Billionaires eye parallel media universe
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axios.com
But yes, ultimately the (U.S.) government is not able to tell businesses what content to moderate (or not moderate) because that would be a first amendment violation, so the only solution for people unhappy with current platforms is to migrate to new ones.
It doesn't help when infrastructure also refuses to host or handle payments for your platform for wrongthink. That said you're right in that the alternatives have been built with perplexingly questionable data harvesting and security protocol.
Migration is not what's best for society. The migration to silos creates thought bubbles, is a barrier to cross-pollination of ideas, and potentially creates extremist.
The ideal social network is a federated network with individuals selecting their own content filtering/moderator. It's possible for all nodes of the network to communicate, and the important responsibility of moderation is removed from the platform. Removing nodes form a network and adding them to a separate network (migration) doesn't solve anything at scale.
And yet, the US Govt has done exactly that and Twitter et al fell right in line.
It's literally step 1 in this discussion which is currently at about step 3104 and climbing.
Don't like it? Sorry about that.
On the other hand, if we don't call this stuff out, we're going to continue in in reverse gear.
You don't have to accept others' opinions -indeed, you must reject many such-, but if we are to live in a civilized society, we have to accept that others have differing opinions.
> On the other hand, if we don't call this stuff out, we're going to continue in in reverse gear.
Please do not get hyperbolic about how deadly covid-19 is. I'm sure you know quite well that that's very much a matter of debate, and that there is a lot of room for debating various trade-offs in public policy, etc.
It's trivially obvious that one can make covid policy absurd. For example, we could just exterminate all humans and stop worrying about covid cases and deaths!
One need not reach such an absurd hypothetical to reach actually-applied policies that many -most, even- find too absurd. There must be a limit to covid-zero-like policies, and we must be free to debate it in order to find that limit. We must even be free to employ facetious, sarcastic, or sardonic humor -- these all can be legitimate modes of argument, especially when the other side is not open to any debate. Disallowing debate is a recipe for disaster, and also for mockery.
I doubt Musk cares about free speech and I doubt much would actually change if he took it over. He might give powerful people less trouble, but it wouldn't mean anything for the plebs. He just wants to own a major platform because that's what billionaires do.
What is new is the free speech angle - but that seems to be just Musks ego. Musk is doing what every other billionaire is doing, but has to spin it as saving the world, somehow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Randolph_Hearst
Media is far more open and diverse today than at any time in human history. Historically it was impossible to publish anything without approval by an editor or publisher, a lot of money, or political power. Publishing was capital intensive and more regulated than it is today.
Is it? Or maybe he's identified a legitimate opportunity considering that about half the nation feels as though twitter et al are more likely to clamp down on discussions of their ideas under the guise of "misinformation"? Stroking his ego is a bonus.
From a strictly business perspective, there's room for a public square which is friendlier to right leaning thought. Arguably from a sociological/political perspective as well.
Could additional places to communicate be useful? Sure, why not. Are we lacking them? Absolutely not.
COVID disinformation did result in right-wing speech being theoretically suppressed in some places, but that's because a lot of right-wing people were openly and loudly broadcasting absolute nonsense, which got their general ability to speak on those platforms curtailed. That was a self-inflicted wound, though, and not something that really can get fixed by new platforms.
I'll also note that many media outlets people call "left-leaning" openly welcome and platform right-wing speech. CNN, ny times, etc frequently hire right-wing politicians and commentators to "balance" their commentary.
Example of disinformation being rightfully suppressed: COVID19 could never, ever have been propagated to the world from a lab leak in China, and saying otherwise means you are TrumpNaziKKKracist.
Oh, wait (<https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/fact-check-how-the...>).
Will people still opt for no or biased moderation and be susceptible to fake news? Certainly, but with some tweaking, proper incentives, and quality trusted moderation, it would be enough to improve discourse and fact finding compared to what we have now, which is one dominating group controlling what we think and see.
Every time there is an anti-regulation push it's always shady people trying to get away with something bad. Musk himself is keen on market manipulation. These people always portray the government as inefficient and evil, and say that we should get rid of it instead of improving it. The government is however what stops people like Musk creating the kind of dystopias only sociopaths can. They still manage, but there should be a limit how much power one man can have, because no one is infallible.