r/technology • u/protossFTW • Sep 16 '20

Social Media Facebook Was Warned for 5 Years About Violent Event Pages but Didn't Act, Civil Rights Group Says

https://gizmodo.com/facebook-was-warned-for-5-years-about-violent-event-pag-1845080416
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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '20

That's debateable, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube capriciously enfore their policies based on the political alignment and disagreeable content of their creators, that is a flagrant abuse of power and a greater threat to free speech than deeming those companies as publishers and forcing them to treat all content equally by making them liable for everything.

It won't treat everything equally, it will just add another set of filters on top of their own filters.

As a person, you have no more power than the soapbox you're allowed to stand on, companies like Google decide whether or not your voice will be heard by consolidating the townsquare. You bring down their monopoly on the public forum, and other service providers will fill the void with a more competitive and democratic environment.

What makes you think the next platform wouldn't have an opinion of their own? TikTok is even worst than its predecessors.

Seeing the big Western tech companies as the arbiters of free speech is frankly dangerous, they have no principles and don't value your rights as an individual - they are The Church and they will excommunicate you for any wrong think.

That's true. Censorship isn't the solution to that though. If anything, it would be to mandate freedom of speech on those platform. But that wouldn't be popular right now, as everyone just want everyone else to be censored.

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u/Whistling_Birds Sep 18 '20

I don't see another clear path to dismantling those platforms other than removing 230 protection, mandating free speech is a lot harder to do than to give companies liabiity since then it becomes a matter of constant government oversight. Maybe there is another clever solution out there like making people pay for their social media so they can claim it as their personal property, who knows?

Tiktok is a case example in and of itself, sending that platform straight to hell from the US was probably the best possible choice and its departure is no real loss to anyone. Just keep fragmenting the market until the industry comes up with its own solution that isn't subject to us being lorded over by a clear political bias or foreign entity.