Regulating social media.

[candycorn]

My biggest worry, politically, since Trump was elected in 2016, has been what would happen in the aftermath. The liberal backlash is going to be ugly. Liberals used to at least pretend to care about liberty. Now they openly despise it. And while political expedience has them currently opposing Trump's efforts to "regulate" social media, that's sort of thing they usually support. The only thing currently keeping it in check is partisan gridlock.

Which worries me.

If Republicans lose the Senate, and the White House, I think we'll see a major effort by Democrats to seize control of (aka "regulate") major social media companies. And, given that Trumpsters have been clamoring for just that, and the fact that they'll be in the minority, Republicans will offer precious little resistance.

it will happen. I think it’s a question of how punitive the regulators are going to be....not if.

Trump's nonsense was definitely "punitive" - he just wants to spank fb and twitter because they defied him. But with the Dems it will be more about expanding state power. Always is.

Some do.

there are no shortages of whacky democrats

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

The question is how to ‘regulate’ that which is virtual, existing only in an infinite, global realm of 1s and 0s– what exactly are the mechanics of that; indeed, ‘breaking up’ FB or subjecting it to punitive regulation will only result in the Sorcerer's Apprentice effect.

Unless we’re planning to amend the Constitution to repeal the First Amendment, we won’t be regulating social media as they do in China.

And how exactly will such ‘regulation’ be justified – that FB does a bad job of controlling the bad acts of private citizens who use their platform is not ‘justification.’ The notion that FB is a ‘monopoly’ is likewise devoid of merit; millions of people have no FB account and have no problem accessing the internet, garnering information from the internet, and using it to its full potential.

Last, even if such regulation were enacted, it would never survive a court challenge.

If post-Citizens United First Amendment jurisprudence won’t tolerate government placing limits on political speech to maintain the integrity of elections, this Supreme Court is certainly not going to tolerate government regulation of political speech on social media platforms.