Entrusting our speech to multiple different corporate actors is always risky. Yet given how most of the internet is currently structured, our online expression largely depends on a set of private companies ranging from our direct Internet service providers and platforms, to upstream ISPs (sometimes...
That isn’t a middle ground. You’re just saying the state can publish a recommendation, which it always has been able to. That’s absolutely in the “unregulated” / “no safety nets” camp. It’s caveat emptor as a status quo and takes us back to the gilded age.
To put it another way: The middle ground between “the state has no authority here” and “the state can regulate away a product” isn’t “the state can suggest we don’t buy it.” It still puts the burden on the consumer in an unreasonable way. We can’t assess literally everything we consume. If I go to a grocery store and buy apples, I can reasonably assume they won’t poison me. Without basic regulations this is not possible. You can’t feed 8 billion people without some rules.
Let me be clear, I agree with the EFF on this particular issue. ISP’s should not regulate speech and what sites I browse. But it’s not the same as having the FDA. For starters, ISP’s are private corporations.
You misunderstood. It’s not a middle ground between “can regulate” and “cannot regulate”. That would indeed be idiotic. It’s a middle ground between “must judge everything for yourself” and “someone else determines what you have access to”. Someone else does the evaluation and tells you whether they think it’s worthwhile, but you choose whose recommendations to listen to (or ignore, if you please).
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