3 ms·

To be honest there's a lot of talk about freedom of speech here, and the dynamic of freedom of speech vs private corporations right to determine what they allow

To be honest there's a lot of talk about freedom of speech here, and the dynamic of freedom of speech vs private corporations right to determine what they allow on their site. Personally I think that this issue is not actually as important as people think, and this problem is just one of several that emerges from a different problem. Our real problem is a lack of competition. There are a tiny number of social media sites that exist at scale: There's Youtube, there's Facebook, and then Twitter. If we had 15 social media platforms, it really wouldn't be much of a problem for them to make decisions about who they wanted on their platform - whether that be through Terms of Service or crappy DMCA implementations. And that's not even taking into consideration the fact that they're all run by the same handful of people who bump into each other at the local Whole Foods. The problem isn't censorship, it's the fact that we've got Standard Oil and no one sees it as a problem.

krapp 7y ago
Googling "social media sites" gives me far more than 15 alternatives to Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. You're like people arguing that Youtube has a monopoly because no "serious" competition exists, only the weasel-words you're using are "at scale" to pretend the entire rest of the social media ecosystem doesn't exist. Wasn't it a meme not long ago that young people didn't even use Facebook anymore, that it was turning into the "old people's social network?" How does that happen if Facebook is Standard Oil and no competition is possible? I guess all of those other sites and apps simply aren't operating "at scale?" The discussion of whether and how social media affects political and cultural discourse, and especially how the gamification and incentives of social media do, is worth having. But the tendency of arguments to depend on slippery slope fallacies which assume the entire web beyond three or four popular sites simply doesn't exist or doesn't matter is incorrect.

krapp 7y ago

Googling "social media sites" gives me far more than 15 alternatives to Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. You're like people arguing that Youtube has a monopoly because no "serious" competition exists, only the weasel-words you're using are "at scale" to pretend the entire rest of the social media ecosystem doesn't exist. Wasn't it a meme not long ago that young people didn't even use Facebook anymore, that it was turning into the "old people's social network?" How does that happen if Facebook is Standard Oil and no competition is possible? I guess all of those other sites and apps simply aren't operating "at scale?" The discussion of whether and how social media affects political and cultural discourse, and especially how the gamification and incentives of social media do, is worth having. But the tendency of arguments to depend on slippery slope fallacies which assume the entire web beyond three or four popular sites simply doesn't exist or doesn't matter is incorrect.