Thread by @evan_greer

As #antitrust bills that would ban Big Tech monopoly abuses & self preferencing come closer to a floor vote, industry lobbyists are trying EVERYTHING to kill these bills

One thing they're doing is amplifying arguments that these bills will undermine content moderation. THREAD🧵:

Every piece of legislation comes with nuance and tradeoffs. One thing industry lobbyists often do is disingenuously amplify or distort good faith critiques or concerns about the specifics of legislation. So it's important to understand the dynamics here.

A few academics and advocates (some of whom I like and respect!) have suggested that language in #S2992 that prohibits companies from "discriminating" against other businesses in an anti-competitive manner could be weaponized to chill platforms' content moderation.

I substantively disagree with this analysis. Unlike with changes to Section 230, I do not believe that the competition provisions in this bill will lead to some massive flood of lawsuits that will lead to platforms engaging in worse content moderation practices.

First: there's no private right to action in #S2992, so it's not like any random person can bring a lawsuit claiming that their business has been discriminated against if, say, it gets removed from Apple's app store for violating TOS. You'd need to get the FTC, DOJ, or an AG

Sure, there are a bunch of terrible AGs out there who might try to bring a frivolous lawsuit against a platform for engaging in basic moderation practices. But ... they can already do that right now, today, under any number of wonky legal theories or under crazy state laws

Even if some bonehead business or app or whatever managed to get some bonehead AG to bring a suit, they'd have to show material harm to COMPETITION that impacts the entire market. And Apple (or whoever) could easily safeguard against this by having clear rules they enforce evenly

It's also important to remember that #S2992 only applies to extremely large platforms with enormous amounts of money to fight the (inherently small, as compared to anything with a private right of action) number of theoretical additional suits that could emerge.

So, I just don't believe this bill will to lead to a massive flood of potentially-successful lawsuits going after platforms for content moderation. That's just not what the bill says.

#S2992 certainly won't "ban content moderation" as Big Tech lobbyists have absurdly claimed

The folks @amprog have an excellent and substantive take down of that particularly absurd claim. americanprogress.org/article/evalua…

But beyond tech lobbyists hyperbole, let's take the more good faith advocates' critique at face value for a second...

Most of the folks raising this critique would agree that companies like Facebook and YouTube are doing a TERRIBLE job with content moderation right now. Not enough transparency, uneven and ineffective enforcement, failure to listen to impacted communities, etc etc

The reality is that unless we crack down on dominant platforms' self-dealing and anti-competitive practices, we're going to be stuck fighting a losing battle to get surveillance capitalist monopolies like Facebook and YouTube to do *slightly-less-shitty* moderation forever.

Big Tech monopolies are never going to give us the types of online spaces that marginalized people and communities need. But most real alternatives, with better business models and better content moderation practices, can't even get off the ground because of Big Tech self dealing

We can go back and forth endlessly arguing about what the rules should be on the tiny handful of platforms we currently have. It's a battle we always lose. And since they don't have to compete on a level playing field, we don't have much leverage to pressure them to do better.

Or, we can fight for legislation that will fundamentally restructure the Internet economy and allow alternatives to achieve network effect, so that we have meaningful choices instead of being stuck with whatever crumbs and concessions we can get from YouTube, Facebook, etc.

If we want an Internet with online spaces that have transparent, equitable, and just moderation practices, it's not going to be an Internet of walled gardens controlled by a handful of surveillance-driven Big Tech monopolies. It's just not.

We have an opportunity here to go beyond harm reduction and fight for structural changes that could put us on a path toward the type of Internet we need: one where people can create and join online communities and services with moderation & privacy practices that work for them.

While reasonable people can disagree on whether some rogue AG or FTC could try to disingenuously weaponize these bills, I wish people would take a few steps back and look at the impact of the bills overall and ask: will #S2992 (& #S2710) be a net positive for humanity? I say yes.

The fight over whether people will have the basic ability to choose what software they run on devices that they own will be a defining human rights battle of our generation. These bills safeguard against app stores as a chokepoint for surveillance & censorship.

With any piece of legislation you need to weigh the good, the bad, and the ugly, and be on the look out for collateral damage and unintended consequences. I don't begrudge the small handful of colleagues / friends who have raised these concerns.

But I'll just say for people who know me & trust my perspective on these issues, that I have thought long and hard about this, looked at it deeply, and I firmly believe that these bills are a massive net positive for the future of human rights, free expression, and justice online

Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon have achieved a level of dominance and gatekeeper status that could enable them to more or less control our online experience--copying, buying, and killing off viable alternatives--for decades if Congress doesn't act.

If these bills fail, the future of the Internet looks pretty bleak.

We have a once in a lifetime chance to get two bills that would ACTUALLY do something meaningful move technology in a more positive, open, and democratized direction.

Let's not waste it Antitrustsummer.com

For more reading on this:

I wrote for CNN about why I think these bills are essential for free expression & human rights: cnn.com/2022/05/10/per…

Blog from @publicknowledge explaining how the bills don't impact content moderation (and why that's good!) publicknowledge.org/big-tech-compe…