Topic for Week 09 -- Will “Breaking up Big Tech” Limit the Free Exchange of Ideas
Question: In his talk Meyer mentioned that getting rid of Section 230 would harm smaller websites and businesses and put them out of business. Would this in turn cause monopolies of social media to form even more so than now, essentially doing the opposite of what people are calling for the government to do?
Yes. Increased regulations generally increase the size of companies and reduce the number of newcomers to the market. Industries such as pharmaceuticals, which are highly regulated, are dominated by a few very large players. While smaller companies exists, they are generally much more limited in scope (i.e. they discover, but do not make their product, or vice-versa), and are often acquired by one of the larger players when they have successful products. I can see the same thing happen with social media. Without many of the protections of Section 230, it would be very difficult to newcomers to establish. Compliance is expensive, and complying with libel law would be an especially expensive case thereof.