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This should be the top comment. Social media companies can either be monopolies or they can put limits on the speech of their platform... but they can't do both

This should be the top comment. Social media companies can either be monopolies or they can put limits on the speech of their platform... but they can't do both. While not against the law of freedom of speech, political moderation processes are certainly against the intent. Every once in a while we get a case like this where an unpopular fringe opinion becomes mainstream and underlines the point. But this isn't just a matter of Facebook / Twitter / YouTube needing a better moderation process - this is more fundamental. No person or organization - no matter how benevolent or wise - should have the power to declare truth in a society. Fringe opinions need constitutional protection - regardless of the era or the technology.

tonystubblebine 5y ago
Not all opinions deserve equal airtime. Fringe opinions should have to work harder to get to the mainstream. Isn’t that exactly what happened here? This is the fringe opinion that had the most inherent value and it’s proved that by breaking through. IMO I wish the platforms had censored more bad info than this. It’s crazy to me that there isn’t more friction for bad ideas.
- beaner 5y ago
  On the contrary, actors who are bad at judging what qualifies as a "good" idea should be removed from the filtering process.
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    How is that contrary? MSM got one wrong in the same time that alternative media has gotten hundreds wrong. MSM isn't just better at rejecting misinformation, it's a lot better.
    - beaner 5y ago
      Wrong. The things it does get wrong have more impact. Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset, but led to mass delusions, promotions of fake news propagandists to the point that they are now embedded within and celebrated by the MSM, the discrediting of the media and the intelligence community, breakdown of trust of those institutions by those who had been clear-headed, and fever-dream level hysteria by those who were misled, greatly fracturing Americans who were already divided. It may be true that they get fewer specific points wrong, but if the ones they do get wrong count for a lot more, that's not better. That's worse.
      - triceratops 5y ago
        > Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset What is "Russiagate"? What about it was "patently false"? The Mueller investigation got multiple indictments against Russian nationals. They also obtained convictions of people working in the Trump campaign or administration for election-related offenses. They found evidence of Russian attempts to influence voters in swing states by illegally buying ads on social media. That Russia attempted to meddle in the 2016 elections isn't in doubt - only whether the meddling worked.
        tablespoon 5y ago
        > What is "Russiagate"? It's talk-radioese for the Mueller investigation. > What about it was "patently false"? IIRC, a lot of misunderstandings about it (e.g. misunderstanding the proven claims that Russia made signficant efforts to interfere with the election as a claim that they successfully rigged it).
        the_optimist 5y ago
        This is a very interesting comment for future historians, as it shows how people convince themselves that they have absorbed substance when in fact there is no such substance. Virtually no aspect of your statement extends beyond press headlines, where the content and follow-on of each of these stories entirely defused the substance of the respective headline. That is why the whole thing that you believe is very important amounted to a pile of dust.
        tonystubblebine 5y ago
        This comment would be more valuable if you’d made it in a constructive way with even one detailed example of defused substance.
        triceratops 5y ago
        That's the irony. Their own views don't have any actual substance.
- setBoolean 5y ago
  1. Who decides what is a "fringe" theory? You? The Government? The scientific community? Facebook/Twitter etc...? 2. ..Fringe opinions should have to work harder to get to the mainstream... No they shouldn't it is you the reader of those news who should make the decision of how much "brain time" this "fringe" news get. 3. Denying airtime to certain topics doesn't make them go away or sways people that believe them otherwise.
  - tonystubblebine 5y ago
    Well, since you asked if I should decide what a fringe theory is, yes, sometimes I do make that decision. But when I'm wrong those things have a habit of breaking through. I remember being pretty skeptical of intermittent fasting for awhile. I'd held it out of a study we did in 2014 and then held it out of our publishing. Something about it smelled like anorexia light. So on the one hand I kept hearing people swear by it and then on the other hand I hadn't done enough research to be comfortable. I ended up having a detailed conversation with a doctor about the physiological side and then with a therapist about eating disorders (especially in men) before I was ready to allow it into our work. So for about a year I was wrongly gatekeeping on this topic. But that's what I mean about fringe ideas need to work harder. The fringes is where those ideas get stress tested and refined. And since ideas break out of the fringes all the time, I don't have any real fear that gatekeeping other places is overly oppressive.
- refurb 5y ago
  This is some impressive mental gymnastics. Why was the lab leak claim labeled “fringe” in the first place? You want Zuckerberg deciding what ideas you should and shouldn’t see?
wpietri 5y ago
