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Let’s be honest - YouTube’s “moderation” is just a vector for the illiberal employees who have gained control over it to amplify their own ideology while suppre

Let’s be honest - YouTube’s “moderation” is just a vector for the illiberal employees who have gained control over it to amplify their own ideology while suppressing all others. The justifications used for such actions are just a set of shallow euphemisms that try to falsely frame it all as a virtuous program to benefit a society they claim doesn’t know any better and must be treated like children. It’s inappropriate and their opaque influence and control over information is no less disturbing than foreign propaganda from state actors. We need to treat large digital platforms like public utilities. Social media is the new digital town square. And large tech conglomerates are too powerful, and need to be split up where possible, and regulated like a public agency where they can’t be (network effects).

sbuttgereit 5y ago
There's a bold assumption in your position that the regulators charged with wielding the power would do so with greater restraint or less paternalism than the platforms do now themselves. What I really would expect to result from regulating the big social media players is that you'd simply institutionalize their dominant position. Regulatory regimes tend to discourage upstarts and often do little to reign in incumbents. After 2008 when increased regulation came after those bad "too-big-to-fail" banks... did we end up with smaller, but more diverse banking institutions or even fewer bigger banks that all looked pretty much the same? I could very well be wrong, but my sense is that we didn't move solve that problem and I don't think regulated big social media would be much better than what we have today.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  If the government were in charge of a social media site, the First Amendment would unquestionably apply to their moderation powers, so even though it'd probably be a mismanaged disaster in a lot of ways, it'd be way better than the status quo as far as freedom of speech and censorship goes.

sbuttgereit 5y ago

There's a bold assumption in your position that the regulators charged with wielding the power would do so with greater restraint or less paternalism than the platforms do now themselves. What I really would expect to result from regulating the big social media players is that you'd simply institutionalize their dominant position. Regulatory regimes tend to discourage upstarts and often do little to reign in incumbents. After 2008 when increased regulation came after those bad "too-big-to-fail" banks... did we end up with smaller, but more diverse banking institutions or even fewer bigger banks that all looked pretty much the same? I could very well be wrong, but my sense is that we didn't move solve that problem and I don't think regulated big social media would be much better than what we have today.

josephcsible 5y ago
If the government were in charge of a social media site, the First Amendment would unquestionably apply to their moderation powers, so even though it'd probably be a mismanaged disaster in a lot of ways, it'd be way better than the status quo as far as freedom of speech and censorship goes.