4 ms·

To me, it feels entirely different if you—as a user are aware of what is popular because you have chosen to see it ranked as so. Will it be gamed? Yes. But yo

To me, it feels entirely different if you—as a user are aware of what is popular because you have chosen to see it ranked as so. Will it be gamed? Yes. But you might be able to as a user suspect that people are trying to game the system with fake votes. What is undeniable though is that because you as a user are making a choice to see the popularity, you are much more cognizant that something might be at play. Popularity—despite its flaws—is still a good signal and a great place to begin critical thinking if you’re aware that you’re choosing to view it through the popularity lens.

didibus 6y ago
I feel one could argue most of the algorithms are just showing what's most popular though. No? It's tricky I guess to draw a line. But maybe it doesn't need to. All it means to consider it editorializing is that the laws and regulations of being a publisher now applies to you, and maybe for all these centralized user content platforms it should? No matter their UX? That would mean those platforms would be liable for copyright, defamation, privacy, negligence and publicity issues that they publish, even if the content is written by their users. I'd consider platforms that just enable peer to peer type conversation, like email, text message, what's app, where you need to explicitly send your post to other people, could be exempt. Those are clearly communication platforms. But any platform that aggregates content into one place for you to consume top to bottom, feed like, etc. I feel could just be considered a publisher. For example, if there was a book company who told people: Send us 144 character long snippets, and we'll put them all in a book collection and publish them, they'd be considered a publisher. So maybe this is true of Twitter as well? What does the digital format change here? This to me wouldn't preclude the sharing of information on the internet, it just means a user who wants to publish something that a "publishing" platform refuses to publish would need to do so themselves, procure themselves a website and publish the content on it. And then search engine or other site aggregator could let users find the content. This would make the user personally liable to copyright, defamation, privacy, negligence and publicity issues off course, but that's what we want: some accountability. If you're telling lies, defaming, providing dangerous and negligent advice, infringing copyright, or advertising for a political party, you should be made accountable for it. In a weird way, the current social platforms are a loophole, the user isn't accountable, and the platform isn't, so its the wild west. Another option is, if you want to be a platform for publishing, I think you could have it that, take twitter, there is no public feed of feed, but users can use it to publish their own material to their followers. But as a user choosing to publish, Twitter would need to perform full KYC due diligence and make your information about how to reach you public. More similar to what a merchant on Amazon goes through. Then it be clear that if you follow X it is X that is publishing, not Twitter, and it is still possible to take X to court as Twitter has done a full diligence KYC and made available enough information to do so. Thus making an easy platform for "self-publishing" but not shielding the user's who use it to publish from accountability of what they publish.

didibus 6y ago

I feel one could argue most of the algorithms are just showing what's most popular though. No? It's tricky I guess to draw a line. But maybe it doesn't need to. All it means to consider it editorializing is that the laws and regulations of being a publisher now applies to you, and maybe for all these centralized user content platforms it should? No matter their UX? That would mean those platforms would be liable for copyright, defamation, privacy, negligence and publicity issues that they publish, even if the content is written by their users. I'd consider platforms that just enable peer to peer type conversation, like email, text message, what's app, where you need to explicitly send your post to other people, could be exempt. Those are clearly communication platforms. But any platform that aggregates content into one place for you to consume top to bottom, feed like, etc. I feel could just be considered a publisher. For example, if there was a book company who told people: Send us 144 character long snippets, and we'll put them all in a book collection and publish them, they'd be considered a publisher. So maybe this is true of Twitter as well? What does the digital format change here? This to me wouldn't preclude the sharing of information on the internet, it just means a user who wants to publish something that a "publishing" platform refuses to publish would need to do so themselves, procure themselves a website and publish the content on it. And then search engine or other site aggregator could let users find the content. This would make the user personally liable to copyright, defamation, privacy, negligence and publicity issues off course, but that's what we want: some accountability. If you're telling lies, defaming, providing dangerous and negligent advice, infringing copyright, or advertising for a political party, you should be made accountable for it. In a weird way, the current social platforms are a loophole, the user isn't accountable, and the platform isn't, so its the wild west. Another option is, if you want to be a platform for publishing, I think you could have it that, take twitter, there is no public feed of feed, but users can use it to publish their own material to their followers. But as a user choosing to publish, Twitter would need to perform full KYC due diligence and make your information about how to reach you public. More similar to what a merchant on Amazon goes through. Then it be clear that if you follow X it is X that is publishing, not Twitter, and it is still possible to take X to court as Twitter has done a full diligence KYC and made available enough information to do so. Thus making an easy platform for "self-publishing" but not shielding the user's who use it to publish from accountability of what they publish.