How Social Media Platforms Use Regulation To Stifle Competition

Are we regulating the wrong tech problems? Many opponents of Big Tech cheered recent lawsuits that found Meta and YouTube liable for violating consumer protection laws and designing their products to addict kids and teens. But in the battle over user safety, is free expression going to end up as a casualty?
In this episode of Revolution.Social, Rabble (Twitter’s first employee) sits down with two influential voices in digital media: Mike McCue (CEO of Flipboard) and Mike Masnick (Founder of Techdirt). McCue and Masnick explain why social media regulations could have unintended consequences.
Masnick cites a 2016 carveout to Section 230 of America's Communications Decency Act, known as FOSTA-SESTA, that was supposed to crack down on online sex trafficking. In reality, it made it harder for police to track down sex traffickers, and pushed sex workers into taking more dangerous offline work.
Today on the podcast:
- Why is Section 230 — which provides limited immunity to online platforms for content posted by their users — the most misunderstood law on the internet?
- Could regulations aimed at punishing Meta actually kill off its competitors?
- And should governments be responsible for checking the power of AI giants?
Plus: Why the right to exit has prevented Gmail from becoming "enshittified."
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
2:45 Section 230 and Regulatory Moats
7:10 The History of Moral Panics and Technology
10:25 From AOL Centralization to the Open Web
15:26 The Hidden Costs of Losing Section 230
22:17 GDPR and Unintended Consequences
27:36 Lessons from the Meta Privacy and Safety Trials
33:24 Internal Research Is Not a Scandal
38:22 How Content Moderation Gets Weaponized
45:31 The Case for Profile Portability
53:21 Regulating Incentives vs. Mandates
1:03:56 AI Regulation and the Risk of New Walled Gardens
1:10:38 Replicating the Open Web's Success
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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Alice Chan, Flock Marketing, is our exec producer.
To learn more about Rabble’s Social Media Bill of Rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/