On my drive home yesterday I heard a story on NPR about a new bill being debated in Congress that would make websites liable for content posted on their site that promotes or engages in sex trafficking. Some internet lobbyist was mad as hell about how this new law would have made it impossible for "the internet as we know it" to have evolved. The merits of the law notwithstanding, I found myself thinking, "What the fuck is so great about the internet as we know it?"Twitter didn't cause any divides. It gave disparate tribes a place to Thunderdome. It is not a commons that suffered a schism it's a frontier being fought over by ideological homesteaders.
My question is why shouldn't companies be liable for how their product harms people? Paypal fucks people all the time, because payment providers can be fined if they're facilitating illegal business. Car companies get sued like every day for making unsafe cars. Gun manufacturers are statutorily protected from lawsuits by victims, and we [thinking people] all think that is wrong as fuck. Fuck you if you're providing a platform to peddle humans. You deserve to die as a person and a business. Also, is eBay still a thing?
Because "harm" is not a binary condition, nor is "liable." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalization_Act Regulation shapes commerce. Fettered capitalism isn't always better than unfettered capitalism. It's entirely rational to argue about the fetters. I personally believe that corporations should be more responsible for the externalities of their business models but I also know that innovation often races ahead of morality and then there's a correction. If every website policed their own content we wouldn't have bills like this but since they don't, the ones that ignore it make that money and drive out the ones that do. Textbook tragedy of the commons and before too long there's arguments about how much we want the sheriff to control grazing.My question is why shouldn't companies be liable for how their product harms people?