Twitter set out to be the public square, <i>the</i> place where matters of importance are discussed by the people. I think JD was serious about that, still is.<p>The problem is that Twitter is a <i>private</i> public square. That contradiction is not something JD can accept, because "<i>his salary depends on his not understanding it</i>.” It isn't reconcilable.<p>We don't have many examples, in modern times, of of non-companies filling roles like Twitter of FB fill. But, that doesn't mean they can't exist.<p>The WWW itself is a platform for speech and is a "public square." Wikipedia is another example. A really good example, if you think about it. If wikipedia <i>was</i> a commercial company, imagine the issues they'd be facing... all that authority as an information source.<p>Meanwhile, we really need to consider the economics of companies like twitter & facebook. Does FB really need 50k employees and a $70bn budget to provide the world with facebook? This isn't a question you could ask about Toyota.<p>If Facebook fell off the edge of the disc, we would very quickly have a replacement. People wouldn't lack for social media. If Toyota fell off the disc, we would have fewer cars. Rebuilding that capacity would require real resources.. Until then, we'd lack for cars.<p>This last part is key. Commercial viability is nearly a non-issue. Social media can be viable on a tiny fraction of its current revenue. This explodes the number of possible actions.<p>I really hope we're not heading for a regulatory shitshow... I hope, but I can't say I'm optimistic.
It blows my mind. The US has an international reputation for being pro-corporate so from the outside, it makes sense that social networks get away with the lack of accountability they have.<p>However, a large portion of humanity use social networking tools so US legislation has a direct affect on everyone and potentially (inadvertently) it has an effect on the democratic processes of other nations.<p>At what point does it become an international issue?
I guess I’m one of the 28%. Politicians, the government, megacorporations other than social media, and the police as well as entire associated bureaucratic law enforcement organizations have too much influence, period. The protests on all sides are a reaction to and expression of that rejection of unwanted, nonconsensual influence over free people. Social media is the megaphone of this protest movement. This is the establishment trying to chop the heads off the hydra, while counterprotesting heads stir up trouble and confuse the narrative on all sides. Will it work? For whom?
While social media seem to be the problem, I find myself internally conflicted. On the one hand I see myself as a supporter of democracy, freedom of speech and liberty of expression, but I'm dismayed by the self harm these ideals are causing at the moment. It's the feeling of being unable to defend against painfully obvious (to me) propaganda but also the worry that I don't close doors to the freedom these platforms allow.<p>Why do information campaigns seem to be failing against the propoganda mills?<p>Living in underdeveloped part of the world I believed for the most of my life that it was lack of education but having in the US for the past few years I had to firmly discard that notion. I currently believe that it is the inherited values that society imparts on us, and that serves as a lens to view facts that is being manipulated.<p>The last company I worked for our executives, all highly educated and good natured, for most parts, held political opinions that I thought were only held by the 'idiots' captured by someone on cell phone videos. They had built a successful company on highly educated immigrant workforce, with major workforce still outside the US, headquarter located in a deep 'blue' state with the founder and chairman of the company an immigrant and PhD holder a first generation immigrant but everyone still a vehement, vocal supporter of current anti-immigrants, anti-science, anti-obama/hillary, anti-medicine propaganda.<p>I don't think it's simply dismissable as biased by financial profit. Is it because everyone near them believes in such and these opinions are manifestation of values they grew up with? Is social media just giving it a loud-speaker. We need to address that somehow I feel.
It's not the social media, it's mainstream mass media who decide to report on "hashtags", memes and viral videos and bring them to the wider public. Lazy journalists who don't investigate facts anymore and only care about trends and outrages and whose "ultimate editor" is now Twitter, as Bari Weiss alleged.
Gluttony cannot be solved by making a better dish, only way to solve it is to moderate eating.<p>What does a world without social networks look like? I don't think we want that anymore. Because social networks do serve a required function.<p>For Twitter, I love the fact that I can follow some people that I look upto and get their real time musings.<p>For Facebook, it's about connecting to friends and people I know and being able to reach out without phone numbers etc.<p>We are trying to solve this problem the wrong way. So again, gluttony cannot be solved by making a better dish, only way to solve it is to moderate eating
The whole question is frankly deeply stupid on so many levels. First off it is push pollingly worded to get directly contradictory groups (those conplaining about too much and too moderation) while pushing a clear agenda. Second the very concept is meaningless. What is a proper level of influence for social media? It can't even be defined. It only leads to intellectual abominations like obscenity and know it when I see it which leads to "Whatever the fuck the person in power wants narcicistically imposed upon all."
