The argument would be the magnitude of their impact on how a member of society can search for, view or transmit information is too large for Google to be deemed a private company.
If a private company impacts a nation's states democracy to such an extent that it rivals it in power, they ought to be classified as something else.
So, in your opinion, what should a government force the company to do when they are classified as what you describe? Force them to host all speech? Does that include art? Disinformation? Propaganda? Porn? Spam? Terrorism?
I don't think you've thought out the consequences of what you're advocating for.
If you have thought it out, please explain exactly what speech they should be forced to host and what speech they shouldn't be.
Right. I personally never thought it was that complicated.
Once a company is classified as a public utility (I believe Google is) it should be forced to host all legal content. You tell me what's illegal and I can safely tell you it can't be hosted by Google.
By whose laws? Even within the US, there are plenty of different laws. Should it be an intersection of all laws, everywhere? Only content which is lawful around the world? Or regionally? Should people outside those regions be segmented off from content that isn't in their region?
Moreover, you're saying that spam should be forced to be hosted by these companies, just like our snail-mail protects. Even if it takes up Exabytes of information.
Should people who have their content removed be able to sue these companies for removing it?
They are American companies, they therefore fall under American laws.
Just with Twitter, we know that content is regulated by region. Setting your location to Germany will prohibit seeing certain content from the U.S. Many more such regional cases.
The spam example would be a problem, but it's more of an annoyance to solve than a basic human rights case. You simply cannot have a democracy where segments of the population are barred from interacting with public officials online. Especially when public business (advertising, fundraising, making political arguments) is now a core of online communications.
If you're saying US companies (that classify as whatever you're defining them as) should be forced to carry all legal speech, no matter how terrible or cruel or provocative it is, I'd be okay with this, and that means literally all spam, and that admins would not be able to moderate any legal speech. If it's any less than this, I'm not okay with what you're advocating for.
And effectively this would turn these sites into platforms that are so filled with trash they will be unusable. And the chaotic part of me would love to see that happen. But it means basically the end of these companies to function.
Realistically, I think we should keep to the standard we've had in the past: we can't compel companies to host speech they disagree with, and we should take strong measures to limit their anti-competitive behavior and break them up into competing companies if necessary (like we did with telecom)
I don't want to keep arguing. Mostly informative exchange.
I would say though, Twitters model from around 2012 was extremely open compared with today (remember the Arab Spring?) and in no way was it an unusable, trash/spam laden platform.
Don't be disingenuous. The problem is viewpoint discrimination. Spam isn't a viewpoint. Porn isn't a viewpoint. Libel isn't a viewpoint. We can limit the ability of tech companies to arbitrarily censor points of view while still keeping the platform free of spam.
How? Create a cause of action whereby if a tech company removes someone's content, that person can go to court and ask that a judge determine whether that content removal is some kind of anti-spam operation or viewpoint censorship. You don't let the company have the final say.
The first amendment is going to be a problem. According to the Supreme Court, those companies have the same first amendment rights that you do. Compelled speech is frowned upon.
> According to the Supreme Court, those companies have the same first amendment rights that you do.
No, those companies don't have first amendment rights. Commercial speech has always been more limited than personal speech. If the law worked like you claim, common carrier laws for railroads would be unconstitutional because they'd violate railroad company freedom of association. These laws are, in fact, constitutional, and so will be the laws that stop big tech censorship.
Besides: corporations? Rights? Total bullshit. This country ought to be run for the benefit of its citizens, not abstract entities like big tech companies. A corporation is an artificial construct that can exist only because society --- made up of humans --- determines that the corporation is in society's best interest. When a corporation is no longer in the best interest of the humans that make up the world, screw the corporation.
Once again, a candidate not being able to post to Youtube is not a threat to democracy. Nothing is stopping this candidate from posting this on their campaign site, or an RNC affiliated site or even Facebook where most of their supporters are likely to be.
> Once again, a candidate not being able to post to Youtube is not a threat to democracy.
Yes it is. Youtube is a huge conduit for communication.
Imagine if ABC banned a candidate. The argument that there’s still CBS and NBC are available is not relevant as a major media outlet is favoring a candidate by blocking their opponents.
For small outlets it’s not an issue. But YouTube is the biggest video provider on the planet, not allowing a political candidate would be detrimental to democracy.
Even if that candidate said stupid stuff like “world is flat.” People have to make their decision and as long as we’re a democracy, that choice should be individual.
If you don't have a big enough chance at winning, you don't go to debates
Mind you, news networks recently had a very strong preference towards the incumbent president, aligning their news to match the president's talking points, and having nightly calls to align their messages
YouTube would be literally interfering with a democratic election. If threat is too strong a word, fine. But you can't deny that they are actively participating in public elections. We want that? We want to privatize democracy? I don't.
Yeah google de-indexing all pages criticizing the democrats and the company is also not threat to democracy. They must provide us with a curated set of sound information vetted by the politicians, FAANG and the state department.
Can we at least agree on some basic facts? Google does in fact curate search. Where a page is listed does not depend on how many times the link was clicked. Yes?
>If you want your right-wing search engine, then create it.
And your true intentions come out.
If Google delists AOC from all their properties in the next election and replaces the results with those from her opposition, I'm sure you'll be the first to say it's totally fine and she should just host her own search site if she doesn't like it.
If a private company impacts a nation's states democracy to such an extent that it rivals it in power, they ought to be classified as something else.