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This is a thought-provoking speech. Do yourself a favor and watch it in its entirety -- before commenting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM https://

• ajg360 7y ago
  Thank you for providing a summary of this, and suggesting that the whole video should be watched before commenting. I attempted to produce a similar summary when posting the video, but I wasn't able to create one as succinct and eloquent as this one.
• throwaway122378 7y ago
  These are all valid points but as humans we’ve never encountered anything like this so we shouldn’t think about it using old world examples. Also think to yourself why this is front and center? Whereas cigarettes literally kill millions a year and they are perfectly legal. Why? Because politicians cant control their agendas with open social media platforms. Corporates should not be responsible for regulating their content, unless they are publishers. Social media platforms should be open with the onus on society to teach truth and government to prevent threatening behavior. Publishers should then be directly held accountable for anything that’s posted on their sites. Fake news, racism, slander, etc.
  • chachachoney 7y ago
    >> Also think to yourself why this is front and center? Whereas cigarettes literally kill millions a year and they are perfectly legal. Why? Because politicians cant control their agendas with open social media platforms. The current crop of populist politicians are benefiting far more from social media platforms than they are from cigarettes.
  • AlexandrB 7y ago
    > Also think to yourself why this is front and center? Whereas cigarettes literally kill millions a year and they are perfectly legal. This is a flimsy comparison. The sale and use of cigarettes is tightly regulated, with sale banned to minors and use banned in most public and commercial spaces. If there was anywhere close to this level of restriction on social media usage you might have a point. P.S. Facebook also contributed to the killing of thousands in Myanmar. So there’s that.
• ignoramous 7y ago
  A UI-free YouTube link: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ymaWq5yZIYM https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ymaWq5yZIYM
  • dublinben 7y ago
    Another alternate link without the usual Youtube junk: https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM
    • rnotaro 7y ago
      I don't know what is that website but it took 35 seconds to have a DOM on a 50Mbps connection. I might prefer Youtube-nocookie.
• enumjorge 7y ago
  Agreed. It’s disappointing to see multiple comments here with ad hominem attacks on Cohen instead of discussing what he said.
• tyri_kai_psomi 7y ago
  > The business model of social media companies is powered by engagement This is the business model of many companies and industries, including advertising and marketing, legacy media companies, and gaming.
• yters 7y ago
  Why is this unique to social media? This is the media establishment as a whole. E.g. news capitalizes on constant doom and gloom b/c that's been getting them the eyeballs for the longest. Notice how all the blockbusters are full of violence, horror and sex. Oh, this applies to social media too. Super surprised. Thanks Sacha.
  • slg 7y ago
    In his speech he specifically says it isn't different than other media establishments. He goes on to point out that other media establishments can't get away with what happens on social media. He certainly speaks from experience on that as someone who has routinely fought against the standards and practices of the MPAA and various television networks. So why does social media get away without those same restrictions?
    • yters 7y ago
      Well, I'd say the established media gets away with much more than on social media, but established media is more uniform in their output so it is easier to squash dissenting voices. Also, the movie industry regularly outputs much more extreme content than has appeared on any social media. In my opinion the real complaint is the old guard against the up and coming media, and they feel threatened and are looking for a way to bring the new media into conformity with their worldview monopoly.
      • manysmallbears 7y ago
        In the video, Sacha mentions the New Zealand mass murder streamed on Facebook[1] and the promotion of explicit holocaust denial and antisemitic propaganda via social media. These are not examples I see occur in established media without reprisal. 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/03/19/new-zealand-mosque-shooters-facebook-live-stream-was-viewed-thousands-times-before-being-removed/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/03/19/new-zealand...
        • yters 7y ago
• foobarian 7y ago
  I grew up in a tightly controlled communist place but I always thought their censorship/propaganda bureaus would have salivated over the power of the social media platforms for that sort of thing.
• account73466 7y ago
  I watched it entirely. He is arguing for censorship (because terrorism, pedophiles and racism), nothing new here. Attacking Facebook of course helps to gain attention of people who are happy to be separated from freedom.
  • cblum 7y ago
    That’s exactly what I got from it. What he’s proposing is censorship. Have everything posted anywhere be vetted by someone. I also think that saying “Google shows you all these neonazi sites” (probably not an accurate quote, but he said something of that sort) demonstrates ignorance of what Google is supposed to be.
    • thih9 7y ago
      > what Google is supposed to be And what Google is supposed to be? They stopped being a dictionary-like search engine some time ago. These days they seem to show personalized web page recommendations, loosely based on the search terms.