Kind of interesting that the intro for the wikipedia on Conservatism in the United States [1] says "Conservative philosophy is also derived in part from ... laissez-faire economics (i.e. economic freedom and deregulation)" but that in this circumstance [2] the self-identified "conservative" group members were the most likely to support more regulation.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_Sta...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ft_2020.07.22_techcompanies_02.png" rel="nofollow">https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ft_20...</a>
It's interesting though. The networks really were created to increase connection/communication between people, and it did in many ways.<p>What was unexpected is the effect. One had expected that people would feel less concerned by the state of the world, cause they would talk to their friends and family rather than bingeing on the global news.<p>But instead, this increase in connections created a sort of phase transition in society. It's kind of similar to the article that was posted here the other day, where scientists realized that atoms in a solid glass were more connected to each other than in liquid glass. In a way, social media literally "cristallized" polarization.
Meanwhile, the major social networks (if not all of them) are still very good at creating echo-chambers and filter bubbles. So nothing has changed since 2016.
I've recently written a pair of explanatory articles regarding the Fediverse, the decentralised social media network.<p><a href="https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-19-guide-to-the-fediverse" rel="nofollow">https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-19-guide-to-the-fediv...</a><p><a href="https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-20-what-is-the-fediverse" rel="nofollow">https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-20-what-is-the-fedive...</a><p>The solution to centralised power and control already exists and is thriving, with approximately 2 million users strong. Take a moment to learn about the Fediverse and you'll be asking yourself why you didn't know about this before. Don't complain, act for Internet freedom.
I just realized how social can fix this issue.<p>Every account has a default setting that is ultra-curated content, works nicely, politically correct, etc.<p>Deep in the options, you can ‘unlock’ all (requires 18+ notification, verification, or whatever depending on laws), then it will be an absolutely uncurated FILO sort of absolutely everything going a mile a minute.<p>The unlocked settings would let you upload code-snippets to do curating, so people could share things and invent new ways to curate.<p>This solves the issue with the risk of censorship.
I recently finished playing Watch Dogs 2, and the missions go over this very problem. Social media’s impact on politics and how data is used to influence the masses.<p>Quite scary actually, that the real thing is happening.
Articles whining about ProblemX are tedious in a capitalist system.<p>Convert all of that whining energy into improving the situation, so as to do more than perpetuate it.<p>Now, if there is <i>substantial</i> ReasonY that ProblemX cannot be addressed, there is genuine basis for complaint.
Even after reading the article, I’m not sure how to understand the question. Is it: "Social media companies are censoring me and must be regulated" or are they perhaps mixing the platform with the content? Because if Trump writes on Twitter, that’s not Twitter. It’s Trump.<p>IMHO, social media companies don’t have a lot of political influence. It’s the reach they create for platform users that’s "the problem".
They really should've added the question "Which social media accounts do you have" and then just summed that up.<p>Do you think those companies would have that much power without its users?
When, I don't know, +90% of public discourse is flowing through a handful of platforms, and they are cutting out what they don't like, teasing out what they do like a gardener sculpting shrubbery to present some customized, skewed version of the public consciousness...yah, it's a problem.<p>I think the publisher vs platform provisions do need to be revisited. I think small niche sites and forums could be allowed more latitude in how they curate, but at a certain scale a higher expectation of neutrality should be enforced. Really, just limited to taking down obscenity, porn, gore, etc. If any more grey curating is applied (i.e. these platforms attempting to deem for themselves what is "hate speech") there should significant penalties for not applying it generally; for instance, taking down a Trump tweet addressing BLM for being deemed racist in some way, and yet giving a pass to others saying "white loves don't matter" or the like.<p>A few giant platforms can't be allowed to be the grand arbiters of what is acceptable public speech and what isn't. The influence they have <i>is</i> scary.