The problem isn't just people sharing illicit content. The problem is those who facilitate that.
The 'town square' notion isn't apt because that's a public space. A better analogy is a private party as each and every platform is, at the end of the day, owned and managed by private legal entities.
If publishers were to verbatim publish whatever crazy, illicit content was mailed to them by their subscribers/readers, they'd be prosecuted within a fortnight. There's plenty of jurisprudence in the U.S. alone.
Online platforms escape legal liability because of Section 230 which states:
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
The big dilemma is that Section 230 needs to be reconsidered if you want to do something about the platforms that facilitate sharing graphic content, hate speech and so on. That's problematic because Section 230 has, arguably, allowed for the Internet to become a free haven for whatever anyone wants to share and build.
The other option is passing the buck to the free market. That is: if you don't like what you see, move over to a different platform. Or: don't use, or work for a platform that doesn't align with your own morals and values.
While that's a nice sentiment: the reality clearly doesn't work like that. Why does someone decide to work for Facebook as a moderator in the first place? Is it because they genuinely want to make a career out of this? Or is it because social/economic circumstances push them in that direction (e.g. lack of other career options, tradeoffs preventing them to move towards other career options,...)?
The same is true about the rise of social media. Billions of people are connected online. And they might seemingly have a ton of agency. But reality is that the vast majority of ordinary people spend the vast majority of time on a handful of social media, posting and sharing content, building an online identity... on a 3rd party platform which they don't own. Without hyperbole: they can't readily migrate lest they lose connection with the digital communities which is inextricably hosted on these platforms. That's just how a matter of networking effects.
All in all, in closing this diatribe: law enforcement and justice can't do much unless there's a clear, modern legal framework which can be readily applied to the middle men.
The 'town square' notion isn't apt because that's a public space. A better analogy is a private party as each and every platform is, at the end of the day, owned and managed by private legal entities.
If publishers were to verbatim publish whatever crazy, illicit content was mailed to them by their subscribers/readers, they'd be prosecuted within a fortnight. There's plenty of jurisprudence in the U.S. alone.
Online platforms escape legal liability because of Section 230 which states:
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
The big dilemma is that Section 230 needs to be reconsidered if you want to do something about the platforms that facilitate sharing graphic content, hate speech and so on. That's problematic because Section 230 has, arguably, allowed for the Internet to become a free haven for whatever anyone wants to share and build.
The other option is passing the buck to the free market. That is: if you don't like what you see, move over to a different platform. Or: don't use, or work for a platform that doesn't align with your own morals and values.
While that's a nice sentiment: the reality clearly doesn't work like that. Why does someone decide to work for Facebook as a moderator in the first place? Is it because they genuinely want to make a career out of this? Or is it because social/economic circumstances push them in that direction (e.g. lack of other career options, tradeoffs preventing them to move towards other career options,...)?
The same is true about the rise of social media. Billions of people are connected online. And they might seemingly have a ton of agency. But reality is that the vast majority of ordinary people spend the vast majority of time on a handful of social media, posting and sharing content, building an online identity... on a 3rd party platform which they don't own. Without hyperbole: they can't readily migrate lest they lose connection with the digital communities which is inextricably hosted on these platforms. That's just how a matter of networking effects.
All in all, in closing this diatribe: law enforcement and justice can't do much unless there's a clear, modern legal framework which can be readily applied to the middle men.