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I fully accept that FB is free to run itself how it pleases. That said, it's clear they are not in a position to act as a neutral platform for civic discourse.

I fully accept that FB is free to run itself how it pleases. That said, it's clear they are not in a position to act as a neutral platform for civic discourse. I try to support technologies and platforms that provide a voice to all. Decentralized over centralized. I try to curate my own list of sources, rather than rely on third-party curation. How else can I ensure a healthy and diverse information perspective?

chii 5y ago
The problem isn't you, but others who do not try to curate their own diverse sources. When time comes to make democratic decisions, if those who are influenced outnumbered people like you, there'd be no way for you to make your case and convince the others of your correctness.
- esyir 5y ago
  Is it really a healthy democracy if the flows of information are controlled from the top down? If I provide you with a tuned set of information in which everything says what I cant, I can get you to believe whatever I want. This is just changing the source of said influence, not removing it.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Has it ever been different?
  - chii 5y ago
    > controlled from the top down? but the facebook/social media isn't "controlled from the top down" - it's people deliberately choosing to _only_ consume them (thus giving those media companies defacto control over people's tuned set of information sources). I'm saying that most people don't care enough to look for separate sources and do their own critical thinking.
    - esyir 5y ago
      I'm not sure if we're talking past each other here. Going to clarify my opinion on this a bit. - Facebook is generally considered in colloquial terms, a "platform". - Expectations by the users are thus that Facebook (the entity) does not dictate opinion, but instead provides an avenue for hosting and discovery of individual opinion. - Thus, to the userbase, Facebook is not a Single source, but is instead a aggregation of multiple sources of "information" (or opinion; Scare quotes were intentional) - One-sided enforcement of opinions on topics breaks the above assumption, converting it from "platform", to "publisher". - This represents far more centralization of information control than the previous "platform" state. I think "centralization" captures my intention here more than the previous "top down" descriptor. One of the assumptions of a free democracy is that people, as individuals, are permitted to discover their own opinion from available information. It's imperfect, but it's pretty important. If we severely restrict the pool of available information to just the slice amenable to whoever is in power, that's in effect the same as forcing their opinion. After all, you can't form the opposing opinion on something if everything you can find supports it. Addendum: On the gotcha of "Facebook's right to free speech". I'm of the opinion that this must be taken in light of scale and the subsequent threats to the individual right to free speech. Here, I declare (unilaterally, agreement may vary) that the individual right to free speech should be held above that of the corporate right, especially when scale is considered. I very much consider the largest digital spaces the closest analogue to the modern public square (some would disagree here) due to their scale and ubiquity.
- thumbellina 5y ago
  I suspect many, perhaps even most, are aware of the bias they are exposed to. I don't expect I'm particularly resistant to it. I am keen to learn more about what I can do. An alternative might be to focus on local community matters. I think this is common in practice.

chii 5y ago

The problem isn't you, but others who do not try to curate their own diverse sources. When time comes to make democratic decisions, if those who are influenced outnumbered people like you, there'd be no way for you to make your case and convince the others of your correctness.

esyir 5y ago
Is it really a healthy democracy if the flows of information are controlled from the top down? If I provide you with a tuned set of information in which everything says what I cant, I can get you to believe whatever I want. This is just changing the source of said influence, not removing it.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Has it ever been different?
- chii 5y ago
  > controlled from the top down? but the facebook/social media isn't "controlled from the top down" - it's people deliberately choosing to _only_ consume them (thus giving those media companies defacto control over people's tuned set of information sources). I'm saying that most people don't care enough to look for separate sources and do their own critical thinking.
  - esyir 5y ago
    I'm not sure if we're talking past each other here. Going to clarify my opinion on this a bit. - Facebook is generally considered in colloquial terms, a "platform". - Expectations by the users are thus that Facebook (the entity) does not dictate opinion, but instead provides an avenue for hosting and discovery of individual opinion. - Thus, to the userbase, Facebook is not a Single source, but is instead a aggregation of multiple sources of "information" (or opinion; Scare quotes were intentional) - One-sided enforcement of opinions on topics breaks the above assumption, converting it from "platform", to "publisher". - This represents far more centralization of information control than the previous "platform" state. I think "centralization" captures my intention here more than the previous "top down" descriptor. One of the assumptions of a free democracy is that people, as individuals, are permitted to discover their own opinion from available information. It's imperfect, but it's pretty important. If we severely restrict the pool of available information to just the slice amenable to whoever is in power, that's in effect the same as forcing their opinion. After all, you can't form the opposing opinion on something if everything you can find supports it. Addendum: On the gotcha of "Facebook's right to free speech". I'm of the opinion that this must be taken in light of scale and the subsequent threats to the individual right to free speech. Here, I declare (unilaterally, agreement may vary) that the individual right to free speech should be held above that of the corporate right, especially when scale is considered. I very much consider the largest digital spaces the closest analogue to the modern public square (some would disagree here) due to their scale and ubiquity.
thumbellina 5y ago
I suspect many, perhaps even most, are aware of the bias they are exposed to. I don't expect I'm particularly resistant to it. I am keen to learn more about what I can do. An alternative might be to focus on local community matters. I think this is common in practice.