I’m a prof at Baruch and teach about IT systems/media. It’s been frustrating to watch ppl bashing or defending Twitter/FB banning Trump cuz both are missing the history and challenges at play here. There aren’t easy answers but there are def *wrong* ones we need to undo 1/12

When I taught an undergrad course on this back in 2016 I reminded students that the first amendment was conceived when literacy was limited and banning the printing press was simply impractical. Not to say it wasn’t still a radical limit on gov power. It was! 2/12

But when radio broadcasting emerged the fed gov recognized its power and enshrined 2 key ideas: the public owns the airwaves and no single company should control a large amount of it. Paving the way for the Fairness Doctrine for political discourse and separating ownership 3/12

(It also pushed rural electrification so the whole country could benefit from new related tech and subsidized/regulated public utilities to provide it which was just as critical to expanding access and modernizing economy) 4/12

Independent of public policy, the appearance of non-partisanship became an economic incentive for broadcasters to reach the biggest audience to attract advertisers. It narrowed accepted ideology in US, but it created (mostly illusionary) idea of objective journalism in US 5/12

But this system was still considered liberal. Conservatives built their identity around bias from the get go. The ideology really wasn’t but certainly most journalists personally were/are. Reagan ended Fairness Doctrine and laid seed for right wing media initially on radio 6/12

Deregulation went further and has continued so only a small amount of companies own radio, TV and, print. Sinclair is an example that owns broadcasting rights to over 40% of US and it’s comically right wing. This has huge implications for public information and debate 7/12

This coupled w the rise of social media and (at the beginning) the decentralization of advertising dollars across many platforms that killed local print. That has reversed under FB/google which take in over half of US ad spending *but don’t need mass appeal to do it* 8/12

We haven’t had the same kind of discussion about the Internet or social media that we did about broadcasting and we’ve paid for it. Same goes for deregulation. There’s always been a market failure in media cuz it’s a complicated technology and social issue that evolves 9/12

But we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We already debated these issues and 1st Amendment concerns and came to a basically sensible plan 85 years ago. Skepticism about the state should be matched with skepticism for the market. That’s the difference from the founding era. 10/12

Start there and update. The public owns the Internet. The gov should provide everyone with access to it. Ensure that no company or companies control too much of it at any part of the chain and create new fairness standards. And it should fund local coverage if market won’t /11/12

It won’t stop misinformation or solve problems of limiting ideological debates, but it provides a framework for recognizing the limit of the market and state power and for encouraging individual + democratic accountability. It’s that or more chaos, we can choose. 12/12