• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Regulation of Online Media

davideduardo

davideduardo

Moderator/Administrator
Staff member
The challenge is the Internet is an international resource. The U.S. could try and force ISP's to block certain sites which violate content rules, but then we become no better than places like China. Unlike China, who's telecommunication systems are all owned by the government, U.S. businesses own the Internet domestically. If there is a chance they would lose money caused by censorship, they could easily tell the feds to pound sand.
 
If Section 230 is removed or majorly altered, I can see that the internet as we have known it to be over the past 20 years will be a drastically different place 20 years from now. Just removing (or lightening) the civil liability protection will accomplish much of what the Chinese government does by full-scale blocking. Another method would be for a government, or other entity, to pressure financial institutions from doing business with websites or internet services that they view with disapproval. Websites do not make money if they don't get paid.
 
Keep in mind these social media sites are not public platforms as defined by the Constitution. They are privately owned membership organizations. So trying to impose public platform rules on a private club will lead to a lot of problems down the road. The only reason the president was deplatformed was because he broke the rules that he agreed to follow. And they waited until after the election to do it.
 
www.eff.org

Section 230

The Internet allows people everywhere to connect, share ideas, and advocate for change without needing immense resources or technical expertise. Our unprecedented ability to communicate online—on blogs, social media platforms, and educational and cultural platforms like Wikipedia and the...
www.eff.org www.eff.org
 
One thing Mr. Oxenford does not address are bills in some state legislatures, of which Texas is the largest, which aim to ban social media companies from "banning or censoring Texans based on their viewpoint".

abc13.com

Gov. Greg Abbott joins lawmakers to introduce social media censorship bill

Gov. Abbott has identified the bill as one of his top 31 priorities for the 2021 legislatives session.
abc13.com abc13.com

The problem with such bills, as I see it, is in the details. What is a "viewpoint"? If Steve from El Paso expresses his view that he had a vision of Jesus Christ who commanded him to deport all the Catholics, is that protected speech that Twitter should be required to broadcast? Should it be? Do those standards change if Steve is chairman of one of the political parties in El Paso? Or a sitting city council member?

In broadcasting, companies are free to ignore Steve, including turning down advertising, except when he is a qualified candidate as defined by regulation. I'm not actually sure if municipal candidates qualify.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
One thing Mr. Oxenford does not address are bills in some state legislatures, of which Texas is the largest, which aim to ban social media companies from "banning or censoring Texans based on their viewpoint".

abc13.com

Gov. Greg Abbott joins lawmakers to introduce social media censorship bill

Gov. Abbott has identified the bill as one of his top 31 priorities for the 2021 legislatives session.
abc13.com abc13.com

The problem with such bills, as I see it, is in the details. What is a "viewpoint"? If Steve from El Paso expresses his view that he had a vision of Jesus Christ who commanded him to deport all the Catholics, is that protected speech that Twitter should be required to broadcast? Should it be? Do those standards change if Steve is chairman of one of the political parties in El Paso? Or a sitting city council member?

In broadcasting, companies are free to ignore Steve, including turning down advertising, except when he is a qualified candidate as defined by regulation. I'm not actually sure if municipal candidates qualify.
Click to expand...
Twitter is a private company, the government can't tell it how to speak.
 
The website owners have First Amendment rights, giving the owners the right to express their beliefs by restricting content.
State and Federal laws cannot overrule the U.S. Constitution. Period.
 
frankberry said:
The website owners have First Amendment rights, giving the owners the right to express their beliefs by restricting content.
State and Federal laws cannot overrule the U.S. Constitution. Period.
Click to expand...
Copyright law is where it gets interesting.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
One thing Mr. Oxenford does not address are bills in some state legislatures, of which Texas is the largest, which aim to ban social media companies from "banning or censoring Texans based on their viewpoint".

abc13.com

Gov. Greg Abbott joins lawmakers to introduce social media censorship bill

Gov. Abbott has identified the bill as one of his top 31 priorities for the 2021 legislatives session.
abc13.com abc13.com

The problem with such bills, as I see it, is in the details. What is a "viewpoint"? If Steve from El Paso expresses his view that he had a vision of Jesus Christ who commanded him to deport all the Catholics, is that protected speech that Twitter should be required to broadcast? Should it be? Do those standards change if Steve is chairman of one of the political parties in El Paso? Or a sitting city council member?

In broadcasting, companies are free to ignore Steve, including turning down advertising, except when he is a qualified candidate as defined by regulation. I'm not actually sure if municipal candidates qualify.
Click to expand...
That seems to go in the category of not only letting you speak, but guaranteeing an audience, which is nowhere in the First Amendment. OK, the state can't "censor" you. That would seem to mean an obligation to force feed my conspiracy theory, racist comment or threats against public officials at the top of all of my friends' feeds (as opposed to post #79), and maybe even to others that don't follow me.
 
