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> we absolutely do not want Mark Zuckerberg or his employees to make decisions on what is or isn’t newsworthy.

The problem is that they already ARE making decisions on what is newsworthy. It is not possible for them to be neutral.

Today the FB News Feed algorithm optimizes for user engagement. That is an editorial decision! It just so happens that it results in having the entire population get their news through a skinner box that reinforces and worsens their most harmful biases.

Like it or not, demagogues around the world (not just the US) are exploiting this mechanic to gain power in ways that are harmful to society. Should Facebook be the arbiter of truth? That's the wrong question. They already are. At this point all we can hope is that they choose to arbitrate the truth in a less damaging way.

I assure you that Facebook is both very powerful and very involved in politics. Just the month it came out that their own research found their recommendation systems were engaging people with the far-right. The execs allowed it.

It is impossible for Facebook to exist and act outside of politics. It’s a nonsensical idea that they could avoid involvement in political issues given the definition of politics.

I find it ok for Facebook to do something like their "Top stories" based on what their algorithm determines for me.

But I'm somewhat annoyed that "Most recent" doesn't actually sort the news feed chronologically, and also show everything. The algorithm is still doing something there.

Yes! I want to see everything my friends are posting, not what FB thinks I should see.

Perhaps less applicable to the Facebook issue, but I have found Mastodon to be a potentially viable replacement for Twitter, though it definitely skews heavily towards the tech crowd.

Chronological timelines, and user-driven moderation. Plus there are way more users now than there were when I joined a few years ago.

From first principles, it is possible to have the medium of Facebook, without the infusion of politics. One only has to imagine an orchestration layer on top of email, contact lists, with a publicly visible open source algorithm driving ranking. I don't think that world can exist now, but it can be a useful mental model to disprove the assumption that the communication medium Facebook provides is inherently coupled with centralized editorial control.

" It’s a nonsensical idea that they could avoid involvement in political issues given the definition of politics."

It's sensical.

The issues are objectivity and established protocols, independent of executive tinkering or favour.

If some government agency, or industry body, 'very intelligently' and hopefully in collaboration with all the necessary parties (highly doubtful but possible), established a set of 'regulatory protocols for social media' - then FB, Twitter could wash their hands of this.

They set up internal controls, a segregated unit with maybe an 'independent oversight board' based on those policies. When there are special cases, they are flagged to the regulatory body who can maybe provide guidance and a ruling.

That way, instead of Zuck coming out and saying 'this is why it was allowed or not' - you have the head of some FB body making the statement, backed by the oversight board, and why it conforms with the specific, established regulatory guidance.

That said, it would also probably be within Twitter/FB rights to remove anything else they wanted to remove, after all, they are a private company. If we wanted to extend their status by virtue of their influence as 'partial public good' - then maybe they could only remove other content within certain parameters (i.e. advertisers don't want it or whatever).

FYI - the Trump 'Tweet' itself was terrible ("Once the looting starts, the shooting starts") and is easily within any policy grounds to take down - however - the actual FB post by Trump, is not that, rather, it's that sentence plus an indication that the statement is meant to infer that looting causes violence etc. which is actually very reasonably above bar. For example, if Trump made the FB post alone, without having made the previous Tweet, there'd be little said about it. It's not controversial to say "When rioting starts, violence starts because things get out of control etc. etc." i.e. a contextualize statement.

I'm really perplexed at why Mark and Jack Dorsey have any inclination to stand in the world and justify their willy nilly decisions to do this or that on a case by case basis. It makes them seem like they're making it up as they go along, an it's just inviting controversy. It's a no-win.

Get some really cold, boring, intelligent, articulate administrator with a legal background, someeone with the stature and credibility of a judge ... and let them do the talking - the world will appreaciate it.

During Covid - all over the world - we're seeing doctors and bureaucrats take the microphone. It's very refreshing to see people who know what they are talking about, speak in detail. They don't seem political. They are super boring to the point where it's dry, anti-populism, they speaking like real adults.

Then we can argue about regulations instead of personal politics.

For those those who aren't familiar with some less savory parts of US history, the phrase "when the looting starts..." has rather ignoble origins. Specifically, Miami's Police Chief Walter E. Headley uttered that phrase in 1967 in support of white supremacy and in response to an outbreak of violent crime [0]. It's the callback to white supremacists of the 1960's is makes the statement a racist dog-whistle of a statement. That's the context that isn't, and can't be cold nor boring.

I'm sure neither Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey want to do any of this, even if only for the simple economic reason that paying for moderation and fact checkers cuts into the company's profit margin, and that they've been mostly hands off with content moderation thus far.

