4 ms·

It is a private company after all. You are pointing out the contradiction of having private business do a public service for profit. There is no way to solve th

It is a private company after all. You are pointing out the contradiction of having private business do a public service for profit. There is no way to solve that without controlling our platforms collectively.

swayvil 5y ago
Social media is practically the archetype of a public utility. Of course it should be nationalized or democratized or open-sourced or whatever.
- swayvil 5y ago
  I disagree you so so I'm gonna censor you (via downvote). That's some good LordOfTheFlies action there folks.
vorpalhex 5y ago
You got the first half. A private business will always be self interested. Collective ownership is not the only solution. Alternatives include public benefit corporations, non-profits and federal government ownership.
- Atlas667 5y ago
  That does not guarantee mass representation of user interests. Mostly the interests of those with enough power to influence that corporation, nonprofit, or federal company will be represented. Which is what happens today and we are right back where we started. I believe that mass representation of user interests for social media could be achieved through popular usage of distributed platforms and popular developing. To have a popular platform nodes must run the mass accepted protocol/version. Else you just have a fragmented network. The majority could rule in this scenario if we have the right ideological framework to sustain it. What you propose is not a real solution.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    The majority, 50 years ago, felt that homosexuality should be punished by the death penalty, mixed racial marriages were "wrong" and that trans people didn't exist. Why do you think the majority should rule anything? Much less control ideology?
logicalmonster 5y ago
1) It's a little more complicated than just pointing out that it's a private company. They enjoy protection from liability under Section 230 of the CDA as a platform, but in many ways are acting as publishers. Are they a publisher or platform, or both or neither depending on the circumstance? I'm not completely sure, but I do know they want to simultaneously have their cake and eat it too. 2) On the surface, it sounds great. But one problem with social media doing something like blocking/banning paid disinformation campaigns is you just have to take their word that this is what happened. Twitter or Facebook can go and ban 25 million accounts in the run-up to a future heated election. They can claim that they're deleting organized paid influencers or deleting Russian bots that are trying to subvert the election and the media will publish that explanation without a hint of proof. The reality is that there's no public proof of who has been deleted, what the evidence is against them, what algorithm or review process was used to label them a bot or paid influencer, what IP addresses were involved, and if there's any false positives. This gives them the power to just label any political opponent they want a Russian bot or organized disinformation and silence them without any pushback from media.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > They enjoy protection from liability under Section 230 of the CDA as a platform, but in many ways are acting as publishers. Section 230 exists specifically to allow online platforms to act as publishers without publisher liability. That's the exact and only thing it does, by its own terms. And it does so specifically because Congress wanted them to actively moderate content.
  - logicalmonster 5y ago
    > actively moderate content Was the intent for them to delete illegal content like child porn or bomb threats, or to boost one political viewpoint over another? I'd argue that it was the former.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Was the intent for them to delete illegal content like child porn or bomb threats, or to boost one political viewpoint over another? The latter, fairly explicitly. Or, more specifically, with the fairly explicit hope that platforms would overall enforce one particular dominant cultural viewpoint (which is not without political dimensions) beyond the scope of what government had the power to regulate, but that this necessarily meant delegating to private parties with potentially divergent views.of community standards was acknowledged and accepted as the cost of broader censorship than there was any argument (even as much as there was for the rest of the Communications Decency Act in which 230 was included, which was otherwise entirely struck down as a First Amendment violation) might be consistent with the Constitution.

swayvil 5y ago

Social media is practically the archetype of a public utility. Of course it should be nationalized or democratized or open-sourced or whatever.

swayvil 5y ago
I disagree you so so I'm gonna censor you (via downvote). That's some good LordOfTheFlies action there folks.

vorpalhex 5y ago

You got the first half. A private business will always be self interested. Collective ownership is not the only solution. Alternatives include public benefit corporations, non-profits and federal government ownership.

Atlas667 5y ago
That does not guarantee mass representation of user interests. Mostly the interests of those with enough power to influence that corporation, nonprofit, or federal company will be represented. Which is what happens today and we are right back where we started. I believe that mass representation of user interests for social media could be achieved through popular usage of distributed platforms and popular developing. To have a popular platform nodes must run the mass accepted protocol/version. Else you just have a fragmented network. The majority could rule in this scenario if we have the right ideological framework to sustain it. What you propose is not a real solution.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  The majority, 50 years ago, felt that homosexuality should be punished by the death penalty, mixed racial marriages were "wrong" and that trans people didn't exist. Why do you think the majority should rule anything? Much less control ideology?

logicalmonster 5y ago

1) It's a little more complicated than just pointing out that it's a private company. They enjoy protection from liability under Section 230 of the CDA as a platform, but in many ways are acting as publishers. Are they a publisher or platform, or both or neither depending on the circumstance? I'm not completely sure, but I do know they want to simultaneously have their cake and eat it too. 2) On the surface, it sounds great. But one problem with social media doing something like blocking/banning paid disinformation campaigns is you just have to take their word that this is what happened. Twitter or Facebook can go and ban 25 million accounts in the run-up to a future heated election. They can claim that they're deleting organized paid influencers or deleting Russian bots that are trying to subvert the election and the media will publish that explanation without a hint of proof. The reality is that there's no public proof of who has been deleted, what the evidence is against them, what algorithm or review process was used to label them a bot or paid influencer, what IP addresses were involved, and if there's any false positives. This gives them the power to just label any political opponent they want a Russian bot or organized disinformation and silence them without any pushback from media.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> They enjoy protection from liability under Section 230 of the CDA as a platform, but in many ways are acting as publishers. Section 230 exists specifically to allow online platforms to act as publishers without publisher liability. That's the exact and only thing it does, by its own terms. And it does so specifically because Congress wanted them to actively moderate content.
- logicalmonster 5y ago
  > actively moderate content Was the intent for them to delete illegal content like child porn or bomb threats, or to boost one political viewpoint over another? I'd argue that it was the former.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Was the intent for them to delete illegal content like child porn or bomb threats, or to boost one political viewpoint over another? The latter, fairly explicitly. Or, more specifically, with the fairly explicit hope that platforms would overall enforce one particular dominant cultural viewpoint (which is not without political dimensions) beyond the scope of what government had the power to regulate, but that this necessarily meant delegating to private parties with potentially divergent views.of community standards was acknowledged and accepted as the cost of broader censorship than there was any argument (even as much as there was for the rest of the Communications Decency Act in which 230 was included, which was otherwise entirely struck down as a First Amendment violation) might be consistent with the Constitution.