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Facebook currently enjoys essentially the same legal protection from liability arising from the content as do post and telephone companies (this is known as "co

Facebook currently enjoys essentially the same legal protection from liability arising from the content as do post and telephone companies (this is known as "common carriage"). The legal reasoning for such protection is that common carriers do not look into content of what they ship or transmit and merely provide a content-neutral service for the public. This protection should not apply to the corporations which do exercise editorial control (or, as it happens, de-facto censorship) over the content they transmit, since they're no longer common carriers but rather publishers. And, of course, the government is already heavily involved with Facebook - just not overtly but in the worst clandestine and unaccountable way imaginable. Anyone who thinks a company executive is going to deny anything spooks ask for is rather naive.

javagram 7y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communica... > Blumenthal v. Drudge, 992 F. Supp. 44, 49-53 (D.D.C. 1998).[25] > The court upheld AOL's immunity from liability for defamation. AOL's agreement with the contractor allowing AOL to modify or remove such content did not make AOL the "information content provider" because the content was created by an independent contractor. The Court noted that Congress made a policy choice by "providing immunity even where the interactive service provider has an active, even aggressive role in making available content prepared by others." Facebook is in a weird situation. The editorial control they do exert is demanded by governments and by users. A truly uncensored Facebook might start looking a lot more like Gab or Voat, and would then be attacked even more heavily by politicians as promoting hate, being anti-democracy, and so on. I think Mark Zuckerberg is trying to pivot the company to privacy to avoid this. Not sure if it can succeed though.

javagram 7y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communica... > Blumenthal v. Drudge, 992 F. Supp. 44, 49-53 (D.D.C. 1998).[25] > The court upheld AOL's immunity from liability for defamation. AOL's agreement with the contractor allowing AOL to modify or remove such content did not make AOL the "information content provider" because the content was created by an independent contractor. The Court noted that Congress made a policy choice by "providing immunity even where the interactive service provider has an active, even aggressive role in making available content prepared by others." Facebook is in a weird situation. The editorial control they do exert is demanded by governments and by users. A truly uncensored Facebook might start looking a lot more like Gab or Voat, and would then be attacked even more heavily by politicians as promoting hate, being anti-democracy, and so on. I think Mark Zuckerberg is trying to pivot the company to privacy to avoid this. Not sure if it can succeed though.