  • daed 7y ago
    Maybe I need to rewatch it, but what I got from it was that he's not arguing against the right to free speech, he's arguing against allowing the right to free speech to impinge on other rights - specifically in his words, the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
    • slg 7y ago
      >he's arguing against allowing the right to free speech to impinge on other rights This is what so many people miss in this debate. We already outlaw a wide variety of speech that infringes on the rights of others. You can't threaten violence against me because that infringes on my rights. You can't slander me because it infringes on my rights. You can't reproduce my copyrighted speech because it infringes on my rights. You can't use my image to advertise your product because it infringes on my rights. The debate isn't free speech versus no free speech. We already decided against universal free speech. The debate is now where do we draw the line between one person's rights and another person's rights.
• Braggadocious 7y ago
  I've done a lot of reading on this, from neil postman, to nicholas carr, sherry turkle, jaron lanier, tim wu, to plato's allegory of the cave. We've been worried about these issues for eternity. As a consumer of information, how do you tell what is real and what isnt? As a publisher, what role do you have to tell people what is real and what isnt? As a content provider, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff? As a software developer myself I'm always looking to discuss this topic with layman and other software developers since we're always looking to develop a new architecture/a new paradigm for conveying better and more concise data to clients. Even without the business model, how would you create a scalable model for all of humanity, regardless of culture or creed, that displays the information people need to do what they need to do? And what does that even mean, "information people need to do what they need to do?" The toughest part of programming is designing scalable architecture. It's so complicated and difficult that we've all but given up on trying to figure this shit out and now we're just building AI hoping something computationally faster and less human can possibly do it better.
• throwaway74342 7y ago
  > Do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing! I did. I guess you have to be fan. I agreed there's an issue. I didn't agree with any of his suggested solutions. > * The business model of social media companies is powered by engagement, How would you change it? All media is powered by engagement. Look at the covers of most magazines at the checkout counter. They'll are covered in sensational titles. > * Do social media companies bear responsibility for the negative impact their products have on society, in the same way that, say, car companies bear responsibility for faulty engines or airplane manufacturers bear responsibility for faulty plane designs? That analogy breaks pretty quick it seems to me. If 15% of Ford drivers started running over children is that Ford's fault? I'd say no. So who's fault is it when my dad posts climate change is a lie posts on Facebook? It's my dad's fault. I'm as worried as everyone else about how to deal with this but I'm having a hard time finding a cure that's not worse than symptoms. It's hard for me not to imagine too many false positives in targeting fake news. It would be interesting to make a quick site and have people judge what they'd take down. I suspect it would show in issue pretty quick. I'm also not sure how you couldn't get around it just by hedging. "Many scientists say X is false". Who decides what's "many"? It doesn't say "all". It doesn't say "most" or "a majority". Let's take an example (i'm not taking a side here, only pointing out what I perceive as difficult). Mr. Cohen mentioned getting some white middle America guy to profess his racism against muslims. Another POV might look at what Muslim's profess to want and think "No, if that's what they want then they are not welcome". Examples > In South Asia, high percentages in all the countries surveyed support making sharia the official law, including nearly universal support among Muslims in Afghanistan (99%). More than eight-in-ten Muslims in Pakistan (84%) and Bangladesh (82%) also hold this view. The percentage of Muslims who say they favor making Islamic law the official law in their country is nearly as high across the Southeast Asian countries surveyed (86% in Malaysia, 77% in Thailand and 72% in Indonesia) You can go through sharia law and find that you likely wouldn't agree with it. I'm not trying to single out Islam or sharia here. Older Christian beliefs are just as bad. The difference is, at least at the moment, few Christians are actually calling for things like stoning your wife for various reason where as > at least half of Muslims who favor making sharia the law of the land also favor stoning unfaithful spouses Note, the point above is not to pick a side. I have no idea if those facts are correct. The point is Mr. Cohen seemed to be saying bring up topic like that should be banned because it's racist against Muslims. It's arguable there's more to it. It should be discussable but of someone says "The majority of muslims want to stone adulterous women and force them to hide their faces and bodies therefore I don't want them here" who decides if that's a racist statement or a prudent one given certain data? https://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/ https://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-relig... I have muslim friends and they're great and seem mostly tolerant but I get an ear full from my non-Muslim Malaysian friends about all the ways the law in Malaysia favors Muslims over non-Muslims. The point being there's an arguably valid POV to be worried about the influence of a lot of people coming into your neighborhood with those beliefs.