There is a difference between delisting stories completely, and removing stories in private messages, but once you talk about the feed itself, the provider is going to be writing some kind of editorial engine, that prefers stories that have more engagement, while at the same time trying to not uprank trash, spam, clickbait, and other types of bs that float to the top.
Spam has already crossed the line, where near everybody, in universal agreement, is ok with their email provider blanket censoring the bulk of it.
If I tell your neighbor that you are molesting his daughter, and he kills you, will your family find that acceptable?
If a politician tells your neighbor that you are molesting his daughter, and he kills you, will your family find that acceptable?
If that word is flagged maybe you'd still be alive because the neighbor would have some doubt as to your guilt.
How about this, two people post the same molesting accusation. One of them has a hat that you don't like so you flag his post. The other one doesn't have that hat so they get a pass on the flag. Following what I believe to be a more clear assessment of the situation, the non-flagged other flavor of hate speech survives to do damage, the hate speech of the hat guy doesn't. This bends the narrative away from the guy with the hat and warps it around to the guy you like. Why isn't this a problem?
If you come to my website to post and I delete it, thats just me taking out the trash as I see fit. You're not being censored. No one suppressed your speech or expression. In fact you said or wrote it and faced zero repercussions and ramifications. Me saying you can can't come on my property or giving you a time out isn't your rights being infringed on.
Not allowing me to delete your post would be the literal definition of censoring MY speech and expression and the SCOTUS has already ruled on this. You can't have it both ways bud.
Zuckerberg is taking the trash out (or not, as the case may be) as he sees fit and therefore those that have advocated this argument should logically be supporting his right to make his own choices. One wonders why they aren't?
If pg came onto this site and started trolling people, throwing around insults, and spreading lies, what would it do to this community? And if dang responded by doing nothing?
It's so bizarre to me how common the "pro free speech" argument is on this site of all places. There is valuable and interesting discussion here precisely because it's heavily moderated. Facebook and Twitter are moderated too, the problem is they do it inconsistently. And despite Zuck's commitment to "allowing all voices to be heard", Facebook will remain moderated, or else it will turn into voat or 4chan.
Define misinformation. One side thinks its opponents are spreading misinformation but they fail to see that their opponents just as fervently believe they are the ones spreading misinformation.
What will happen to your ideological group if the other side gets a majority and it's your beliefs that are declared misinformation?
You can argue that you don’t like these rules and that everybody should be free to share their favorite videos, that people should be free to post anti vax information. There are plenty of platforms besides Facebook that you can go to (I recommend 4chan for the true freedom of speech experience). Those platforms might not be where the users are though.
What you are arguing, however, is that some people on Facebook should be exempt to the general rules of the platform and that applying rules to them in the same way it’s applied to others is censorship.
edit: typo
Today's world is vastly more complex than it was in our ancestral environment, and that makes assessing truth very hard. It's not possible for anyone to directly access all primary sources, so we have no choice but to set up some kind of division of labor in the assessment of truth. Scientific peer review is one example of such a division of labor. We trust peer reviewed publications not because peer review is flawless, but because we have to do something to triage the myriad firehoses of information that exist in today's world, and peer review is the best we've been able to come up with so far.
Handing over the arbitration of truth to unaccountable private corporations is, like peer review, far from optimal. But we have to do something or those who are out to deliberately deceive to advance their political agendas will win. It is always easier to destroy than to create, and it is easier to promulgate a well-crafted lie than the truth. Those are the facts on the ground that we as a society have to grapple with. It's a hard problem and none of the solutions that have been proposed are optimal. But that's no excuse not to try to do something. If we don't, society will descend into chaos and authoritarianism. Fact checking by social media platforms is far from optimal, but it's a hell of a lot more likely to advance democracy than survival of the fittest con man.
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. It's better to train society and individuals to take what is out there and teach them how to process it than to institutionalize them to trust "experts". Even today, before you take medical decisions, you have to trust your own instincts on what is the best for you. Yeah, those so called experts, won't make the right decisions.
Handing over arbitration of truth is an extremely foolish idea. We might as well have dictatorship and let "elders" decide for us and give up on democracy. Doing _something_ is not a virtue by itself, it has to be meaningful and many times you just have to pause and do _nothing_.
Division of labor does not necessarily mean total centralization.
Which in turns looks very much authoritarian and undemocratic.