🏛️ Big tech gets regulated as common carriers via a left-right deal

“My thoughts have evolved before when he first got banned. I was really supportive of it. ... in general now, a much more free speech because I think it's much more fragile than I thought it was before. ... two years later, a much more on David's original camp now, which is we just need to establish this as a pillar of society and not deviate and find credible voices on both sides. ... But the minute you start cancelling stuff today, as I sit in 2022, what I would tell you is I think it's very, very bad because it's going in a really bad place.”

“if they take away your right to free speech on these platforms, if they censor you, if they de-platform you, you do not have a right to free speech in this country. That right needs to be protected.”

“If they choose, like Pinterest and Twitter and YouTube and Facebook and Google, to change how their platform operates, Sacks, I actually think that's a commercial decision made by a private company. They should have the right to do that, but they're going to lose users over time.”

“And in all these cases, from Google to YouTube to Twitter and now to Spotify, the idea of being just an access, a platform for access is proving to be wrong. All of them are de facto publishers. They ultimately have to make decisions about what they do and don't let on the platform. ... And now they're finding that there is no way to avoid being treated like a publisher. And a publisher has someone that's called an editor and an editor decides what is and isn't put on that publishing platform, as has always been the case in old media.”

“I think that politicians are using the threat of regulation to try and drive the speech policies they want on these social networks. That's what's really going on. ... Because the people in Washington are trying to coerce Facebook into controlling what they call misinformation, which is really just speech they don't like. And that is highly inappropriate.”

“these big tech companies, the FAANGs, they have way too much power in the marketplace. They are now gatekeepers over the internet. They control all these powerful platforms. And broadly speaking, it is time, I think, to basically have some limits on those powers, make sure they don't abuse it. I think she's also right that the traditional standard of consumer harm doesn't really capture that sort of concept of market power for these free ad-based services”

“But I think the legit, I think the words you're going to hear a lot, okay, are common carrier. ... And so I think there is I think the left and the right here can cut a deal where they regulate these guys, these big tech companies as common carriers. I think that is what we're headed towards.”