Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook in an interview: “I feel fundamentally uncomfortable sitting here in California at an office, making content policy decisions for people around the world.”
Mark – if you feel uncomfortable doing that to us, imagine how your victims feel! Imagine what people from other countries think about this country because of your business. Well, you don’t need to strain your imagination. You listened to their governments and promised to accommodate them as the Obama regime used to do — at the expense of Americans. But this is not the topic of this post.
Here, in the U.S., we are not used to authorities making content policy decisions for us. And Facebook is much less than an authority. Facebook is a service, serving its users on mutually agreed terms – which are not the same as the claims of the mouse-click “user agreement” that you imagine the users accept when they join or use Facebook.
When the Obama administration reclassified our internet access under Title II of 1934/96 Communications Act, Facebook became a common carrier, as defined in that Act. As a common carrier, Facebook is not allowed to even have a “content policy.” The same FCC order has levied on U.S. internet users the duty to pay for Facebook traffic, whether they use Facebook or not. Thus, Facebook became a “government actor” prohibited from violating users’ First Amendment rights.
Much of what is said applies to other parts of GFTM – Google, Twitter, and Microsoft.