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Censorship is a cheap and bad solution to a problem that a lot of people feel very real. We have a real issue of regular people and malicious actors using the u

Censorship is a cheap and bad solution to a problem that a lot of people feel very real. We have a real issue of regular people and malicious actors using the unprecedented reach of social networks to spread falsehoods, conspiracy theories, attacks on certain groups... Yes, the usual response will be "it's the responsibility of adults to filter what they see" but the reality is that doesn't happen. We are not ready for such an influx of information, and the structure of social networks incentivizes outrage and false or misleading content, and penalizes nuance and well-researched arguments. Social networks are being used to manipulate massive amounts of people. That's what should be scary. Censorship is just a response to that. Personally, I think the solution is to limit reach, for everyone, full stop. Place legal limits on recommendations and pushed content, to incentivize people choosing their sources. Limit how many times a content can be easily shared (think of the ease of retweeting something you didn't even read) to incentivize organic spread. Limit the reach of unverified and new accounts to incentivize trust building. Increase fines and punishments (through courts, of course) for organizations that blatantly lie to the public to incentivize proper research.

ilyt 4y ago
> Yes, the usual response will be "it's the responsibility of adults to filter what they see" but the reality is that doesn't happen. Let me stop you there. Those platforms dont give you tools for that! You can't say "but people won't do it" if they don't have any good option to do that in the first place. But yeah, shoving algorithmic garbage to get people to click would be bad enough, but now we have that with added tries of trying to manipulate politics with it. > Personally, I think the solution is to limit reach, for everyone, full stop. Place legal limits on recommendations and pushed content, to incentivize people choosing their sources. Limit how many times a content can be easily shared (think of the ease of retweeting something you didn't even read) to incentivize organic spread. Limit the reach of unverified and new accounts to incentivize trust building. Increase fines and punishments (through courts, of course) for organizations that blatantly lie to the public to incentivize proper research. I firmly believe that RSS model of people having to choose what to subscribe to get anything would be much better off. If someone wants to put collective vomit of the internet (which what pretty much twitter algorithm does) as a feed they are free to do so but nobody is shoved whatever algorithmic crap decides that will get reaction and ad views out of them. And before someone says Mastodon/Fediverse, nope, they fucked it up. The fact admin can decide "no, I decide for my users that any updates from this @server.address are bad and nobody, not even someone who subscribed explicitly, can engage with it" disqualifies that because it have same problem of exacerbating bubbles decided upon by tiny minority

ilyt 4y ago

> Yes, the usual response will be "it's the responsibility of adults to filter what they see" but the reality is that doesn't happen. Let me stop you there. Those platforms dont give you tools for that! You can't say "but people won't do it" if they don't have any good option to do that in the first place. But yeah, shoving algorithmic garbage to get people to click would be bad enough, but now we have that with added tries of trying to manipulate politics with it. > Personally, I think the solution is to limit reach, for everyone, full stop. Place legal limits on recommendations and pushed content, to incentivize people choosing their sources. Limit how many times a content can be easily shared (think of the ease of retweeting something you didn't even read) to incentivize organic spread. Limit the reach of unverified and new accounts to incentivize trust building. Increase fines and punishments (through courts, of course) for organizations that blatantly lie to the public to incentivize proper research. I firmly believe that RSS model of people having to choose what to subscribe to get anything would be much better off. If someone wants to put collective vomit of the internet (which what pretty much twitter algorithm does) as a feed they are free to do so but nobody is shoved whatever algorithmic crap decides that will get reaction and ad views out of them. And before someone says Mastodon/Fediverse, nope, they fucked it up. The fact admin can decide "no, I decide for my users that any updates from this @server.address are bad and nobody, not even someone who subscribed explicitly, can engage with it" disqualifies that because it have same problem of exacerbating bubbles decided upon by tiny minority