Breaking: Facebook is violating your free speech rights!

When I need emergency services, I don't go to Facebook. What Facebook offers is convenience: A great place to display pictures of your cat and flirt with college girlfriends behind your wife's back.

An essential service is something that you will die without, or that would have a significant impact on your quality of life. Just because a lot of people are using something, doesn't mean it is essential. And humans existed for 10,000 years before anyone even had an inkling of something we would come to call an "essential service." Certainly these things are benefits to a modern society -- electric power, gas to heat our homes. My god the pioneers who loaded their wagons and headed down the Oregon Trail would be cringing to hear today's free men whining that some teenage billionaire is blocking their ability to shout profanities at strangers through a magical box on their kitchen table.

You can probably predict by now that I will suggest the more important question is why would it be regulated in a nation of free men. Free men don't need their government to protect them from the pitfalls of capitalism: They ****ng nut up and figure it out.

But then yes, you have the very practical question of how you could even begin to regulate something like Facebook. Very specific details would need to be worked out, and short of physically cutting the actual fiber, there's really no way to shut it off. There are backups on top of backups, redundancies, contingency plans... And don't forget the internet is borderless: What happens when FB says you know we've had just about enough of your tyranny... we're offshoring the whole thing to Bulgaria. The end user would never even know the difference. And this is how the internet is very very different from actual utilities. The power company can't just say "screw you, Illinois, we're moving to the Cayman Islands..." Nor the gas company, the railroads, etc...

I never said it did.

I know what a monopoly is -- which is why I said exactly what you just did upthread Did you even read my post?

They certainly had some obstacles thrown in their way. What did they do? They nutted the **** up and figured it out like free men. As I said, the big bad big brother Google of all things will take you right to Parler in 0.50 sec..

I think what you're trying to say is that breaking up Facebook (ala the Baby Bells of the 1980s) is highly impractical. Which it is. And still does not answer my question: What "problem" would you solve by trustbusting Facebook? Twelve Facebooks or One Facebook To Unite Them All -- it's still the same damn Facebook.

Though you're going to need to do a better job of supporting your position vis-a-vis Interstate Commerce: Congress has the authority to regulate commerce over state lines, but that does not translate to regulating the content of a web business. And if it does, then we really are in trouble. So, careful what you wish for as the saying goes. And I again will ask you to tell me what you think happens when Facebook flips the bird to the U.S. government and takes it ball to some foreign country only too happy to welcome tens of thousands of tech jobs...

If they want to keep the Ss. 230 protection, then yes they would have to basically end all moderative functions of any kind. How cool would it be to buy weed on Facebook!!

Opinions, beastiality fantasies, hardcore porn, autopsy videos, plane crash scenes with burning bodies... Ooh! Bomb-making instructions, AR-15 stripped lower program for 3D printing!

Do we "allow" free men to run their businesses as they see fit? Seriously? No real tyrant could have said it better.

Without literally going full Orwell, we already have the solution -- and you agreed. Ss. 230 was carved out for ISPs (when Mark ****erberg was 12) because they made a special pleading to Congress that with tens of thousands of bits of information per second flowing through their servers, there was no practical way they could monitor and regulate user-generated content on the thousands of BBS networks popping up all over the fruited plain -- consequently offering up everything from poorly-formed opinions, beastiality fantasies, hardcore porn, autopsy videos, plane crash scenes with burning bodies... Bomb-making instructions, death threats to politicians on both sides, etc. Companies like AOL, Prodigy, Compuserv, et al were very worried that they would be liable for content little Bobby Joe in Olathe, Kansas put up on the "Big Titties and Little Piggies" BBS when he dialed the number and plugged his phone handset into the rubber receivers after the bleeping blooping squiggly static... This was when algorithms just things written on paper to solve complex math problems and the ISPs were truly just in the business of hosting content on these fancy big discs called servers. That all changed in 1996 with the passage of the CDA, as I'm sure you know.

A mere 25 years later and Moore's Law brought us more computing power in the palm of our hands than the rooms full of vacuum-tube computers used to put the first men on the moon... and a connected planet to go along with it, replete with all the downside of being able to reach out an touch a stranger on another continent in 0.50 sec..

Irony: From the Law of Unintended Consequences Department... Ss. 230 would not even be a discussion had your tyrannical government not wanted to "protect" free men from themselves by attempting to limit the availability of movie films depicting human sexuality -- the most natural thing in the world.

 

I don't tap Morse code on my water main either.................

