If you started using the internet before Facebook and Twitter existed, you probably know a few things about social media platforms. When local bulletin boards, listservs, and local BBS carriers were a good source of information. It didn’t matter if you were sharing information about your love of animals, video games, your local sports team, home gardening, or anything you can dream of—there would always be an online forum built for you to participate and find people to talk to about the issue at hand. Some of these groups last nearly a lifetime; in 1999, I joined a group for firsttime parents, all who would have a child born in August, 1999—more than 20 years later, we are all still together.
How did we manage a feat like that? Because moderation of these forums kept trolls out of them. If the forum was about discussing the Kansas City Royals, and you wanted to come in and start bashing our team relentlessly, sorry, you would get booted. Boards devoted to cooking and you wanted to come in and chum recipes or sell your wares? Sorry, goodbye. This level of community allowed the internet to grow. Now Florida Republicans, bowing to the former failed president who knows absolutely nothing about the internet, want to rail about “deplatforming.”
Florida Republicans are busy pushing a “deplatforming” bill that says that social media cannot, effectively, ban or remove members for political belief. In the end, however, just like at the beginning of the internet, Republicans still don’t get it. NBC News lays out part of the problem:
The Florida bill would prohibit social media companies from knowingly “deplatforming” political candidates, meaning a service could not “permanently delete or ban” a candidate. Suspensions of up to 14 days would still be allowed, and a service could remove individual posts that violate its terms of service.
The state's elections commission would be empowered to fine a social media company $250,000 a day for statewide candidates and $25,000 a day for other candidates if a company's actions are found to violate the law, which also requires the companies to provide information about takedowns and apply rules consistently. The proposed fines were lower in the original bill, but on Tuesday the Florida state House raised them in an amendment.
Here is where we get into a strange area. You see, more and more online forums, discussion groups, and topic coverage about every single thing possible are hosted by, or connected to, a major cloud storage provider. Your favorite online forum about gaming? Likely hosted by an Amazon, Microsoft, or Google cloud service through AWS, Azure, or GCloud.
Newer social media services are also facing problems with calls such as this one. While Microsoft walked away from buyout talks with Discord, the next 10 years will result, as President Biden pointed out, in more unprecedented progress in the way we communicate and come together, resulting in massive changes in what constitutes social media.
From bulletin boards to Twitter and Facebook, Discord, Twitch, TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, to SnapChat, change has always been a big part of internet growth. Republicans stay the party of no, wanting to believe they can stop change and demand it serve their interest. Heads up: That just doesn’t work, and has never worked.
Bills like these are built not with the goal of helping out public discourse but for appeasing Donald J. Trump and stoking Republican paranoia.