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These social media platforms don’t act like common carriers. It’s a fundamental necessity of the business that social media platforms be able to deliver enough
by jmull 5y ago
These social media platforms don’t act like common carriers.
It’s a fundamental necessity of the business that social media platforms be able to deliver enough good content that users want to join and engage while filtering out enough bad content that users don’t get fed up and leave.
So they implement all kinds of mechanisms designed to promote and emphasize “good” content and minimize “bad” content. It’s important to understand that “good” means good for business and “bad” means bad for business, and of course there are sometimes short-term vs long-term considerations to balance.
Mechanisms like search rank algorithms, retweets, comments, likes, content policies, moderation, flags, bans, etc.
If the government takes some of these mechanisms away from a social media platform they will (1) fundamentally change the nature of the social media platform — quite possibly breaking what made it a desirable place to share in the first place; (2) prevent these companies from making business decisions in their own business interests.
Imagine HN with no moderation, or your favorite narrow-interest subreddits full of spam and political posts with no one allowed to moderate them or ban the crap posters. It entirely defeats the purpose.
Is this really what we want?
Also, remember that platforms much more permissive than the big social media platforms exist that are accessible over the same internet, not to mention plain old web sites. So what exactly is the need to force, say Facebook or Twitter to have very permissive content policies?
I think what many people concerned with this actually want is for social media platforms to continue to moderate and filter bad content and promote good content, but they want to tell the platform what “good” and “bad” mean according to their own opinions rather than letting them determine that for themselves.
- fabbari 5y agoBut all that spam would come into play with "generic" feeds. You don't expect spam from people, groups and organizations that you subscribe to. You can think of "discovery feeds" as an addon - and maybe even not provided by the same company providing the social network itself. Cherry on top? You would have to actively subscribe to those feeds, forcing them to be interesting/relevant.
- GVIrish 5y agoBut you're back to the problem of breaking the business model of these companies. If everything was opt-in, subscription-only, that would fundamentally change these platforms. Even then, with zero moderation, feeds that people subscribe to could still get overwhelmed by trolling and vitriol.
- js8 5y agoI think you're right, they cannot be a "common carrier" because decentralization (in the sense of giving people choice) of the selection algorithm makes them irrelevant. There is no other service they provide (to the end user) other than the content selection.
- jmull 5y agoConsider HN. What do you think the main feed and discussion might look like if moderation was not allowed? Likewise for any special-interest sub-reddit you might subscribe to. I think these things will be very substantially changed, for the worse, if content moderation isn't allowed.
- stale2002 5y ago> be able to deliver enough good content that users want > Is this really what we want? There is a pretty simple solution to this. Leave these decisions in the hands of an individual user's choice. I am sure that there would be some kinks that need to be worked out. But coming at these problems from the perspective of allowing a user to choose different spam/block parameters or algorithms, of their own choice, and letting the market decide what users really want. I am sure that most people would voluntarily choose certain general spam blocking settings, without the need for the platform to make every decision for the user.
- temp8964 5y agoThe article already clearly distinguished the hosting function and the recommendation function. What makes those social media platforms common carrier is their hosting function, you are taking about their recommendation function, which can be technically separated from the hosting function. For example, if they think Trump is bad, just hide him from everyone not following him. At the same time, still show his messages to everyone following him, for the hosting purpose.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago>It’s important to understand that “good” means good for business and “bad” means bad for business, . The 'good' here is what people 'want', at least what they think they want and not what they 'need'. Overtime the users unconsciously or consciously(influencers) realize that the system overwhelmingly favors this behavior and resort to only broadcast content which people want irrespective of whether its factual or end-up hurting those who consume it in the long run or even if they themselves don't believe in that content. You can verify this yourself, Subscribe to a Twitter topic of your expertise and check the home screen(mobile app) (or) if you're brave enough check the home page of LinkedIn and you'll see the algorithm's overwhelming bias towards conformity.