"Too much of the discussion assumes that there are only two parties who might have a say in the moderation of social media: governments and the platforms. But we want to make the court aware that a new generation of services are focused on enabling the users themselves to make that choice, and if these laws are allowed, it could wipe out that possibility."
"X's Yaccarino said the company supported the STOP CSAM Act, legislation introduced by Durbin that seeks to hold tech companies accountable for child sexual abuse material and would allow victims to sue tech platforms and app stores."
Of course they do. It would wipe out small to medium platforms and entrench the current oligopoly of big DataFarms. Don't be fooled, this is regulatory capture at work.
Using #ActicityPub and #Mastodon as a launching point, Meta could provide social cloud services that met regulation requirements. Small devs and admins, who couldn't meet it themselves, would be compelled to migrate.
This would first happen through #threads (dot) net.
Meta then offers a revenue-split with its ad network. This aligns with a well-documented #regulatorycapture strategy using a carrot and stick tactic. Where regulation is the stick and ad-revenue the carrot.
Sure, sometimes it makes sense to do your own research. There's times when you really do need to take personal responsibility for the way things are going. But there's limits. We live in a highly technical world, in which hundreds of esoteric, potentially lethal factors impinge on your life every day.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
All of this leads to #RegulatoryCapture - when a regulator starts defending an industry from the public interest, instead of defending the public from the industry. The term "regulatory capture" has a checkered history. It comes out of a bizarre, far-right #ChicagoSchool ideology called #PublicChoiceTheory, whose goal is to eliminate regulation, not fix it.
🇨🇦 If you are not making $300k (household) please don’t come into my comments defending Liberals, it is embarrassing for us both. It is why we are going to get stuck with a Poilievre government and then the real fun starts. Wake up, they’re not on your side (and I am from a long line of Liberals). The middle class is non-existent after 8 years for people under 45.
The present housing failure, in part, comes from decades of developer capture. #Chretien and #Martin played as much a role in gutting social housing as any cons.
As a teenager growing up in #Ontario, I always envied the kids who spent their summers #TreePlanting; they'd come back from the bush in September, insect-chewed and leathery, with new muscle, incredible stories, thousands of dollars, and a glow imparted by the knowledge that they'd made a new forest with their own blistered hands.
If that sounds implausible to you, then you've gotten trapped in the neoliberal mind-palace.
The term #RegulatoryCapture was popularized by far-right #ChicagoSchool economists who were promoting #PublicChoiceTheory. In their telling, regulatory capture is inevitable, because companies will spend whatever it takes to get the government to pass laws making what they do legal, and making competing with them into a crime: