No single country should be able to restrict speech across the entire internet. That's why EFF celebrates the news that Australia's eSafety Commissioner is dropping its legal effort to have content on X taken down across the globe. This development comes just days after EFF and FIRE were granted official intervener status in the case.
Holding social media companies responsible for the content they host is a better solution in my view. We hold newspapers responsible. Why not social media? Yes, moderation is expensive but they are wildly profitable, musk aside.
They don’t need to moderate everything, as the content volume is high, but they certainly could manually moderate all content that reaches a certain threshd. They choose not to and hide behind their users sharing as a reason.
That would be very bad for free speech. Companies would not take any chances and would remove any content that could remotely bring them trouble. I’m sure there would be lots of bad takedowns and it would be abused just like the DMCA.
Depending on private companies for free speech is bad for free speech in and of itself. So either course has negatives, which means the course with leqsr negative outcomes is best. If they over moderate, they lose users. If they undermoderate they face fines. I’m sure the market force will mean they do whatever is most profitable.
Geoblocking is a better solution. Just don’t store that content in Australia and block it from coming in.
Everything on the internet is effectively permanent anyway
Holding social media companies responsible for the content they host is a better solution in my view. We hold newspapers responsible. Why not social media? Yes, moderation is expensive but they are wildly profitable, musk aside.
They don’t need to moderate everything, as the content volume is high, but they certainly could manually moderate all content that reaches a certain threshd. They choose not to and hide behind their users sharing as a reason.
That would be very bad for free speech. Companies would not take any chances and would remove any content that could remotely bring them trouble. I’m sure there would be lots of bad takedowns and it would be abused just like the DMCA.
Depending on private companies for free speech is bad for free speech in and of itself. So either course has negatives, which means the course with leqsr negative outcomes is best. If they over moderate, they lose users. If they undermoderate they face fines. I’m sure the market force will mean they do whatever is most profitable.
The eSafety commission argued that “well everyone just uses VPNs anyway so it won’t matter”