We've seen some laws passed recently, which attempt to prevent social media companies from effective moderation. Yishan repeatedly makes a point here, that most forms of spam are not illegal. Rather recent case law[1, 2] has confirmed that even panhandling is protected speech. Prior to that, we saw Lloyd vs Tanner[3], which ruled that private property could function as a "town square" and censorship runs afoul of the first amendment. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act carves out a special exemption for websites that host user-generated content, and politicians on both sides of the aisle have set their sights on remodeling that law.

I'm really curious to see how this plays out. As far as I see it, a well-lawyered bot operator could completely undermine the ability of websites to moderate their content, and as Yishan aptly points out, they wouldn't stop at inflammatory content. Their goal would be to open the floodgates for commercial communications. It could completely ruin the open internet as we know it. Or, perhaps, it would merely limit the size of social media companies: once their user-base crosses whatever "town square" threshold is decided on, spammers have free reign. Interesting times we live in.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/04/02/709251256/judge-throws-out-pa...

[2] https://media.arkansasonline.com/news/documents/2019/04/01/o... [pdf]

[3] https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/582/lloyd-corpo...