2 ms·
On the one hand, I believe in safe harbor & don't think a company is responsible for policing itself perfectly. There's a lot of hard to understand situations a
by rektide 5y ago
On the one hand, I believe in safe harbor & don't think a company is responsible for policing itself perfectly. There's a lot of hard to understand situations across the world, and then understanding people's use of a language is radically harder still. It's terrible, but bad is going to keep happening, and it's not just Facebook's fault problem. Societies need a realistic expectation of what they might expect, need their own stake in how they will help steer moderation & pick what moderation happens. This is a lose lose game, and it's one society can't just keep flunking social media on: it has to have it's own skin in the game.
On the other hand, a company which cannot be even the faintest bit responsible for it's platform has an obligation to allow users their own defense, has to promote society getting it's own skin in the game. Facebook fails at this miserably. It retains a worthless, undignified pretense of authority- has their own moderation system- yet it fails, flails, & is perpetually incompetent. Allowing the people to form their own defenses on social networks seems a requirement for civilization. We can't & shouldn't allow sole arbiters to decide, particularly not one's that are so incompetent. It seems unlikely any government would do any better. To me, this implies that we need to open the doors, throw wide the possibilities of moderation, and let users begin to devise their own moderation systems & safeguards. Facebook has fallen far short of the base, bare minimum, but I don't think they should have to figure out how to police every engagement, don't see how they could fulfill the minimum. Rescinding connectivity to the world does not seem fit. But their reckless failure signals clearly their abdication, signals that the platform must be open to other more active & vigilant forces. The platform needs to open, for the base minimum protection of the world.
- Nextgrid 5y ago> has their own moderation system- yet it fails, flails, & is perpetually incompetent It doesn't just fail - it fails by design most of the times. Facebook's business model is based on "engagement" and promoting harmful, offensive or illegal content (which could and does lead to violence) usually generates more of it than just letting people see friends' updates. Moderation "succeeds" when it is determined that the negative PR impact of letting the content survive is greater than the profit it generates. They happily let extremist groups organize in the open for months (and profited off them) until it blew up in what became the Capitol insurrection and only took action after the attack when the PR downside was no longer worthwhile.