Which does does not define a utility service, I would die without food either but grocery stores are not utilities. Look you entirely miss the point about utility so just drop the discussion.

Why do you support doing so through 230 then?

They were denied access to the servers and were shutdown............

The internet is considered by the courts to be interstate commerce. Facebook offers commercial services over the internet which is interstate commerce.

So what exactly is YOUR position here how would YOU regulate if at all? As I have said I don't see how it could be done and who would do it.

 

To say it another way: You may say what you want but no one is legally obligated to supply you with a microphone. Social media platforms don't have to give you a ready made audience for your views. That would be the equivalent of making a publication like National Review publish pro communist propaganda to counter balance their conservative views.

 

You have a public utility called a telephone for that, aka an essential service.

The essential service test is absolutely one of the boxes checked for the determination of a public utility.

Because they don't fit the other requirements to be a public utility, of which there are many.

I will say the same thing to you: Your desire to regulate Facebook because you don't like their business practices (and the free service they provide you apparently) is so intense, it is clouding your normally good judgement. You MUST make Facebook a public utility to support your tenuous argument.

Not sure what you mean by that: I have stated Ss. 230 should be repealed by the next congress. It sure as **** won't be repealed by this current one.

Yes, which I acknowledged. Then what did they do? Go whining to the government and demand the state nanny spank the big bad internetz for treating them unfairly? NO: THEY NUTTED THE **** UP AND FIGURED IT OUT. Like the free men they are.

No. The internet is a computer network. Certain internet businesses are regulated under the ICC.

To the extent that they are engaged in interstate commerce, of course they would be subject to the regulations thereof. Your use of the free service they offer does not constitute commerce, however.

I would deregulate it as it is already regulated under Ss. 230 of the poorly-executed CDA. I have stated this ad nauseum. Let Facebook moderate their little black hearts out and let them face the same civil liability as the New York Slime(s), The Washington Compost, or the Los Angeles Bad Times. Facebook is acting like a publisher of mass media and they should be treated as such.

Here is the one place we agree. It CAN'T be done. So take away their special protection and let the chips fall where they may.

Even better: Be a good entrepreneur, offer a superior service and put them out of business. Remember MySpace? Yeah, nobody else does either because Facebook and Mark ****erberg knocked their dicks in the dirt.

Again -- if you want to empower the state to regulate internet content, I just have one piece of free advice for you: Careful what you wish for. The UK heavily regulates content, The Peoples' Republic of China, The Republic of Germany... along with dozens of other tyrannical states around the globs. Ask yourself what they have in common. It's a rhetorical question: What they have in common is their citizens are not citizens at all, but subjects under the rule of tyrants whom have little to no rights to speak of.

We don't want to go down that road just so you can post whatever you want on Facebook and Twitter.

 

I agree they are a business and as such are not obligated by Bill of rights.. Google is also not obligated to adhere to limits of bill of rights.

However the form of political communication and free thought is longer print. It's digital. Who runs the digital spectrum? Facebook and Google.

Traditional media, once the information engine, is and has been regulated where, advertising wise, it can't be politically bias.

What if Google and Facebook worked closely with one political party to enfluence elections or agenda? What if Google didn't allow websites for conservative candidates or politicians? What if any republican oriented advertising was restricted or not allowed?


We will see what happens...but we have laws already in place to fight collusion and monopoly.

 

A utility provides important services that everyone uses is a utility because it is given special protection to run it's service. IE instead of having twenty companies running electric wires, or twenty water companies laying water pipes etc. It is given those rights of ways and in return comes under more regulations. I never said FB WAS a utility but was taking on some of the qualities of one and how we use it, regulation would make it more like one. Again I'm not going to argue that point anymore because I don't think you get it.

The courts have ruled that internet is interstate commerce. FB makes income from it's interstate commerce.

You are merely suggesting it be done through the courts by the decisions of unelected judges and not the elected officials in Congress. Is one better than the other? I don't know, lawsuits can take years to resolve, what if a court puts in an injunction because someone posted something and it made onto FB and someone else didn't like so they sued them. You'd be leaving it up to the courts to decide content. And again the NYT nor the WaPo or any other news media has such a lock on the news that they control that medium as FB does with social media.

 

You work hard to maintain your willful ignorance.

 

Your "what ifs" are here.

Google worked with Facebook to undermine Apple’s attempts to offer its users greater privacy protections.

Rigging auctions?

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50% is a more round number.