That they're having this discussion should then be taken as a signal that things are different, and hosting user-generated content is no longer the free-for-all it was in 2009, for better or worse.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_looting_starts,_the_s...

> "I mentioned this in a previous thread, but we absolutely do not want Mark Zuckerberg or his employees to make decisions on what is or isn’t newsworthy. They have far too much power, and not enough internal controls, to be involved in politics."

Absolutely agree. Which is why I also agree with Zuckerberg's decision to let the post stand. I also believe it to be more important to teach people to assess a danger for themselves, instead of trying to protect everyone from danger.

> "And yes, you can have an independent moderator system - but they’ll end up in the same position as Facebook as well, with no accountability to the public."

In its present form, yes. But what if we force social media towards interoperability? As in, you can use Facebook, but you can befriend people from Mastodon and Twitter with it, too, because a law says that this all must be interoperable? In such a case, a neutral, independent, maybe state-enforced moderation would become possible.

First of all, it is a mistake to couch the issue as "newsworthiness." It's not about whether or not speech is newsworthy. It's about whether or not to allow a post to be openly displayed and disseminated - even to non-subscribers of the poster - without a disclaimer. The current argument is not whether speech should be quashed; it's about whether it should be annotated, disseminated and/or amplified.

Even if the question were around newsworthiness - which, I emphasize, it isn't -- publishers make decisions all the time as to what is newsworthy and what isn't. Someone has to decide what goes on the front page or how to order stories, whether it be in the form of a newspaper, a TV show, or what's above the fold on a website.

The golden rule when it comes to private property -- which Facebook is -- is "my house, my rules." Mark Zuckerberg, with a complicit Facebook board, has made it abundantly clear whose house it is. He can -- and has -- set whatever rules he wants, subject to the law. At this point, he has made it clear that his rules are to maximize dissemination of the President's communication even at the expense of other legitimate concerns. And it is legitimate to take a contrary position on what those rules should be.

Also, stripped of context, a video of someone getting murdered (by a cop or other) would probably get taken down I think? Not even for incitement, just for the violence in the video itself.

Good point, didn't that video lead to protests? Which gave an opportunity for looting. If the goal is peace at all costs, then the goal is ignorance.

Journalists have balanced the need of the public to know something against the harm for decades. They sometimes get it right, they sometimes get it wrong.

Facebook and the like try to reproduce that as an algorithm

> They have far too much power, and not enough internal controls, to be involved in politics.

How does this compare with television? Newspapers? Any form of media? Facebook isn't special. Maybe you're right, but if you are, the problem is bigger than one tech firm. It's bigger than all tech firms.

The problem is exactly something Trump complained about.

Big tech companies are using a law made to protect ISPs to avoid getting sued for whatever people say on their platforms, including stuff their own employees say.

Other forms of media can be sued.

This is a huge difference.

The OP is complaining about editorial control and bias but traditional media companies have full editorial control and biases.

Whether or not someone can be sued for content created by other people seems completely irrelevant to the discussion. In either case, you can always sue the content author.

FB already is making newsworthiness decisions all the time with their recommendation engine.

Being scored low by the algorithm is effectively the same as being censored.

I agree. Its an impossibly thin and weird line that Facebook has to walk; there are no overarching, simple policies which, when applied unilaterally, would produce an outcome that everyone finds desirable.

I do think that a non-unilateral policy of allowing more lee-way for the accounts of government officials makes sense. Yes, its glorifying violence, and I understand Twitter's decision to hide the tweet, but we also have a right to be apprised of these borderline-insane things that our leaders are saying so we can make more informed decisions when it comes time to vote. Silencing Trump is not productive; more people need to see these things he's saying, and hopefully, make the right decision (for them) when it comes time to re-elect him or not.

I think, to be frank, its a situation similar to the old gun control argument that, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns. Whether you agree with that statement or not; when Twitter censors Trump, the only people who won't hear him are Left who are participating in that discussion on the social platforms where he was censored. There are too many communication channels nowadays, and most right-wing citizens already feel so suppressed on Twitter/Facebook that they additionally monitor other platforms, where his message is shared loud and clear, with no censorship.

Additionally, I don't like the symbolism behind the supposition that these private companies are above the government. I may not like the government right now, but Twitter and Facebook should not have the right to censor government officials. You may support Twitter's actions today, but the situation could easily be flipped. The left is more technically inclined today, and most tech leaders are leftists. When the left applies pressure to Twitter, it sticks. It won't always be like this, and we need to set the precedent that at least some tactically useful form of free speech still applies on these platforms, even though they don't have a legal responsibility to uphold it.