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> These companies think they’re the patricians of internet discourse. The reality is they’re the plumbing. That was true until they started promoting and demot
by CarelessExpert 5y ago
> These companies think they’re the patricians of internet discourse. The reality is they’re the plumbing.
That was true until they started promoting and demoting content in order to drive engagement and juice their ad revenues.
Big tech is not plumbing. The minute Facebook invented the news feed they became editors and content promoters.
If they really want to just be plumbing, they can shut down their algorithms any time.
As an aside, I picked on that part of the post because the rest of it quickly pivots away from tech and reads as a self-promoting, semi-unhinged rant about covid that reads like the drunken ramblings of Q adjacent anarcho-libertarian, complete with the big hits: references to the "Davos elite", hydrochloroquine, ivermectin, Evil Dr. Fauci, etc, etc.
Which reminds me, I should probably flag this post given it's relevance to HN is glancing at best...
- stale2002 5y ago> The minute Facebook invented the news feed they became editors and content promoters. Ok. If they are editors and publishers then perhaps the law should change so that should be treated like other content editors that exist already. We could do this by treating them legally equal to things like the New York Times, with all the legal responsibilities, freedoms, and liabilities that such a thing entails. And these companies that don't want to be treated like editors, then we could create new provisions in the law, that give them protections if they act like how the phone company acts.