3 ms·
The specific cases are less important than the overall trend which is social media companies using their control of who sees what to influence public opinion. I
by jrsj 5y ago
The specific cases are less important than the overall trend which is social media companies using their control of who sees what to influence public opinion. It’s common to think in terms of users being banned or users being censored, but the real issue is ideas being censored in aggregate. This allows for a more subtle distortion of reality than what traditional media can achieve. Essentially it’s possible to make public opinion look like whatever you want it to on any given issue & control which issues are at the front of people’s minds.
They have many tools to do this. Promoting certain viewpoints & hiding others in feeds, manipulation of trending topics, various degrees of shadowbanning, blacklisting specific links or images, etc.
None of this is regulated and there’s no real transparency. It’s dangerous and I expect it to continue to get worse.
- duxup 5y ago>The specific cases are less important I completely disagree. Complaining about censorship because someone can't post some lies and vitriol targeting someone is far different than someone posting some well thought out ideas and getting them removed.
- splitstud 5y agoThe complaints around censorship have to do with users posting anything related to certain viewpoints (in fact or in error) no longer being able to post anything at all. Shaping the tenor of public discourse while also claiming that one is not legally a publisher is not something we should allow in our society. If you think this has anything to do with merely 'lies' or flaming, you're not keeping up.
- duxup 5y agoI really haven't seen what you seem to be alluding to. That's kinda why I talk about having to ask for exact examples... I still have no clue what exactly you think is being censored.