For my money, I think the way this works out is that the idea of global social media conglomerates also falls apart. I think instead of subsidiaries of mostly US companies, governments will prefer to have the social media platform and its officers entirely subject to their jurisdiction with no option of leaving, or have it directly operated by the state, or not have it at all.
Which country will regulate a multinational social media? How will countries that are unhappy with the descisions of [the US] court descisions appeal? This problem goes deeper than you would hope to think, but I agree that they must be treated like utilities.
At some point big social media might have to be made a utility and or nationalized, assuming we want a de-jure government to be our real government, and not a constellation of corporations acting as a de-facto one.
Well all the major internet firms are based in the United States, if they want to hold to foreign markets they would need to hold separate divisions in separate countries, or in coalition dealings. There is a reason USA law Section 203 debates (which doesn't address the core problem) are so contentious regarding Social Media.
Every time I see news like this I can't help but wonder what would happen if federated social media becomes mainstream. All these attempts to regulate social media generally revolve around there being a "platform", it being a company, it caring about profits, it having a legal department etc. It all falls apart spectacularly if you frame social media as something intertwined with the internet itself, with no central authority whatsoever.
Agreed. Also, even if we assume that the groups idea (which I don't think is very well defined) would solve everything, how would you get all social media platforms to follow that template? I can't see any legislation requiring such an approach surviving legal challenges, or being implemented globally.
I don't see the logical conclusion of breaking up from that. Even if you have 2 separate companies - Instagram and Facebook - neither should have that power. Twitter shouldnt be deciding what is political advertising either.
The logical conclusion is that the government steps in write laws on what social media should do.
I honestly hope so. Having organizations like Meta or Twitter et al control massive sections of the social media landscape is not healthy. Any organization, group, or individual that wants to have an online presence should be able to spin up their own service and publish to any constellation of servers that want to hear what they have to say. I hope the EU efforts to push common standards are also applied to US companies in US markets to make all of the coms services federate like we were promised over a decade ago.
Over the last several years, it's become clear to me what the large social media companies want to be: de facto world governments.
They won't admit that, and you'll hear a lot of gab about algorithms and cooperation with various governments, but at heart it appears to me that this is cooperation with various governments as a government themselves. It's a negotiation among equals.
We can provincially argue about who can say what in the US on which platforms, or what the rules _might_ be to demonetize and/or kick people off platforms, but at the end of the day, the platforms themselves, through means mostly opaque to us, are negotiating as if they were our local tyrannical government with complete control over the public square and public places.
I understand that for many this is completely far-fetched and I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. This is a difficult thing to freely admit and grasp. It's also very difficult for those that are currently happy with whatever the most recent decisions are.
Yes, the net is still (mostly) free and open, and competitors _might_ come along and take the place of the current major social networks, but at heart this is a problem based on generalizing and universally abstracting social interactions. You could split up and/or dismantle every major player today and be in the exact same spot five or ten years from now when the next ones come along.
I am happy that more and more people are finally waking up to the danger here. If we are allowed to adequately describe the nature of this problem, we might have a shot at fixing it.
By bringing national law to bear on Facebook, Twitter, etc. in such a vivid way, it sets a precedent that other countries will follow (like EU members). Now, because contradictions b/w any two bodies of law may come into existence, this will lead to blocks of countries that share a similar body of laws regarding speech meaning greater accommodation and less censorship. If there is a high degree of disagreement, however, there may be a good number of such blocks which means decentralization of social media. So either these companies face increased regulation, or they will be force to retreat from global dominance.
These social media companies are so young, and most of them had to topple the previously largest company in their space to obtain their position now. I think with a little time that the social media giants will start bleeding market share, any monopoly regulation will be wildly out of touch by the time it makes it through the courts.
I think most would agree that if there were a globally connected (meaning countries are not silos), open and privacy first alternative would exist they would want to switch however I think once these platforms grow they would hit similar problems:
* To operate in multiple countries so people can stay connected you have to abide by local laws even if they don't match the typical values.
* Social media is inherently winner-takes all due to the requirement of critical mass and connectedness. The winners have shifted over time (myspace) before but it seems harder to do than with other consumer services.
* Moderation of billions is a hard unsolved problem and is a game you can't win. You walk the tight rope of either allowing hate speech or being too overreaching in censoring. I'm not sure other startups will solve this any better.
* I'm personally not a huge fan of governments messing with competition, especially not for services where the people themselves choose to use it or not. Some share of people like using facebook and I don't feel banning them for the sake of their success is the right solution. While I'm from europe myself I feel over-regulating is one (among many) of the reasons why there are almost no dominant tech players here.
* Monetisation and use of user data. While there are other monetisation paths many people are actually ok with the trade of their data for features and should have this choice. The larger tech companies probably have some of the most well organised and privacy aware advertising platforms compared to smaller players where the likelihood of privacy incidents is arguably higher.
so basically every major social media platform in existence (and quite a few of the more general tech ones too), except replace the CCP with the American government
Honestly it's kinda fun watching Americans tangle with the "oh no this ubiquitous platform is controlled by a company beholden to a foreign power I disagree with but have no say in or control over!" conundrum for once.
This argument is more thought provoking than people may think.
What we see is a shift of power. Electronic communications started out as private enterprises, then mostly taken over by states because of the need centralization, and now almost completely taken over by private enterprises one layer above. Governments are still trying to make sense of what happened and find their role in this new world.
Platforms are centralization at work, and it's not that far fetched to think that states could do a better job than Twitter or Facebook. Platforms have immense power. After all, we mostly agree that Facebook very literally facilitating genocide was not good for society. What we disagree on is how much they knew and how much was circumstantial.
There is also this idea that jurisdictions matter for platforms. The Chinese connections with Tiktok owners are problematic since we know for a fact that they have the power to influence elections. The American ownership of Facebook is not similarly problematic, largely because the CIA and other institutions interests mostly align with ours.
It would not surprise me if the Saudi money financing Twitter/X would turn out to be just as important as the financing of 9/11.
In light of that, it should not be surprising that EU states wants to play the game too, even if it will have very little practical effect.
While a part of me would be pleased if social media companies went to oblivion, practically, I don't think large states can operate totally truthfully without collapse. Running a state is sometimes messy and most people have a very simple morality (reinforced by years of superhero media) which is incompatible with international statecraft. That said, I don't think this excuses constitutional violations, but those of peoples generally held (lowest common denominator) morality
I don’t concede that social media is the public square; at most, it is one piece. It also seems to be one of the less useful, judging by the overall timbre of the engagement.
Even if true, what right does the govt or people have to reprieve the companies of their property rights? Nationalization is not generally in line with our system of laws in the US.
I certainly don't think nationalization is the ideal outcome. I'd hate for Twitter to become "the" official state communication medium. I'd far rather we stop making social media public squares by requiring social use decentralized protocols, like email.
But if we're not nationalizing, we need to accept that companies operating these platforms must at minimum be regulated, just like privately owned utilities are. They're conduct should be transparent, the public should be able to inspect the algorithms in use, and most crucially, these companies must be liable for their behavior. And that is directly contrary to the goals of Section 230.
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