THERE IS A LOT of cross-talk among some of my friends, some in the word cloud above, when they're put into Facebook jail or when friends of theirs are deplatformed. I wonder if you've ever fallen into any of those spaces? This is something I've been considering since 2008. [1]
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Amazon run their own internal processes to adjudicate disputes about speech, accommodation, meals, commerce, elections, and reputation. When Google is warned about defamatory content in top search results, Google weighs the protection of one person’s public image and another’s profits or speech. Amazon routinely weighs in when product reviews flame up between consumers and third-party merchants about defective or counterfeit items. On Trip Advisor or Google Local, some small businesses have to lay off employees or cease trading when reviews get heated.
I teach a Law module at the university level that reviews the processes that the largest social networks use to resolve disputes. Behind the scenes sits credit card companies who can rule on disputed charges between a merchant and consumer. In the case of consumer spending disputes, European and United States federal law offers frameworks for timely notices, reasonable investigations, and other procedural minimums. But the large social network platforms can set their own discretionary standards. During COVID-19 and in aftermath of the 2020 American national election, Facebook established an independent oversight board that can overrule content moderation decisions. But none of the social audio apps I use have similar procedures--and why would they?
I wonder if you've been caught in the crosshairs and been put in Facebook jail? Have you received a red card for a copyright violation? Have you been blocked by people because they don't agree with your perspective? If we continue to engage on social media platforms we need to trust the methods they use to resolve disputes. Perhaps legal standards, like the ones used in the financial services sector, are now needed to ensure civility in the information age. As Rory Van Loo writes in the University of Chicago Law Review, "The procedures would aim to improve the administration of justice through public accountability and separation of at least one of platforms’ executive, legislative, and judicial powers." I'm interested in following these discussions and hope some sort of international standard applies to public discourse online.
More about Deplatforming:
1. Bernie Goldbach -- "Social Media Plumbers" on InsideView, 2008.
2. Rory Van Loo, "Federal Rules of Platform Procedure," 88 University of Chicago Law Review 829 (2021). Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/905
[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative media for business on the Clonmel Digital Campus of the Technology University of the Shannon.]