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I don't think people are saying it's illegal -- people are saying it's a bad thing. Those don't necessarily equal each other. Concepts like "censorship" or "fre

I don't think people are saying it's illegal -- people are saying it's a bad thing. Those don't necessarily equal each other. Concepts like "censorship" or "freedom of speech" can exist and be talked about independently of the United States First Amendment; there may not be legal grounds for prosecution but from a social/philosophical angle these are still things that can be legitimately debated. My main concern is that, as more and more of the average Internet user's communications becomes funneled through a small number of big private companies, the typical media ecosystem that we're accustomed to is changing. For some people, Facebook and their feed basically is the Internet. I don't know what the solution is or if there is one, but I find it unsettling to imagine a future where more and more of everyday life becomes dependent on private forces that pride themselves on not having to provide the protections that people grew up assuming they could rely on.

lisper 10y ago
> people are saying it's a bad thing I understand that. But why is it a bad thing? We have freedom of the press in the U.S. That means that the press is free to be biased.
- DanAndersen 10y ago
  If people go to a media source with the assumption that they're going to be receiving useful information about the world, then I'd consider it a self-evident bad thing for the media source to lie to them and give them information that isn't representative of reality. To put it into machine learning terms, giving people a bunch of training data that is biased (i.e. isn't sampled from the same distribution as reality) is going to train people's judgment to be less in tune with reality. I don't think I need to argue the laws of the US to make this point, but the press is free to be biased (up to a limit, remember that!) because excessive legal attempts to curtail media bias can tend toward making things worse -- simply putting the people in power in charge of doing the biasing.
  - lisper 10y ago
    > I'd consider it a self-evident bad thing for the media source to lie to them and give them information that isn't representative of reality. And I would agree. Nonetheless, in a free country, the owners of a media source are not bound by what you and I think (and that's a good thing). > up to a limit, remember that! Huh? What's the limit?
    - DanAndersen 10y ago
      There are rules regarding libel and slander -- they're not as overly strict as some other countries, but media isn't free to say absolutely anything about anyone.

lisper 10y ago

> people are saying it's a bad thing I understand that. But why is it a bad thing? We have freedom of the press in the U.S. That means that the press is free to be biased.

DanAndersen 10y ago
If people go to a media source with the assumption that they're going to be receiving useful information about the world, then I'd consider it a self-evident bad thing for the media source to lie to them and give them information that isn't representative of reality. To put it into machine learning terms, giving people a bunch of training data that is biased (i.e. isn't sampled from the same distribution as reality) is going to train people's judgment to be less in tune with reality. I don't think I need to argue the laws of the US to make this point, but the press is free to be biased (up to a limit, remember that!) because excessive legal attempts to curtail media bias can tend toward making things worse -- simply putting the people in power in charge of doing the biasing.
- lisper 10y ago
  > I'd consider it a self-evident bad thing for the media source to lie to them and give them information that isn't representative of reality. And I would agree. Nonetheless, in a free country, the owners of a media source are not bound by what you and I think (and that's a good thing). > up to a limit, remember that! Huh? What's the limit?
  - DanAndersen 10y ago
    There are rules regarding libel and slander -- they're not as overly strict as some other countries, but media isn't free to say absolutely anything about anyone.