Comment by Jensson
5 months ago
> No one owes you distribution unless you have a contract saying otherwise.
The common carrier law says you have to for for some things, so it makes sense to institute such a law for some parts of social media as they are fundamental enough. It is insane that we give that much censorship power to private corporations. They shouldn't have the power to decide elections on a whim etc.
I 100% agree with your sentiment here Jensson but in Googling, "common carrier law" what I get are the sets of laws governing transportation services liability:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
Is there perhaps another name for what you're describing? It piques my interest.
Common carrier also applies to phones and electricity and so on, it is what prevents your phone service provider from deciding who you can call or what you can say. Imagine a world where your phone service provider could beep out all your swear words, or if they prevented you from calling certain people, that is what common carrier prevents.
So the equivalent of Google banning anyone talking about Covid is the same as a phone service provider ending service for anyone mentioning covid on their phones. Nobody but the most extreme authoritarians thinks phone providers should be allowed to do that, so why not apply this to Google as well?
This is essentially the free speech maximalist position: allow any legal content.
If they did that, people would leave the service in droves for a competitor with reasonable moderation. Nobody wants to use a site that is overrun with spam and porn.
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