>I’m not disagreeing with that, and I’m also aware that as a private company, whatever they do with their website isn’t an infringement upon first amendment rights. I’m just bristling at the parent comment who seemed to be saying that in our new AI-driven world, free speech is no longer an intrinsically valuable thing.
Those are all good points.
I didn't understand GP to be claiming that ML algorithms trump free speech, which may explain why we're actually in violent agreement WRT YouTube's recommendation algorithms.
I'd note that I avoid the big social media sites like the plague, and not even primarily for the toxic atmosphere. Rather, I find the business model to be inherently cynical, exploitative and destructive of communities (cf. sites like nextdoor.com).
As long as the incentives (maximization of advertising dollars) favor pushing for ever higher engagement, the cycle that creates increasingly fine-tuned filter bubbles and "targeted" advertising, we're going to see less focus on free expression from large corporations, because their primary goal is to maximize profit.
I believe that this model will eventually collapse and be replaced (with something better or worse, I don't know) with a different one. My concern is in the damage that this will do to our discourse and societal cohesion in the meantime.
Which points to larger problems with our economic model. Maximizing short-term profit is fetishized as all-important, regardless of potential downsides[0]. That focus legitimizes predatory behavior based on the (incorrect) idea that captialism is necessarily a zero-sum game.
This distorts the economy and the culture, pitting us against each other in surprising (and very destructive) ways.
I am most certainly not advocating that we abandon capitalism, as its had a largely positive effect on health, wealth, technological advancement and a host of other areas.
Rather, I believe we need to change the incentives around markets to encourage a broader, fairer capitalism that creates increased prosperity for everyone, rather than those already at the top.
[0] From a long-term perspective, focusing primarily on short-term extraction of value from the economy is self-defeating. Primarily because our economy's success is based on consumer spending (~70% of the US' GDP is consumer spending). Through wage suppression, rent-seeking and (a good thing) automation, we're reducing the ability of larger and larger segments of the population to contribute to that 2/3+ of the economy. If unchecked, we'll eventually get to the point where wealth and income are so concentrated that we won't be able to sustain that model and everyone will lose.
Because there are only so many pairs of jeans, lava lamps, snow globes, raisins, cars, houses or pizza pies that any one individual or household can use.
This argues for a much broader distribution of economic resources (wages, access to capital, safety nets, infrastructure, etc., etc., etc.) than we have now. This could provide enormous benefits to those who have the least and, in the long-term, those who have the most.
Beyond that, it can create a stronger, more resilient economy for everyone.