4 ms·

Yes and no, because we’ve seen society wide effects from this over the last 15-20 years. But all websites? To my knowledge, the only websites people agree on t

Yes and no, because we’ve seen society wide effects from this over the last 15-20 years. But all websites? To my knowledge, the only websites people agree on this are Facebook and Twitter. So probably probably not all websites, but that's one of the things that need to be worked out. When does a site reach a scale where it can no longer be treated solely as a private entity? What should happen then? How should we identify those sites? Then what? There are tons of people who agree with you, tons who don't, and tons in between. But the majority seem to be on the side that things can't stay the way they’ve been. The effects on society over the last 20 years are not good. I haven't seen much disagreement on that. No one can agree on what to do about it though. McDonald's is an interesting example because there are debates happening there too, but making people fat doesn't have cause the same visceral reaction as interfering with elections. Which government? This is a global issue. It's going to be a long painful process of screwing up then trying to fix it.

krapp 4y ago
>McDonald's is an interesting example because there are debates happening there too, but making people fat doesn't have cause the same visceral reaction as interfering with elections. But no one is saying that, because of their scale and cultural influence, they have to be privatized and considered infrastructure. >Which government? I mean this is obviously an attempt by the US government to control speech on US web platforms, based on US politics since the election of the last President. The rest of the world seems to have settled the question of whether websites are allowed to moderate content, and it was a settled question in the US until a bit after 2016.
- solarmist 4y ago
  I’m not even saying that. My point was that when a company gets that large it has an undue amount of influence on public/private things and we as a society don’t know how to deal with that. I’m talking about things like banning trans fats from fast food or calories on menus. There are many levers you can pull beside the public/private switch. Yes this is US specific, but they’re far from the only ones planning to do something about it. I disagree that this is settled anywhere. We’re still trying to understand what’s been happening.

krapp 4y ago

>McDonald's is an interesting example because there are debates happening there too, but making people fat doesn't have cause the same visceral reaction as interfering with elections. But no one is saying that, because of their scale and cultural influence, they have to be privatized and considered infrastructure. >Which government? I mean this is obviously an attempt by the US government to control speech on US web platforms, based on US politics since the election of the last President. The rest of the world seems to have settled the question of whether websites are allowed to moderate content, and it was a settled question in the US until a bit after 2016.

solarmist 4y ago
I’m not even saying that. My point was that when a company gets that large it has an undue amount of influence on public/private things and we as a society don’t know how to deal with that. I’m talking about things like banning trans fats from fast food or calories on menus. There are many levers you can pull beside the public/private switch. Yes this is US specific, but they’re far from the only ones planning to do something about it. I disagree that this is settled anywhere. We’re still trying to understand what’s been happening.