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I hope this doesn't sound deliberately obtuse, but can we be specific about the parts of the social media space (and probably Facebook specifically) that feed t

I hope this doesn't sound deliberately obtuse, but can we be specific about the parts of the social media space (and probably Facebook specifically) that feed this? - I don't think private or group chat is on the hook. - I think that if group "pages" are responsible, then this at least potentially applies to BBSes and mailing lists and any blog with a comment section. Along this argument it sounds like Facebook is responsible because it's big, lightly moderated, and easy to use -- none of which I find particularly egregious. (Should we expect every website to fail at least one of those three conditions?) - I think that leaves the "news feed algorithm" argument. That the content (news, ads, friends' posts) you see is tailored for engagement. I think this argument is the one most commonly held. I disagree with it, but it's the one I'm most partial to. Are there other parts of social media that deserve the blame?

asdff 6y ago
>Are there other parts of social media that deserve the blame? Allowing propaganda to fester on their websites with the same air of legitimacy as actual factual content for years now is the reason why we were terrorized today.
- repsilat 6y ago
  OK, I think I'd put that mostly under the second point -- it's a platform for content that's big, lightly moderated, and easy to use. To look into that a bit more, I guess the "big" condition could go one of two ways: - Bigger platforms have a proportionately greater impact than smaller platforms, and a proportionately greater responsibility to moderate content. Ideally actual factual content should be prohibited from all platforms -- Facebook, wikipedia, blogger, the internet generally. Propaganda should not be allowed to "fester" anywhere. - Bigger platforms have a responsibility that smaller platforms simply do not. There can be places on the internet for them, but not too many under the same domain name. I know that my characterization of neither possibility is charitable. I'd appreciate another perspective. Maybe the important point is that Facebook stores and serves the content. But DNS helps serve content, and ISPs help serve content, and software providers help serve content. Maybe storage is where your moral line is crossed? Maybe you think AWS and GCP and Azure etc have the same resposibility as Facebook (per unit of horrible content)? And the banking system probably has a moral incentive to cut off people doing questionable things? And if someone were to self-host, we'd probably need to think about who sold them their computers, electricity, bandwidth and hardware and food.

asdff 6y ago

>Are there other parts of social media that deserve the blame? Allowing propaganda to fester on their websites with the same air of legitimacy as actual factual content for years now is the reason why we were terrorized today.

repsilat 6y ago
OK, I think I'd put that mostly under the second point -- it's a platform for content that's big, lightly moderated, and easy to use. To look into that a bit more, I guess the "big" condition could go one of two ways: - Bigger platforms have a proportionately greater impact than smaller platforms, and a proportionately greater responsibility to moderate content. Ideally actual factual content should be prohibited from all platforms -- Facebook, wikipedia, blogger, the internet generally. Propaganda should not be allowed to "fester" anywhere. - Bigger platforms have a responsibility that smaller platforms simply do not. There can be places on the internet for them, but not too many under the same domain name. I know that my characterization of neither possibility is charitable. I'd appreciate another perspective. Maybe the important point is that Facebook stores and serves the content. But DNS helps serve content, and ISPs help serve content, and software providers help serve content. Maybe storage is where your moral line is crossed? Maybe you think AWS and GCP and Azure etc have the same resposibility as Facebook (per unit of horrible content)? And the banking system probably has a moral incentive to cut off people doing questionable things? And if someone were to self-host, we'd probably need to think about who sold them their computers, electricity, bandwidth and hardware and food.