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Comment by jimmyjazz14 | Hacker News Reader

Why not just ban all non government approved speech, less we hear something that might hurt our feelings or make us engage in wrongthink.

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It’s interesting that you bring up wrongthink. Banning free speech would be something like out of 1984, but what we have is far more subtle and insidious. A system that shows you only what it wants you to see, while tricking you into thinking you’re seeing what you want to see.

Anyway, you can support free speech while hating this algorithm crap at the same time.

The system isn't tricking anyone, if an individual is not aware of how social media algorithms work that is due to willful ignorance (in the case of children that falls on the parents willful ignorance).

I do personally believe banning the algorithms begins to fall into the realm of free speech regulation. I can hate the algorithm crap without thinking the government should regulate the internet.

Except that is an ideological position that has zip to do with the realities of how speech and ideas actuall move in online spaces.

In the starkest of terms: Americans have to somehow reconcile faith in the power of an invidual's freedom of speech and the manipulation of the collective marketplace of ideas.

Correct, the government can't ban mathematical algorithms. Just like they can't ban certain plants from being grown.

I actually don’t think banning “the algorithm” is the right solution either, nor are the identity verification disguised as age gates. But I would like to see the US government do something. I actually think Lina Khan was doing some good things.

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