In today's world these folks get to have a strong influence over how people are influenced.
Handling this well is very important. If people misuse that position than they can and will cause people to be influenced certain ways because of it.
I get that you're asking this question rhetorically, but the "obvious" answer is the correct one: the people that own and operate the amplification system as their business model get to pick. Why should it be otherwise?
I don't want to be a pawn of the wealthy, or of governments, or powerful people in general. I don't trust my own government to do what's in my best interests, let alone foreign governments. I certainly don't trust the wealthy, either. That's why I think it should be otherwise.
Then don't. It's your choice to get all your news from facebook or twitter. You're here on HN, so I believe you already understand that the contents of facebook and twitter shouldn't determine the contents of your thoughts.
Yet very many of these people will continue to use Facebook and Twitter for news, rather than changing to an alternative. So your solution to the problem fails.
It's not up to you. People can visit whatever websites they want, your subjective judgements about the nature of the content on the website isn't relevant. If they have a problem with the website they are free to visit another one.
> Very many people will continue to use Facebook and Twitter for news.
That's their choice. Very many people will continue to use pornhub and there is nothing the church can do about it... yet.
Is up to me to stop it? No. Of course not. Obviously not. In fact, even if I had the power to single-handedly, unilaterally, stop Facebook from doing these things, I wouldn't. Because I don't believe that might makes right (that's my wider point, after all).
What I want is a popular, democratic movement to regulate the websites that people use, in the way that the informed population think they should be regulated.
Allowing countless to be made pawns of in the name of liberty seems foolish.
Too late. People are too easy to manipulate when you can amplify whatever you want.
yeah - this is the same sentiment out founding fathers had (in US obv.)
> I don't trust my own government to do what's in my best interests...
That's why we vote. The system created relieves us of worrying about being manipulated by powerful people, by letting the people run the government.
The truth is, your opinion only counts as much as your vote. That's how it should be. Your fringe opinions shouldn't count more than the rest of the people's opinions. So go vote. And let that be that.
The "particular values, agendas and biases" you're referring to are just advertising revenue, not some political bias installed by the developer. If you WANT to believe there are such developers working at those companies, I can't stop you. But the evidence isn't really there. Make some friends who work at those companies and see what you can find out from the people who actually develop the tools you're accusing of having such political bias in.
Now, if we are talking about political bias in these platforms' policies, you might have something.
A lot of the people yelling about the power of social media giants now are yelling because they represent the old status quo, not because they want democratisation of thought.
That's been happening for some time now, by algorithms that are optimized for outrage, engagement, clicks, etc.
Every form of media has that power, social media is not at all special in this respect. A post getting banned from twitter makes no difference to someone that gets their news from Fox News and talk radio. It's up to the people to manage their own thoughts, same as it ever was.
So let them read what you don't want them to. If it isn't illegal or incitement of violence, it doesn't need to be removed.
But it can be removed, because its one of many millions of privately owned websites on the internet... This is the great thing about the internet, anyone can create a website and run it however they want and users are free to visit whichever sites they like the most. This is a win-win for everyone except for those who want to control what site owners do with their own websites.
It's still an option to just leave it alone. What is this obsession our culture recently has that says "Just because I CAN do something, I MUST do something"?