It’s complicated. Only a few companies can afford to pay out bribes to avoid lawsuits, which means they’d effectively be destroying all of their competition in exchange. Bluesky and Lemmy can’t afford to pay their way out of lawsuits, after all. This would be a handy win for total monopolization of the internet under only a few companies, even if it might also be expensive.
On top of that they were starting down the barrel of FTC for monopoly practices, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some kind of backroom deal with the government here. Maybe if the tech companies allow Section 230 to be repealed and for age-verification laws to pass, the government doesn’t force their companies to be broken up in antitrust actions.
It’s complicated. Only a few companies can afford to pay out bribes to avoid lawsuits, which means they’d effectively be destroying all of their competition in exchange. Bluesky and Lemmy can’t afford to pay their way out of lawsuits, after all. This would be a handy win for total monopolization of the internet under only a few companies, even if it might also be expensive.
On top of that they were starting down the barrel of FTC for monopoly practices, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some kind of backroom deal with the government here. Maybe if the tech companies allow Section 230 to be repealed and for age-verification laws to pass, the government doesn’t force their companies to be broken up in antitrust actions.
I have no idea what is going to happen.