Beyond Social Media Analogues

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Dickinson, Gregory M.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866909159294763008
author Dickinson, Gregory M.
author_facet Dickinson, Gregory M.
contents The steady flow of social-media cases toward the Supreme Court shows a nation reworking its fundamental relationship with technology. The cases raise a host of questions ranging from difficult to impossible: how to nurture a vibrant public square when a few tech giants dominate the flow of information, how social media can be at the same time free from conformist groupthink and also protected against harmful disinformation campaigns, and how government and industry can cooperate on such problems without devolving toward censorship. To such profound questions, this Essay offers a comparatively modest contribution -- what not to do. Always the lawyer's instinct is toward analogy, considering what has come before and how it reveals what should come next. Almost invariably, that is the right choice. The law's cautious evolution protects society from disruptive change. But almost is not always, and, with social media, disruptive change is already upon us. Using social-media laws from Texas and Florida as a case study, this Essay shows how social-media's distinct features render it poorly suited to analysis by analogy and argues that courts should instead shift their attention toward crafting legal doctrines targeted to address social media's unique ills.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_02273
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond Social Media Analogues
Dickinson, Gregory M.
General Economics
Economics
The steady flow of social-media cases toward the Supreme Court shows a nation reworking its fundamental relationship with technology. The cases raise a host of questions ranging from difficult to impossible: how to nurture a vibrant public square when a few tech giants dominate the flow of information, how social media can be at the same time free from conformist groupthink and also protected against harmful disinformation campaigns, and how government and industry can cooperate on such problems without devolving toward censorship. To such profound questions, this Essay offers a comparatively modest contribution -- what not to do. Always the lawyer's instinct is toward analogy, considering what has come before and how it reveals what should come next. Almost invariably, that is the right choice. The law's cautious evolution protects society from disruptive change. But almost is not always, and, with social media, disruptive change is already upon us. Using social-media laws from Texas and Florida as a case study, this Essay shows how social-media's distinct features render it poorly suited to analysis by analogy and argues that courts should instead shift their attention toward crafting legal doctrines targeted to address social media's unique ills.
title Beyond Social Media Analogues
topic General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.02273