Good thing they aren't monopolies, then. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and Reddit are are all very popular places for people to post their views. And that's not counting the myriad lesser places like the one we're using now. And of course anybody can drop a few bucks on a blog of their own. I also disagree that sites moderating is against the intent. Freedom of speech is one right, but so is freedom of association. Should HN be required by law to platform anybody with an "unpopular fringe opinion"? I'd say no. Using government power to force participation in speech someone finds odious is just as bad as using government power to shut down speech.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  >And of course anybody can drop a few bucks on a blog of their own. And no one will read it unless you can post links on facebook, twitter and reddit. In the end, almost all communication online runs through a limited set of american megacorps who all act in the same ways, have the same rules and align to the same culture. It's no surprise China and Russia ban American sites because those sites control the debate and culture of the places that use them.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    I do think there is a problem with how tightly some big corporations have locked down social media - but the 1st amendment (and equivalent laws elsewhere) don't cover the requirement that anyone actually listen to your speech. I think if we see social media as being a necessary modern medium for speech then we're going to need to get a government sponsored something in the mix - whether that is a common required protocol for messaging or a full blown nationalized social network is an open debate we can have. The main issue is that as long as we're blindly trusting the market to fix itself - it has decided the fix is that monopolies are great when nobody is breaking up big tech companies.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    > And no one will read it unless you can post links on facebook, twitter and reddit. I suppose the question is how long that list of websites really is, and how long it needs to be before people stop calling all those websites "monopolies." Obviously it would be fairly absurd to say "no one will read your website unless you can post links on site 1, site 2, site 3, ... site 3,109,550, and therefore those 3.1 million websites are monopolies."
pavlov 5y ago
This argument seems to assume that Internet hosting is like air — a natural resource which by default is available for everyone to use, but social media companies restrict unfairly. As everyone here should know, it’s not like that: hosting can be awfully expensive, especially for media content. Social media companies receive money from advertisers, and use that money to host content from users and partners that hopefully makes those ads look appealing too. It’s that simple. Should these companies be compelled by the government to display content that makes their customers (advertisers) look bad? That seems like an awfully deep intrusion into a private business. If the social media companies truly were monopolies, that would be another thing. But it’s hard to make that argument when new entrants like Snap and TikTok are able to conquer entire market segments and reach $100B valuations in a matter of years.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  Real estate is expensive too, but there are "town square" doctrines in some states where presenting yourself as a public space means you must not discriminate on usage. This goes further -- in some states where such doctrine does not exist it was kind of synthesized because some electoral districts have, say, 80% of the electorate in an apartment building which a judge ruled must be accessible to candidates who run.
  - pavlov 5y ago
    A comment section on a blog presents itself as a public space. Does this mean nobody can moderate comments anymore? Or if the rule only applies to political expression, can spammers just adopt the formula: “I love candidate $X because he buys viagra at http:yyy” Or, if the rule is that big enough sites suddenly become “town squares”, that seems like a major disincentive to American companies to grow. Others would walk in without these limitations, like Chinese already did with TikTok.
    - R0b0t1 5y ago
      A direct analogue is the concept of an easement. If you get large enough and enough people use your site, that is when the public square doctrine would kick in. Similar to how eventually if you let people keep walking through your yard it becomes public use land. Usually you have multiple chances to fight it. The owner of a square continues to own it because it makes them money.
BurningFrog 5y ago
What I would do, if elected Emperor over this, is to add warnings or links to debunkings of fringe theories, but never delete them. The power to silence will always be abused.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > or links to debunkings of fringe theories Sadly won't be helpful, and may actually make things worse: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backfire_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backfire_effect * https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont...
  - armchairhacker 5y ago
    IMO I think it's useful to avoid getting moderates and people who don't know better caught up in the mess. For people who are already convinced, they're already convinced. Banning the content entirely also doesn't help. People are very good at spreading information, even if you manage to ban all conspiracies from the internet, you have TV, the newspaper, private networks, and just word-of-mouth. Another good tool would be to teach kids how to identify misinformation. You don't have to worry about belief perseverance when there's no belief yet.
    - gowld 5y ago
      I can't teach your kids to identify misinformation against your will and theirs.
    - wslack 5y ago
      However, in past decades, those other networks didn't cause the same level of propagation of misinformation.
  - nitwit005 5y ago
    That wikipedia link for the backfire effect directly mentions failure to reproduce the findings. I will assume that's true, or you won't find this reply very convincing.
nescioquid 5y ago
I agree with you in spirit, though I feel like the issue is more about whether social media are common carriers [1] or publishers. They shield themselves when they claim to be a carriers, yet act like publishers. The monopoly aspect, I agree, would be more important to speech, given they behave as publishers of what you may as well consider on-spec content. I'd like to get clear on to what degree they should be considered carriers or publishers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
- planetree 5y ago
  They're publishers: they profit from advertising from content, and don't charge a carrier fee. Seems simple enough.

