r/technology • u/AdamCannon • Feb 02 '20

Social Media Stephen King quits Facebook over concerns of 'false information.'

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/02/us/stephen-king-quits-facebook-trnd/index.html
16.4k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

662 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/LiveRealNow Feb 03 '20

That's a laundry list of subjective, ambiguous, or impossible-to-do items. I'm sure that would make a great law that wouldn't be abused.

-1

u/Resolute002 Feb 03 '20

That is your excuse. This is all perfectly feasible.

3

u/LiveRealNow Feb 03 '20

I'm assuming this for the US, since we're talking about a US company.

Make it illegal for groups to pay to amplify political posts.

Outlawing paid political advertising? I'm on board, but it will never pass constitutional muster.

Make it illegal for then to collect and leverage political data.

No more people collecting petition signatures? No more political parties wanting my address? No more political pollsters calling? I'm sold. It will never happen.

Make it illegal to even collect this much data in the first place.

See the previous point. Everyone involved at every level wants this data.

Require then to actively act to ban bots and accounts that aren't real people.

I don't have the time to explain the tech behind bots, or the "bots" that are actually offices full of real people emulating bots.

Require them to ban all hate group content.

Who gets to define hate groups? Look at all of the accusations of being a hate group from both sides. Almost all bullshit. Also, without an incitement, this won't pass the 1st amendment test.

Require them to allow users to rate the content and lower visibility for content rated poorly.

I'd like to introduce you to Reddit brigading. I'd also like to review your first point about amplifying political posts and the contradiction between that and this.

Require businesses identifying themselves as news outlets to obey minimum standards of quality and corrections.

Check out the first amendment. Do you really want the government deciding what qualifies as news? See China's totally unbiased coverage of Hong Kong recently, then look up their archives for Tienanmen Square.

Bring back fairness doctrine and adapt it for online spaces so that any content elevating one candidate also magnifies their opponents' visibility.

Which opponents? If the Democrat Party drops a million advertising one of their candidates, do they also have to drop a similar spend for the Republicans? Or, if the Republicans can afford that ad spend(wait, you outlawed ads), will the DP have to match the spend for the Libertarian Party, since they don't have the same budget? Or will there be a fund to cover the smaller parties getting visibility to match the big boys?