The Coming Fight for Control of the Internet

I have been blogging very little, as I have been swamped with a big and exciting work project. As the peak effort on that is now past, I look forward to writing more on Continuations again, as well as taking another turn revising my book The World After Capital. In the meantime, here are some observations on the most recent iteration of the debate around regulating large tech companies generally, the role of Section 230 specifically and how these relate to speech on the Internet. Topics that I have been writing about for many years.

First, information cascades are real and have been known to be a problem for a long time. Both through low effort enduser actions (such as a retweet) and through algorithmic amplification (one user’s like winds up on others’ timelines) “news” travels fast. As has been well studied the more outrageous it is, the faster it travels.

Second, this problem has been known for a long time and one of Twitter’s and Facebook’s biggest failings has been to do nothing about it, while at the same time suppressing third party efforts. Twitter’s handling of some links last week by simply not allowing them to be posted was a ham fisted attempt to rectify this last minute before an election. A later and broader iteration aimed at slowing down retweets is more of a step in the right direction.

Third, it is clear that Facebook is back to selling out everyone else with Zuckerberg’s support for undoing Section 230. This is of course exactly what happened with the awful SESTA/FOSTA, which initially had a tech coalition aligned against it until Zuckerberg saw that it would be to Facebook’s advantage to support it. These are classic “pull-up-the-ladder” moves by powerful company aimed at suppressing competition.

Fourth, at the very same time Facebook is trying to suppress third party monitoring by sending a cease and desist to an NYU based research project in which Facebook users voluntarily contribute information. Facebook claims this represents a Terms of Service violation. If Facebook succeeds with this legal strategy, it would be a grave restriction of enduser freedom at a time when we need the exact opposite.

Fifth, it feels like all of this will come to a head following the election, no matter who wins it. What’s at stake is far larger than most people seem to believe. This isn’t about some small tweak to Section 230. This is and will be a battle about who controls information and computation on the internet. At present it looks as if we are headed in completely the wrong direction with an awful combination of too much corporate and too much state power all at once.

More to come as this unfolds, but in the meantime you can always read the “Informational Freedom” chapter in The World After Capital.