It's the opposite, but sure, Vox. These laws restrict what those platforms can do TO their users and what they are allowed to constitute as bad behavior. Protecting citizens against platform bias and the ideological capture that has already taken place is here reframed as taking control of the platform itself. Only in the most technical of philosophical framing would this be true.
The fact is that these platforms have invited this kind of oversight by hiding behind federal protections designed to encourage free speech and abused the language of those to justify actually curtailing speech. Literal cake having + eating with constantly flaunted double standards and tongue wagging has led to this attempt to rein that abuse back in.
It is also painfully clear that the mainstream platforms have been pushed and encouraged by ONE of the major political parties to behave in just this way. Judicious reinterpretations of law, careful ignoring of bureaucratic policy outcomes, and media partnerships to fluff up the "but it's for the good of democracy" angle whenever Obama weaponizes Facebook ads to mine electorate data in the "most technically savvy campaign ever conducted" but the exact same behavior framed as the end of the world when a conservative firm runs a user poll in 2016.
This article is just another attempt at that. Tactics bad when Republicans want it, or new regulation has language that might actually stifle one of their beloved and profitable hustles.
It's the opposite, but sure, Vox. These laws restrict what those platforms can do TO their users and what they are allowed to constitute as bad behavior. Protecting citizens against platform bias and the ideological capture that has already taken place is here reframed as taking control of the platform itself. Only in the most technical of philosophical framing would this be true.
The fact is that these platforms have invited this kind of oversight by hiding behind federal protections designed to encourage free speech and abused the language of those to justify actually curtailing speech. Literal cake having + eating with constantly flaunted double standards and tongue wagging has led to this attempt to rein that abuse back in.
It is also painfully clear that the mainstream platforms have been pushed and encouraged by ONE of the major political parties to behave in just this way. Judicious reinterpretations of law, careful ignoring of bureaucratic policy outcomes, and media partnerships to fluff up the "but it's for the good of democracy" angle whenever Obama weaponizes Facebook ads to mine electorate data in the "most technically savvy campaign ever conducted" but the exact same behavior framed as the end of the world when a conservative firm runs a user poll in 2016.
This article is just another attempt at that. Tactics bad when Republicans want it, or new regulation has language that might actually stifle one of their beloved and profitable hustles.