I think he's right, but there's a subtlety here that's often missed. Zuckerberg talks about it directly [0] and I think his approach is probably the most reason

I think he's right, but there's a subtlety here that's often missed. Zuckerberg talks about it directly [0] and I think his approach is probably the most reasonable. Social Media platforms do have some responsibility to moderate (and they have the legal Good Samaritan protection to do so in the US thanks to section 230). They have a particular responsibility since their 'engagement' algorithms have often historically led to making things worse by elevating controversial content. When they're using algorithms to elevate certain types of content they are employing some level of editorial control and have some responsibility as publishers in how they rank that content (what they choose to show more widely, what they choose to allow to fall into obscurity). FB for their part has put a lot of effort into determining this kind of moderation standard and what they allow from users [1]. The recent political stuff is interesting in part because Zuckerberg is arguing that democratically elected politicians should be an exception to these rules, basically that citizens have a right to see the speech of their elected leaders (and lies should be corrected by a free press). While FB is legally able to moderate the speech of an elected politician on their platform, Zuckerberg argues it's wrong for FB to decide what political speech is okay to block because they shouldn't be in the position to make that call. I think he's right to be concerned about that precedent. This doesn't apply to the speech of regular users or even to the political speech of non-democratically 'elected' politicians. [0]: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-free-speech.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-f... [1]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-facebook-war-on-hate-speech https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-... [Edit]: Also this: > "One thing that interests me and that I have so far not been able to find out is how it starts. How does a ‘normal’ person step into this cult world where up is down and not think to themselves: “Hm, this does not seem like it is believable”." I think people do think this at first, but I think we are all more vulnerable to being infected by bullshit then we like to believe. People are wildly inconsistent, even in their own views most of the time (yes even you, and me). We think poorly, many people believe crazy things, we argue via motivated reasoning, don't extend views globally, don't consider things the same when they're out of sight etc. When exposed to lots of wrong information repeatedly I think most people get corrupted, even those that are pretty analytical. I think it takes continuous vigilance to not believe crazy things (and I think people get worse as they get older at being able to do this well). I don't think these are outliers, I think this is the norm. Most people just don't wonder about things at all so avoid being radicalized into harmful action based on their own crazy beliefs. I also suspect in-person interaction has a lot of built in de-escalation mechanisms that bias towards unity and friendliness most of the time, so things get worse when you lose that natural control.