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Comment by trident1000 | Hacker News Reader

People dont really understand how dangerous of a situation were in right now. When big tech platforms can amplify or decrease thoughts, sources, and even political candidates voices, they literally decide politics. Democracy is being challenged. We need to decide if we want kings or democratically elected representatives to be in charge of the country.

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The only thing that has changed is that the power that used to be in the hand of the press and those with access and control of the press is now in other hands and in some ways more transparent.

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.

People choose which press to go to based on what they thought of the information provided there. People choose social networks based on which people are on them. Social networks controlling what you see is therefore much more dangerous than newspapers controlling what you see, since if you don't like what you see in a newspaper you can just switch but if you don't like twitter removing your posts most of your reasons to stay are still there.

> When big tech platforms can amplify or decrease thoughts, sources, and even political candidates voices, they literally decide politics.

That's been happening for some time now, by algorithms that are optimized for outrage, engagement, clicks, etc.

> People dont really understand how dangerous of a situation were in right now. When big tech platforms can amplify or decrease thoughts,

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.

> 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.

> 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.

"Can be" and therefore "must be because I say so" are two entirely different things.

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"?

It's an option to leave it alone, but it's the site owner's prerogative. If you don't like the site owner's moderation practices that's fine, but there's no reason that your opinion should override the owner's intentions with respect to how the site is run and the type of content on the site.

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