asiCast 195: Publish – and be damned
‘There are more lawyers in Meta than social media directors in Brooklyn’, the inimitable Bob Hoffman says, expressing doubt that the recent court rulings against Meta and YouTube in the US would represent a ‘tobacco moment’ in the regulation of social media platforms. In conversation with Brian Jacobs of BJ&A in this podcast, he discusses the implications of the recent rulings against both Meta and YouTube in New Mexico and Los Angeles.
Bob’s objective right now is to get Congress to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which is clearly out of date and no longer reflects the current state of online communications. Introduced in the early days of the internet, it sought to reflect enthusiasm for the emerging ‘information superhighway’ and encourage the companies establishing bulletin boards to enable people to share whatever they wanted. As such, the companies were simply providing a service and could not be regarded as publishers and be subject to the associated regulations and responsibilities.
That age of innocence is long past and now everything is curated, ranked, recommended and amplified to keep people engaged.
Brian and Bob discuss the extent to which the advertising industry seems incapable of rising to the challenge of the demonstrable harm done by many forms of online communication. To a significant degree, advertisers and agencies seem complicit in this and the law needs to recognise that the industry is clearly not capable of regulating itself.
There is a great deal of effort currently being expended in measuring the performance of media channels by identifying the commercial outcomes generated – something that the platforms have long been able to do to advertisers’ satisfaction.
It may be time the industry started to measure the social outcomes of their communications rather more urgently.
You can read Bob’s recent piece on the subject here and Brian’s latest Cog Blog here
Bob has also set up a petition for anyone wishing to see those distributing content online to be held to the same standards and responsibility as every other medium. You can sign in support of this group here.
Bob Hoffman talks with Brian Jacobs:
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