Supreme Court to hear case on how the government talks to social media companies | Hacker News Reader

Supreme Court to hear case on how the government talks to social media companies

theverge.com

26 pointsrntn6 comments

If you like the government having the right to do this, could you please explain why you're OK with your political opponents having this power when they get in office? Because in many circumstances they will be attempting to inculcate an incompatible ideology with it. How can you reconcile wanting to hand this power to either in that case?

The power to talk to companies and attempt to coordinate efforts on communicating information about important national concerns like public health and voting information? If that's not allowed, are government sources not allowed to talk to the press either? Or even send out press releases (which could be interpreted as "coercion" to publish the included information)?

So long as the companies have no obligation to do what the government agents suggest, then I think this is an entirely reasonable "power" to have. In fact, it's one that you can't actually get rid of anyway.

Agreed. I'd also want to add that companies should be releasing some sort of transparency report on which governments are asking and at what frequency, etc.

I think the government for the most part, needs to get out of social media and treat them like TV of old.

The idea is that TV is just a medium. You can post any commercial or information you want on there and it should be up to the viewer to discern what they want to watch and believe.

Look for example at some of the drug commercials, or if you want to get nitty gritty, look at fast food commercials that have carcinogenic ingredients. This is a slippery slope and I sincerely believe it should be the responsibility of the parent, guardian or mature individual to decide what and when and where to watch content.

>The idea is that TV is just a medium. You can post any commercial or information you want on there and it should be up to the viewer to discern what they want to watch and believe.

That isn't the way TV has ever worked, at least in the US, it's highly regulated by the FCC and commercial claims by the FDA. Arguably, the government is far more hands off WRT social media than it is broadcast media.

You really have a very distorted view of this topic. Old school broadcast TV was and is heavily regulated. Certain percentage of ad time had to be allocated to public service announcements. Certain types of "adult" programming couldn't air before a certain time of day. Ownership of broadcast stations was highly limited and competition was enforced. The content of commercials is regulated, and many types of claims are entirely illegal to make. Political advertising was incredibly heavily regulated. Important government messages are required to be broadcast at the whim of the executive branch. Social media is the wild west compared to TV.

You call out the drug ads. They are annoying and questionably ethical, I agree. In fact, they didn't used to be allowed at all! The fact that things have gotten worse in that regard doesn't mean we should just give up on regulating ads on social media, which are far far worse, and do much more harm than an ad for a diabetes medication that spends 25 of its 30 seconds citing every potential side effect.

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