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The position Facebook are in is completely unenviable. On the one hand, Facebook is the biggest social network in the world and they have arrived at that succe
by neilalexander 7y ago
The position Facebook are in is completely unenviable.
On the one hand, Facebook is the biggest social network in the world and they have arrived at that successful position by encouraging people to speak and to share. Without user participation, Facebook is nothing - it's only where it is today because it has given people (and advertising companies?) a platform to broadcast to an audience almost frictionlessly. You can obviously say the same about Twitter and similar platforms.
On the other hand, we call upon Facebook to be safe. We're happy that Facebook gives people a platform from which to broadcast but we don't want them to broadcast the wrong things. We can't expect that everyone will play by the rules - that's just human nature, but we seem to expect that if violent crime, pornography or hate speech is posted, that "someone else" will deal with it so that our children won't see it.
Meanwhile, Facebook are caught in the middle in a seemingly impossible situation, trying desperately to reconcile the two whilst maintaining their reputation, legal compliance and without pissing off their users any more than they already have done in various other ways (data scandals, privacy invasion, etc).