TheBigA said:
Keep in mind these social media sites are not public platforms as defined by the Constitution. They are privately owned membership organizations. So trying to impose public platform rules on a private club will lead to a lot of problems down the road.
Click to expand...
Are newspapers? They existed when the Constitution was written, yet they still can (and do) get sued for something they publish. The fact they are privately owned entities doesn't shield them from liability.. If Section 230 were removed or drastically altered, it would place websites in the positions of newspapers -- whether privately held or not.
 
boombox4 said:
Are newspapers? They existed when the Constitution was written, yet they still can (and do) get sued for something they publish.
Click to expand...
A newspaper cannot be sued over something they did not publish. That's what some of these bills are proposing, with respect to "banning censorship".

Newspapers do enjoy significant legal protections in libel and other suits. It is very difficult to win a libel suit against a newspaper, doubly so if the plaintiff is an elected official or other public servant.

An individual can be sued for something they publish online. Elon Musk recently won a libel suit filed by a man whom Musk called a "pedo" on Twitter. However, Twitter does not have responsibility for that statement made by Musk, because of Section 230 of the CDA.

boombox4 said:
If Section 230 were removed or drastically altered, it would place websites in the positions of newspapers -- whether privately held or not.
Click to expand...

I agree. Section 230 originated after a lawsuit, Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy, found Prodigy responsible for libel after not removing accusations of securities fraud conducted by Stratton Oakmont, while also removing posts for things like profanity and not adehering to a set of user guidelines. The jurisprudence of the time found that, by taking those moderating actions, Prodigy was akin to the newspaper editorial staff. A previous ruling said that its competitor, CompuServe, which had an anything-goes policy was not liable in such a way.

It turned out that Stratton Oakmont had in fact committed securities fraud, and that the anonymous author on the Prodigy service was something of a whistle blower.

I think it is unreasonable for services like Prodigy (or its modern successors Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) to be held to the same standards as a professional staff of reporters and editors, so I would oppose a full repeal of the provision.

There might be a tweak to it that I could support, but I'm not sure what that might be.
 
boombox4 said:
Are newspapers? They existed when the Constitution was written, yet they still can (and do) get sued for something they publish.
Click to expand...

We're talking about "user generated content." That's what social media is. Newspapers are not platforms for user generated content. Section 230 protects the owners from liability from content they don't create.

If Section 230 is removed, social media companies will be forced to become even more selective over the content on their site, which means even more censorship, not less.
 
One thing that frightens me is when politicians start trying to draft bills and govern social media and internet content, when they have little understanding of it themselves. When Mark Zuckerberg went before Congress to speak about social media and Facebook in particular, Democrats were unhappy about the amount of misinformation that was being freely and openly spread on Facebook without restriction, and Republicans were unhappy because they felt that every action Facebook took to curb misinformation, seemingly negatively impacted them.

Regardless, the one thing I remember was the obvious complete lack of understanding of how Facebook works and what social media is by more than a few of the people in Congress who were questioning Zuckerberg. Someone compiled a "best of" segment, featuring the audio of their sometimes heated questions, and Zuckerberg's replies where it was obviously he was somewhat dumbfounded by what they were asking, which showed they had no clue. He was trying to be as respectful as possible and give them answers without making them sound like idiots.

Those people should not be regulating or passing bills to control social media when they don't fundamentally understand how it works.
 
Last edited:
Mikey Radio said:
One thing that frightens me is when politicians start trying to draft bills and govern social media and internet content, when they have little understanding of it themselves. When Mark Zuckerberg went before Congress to speak about social media and Facebook in particular, Democrats were unhappy about the amount of misinformation that was being freely and openly spread on Facebook without restriction, and Republicans were unhappy because they felt that every action Facebook took to curb misinformation, seemingly negatively impacted them.

Regardless, the one thing I remember was the obvious complete lack of understanding of how Facebook works and what social media is by more than a few of the people in Congress who were questioning Zuckerberg. Someone compiled a "best of" segment, featuring the audio of their sometimes heated questions, and Zuckerberg's replies where it was obviously he was somewhat dumbfounded by what they were asking, which showed they had no clue. He was trying to be as respectful as possible and give them answers without making them sound like idiots.

Those people should not be regulating or passing bills to control social media when they don't fundamentally understand how it works.
Click to expand...
I still have a Tshirt with Zuckerberg's quote "Senator, we sell ads" when the Senator asked how Facebook can make money when it's free to users.
 
Mikey Radio said:
Those people should not be regulating or passing bills to control social media when they don't fundamentally understand how it works.
Click to expand...

I had some friends who were involved with the Music Modernization Act that became law a couple of years ago. Congress basically said "We don't understand the music business. All you people get together and come up with some policies we can enact, and you all agree with." So that's what they did. They brought together the music industry (labels, artists, writers) and the various users of music (radio, streaming, satellite, retail, etc) and put together a list of things they all agreed on. They sent it to Congress, and it became law.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom