Firstly, for the most part I think we’d be talking about new legislation to reform platform protections in the case of Twitter, FB, Parler, etc. and new legislation in terms of whether or not server farms and various other services should have some form of regulations similar to common carriers with the Amazon denying Parler service issue. In neither case have I really proposed an exact framework for the remedy, and I’m sure there would be various things that companies were allowed to do while falling within their rights.
On to your porn and Amazon/Parler issue. Maybe. You’ve sort of combined both the platform protection and the denial of service into a single scenario by throwing moderation into the Amazon/Parler thing. we can remove the wrinkle by just pretending that Parler was a porn site. In terms of whether or not I think Amazon should be allowed to deny service to porn site , I think there would be reasons and circumstances for that to go either way. The government already regulates vulgarity, pornography and sex work despite the purveyors of such frequently claiming that it violates their right to freedom of speech, which of course usually gets expanded to expression. The idea that a new law regarding Amazon’s denial of service, or platform protections would have to prevent a company from moderating against pornography or including a pornography ban in their terms of service would be flawed. It seems like an obvious exception that would probably be included to one degree or another. Additionally, outside of that realm there are usually loopholes regarding religious or moral objection, and there should be some here. Generally, I don’t like the idea that government should force an individual or a business to violate their conscience or be punished, even if I think that their conscience is a bit unreasonable. On the other hand, things can definitely get too unreasonable. If you manufacture sign board(the raw material) and don’t want your sign board to be used to make political signs, then you probably shouldn’t be in the sign board business. But if you make custom signs, and are uncomfortable with what someone wants you or your company to put on the sign, you’re one step closer to the issue and I can see a need for your objection to be allowed. If manufacturer lenses, and don’t want one of your lenses to end up in a camera that shoots pornography, you probably shouldn’t manufacture lenses. If you’re a photographer and don’t want to shoot pornography, I think we all see where you’re coming from and why an exception needs to be in place. In Amazon’s case, they could easily say that they aren’t selling a server, but rather they are leasing server space or providing hosting services and thus retain more rights than someone selling sign board or lenses. However, if you’re in the real estate business, you can’t claim that because you’re leasing a property rather than selling it, that you don’t have to lease it to black or homosexuals. You probably can decline to lease it to a pornography business. For Amazon denying service I think there are two possible angles. 1) Does leasing server space or providing web hosting need to have laws similar to common carrier laws? Or
2) Should political speech receive protections similar to those that we currently offer certain protected classes ie. race, sex, religious affiliation, and sexual orientation.
Really, the answer to the above two proposals may be “no” it causes more problems than it solves.
Now I’ll just apply your porn question to platform protections and leave Amazon and their servers out of it. Yes it changes the calculus. Again, we regulate vulgarity, nudity pornography etc. in public spaces, why would we then deny a platform the opportunity to self police such issues if they saw fit? There would be plenty of simple enough tests to determine if pornographic content was the reason that someone was moderated. If FB moderates an account by hiding posts, labeling, locking, blocking etc. and claims that it’s related to graphic, violent, pornographic content etc. but the exact level of said problem is otherwise allowed all over FB, then clearly they were moderating something else. If they chose to moderate something that a new law on platform protection said was outside the scope of allowed moderations, then they would simply be considered a publisher, rather than a platform, and become open to the same legal action that TV, radio, and newspapers are already subject to today.
