Social Media Giants Support Racial Justice. Their Products Undermine It

nytimes.com

8 points·jbegley··2 comments

This article is making a long and explicit case for censorship. The author is unhappy that "[Candace Owens] can insult the victims of police killings with impunity" and "seven of the 10 most-shared Facebook posts containing the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' over the past month were critical"; he recommends that Facebook should change its recommendation algorithms to "amplify the right voices" and ensure that trolls cannot "hijack the conversation".

I'm extremely disturbed to see the New York Times calling for Facebook to try and prevent discussions it doesn't like.

I had a similar negative reaction to this opinion piece in the Tech section of the site. We should focus on refutation and not censorship as the way to address most ideas with which we disagree.

Moreover, his approach to identifying these offensive ideas could do more harm than good.

They could build teams of civil rights experts and empower them to root out racism on their platforms, including more subtle forms of racism that don’t involve using racial slurs or organized hate groups.

Which civil rights experts? Would there be a bias on this panel towards some civil rights over others? Also, while some ideas are clearly racist other ideas are arguably racist, but not necessarily so. Who decides? "Root out...subtle forms of racism" sounds like an invitation to characterize non-racist ideas as racist.

They could dismantle the recommendations systems that give provocateurs and cranks free attention, or make changes to the way their platforms rank information….They could institute a “viral ceiling” on posts about sensitive topics, to make it harder for trolls to hijack the conversation.

Again, who decides who the provocateurs and cranks are? Also, without ranking algorithms much of the platform value for good is lost.

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