The view in Washington appears to be that social media has become so important that it must come under government control. That this is a non sequitur seems lost on many.
For example, some members of the House and Senate have mistakenly pressured Big Tech to steepen the political tilt of its content moderation. The politicians apparently see themselves as protectors of truth, but in reality they know truth no better than anyone else. And the restrictions they seek would damage America’s political, cultural, and economic futures by diminishing people’s exposures to novel ideas and squashing innovations that challenge the status quo.
One pushback to this control of online speech is a movement to shoehorn social media companies into a common-carrier mold. The most prominent example of this effort is Sen. Bill Hagerty's (R-TN) proposed 21st Century FREE Speech Act, which seeks to regulate social media platforms of more than 100 million users as common carriers. This perspective has gained supporters (see here, here, here, and here) and critics (see here, here, and here).
The push to create social media common carriers is misguided — namely because it tries to impose an untested business model. The common-carrier concept evolved in common law during medieval times, when transportation businesses sometimes proved unfaithful in their promises to customers. Over time, courts imposed nondiscrimination requirements when carriers victimized customers that had little or no choice of...
Read Full Story: https://news.yahoo.com/social-media-companies-shouldn-t-180000770.html
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