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The article touches on this in a more roundabout way, but personally I couldn't help but feel a bit of grim satisfaction at this whole situation. The newspaper

The article touches on this in a more roundabout way, but personally I couldn't help but feel a bit of grim satisfaction at this whole situation. The newspapers who got moderated by Twitter and are now crying foul are the same ones who are the reason Twitter started with their heavy-handed proactive approach to moderation in the first place. Twitter, Facebook, most platforms really, just want to be dumb service providers. But they got bullied by major news organizations who, as always, had no fucking clue what they are asking for, into becoming what they are now. I don't think anything will change though. Within their opinion columns only their inability to reflect upon past mistakes is more chronic than than their inability to think their hot-headed demands to their logical conclusions.

AlexandrB 6y ago
> Twitter, Facebook, most platforms really, just want to be dumb service providers. I think this was true before both started pushing algorithmic feeds over chronological ones. Now it's pretty clear that both Twitter and Facebook want to curate what you see based on criteria and algorithms they choose.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  > I think this was true before both started pushing algorithmic feeds over chronological ones. While it's true that algorithmic feeds fundamentally give the platform control over what you see, this is not the type of slam dunk argument you are making it out to be. First of all, the primary reason social media platforms move to algorithmic feeds is to increase engagement (eyeballs, ad revenue etc.), not censorship. And this is because a lot of the content posted by people is crap and not interesting to others, and a purely chronological timeline puts all such content at equal footing. For the longest time FB let you switch to a chronological feed, and for most people, it was absolute crap, because generic posts by your friends, updates about changes they made, social media posts by brands etc. all got exactly the same weightage, and you had to trawl through a lot of crap to find useful stuff on the feed. Left to their own devices (and by that I mean, without traditional media raking them through the coals every single day), these platforms would be happy to keep leftists in their leftist bubbles, rightists in their rightist bubbles, and so on, as long as it kept all these factions individually engaged and happy. Do you think Facebook _enjoys_ dealing with these pointless he-said she-said sort of arguments every day whenever something contentious comes up? They don't. It's a HUGE time and money sink for them, and causes reputational damage no matter what decision they take, because someone will always be upset.
RonanTheGrey 6y ago
> The newspapers who got moderated by Twitter and are now crying foul are the same ones who are the reason Twitter started with their heavy-handed proactive approach to moderation in the first place. Yeah, I was interested in their analysis of how the social media platforms got blamed for 2016 even though the big news outlets were at least as culpable, if not more so. I never thought it was fair to lay the blame at social media's feet. Certainly not without blame, but they sit rather at the end of the rope, not the beginning and at least for me this blog post's examination of agency vs. responsibility was alot more satisfying than "free speech they can do what they want checkmate."

AlexandrB 6y ago

> Twitter, Facebook, most platforms really, just want to be dumb service providers. I think this was true before both started pushing algorithmic feeds over chronological ones. Now it's pretty clear that both Twitter and Facebook want to curate what you see based on criteria and algorithms they choose.

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
> I think this was true before both started pushing algorithmic feeds over chronological ones. While it's true that algorithmic feeds fundamentally give the platform control over what you see, this is not the type of slam dunk argument you are making it out to be. First of all, the primary reason social media platforms move to algorithmic feeds is to increase engagement (eyeballs, ad revenue etc.), not censorship. And this is because a lot of the content posted by people is crap and not interesting to others, and a purely chronological timeline puts all such content at equal footing. For the longest time FB let you switch to a chronological feed, and for most people, it was absolute crap, because generic posts by your friends, updates about changes they made, social media posts by brands etc. all got exactly the same weightage, and you had to trawl through a lot of crap to find useful stuff on the feed. Left to their own devices (and by that I mean, without traditional media raking them through the coals every single day), these platforms would be happy to keep leftists in their leftist bubbles, rightists in their rightist bubbles, and so on, as long as it kept all these factions individually engaged and happy. Do you think Facebook _enjoys_ dealing with these pointless he-said she-said sort of arguments every day whenever something contentious comes up? They don't. It's a HUGE time and money sink for them, and causes reputational damage no matter what decision they take, because someone will always be upset.

RonanTheGrey 6y ago

> The newspapers who got moderated by Twitter and are now crying foul are the same ones who are the reason Twitter started with their heavy-handed proactive approach to moderation in the first place. Yeah, I was interested in their analysis of how the social media platforms got blamed for 2016 even though the big news outlets were at least as culpable, if not more so. I never thought it was fair to lay the blame at social media's feet. Certainly not without blame, but they sit rather at the end of the rope, not the beginning and at least for me this blog post's examination of agency vs. responsibility was alot more satisfying than "free speech they can do what they want checkmate."