Republican congressmen are making a big deal of the fact that Twitter engineers have access to user data

[ClaireH]

Yes, as long as they did not break the law getting there.

What is a monopoly but for a truly successful business. Should companies be punished for being to successful.

But I am not sure what that has to do with the current discussion. There are no monopolies on the internet. The internet is basically infinite. Way back in the day "MySpace, was the monopoly that was too big to be taken down. Now it is just about just a memory.

Something will come along and do the same thing to FB and Twitter.

Ah. I am not talking about successful businesses that make gains in territory and influence. I agree that the free market should be left untouched by federal influence. That said, monopolies have a corruptive element in their take over tactics and knocking out new start ups to wipe out the competitors. When a huge mega company consumes all possible competitors it then works against a free market system . When competition isn’t part of the equation us commoners are unable to to afford many products and are stuck with the option of buying from the monopoly or doing without. Price fixing is bad enough.

The best choice is to avoid the formation of monopolies, and without a legal structure preventing true monopolies several mega corps would be in full blast by now covering all territory and sectors. Certain media platforms, particularly Facebook/Alphabet, are acting like monopolies thus various lawsuits have resulted and ongoing. It’s interesting to watch the procedures and to hear from Zuckerberg how he justifies his monopolized take over lol

 

[Seymour Flops]

First, it is silly to equate what private companies do with governmental actions, for some reason so many people have trouble with that. Not sure why.

Second, it is not a "I am too small" it is I understand big data, it is my livelihood after all.

Third, FB, Twitter, the Internet, cellphones, this website and so many more things are optional/luxury things we freely choose to use/participate in. We do so knowing what they do with our data. Then it becomes a matter of is it worth it to the individual to use these things knowing the companies that provide them use our data to make money.

There is no comparison to this and the Govt removing rights that our constitution forbids the Govt from taking.

All of that will be an absolutely valid argument just as soon as the government removes the special protection that Facebook and other social media get from libel lawsuits. That special protection is based on default assumption that Facebook and others are "neutral public platforms."

Clearly they are anything but neutral, and the only reason the government provides that special protection is that all of their censorship is pro-government and pro-democratic party. Let them be at risk for lawsuits the same as the New York Post and I'll say they are perfectly free to edit their content as they like, including Banning whatever writers they choose to.

Banning a sitting president of the opposing party for making comments about covid which have later been proven to be absolutely true, is not anything close to being a neutral public platform, nor serving the public interest.

 

[Harpy Eagle]

All of that will be an absolutely valid argument just as soon as the government removes the special protection that Facebook and other social media get from libel lawsuits. That special protection is based on default assumption that Facebook and others are "neutral public platforms."

They have no more protections than sites like this. Remove them from FB and Twitter and sites like this cease to exist.

That seems counter productive to me.

the New York Post and I'll say they are perfectly free to edit their content as they like, including Banning whatever writers they choose to.

The NY Post preapproves everything that is posted in their paper or their site. Have you ever been on a forum that required every post be preapproved prior to the public being able to see it?

I have and they die a quick death.

Would you be ok with this site being held liable for anything anyone post?

Banning a sitting president of the opposing party for making comments about covid which have later been proven to be absolutely true, is not anything close to being a neutral public platform, nor serving the public interest.

Trump was banned for his incitement of violence on Jan 6th. If you are going to whine about something, at least get the details correct.