don't bother with taxes anymore.

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