I fail to see how massive global wealthy companies with immense influence and who by now control a sizable chunk of the places where public life and moreso public discourse takes place are so much different from governments in this context. Other than that we actually elect governments, meaning the mega corps are even less accountable to the general public. The Googles and Facebooks have more power (money, influence, etc) than a lot of actual nation states and their governments already, and they are constantly increasing their influence by means of lobbying (including keeping competitors at arm's length with regulatory capture), directing public discourse and quite often just "doing things" and waiting if anything bad will happen to them - which usually won't.
While the amount of wealth companies and a few individuals have is absolutely concerning and something we’d be crazy to ignore, it boggles my mind that you don’t see any differences between governments and companies when it comes to speech....
For one thing, governments can kidnap you, your family and anyone you’ve spoken and lock you in a cage. That’s one of many huge differences between the two.
We live in a time when the ability to find a platform for your ideas is significantly bigger than it’s ever been in history, even without the couple of tech giants.
And just to reiterate, we should be terrified of the power of some of these tech giants, but I’m skeptical of anyone who fails to see a difference between a company saying, “not on my servers” in a world where governments literally kill people who say things they don’t like.
I do see a difference, sure. Just that the difference is getting slimmer and slimmer constantly, and already is too small for me to consider to be comfortable.
>For one thing, governments can kidnap you, your family and anyone you’ve spoken and lock you in a cage. That’s one of many huge differences between the two.
Companies used to do that already. Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. That's why, in my humble opinion, the time is now to reign in the power of mega corps.
It also misses the point a bit by focusing on the most egregious things like kidnapping, imprisonment, killings. You don't have to kidnap, kill or "vanish" your opponents, there are many ways to repress them, scare them into obedience and so on.
You cannot "quit" google when google is actively framing policy and the law for everybody.
You may say that so far google wasn't too bad, and I would agree. Regardless, I still find it concerning that they are able to concentrate that much unchecked power. "Don't be evil" was yesterday, "Don't be evil unless it hurts our margins too badly" is today, I think there is a possibility - but not a certainty of course - that tomorrow it might gonna be "Evil is quite alright if it helps our margins". And that's just google. Other companies with massive influence, like the Murdoch or Koch empires, haven't been as nice as google.
Yes, you absolutely can. Switch from YouTube to a different site, or host video yourself.
If you're complaining about lobbying, that's an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion. If you're complaining about monopolies or concentration of power, that's also an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion.
Right now we're talking about whether the people running a site, who own the servers on which the data lives, can choose what they host, or whether they're forced to host things against their will. Do you believe that the government should be able to force people to host content against their will?
>If you're complaining about lobbying, that's an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion. If you're complaining about monopolies or concentration of power, that's also an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion.
I am doing both.
Also, switching hosting isn't a cure. Google/Youtube and Facebook and reddit and twitter, for better or worse, control much of the audience online. If they decided you do not exist then for the majority of people you do not exist. Not because those people chose to ignore you, but the companies made the decision for the audience. At the same time companies like google do everything to disrupt the "open market of ideas" and replace it with a "walled garden of ideas we can monetize and do not object to", so far mostly to gain a competitive advantage not to push their point of view, but that may well change.
Taking about hosting in isolation is in my opinion not helpful, one has to always consider the larger picture.
In doing so, you have failed to answer the load-bearing question.
We're talking about whether the people running a site, who own the servers on which the data lives, can choose what they host, or whether they're forced to host things against their will. Do you believe that the government should be able to force people to host content against their will?
>Do you believe that the government should be able to force people to host content against their will?
I am in favor of regulating the very big players like utility companies are regulated: you don't get to refuse customers electricity or clean water just because you do not like them.
In general, you want liability safe harbor (DMCA, section 230)? Then you have to abide by the same freedom of speech contract the government has to abide by. You want to moderate the content on your platform? Go for it, but then you're on the hook for moderating all of it in a timely fashion.
PS: Companies are not people (SCOTUS may disagree). I'd very much differentiate between a for-profit operation and personal stuff when it comes to certain types of legislation.
Try quitting Amazon. I haven't ordered anything from them for over a decade. Easy peasy. Oh but my employer uses AWS. Damn. And so do untold websites that I use. Damn. And just this week, I bought something from good ol' BestBuy -- nothing wrong with that, right? Except they now have "marketplace" listings and my purchase was delivered by Amazon. Shit.
We have large body of dystopian fiction in all media (books, movies, TV, videogames, comics, etc.) about what might happen if the private entities accumulate more money and power than democratically elect governments.
I’m not saying we’re there just yet, but this Google’s stance is a step in that direction.
You don't even have reach as far as dystopian fiction. Look at the history of the Hudson Bay Company and the India Trading Company, private companies which were in effect defacto governments.
When that private entity achieves a near-monopoly on search, then it becomes the arbiter of what does and does not get heard.
That's concerning enough in itself for free speech, but add in pressure from government to "self-regulate," and you arrive at effective government censorship/suppression. When Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey are brought before Congress to testify about what they're doing to stop the spread of "fake news," the implicit threat is that if they don't pro-actively do what Congress wants, then Congress will force them to do so (or punish them in other ways).
Yes but the difference shrinks when all the private entities that dominate the communication between people impose the same censorship and competition is effectively prevented by network effects. It's more of an anti-trust problem. Nobody would be complaining if it was just some small internet forum doing it.
YouTube (of Google), Facebook and Twitter are three different sources of (peer-propagated) information, and even combined do not constitute a centralized source of information.
It does seem like they are used for "news" way more than (in my personal opinion) is advisable, but they are still each independent organizations, and they do not hold (quite) all of the keys to information, and still want to preserve a reputation of impartiality, as difficult and impractical of a goal as that is.
It's certainly a problem when other sources of information loudly pronounce misinformation as fact. If you only compare YouTube and a single other competing news source, you might feel it's rather odd that YouTube is choosing to stop information of a certain nature. If you look widely enough, you are more likely to find that the information is false, and it was your original comparison source that was, in fact, problematic.
The point of all this is that there needs to be more sources of valid, factual information than sources of the same problematic false information, or we are all going to lose the ability to determine any reasonable facsimile of truth. The fact that is it peer-propagated certainly entangles a complexity that is reflected in the very divided opinion on this issue.
But I think in the end it will boil down to something simple. Like other things we've previously agreed should not be free to be amplified on peer networks, likewise demonstrably false information sourced from the government of the people should also not be free to find amplification on those peer networks.
Can Google imprison you? Not in the US, unless their lawyers find a nice way to make a prosecutor go e.g. for some fancy computer espionage charges (see Aaron Schwartz for example), but companies in the past had regimes in their bag and made people go to prison or vanish entirely, or perform forced labor for them.
Can they seize your assets? Not directly, but try getting sued by the legal department of a mega corp and see what you have left when it's all over. The end result is the same.
As somebody else pointed out, we already had companies that effectively acted as unelected governments in the past, like the East India Company. They used to execute people.
Google can do bad things to you. Significantly less-bad things to you than imprisonment/asset seizure/execution, BUT they are not required to follow due process and are not answerable to anyone but themselves if they do something bad to you. They can also provide substantial amounts of incriminating evidence to the government (the ones who can execute you) and technically a warrant is not required. If the cops go to Google and ask for info about you that is stored on Google's computers, and Google gives it to them without a warrant, your rights as a US citizen have not been violated.
