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Comment by literalAardvark | Hacker News Reader

I'm just as confused as you are.

The economic value seems literally negative and the influence on the discourse massive and much too unpredictable.

The recent Romanian election where a focused botnet created a pro russian candidate from thin air 2 weeks before the election _and got him elected president_ should really be proof enough that the state of things is unnatural.

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I hadn’t heard of this, so here’s more context [1] for the curious.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/articles/cqx41x3gn5zo

"created a pro russian candidate from thin air 2 weeks before the election"

The way you phrased this made it seem like the candidate didn't exist. The candidate was a real person, but just wasn't well known or polling very well before winning.

Because western democracies are about freedom of speech and access to information ?

To my ear, "freedom of speech" mostly means "ability to be an asshole without consequence". Facebook seems determined to push this as close to fraud as possible without incurring legal consequences. This is, of course, the main drawback of democracy, but why don't states stand up for themselves and demarcate the freedom clearly rather than acting like a doormat for capital? Not that america in living memory would understand such values....

I'm fine with that, it's primarily the finely tuned bubbles I'm against here.

So, very approximately, ban fyp.

That's what makes it even more confusing why we don't ban these sites.

Are you aware of The Paradox of Tolerance?

I am, which is the problem, if you start banning social media, you are banning access to information.

The real way out of it is education. Educating people about algorithms, social engineering, the harms of misinformation etc?

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