Honest question: it seems like the left and right might really agree here on limiting the legal protections for social media companies. Don't we want companies like Meta to be responsible for misinformation?
Meta being responsible for lack of moderation is not the same as Meta being responsible for the specific content people post.
To summarize with my own Don Quixote analogy: The politicians are tilting at windmills to create the appearance of Doing Something. Their followers perceive them as successful because the illusory opposition (Dragons) seem to be gone, and they're merely confused when you tell them about the "unrelated" vandalism of local windmills.
[0] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/11/05/no-section-230-doesnt-ci...
https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
How a party can bill itself as a champion of the working class while also being in the pocket of dozens of billionaires is beyond me.
"It's the economy, stupid" is an old and tired cliché. Really its "the vibe of the economy"
I don’t think they care why it happened, they care about it being fixed.
Why would they think this? Has price fixing been shown to a) exist and b) be the dominant effect over some obvious and enormous effects?
The only explanation I can think of for the constituency is that people like a confident but far-fetched proposal more than an undramatic but feasible one. Slowly chipping away economic inequality and strengthening labor protections and introducing social benefits actually works, it just doesn't sound as impressive as "I will quickly and singlehandedly fix the cost of living (source: trust me)."
How do you imagine the "TikTok ban" playing out under a left vs. right administration?
My point was, both parties supposedly agreed on the TikTok ban. Yet the candidate for one of them suddenly did a 180 after it passed, and will in all likelihood prevent it from having any effect.
So I wouldn't really assume they have similar desires for protections (or lack thereof) for social media companies just because similar words come out of their mouths at some point in time.
I don't particularly. I don't think it's their job to have that power.
Holding them accountable would make them beholden to the truth (and, partially to us)... Not to whomever they sell our private data to.
I think this is crucial distinction which may help reduce politization.
I don't understand how this would work. Who determines what's true?
It'd have to be open-source and reproducibility should be a core value (so we can start healing some of the scientific fields' reproducibility crises).
But they insert ads and content I've never subscribed to, with no way to prevent either. They also selectively suppress content that I have subscribed to. That doesn't sound like a neutral conveyance of information. In fact, it sounds like they're already exercising the power you'd prefer they not have, according to private algorithms and policies that offer none of transparency or accountability that comes with public regulation.
Whatever you'd prefer, it's already disappearing from the rear view mirror. Facebook 2024 is not Facebook 2008, nor are any of its peers.
Maybe you would prefer they wouldn't have it, but I prefer that private companies run their moderation as they see fit for the market.
If they can do that, how do you draw other lines?
And then if your answer is no, why do you think you should be able to dictate a rule that is so harmful to their business?
What difference would that make if they do? The last time around the public hated Ajit Pai's running of the FCC. If that didn't change anything back then, what makes you think what the public thinks will impact a Trump led FCC this time around?
Who is going to pay for these court cases?
Who has the money to draw them our indefinitely?
Companies aren't, and should not be, responsible for what other people post on their websites.(See Section 230 prehistory)
But neither is a company liable just because they engage in moderation.
Why not just make a separate court system instead of tying up the existing one? We couldn't call it the Ministry of Truth because it's the US, but maybe Bureau of Truth?
Not what I call sustainable governance.
No. This is one of those questions that sounds easy but is hard in practice.
Sure, it's bad for society if a lot of people promote an obviously false idea such as flat earth.
But do we want companies like Meta to suppress that information? That creates kind of its own set of problems. For example, it creates a sense of persecution, which generates more followers. ("Big tech is censoring me!")
And you can't really automate that, because then you could inadvertently block e.g. people discussing history about ancient cultures and their views of the earth.
So humans have to be involved.
Now throw politics and money into the mix and it gets murkier still. Was it misinformation when people said the state of Georgia elected President Trump even before all the votes were counted? (And the inverse: was it misinformation that CNN refused to call Georgia for President Trump even when it became mathematically impossible for Senator Harris to win it?)
It was not long ago when the COVID accidental lab leak theory was considered misinformation. Do you want Facebook censoring posts about that? Now that theory enjoys status as a real possibility. What was once considered misinformation is now considered a possible, even plausible theory.
Too often tech folks try to think in binary here: either misinformation or factual information. But reality isn't always so clear cut. I don't want social media companies being the arbiter of what's true.
I don't think that's the question. Companies like Meta are already allowed to "suppress" that information by moderating content. But that isn't an enforcement of universal "truth," since a platform can only moderate itself.
I think the question is whether the government should be allowed to determine what is and isn't truth and force all platforms to either suppress or publish based on that determination alone. That's what repealing Section 230 would lead to.
>It was not long ago when the COVID accidental lab leak theory was considered misinformation. Do you want Facebook censoring posts about that? Now that theory enjoys status as a real possibility. What was once considered misinformation is now considered a possible, even plausible theory.
OK? And were people sent to the gulags because Facebook banned discussion of it? Did it even hinder popular discussion of the lab leak theory in any significant way? From what I recall, it didn't.
>I don't want social media companies being the arbiter of what's true.
They aren't, and never have been. But you do seem to want government to be the arbiter of what's true, and that seems worse to me. Yes, mistakes can be made where attempts to adjudicate truth and misinformation are concerned, but between being banned from Facebook or having men with guns knock down my door for publishing illegal facts, I'd rather have the former.
It is, though. The parent asked, "Don't we want companies like Meta to be responsible for misinformation?"
I am responding to that question, so yes, that is the question.
> "And were people sent to the gulags because Facebook banned discussion of it?"
Must there be gulags involved for free speech to be suppressed?
And yes, it did hinder discussion of the lab leak theory. Dozens of news outlets suppressed this theory, even mislabeling it as a conspiracy theory and ostracizing those who held it.
> "They aren't, and never have been. But you do seem to want government to be the arbiter of what's true"
Wow, either there is a serious miscommunication here or you are deliberately misreading my post. I don't want government or social media companies to be the arbiters of what's true. I don't want the current or future administration mislabeling critiques of the government as "hateful" or "misinformation". Nor do I want Zuck, Pichai, or any other tech company suppressing speech because it is unpopular, hateful, or misinformation. We cannot entrust government or corporations with guarding our rights to free speech.