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Well it is undisputed that ISIS used Twitter and Facebook very effectively to recruit and spread propaganda. Whatever you think of the outcome of the last presi
by orbifold 8y ago
Well it is undisputed that ISIS used Twitter and Facebook very effectively to recruit and spread propaganda. Whatever you think of the outcome of the last presidential election in the US and the Brexit vote it can not be a good thing for democracy to fracture opinions and reinforce beliefs by optimising for engagement in the way the Facebook and Twitter algorithm seem to do. Plus the way they work as AD platforms is also fundamentally different compared to traditional campaign advertisement, because not the same ads are shown to everyone.
This is not about censorship and this kind of content is not information. I don't object to this footage being available in an archive and that it can be retrieved by anyone free of charge if they explicitly asked for it. I do not even object to it being freely available somewhere on the internet. What I object to is that Facebook and Youtube can get away with pretending they are passive conduits of information, while they in fact curate and profit directly from the content they host.
They should be held to the same standards as traditional media companies, which they are in the process of displacing. A traditional media company would never have been allowed to show uncontextualized and extremely violent content such as this. If the algorithm does not catch this, that is not an excuse. They should be held accountable, as
they should be held accountable for allowing ISIS to use their platforms.