Public Accommodation Regulation Won ’t Work For Social Media

Discussion. ” The panel, which focused on proposals to regulate the content moderation decisions made by prominent social media firms, featured a presentation by Georgetown Law Professor and Cato InstituteSenior Fellow Randy Barnett. Barnett presented an argument for social media regulation grounded in public accommodation law that I have not addressed yet. While among the most interesting arguments in favor of requiring social media firms to host more content, it fails thanks to a few conceptual flaws.Those who have been following the policy debates surrounding social media content moderation will be familiar with a number of arguments for policies that would force social media companies to host more content. Many of these arguments rest on weak foundations. For example, PragerU argued that YouTube is a “company town” like Chickasaw, Alabama. InMarsh v. Alabama (1946) the Supreme Court held that First Amendment protections applied in Chickasaw, a town owned by a private company. The 9th Circuit correctly noted in itsPragerU v. Google ruling that the Google ‐​owned YouTube is nothing like a company town. Unlike the company town under consideration inMarsh, YouTube does not run the municipal functions of a town.Others, such as Barnett ’s co‐​panelist Michigan State University Prof. Adam Candeub, argue that social media firms should be subject to common carriage regulation. I have written about this argument before an...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs