As I worried yesterday, Facebook’s defenders are already trying to end the conversation about platform bias before it can begin. “It’s like complaining that the New York Times doesn’t publish everything that’s fit to print or that Fox News is conservative,” Eugene Volokh states.
Eight years ago, I argued that platforms like Google are much more like cable networks than newspapers–and should, in turn, be eligible for more governmental regulation. (The government can’t force Fox News to promote Bernie Sanders–but it can require Comcast to carry local news.) The argument can be extended to dominant social networks, or even apps like WeChat.
As I note here, to the extent megaplatforms are classifiable under traditional First Amendment doctrine, they are often closer to utilities or cable networks than newspapers or TV channels. Their reach is far larger than that of newspapers or channels. Their selection and arrangement of links comes far closer to the cable network’s decision about what channels to program (where such entities, by and large, do not create the content they choose to air), than it does to a newspaper which mostly runs its own content and has cultivated an editorial voice. Finally, and most importantly, massive internet platforms must take the bitter with the sweet: if they want to continue avoiding liability for intellectual property infringement and defamation, they should welcome categorization as a conduit for speech, rather than speaker status itself.
Admittedly, if there is any aspect of Facebook where it might be said to be cultivating some kind of editorial voice, it is the Trend Box. It is ironic that they’ve gotten in the most trouble for this service, rather than the much more problematic newsfeed. But they invited this trouble with their bland and uninformative description of what the Trend Box is. Moreover, if the Trend Box is indeed treated as “media” (rather than a conduit for media), it could betoken a much deeper challenge to foundational media regulation like sponsorship disclosures–a topic I’ll tackle next week.