tonystubblebine 5y ago

Not all opinions deserve equal airtime. Fringe opinions should have to work harder to get to the mainstream. Isn’t that exactly what happened here? This is the fringe opinion that had the most inherent value and it’s proved that by breaking through. IMO I wish the platforms had censored more bad info than this. It’s crazy to me that there isn’t more friction for bad ideas.

beaner 5y ago
On the contrary, actors who are bad at judging what qualifies as a "good" idea should be removed from the filtering process.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  How is that contrary? MSM got one wrong in the same time that alternative media has gotten hundreds wrong. MSM isn't just better at rejecting misinformation, it's a lot better.
  - beaner 5y ago
    Wrong. The things it does get wrong have more impact. Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset, but led to mass delusions, promotions of fake news propagandists to the point that they are now embedded within and celebrated by the MSM, the discrediting of the media and the intelligence community, breakdown of trust of those institutions by those who had been clear-headed, and fever-dream level hysteria by those who were misled, greatly fracturing Americans who were already divided. It may be true that they get fewer specific points wrong, but if the ones they do get wrong count for a lot more, that's not better. That's worse.
    - triceratops 5y ago
      > Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset What is "Russiagate"? What about it was "patently false"? The Mueller investigation got multiple indictments against Russian nationals. They also obtained convictions of people working in the Trump campaign or administration for election-related offenses. They found evidence of Russian attempts to influence voters in swing states by illegally buying ads on social media. That Russia attempted to meddle in the 2016 elections isn't in doubt - only whether the meddling worked.
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > What is "Russiagate"? It's talk-radioese for the Mueller investigation. > What about it was "patently false"? IIRC, a lot of misunderstandings about it (e.g. misunderstanding the proven claims that Russia made signficant efforts to interfere with the election as a claim that they successfully rigged it).
      - the_optimist 5y ago
        This is a very interesting comment for future historians, as it shows how people convince themselves that they have absorbed substance when in fact there is no such substance. Virtually no aspect of your statement extends beyond press headlines, where the content and follow-on of each of these stories entirely defused the substance of the respective headline. That is why the whole thing that you believe is very important amounted to a pile of dust.
        tonystubblebine 5y ago
        This comment would be more valuable if you’d made it in a constructive way with even one detailed example of defused substance.
        triceratops 5y ago
        That's the irony. Their own views don't have any actual substance.
setBoolean 5y ago
1. Who decides what is a "fringe" theory? You? The Government? The scientific community? Facebook/Twitter etc...? 2. ..Fringe opinions should have to work harder to get to the mainstream... No they shouldn't it is you the reader of those news who should make the decision of how much "brain time" this "fringe" news get. 3. Denying airtime to certain topics doesn't make them go away or sways people that believe them otherwise.
- tonystubblebine 5y ago
  Well, since you asked if I should decide what a fringe theory is, yes, sometimes I do make that decision. But when I'm wrong those things have a habit of breaking through. I remember being pretty skeptical of intermittent fasting for awhile. I'd held it out of a study we did in 2014 and then held it out of our publishing. Something about it smelled like anorexia light. So on the one hand I kept hearing people swear by it and then on the other hand I hadn't done enough research to be comfortable. I ended up having a detailed conversation with a doctor about the physiological side and then with a therapist about eating disorders (especially in men) before I was ready to allow it into our work. So for about a year I was wrongly gatekeeping on this topic. But that's what I mean about fringe ideas need to work harder. The fringes is where those ideas get stress tested and refined. And since ideas break out of the fringes all the time, I don't have any real fear that gatekeeping other places is overly oppressive.
refurb 5y ago
This is some impressive mental gymnastics. Why was the lab leak claim labeled “fringe” in the first place? You want Zuckerberg deciding what ideas you should and shouldn’t see?

wpietri 5y ago

Good thing they aren't monopolies, then. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and Reddit are are all very popular places for people to post their views. And that's not counting the myriad lesser places like the one we're using now. And of course anybody can drop a few bucks on a blog of their own. I also disagree that sites moderating is against the intent. Freedom of speech is one right, but so is freedom of association. Should HN be required by law to platform anybody with an "unpopular fringe opinion"? I'd say no. Using government power to force participation in speech someone finds odious is just as bad as using government power to shut down speech.

