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Should employers be required to retain employees who say things that damage their business? Are algorithms free speech? Who gets to determine which algorithms

Should employers be required to retain employees who say things that damage their business? Are algorithms free speech? Who gets to determine which algorithms I'm allowed to implement to promote or demote comments on my private media platform? How do you propose altering media incentives without restricting people's freedom of expression? Passing laws?

ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
To your first question, an emphatic yes. That's the point of labour laws, employers rarely fire people for fun, they do it for economic reasons. I expected your second and third questions, and I agree with the premise to some extent. If algorithms promote or demote some speech they affect free speech. If you accept that, free speech does not exist online and never can by definition. It's a spectrum however and it's hard to reason about because recommendation algorithms are complicated, have many parameters and are a black box to consumers. If a company promotes posts that benefit it financially, that's very far from free speech, if a company promotes posts based on a random generator it's very close to free speech but probably useless to users. I don't have a bite-sized answer to what must be done, it's a project that must be started and tested in the real world. I'd certainly prefer the government to be in charge of what gets implemented, it's a matter of public good that should not be left to private corporations. My naive, off-the-top of my head idea would be a range of public, open source algorithms cautioned by the government that prevent companies from exploiting their users. There are other softer ideas depending on your beliefs wrt the government, for example you could let all companies use any algorithms but force them to publish them. To me social media is equivalent to tobacco, sugar and gambling, it's highly toxic, exploits our baser instincts, and cannot be solved by an individualist perspective but social media is a fairly recent phenomenon so I think it'll take a few decades before we grasp the full severity of the problem. W.r.t the press, I think the problem is apparent but I'm hesitant to answer because I'm not knowledgeable enough about the domain. Often technological solutions get discussed here, like micropayments & cie, which don't seem to be doing well. I think there is something to be said for more diversity in the industry so it's more representative of the people they're supposed to inform, but positive discrimination is a tricky subject. There are also lot of former government employees working for big media companies so we're not starting from a blank state wrt the influence of the government, passing laws could rebalance things but I honestly don't know what form they'd take. I know addressing perverse incentives doesn't have to lead to a curtailing of free speech.
- angst_ridden 4y ago
  I have mixed feelings about your point 1. For example, I fully support employee's right to talk about unions, or discus their salaries with one another. But if I ran a coffee shop, say, and my employee seriously reduced my income by standing on the sidewalk outside the store on his off hours and insulted customers, I'd feel like I shouldn't be forced to fund that activity by employing him. Admittedly, it gets a little more complicated if he were there telling them that coffee is a neurotoxin that will turn their french bulldogs gay. In either case, he's still driving away my customers. There's a point where freedom of speech intersects with freedom to not be harassed. If someone doxxes me in an argument, that's one thing. If they publish my kids' pictures and the address of their school, that's another entirely. But where the point of "acceptable" lies is difficult to nail down. Intimidation and threats can take many forms, depending on the relative position and power someone has in society, not to mention their histories. What would be a dumb insult to me might be a direct threat to someone else, and vice versa. I agree that social media and today's news media operate largely on a Lacanian outrage mechanism that is divisive, self-amplifying, and accelerational. I don't have a good solution to that. My general inclination has historically been towards government regulation, but even the law depends on some degree of a shared vision of society. If you have no faith in the community and feel no obligation to it, or worse yet, feel that it is illegitimate on its face, you can always find ways to circumvent the letter of the law. That phenomenon has been increasingly weaponized, and I can't see any good ways to break that cycle.

ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago

To your first question, an emphatic yes. That's the point of labour laws, employers rarely fire people for fun, they do it for economic reasons. I expected your second and third questions, and I agree with the premise to some extent. If algorithms promote or demote some speech they affect free speech. If you accept that, free speech does not exist online and never can by definition. It's a spectrum however and it's hard to reason about because recommendation algorithms are complicated, have many parameters and are a black box to consumers. If a company promotes posts that benefit it financially, that's very far from free speech, if a company promotes posts based on a random generator it's very close to free speech but probably useless to users. I don't have a bite-sized answer to what must be done, it's a project that must be started and tested in the real world. I'd certainly prefer the government to be in charge of what gets implemented, it's a matter of public good that should not be left to private corporations. My naive, off-the-top of my head idea would be a range of public, open source algorithms cautioned by the government that prevent companies from exploiting their users. There are other softer ideas depending on your beliefs wrt the government, for example you could let all companies use any algorithms but force them to publish them. To me social media is equivalent to tobacco, sugar and gambling, it's highly toxic, exploits our baser instincts, and cannot be solved by an individualist perspective but social media is a fairly recent phenomenon so I think it'll take a few decades before we grasp the full severity of the problem. W.r.t the press, I think the problem is apparent but I'm hesitant to answer because I'm not knowledgeable enough about the domain. Often technological solutions get discussed here, like micropayments & cie, which don't seem to be doing well. I think there is something to be said for more diversity in the industry so it's more representative of the people they're supposed to inform, but positive discrimination is a tricky subject. There are also lot of former government employees working for big media companies so we're not starting from a blank state wrt the influence of the government, passing laws could rebalance things but I honestly don't know what form they'd take. I know addressing perverse incentives doesn't have to lead to a curtailing of free speech.

angst_ridden 4y ago
I have mixed feelings about your point 1. For example, I fully support employee's right to talk about unions, or discus their salaries with one another. But if I ran a coffee shop, say, and my employee seriously reduced my income by standing on the sidewalk outside the store on his off hours and insulted customers, I'd feel like I shouldn't be forced to fund that activity by employing him. Admittedly, it gets a little more complicated if he were there telling them that coffee is a neurotoxin that will turn their french bulldogs gay. In either case, he's still driving away my customers. There's a point where freedom of speech intersects with freedom to not be harassed. If someone doxxes me in an argument, that's one thing. If they publish my kids' pictures and the address of their school, that's another entirely. But where the point of "acceptable" lies is difficult to nail down. Intimidation and threats can take many forms, depending on the relative position and power someone has in society, not to mention their histories. What would be a dumb insult to me might be a direct threat to someone else, and vice versa. I agree that social media and today's news media operate largely on a Lacanian outrage mechanism that is divisive, self-amplifying, and accelerational. I don't have a good solution to that. My general inclination has historically been towards government regulation, but even the law depends on some degree of a shared vision of society. If you have no faith in the community and feel no obligation to it, or worse yet, feel that it is illegitimate on its face, you can always find ways to circumvent the letter of the law. That phenomenon has been increasingly weaponized, and I can't see any good ways to break that cycle.