There was really a time - it seems light years ago - when idealism was high about social networks.
The assumption was that those digital platforms for self-expression and connecting could and would regulate themselves. In the worse-case scenarios, if posters proved to be rhetorical miscreants, the network's powers that be would remove the content.
Yes, the bad guys would be banned temporarily or even permanently. If the members of the media covered that banishing from Paradise, there would be public shaming. Not only branding but actual business revenues could be hurt.
That mindset shaped Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Essentially, social networks were not responsible for what was posted. However, if they observed material which threatened violence and so on, they was accountable for taking appropriate legal action.
Post the Synagogue shooting, there is a growing outcry for repealing Section 230. The assumption is that networks are unable to self-regulate and/or if they do it is too little too late.
In addition, just about everyone in the loop of facilitating those platforms is being put under a public relations and legal microscope.
For example, should payment processors such as PayPal and Stripe had acted sooner in suspending extreme network Gab?
Should GoDaddy had ended its domain registration as soon as the tone and content of Gab were documented as standard fare.
The world knows that alleged synagogue murderer Robert Bowers had been a "regular" on Gab. Here are more details from Phillip Bantz at Law.com.
The ugly underbelly for all this is the fragile right to freedom of speech, both personal and commercial. That is not an abstract matter. Progress in a society - cultural, social, technical, and economic - depends on being able to put out there all kinds of ideas.
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