SilverRed 5y ago
>And of course anybody can drop a few bucks on a blog of their own. And no one will read it unless you can post links on facebook, twitter and reddit. In the end, almost all communication online runs through a limited set of american megacorps who all act in the same ways, have the same rules and align to the same culture. It's no surprise China and Russia ban American sites because those sites control the debate and culture of the places that use them.
- munk-a 5y ago
  I do think there is a problem with how tightly some big corporations have locked down social media - but the 1st amendment (and equivalent laws elsewhere) don't cover the requirement that anyone actually listen to your speech. I think if we see social media as being a necessary modern medium for speech then we're going to need to get a government sponsored something in the mix - whether that is a common required protocol for messaging or a full blown nationalized social network is an open debate we can have. The main issue is that as long as we're blindly trusting the market to fix itself - it has decided the fix is that monopolies are great when nobody is breaking up big tech companies.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > And no one will read it unless you can post links on facebook, twitter and reddit. I suppose the question is how long that list of websites really is, and how long it needs to be before people stop calling all those websites "monopolies." Obviously it would be fairly absurd to say "no one will read your website unless you can post links on site 1, site 2, site 3, ... site 3,109,550, and therefore those 3.1 million websites are monopolies."

pavlov 5y ago

This argument seems to assume that Internet hosting is like air — a natural resource which by default is available for everyone to use, but social media companies restrict unfairly. As everyone here should know, it’s not like that: hosting can be awfully expensive, especially for media content. Social media companies receive money from advertisers, and use that money to host content from users and partners that hopefully makes those ads look appealing too. It’s that simple. Should these companies be compelled by the government to display content that makes their customers (advertisers) look bad? That seems like an awfully deep intrusion into a private business. If the social media companies truly were monopolies, that would be another thing. But it’s hard to make that argument when new entrants like Snap and TikTok are able to conquer entire market segments and reach $100B valuations in a matter of years.

R0b0t1 5y ago
Real estate is expensive too, but there are "town square" doctrines in some states where presenting yourself as a public space means you must not discriminate on usage. This goes further -- in some states where such doctrine does not exist it was kind of synthesized because some electoral districts have, say, 80% of the electorate in an apartment building which a judge ruled must be accessible to candidates who run.
- pavlov 5y ago
  A comment section on a blog presents itself as a public space. Does this mean nobody can moderate comments anymore? Or if the rule only applies to political expression, can spammers just adopt the formula: “I love candidate $X because he buys viagra at http:yyy” Or, if the rule is that big enough sites suddenly become “town squares”, that seems like a major disincentive to American companies to grow. Others would walk in without these limitations, like Chinese already did with TikTok.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    A direct analogue is the concept of an easement. If you get large enough and enough people use your site, that is when the public square doctrine would kick in. Similar to how eventually if you let people keep walking through your yard it becomes public use land. Usually you have multiple chances to fight it. The owner of a square continues to own it because it makes them money.

BurningFrog 5y ago

What I would do, if elected Emperor over this, is to add warnings or links to debunkings of fringe theories, but never delete them. The power to silence will always be abused.

throw0101a 5y ago
> or links to debunkings of fringe theories Sadly won't be helpful, and may actually make things worse: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backfire_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backfire_effect * https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont...
- armchairhacker 5y ago
  IMO I think it's useful to avoid getting moderates and people who don't know better caught up in the mess. For people who are already convinced, they're already convinced. Banning the content entirely also doesn't help. People are very good at spreading information, even if you manage to ban all conspiracies from the internet, you have TV, the newspaper, private networks, and just word-of-mouth. Another good tool would be to teach kids how to identify misinformation. You don't have to worry about belief perseverance when there's no belief yet.
  - gowld 5y ago
    I can't teach your kids to identify misinformation against your will and theirs.
  - wslack 5y ago
    However, in past decades, those other networks didn't cause the same level of propagation of misinformation.
- nitwit005 5y ago
  That wikipedia link for the backfire effect directly mentions failure to reproduce the findings. I will assume that's true, or you won't find this reply very convincing.

nescioquid 5y ago

I agree with you in spirit, though I feel like the issue is more about whether social media are common carriers [1] or publishers. They shield themselves when they claim to be a carriers, yet act like publishers. The monopoly aspect, I agree, would be more important to speech, given they behave as publishers of what you may as well consider on-spec content. I'd like to get clear on to what degree they should be considered carriers or publishers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

planetree 5y ago
They're publishers: they profit from advertising from content, and don't charge a carrier fee. Seems simple enough.