The egregious part is the amplification part. Profit derives from that. Transmission and protection are neutral and they are necessary for all information especially if there is a history of freedom of expression; though of course some governments and others like regulating permissible expression.
Facebook is doing that in India as well. They are becoming Government Lap dog and do as its comfortable to their profits. Government of India able to suppress many dissent in recent years because of social media suppression. BTW Current government control News Channels by other means, we have term for Indian news channel as Godi Media. "Godi" in hindi literally means lap.
Transmission and protection are not neutral. They're a choice. Facebook has freedom of association and is allowed not to host content they believe harmful. Something they already do extensively. [1]
They are a choice, yes, the same way anything is. They are neutral choices in the same way roads and other infrastructure "permitting" criminals to use them are. The fact that Meta does not choose to be neutral in all such cases is not an argument against that.
It is definitely a valid argument. "Facebook should allow all content" is a consistent position if ultimately a stupid one. But once they decide to intervene all of the downstream choices are valid to question.
They were always valid to question regardless but that doesn't mean intervention is inherently good (nor bad).
We actively work to prevent anyone with a suspended license from using the road, so does it follow that failing to do the same for convicted rapists is a bad thing?
I don't think "Facebook should allow all content that is within the bounds of the law of the local jurisdiction" is stupid at all. Ideally that's how infrastructure-esque operations should conduct themselves.
That revised standard isn't obviously stupid, just vacuous, in two ways.
One, Facebook is nothing like neutral content infrastructure.
Two, laws come from somewhere. They are rooted in morality, and are always a snapshot of the historic violations bad enough to drive laws. Anybody who bases their behavior purely on the law has no morals, just fear of consequences. And when it's something new in the world, that stance guarantees ongoing harm until the law catches up.
Yes, but that is perfectly ok because we live in a society with not only freedom of speech but also freedom of the press, so it necessarily follows that it is ok to distribute speech that you don't like to a willing audience and also to profit from it. If that isn't ok, then neither is HN or the New York Times.
"Legal" and "perfectly okay" (aka socially acceptable or virtuous in some other way) are different things. If HN started paying people to post socially divisive content that wouldn't be okay at all (though it would almost certainly be legal).
