Couple things. First, the fact that he sees NetChoice as morally equivalent to Citizens United. Second, the (IMO false) distinction he draws between human and “algorithmic” curation. Ranking and moderation are essential functions of social media, and they can do neither at scale without automation…
Small forums do both of those things as well, but don’t need automation as they operate at a smaller scale. Should human moderators be subject to neutrality requirements?
This leads to the third thing; he seems to imply that search and social media ought to be common carriers, like railroads or airlines. How can a platform rank content in an “unbiased” way subject to common carrier rules?
Short version of longer answer, there could be a regulatory environment in which the algorithms were regulated to make sure they aren't actually doing really twisted things, right now it seems like corporations have total carte blanche to do whatever, and shouldn't be impossible to separate /
"selling eyeballs by the trillions" from "expressing your opinion". If we want to move forward as a functioning democracy we can't just trust all the Elon's and Marks of the world to behave benevolently, we have to get over this idea that you can't touch the algos witout eviscerating speech.
There's quite a large gap between "imposing regulations to make sure corporations aren't profiting off directly by prioritizing disinformation" and "the truth czar is coming into your house to inspect it for thoughtcrime" but I see quite a few people who seem these are one and the same
There is a problem here, though. Who gets to decide what “disinformation” is, and under what circumstances? I can imagine a near future where the fact that Biden won in 2020 would officially be “disinformation.” There are serious candidates for office right now who believe this.
“Selling eyeballs” is not an illegal, or even a malicious activity. That’s exactly what newspapers, news websites, and cable TV do. The platforms aren’t much different in this regard.
And how do you touch algos without affecting speech? Platform moderation would be subject to the political whims of whatever authority crafts the regulations, not based on what works for users and advertisers.
