Censorship is the path that leads to tyranny. Better to have all sides without being muzzled. Today’s truth can be tomorrow’s fake news and vice versa.
The issue is that these companies are now providing a platform for the "village idiot", and it's up to people to differentiate truth from falsehoods, which is surprisingly difficult to do on a topic you don't know anyything about.
News media has direct business relationships with these platforms. This isn't about some village idiot. If you are fascinated by village idiots, you are their audience.
Any democracy I know (including the US) has used censorship in times of crisis throughout its history. There is little indication that the "slippery slope" is more than a fallacy.
Yes, but was that justified? Any examples for that? Especially on the topic of war a free press was the reason people started to get to know the darker side of war instead of the usual heroic depictions propaganda often proclaimed.
We are not talking about war related strategic information here, so I don't understand your position. I still don't know about any examples. There should be at least some if it is dismissed as necessary.
In a healthy democracy, there are appropriate mechanisms that hold censors accountable than the average layman, so that they do not abuse their office. For this reason they are granted a louder voice.
To be precise, social media platforms do not censor, but selectively grant certain entities a louder voice at a subsidized cost. Of course, these companies are out of the reach of the checks that the US government is laden with, and this should be managed by regulation or other form of checks.
>In a healthy democracy, there are appropriate mechanisms that hold censors accountable than the average layman, so that they do not abuse their office. For this reason they are granted a louder voice.
The majority of the world does not live under healthy democracies. That the west is copying this failed model is concerning.
This counterargument isn't fatal to my point, though I tailored it to the parent comment (re: censors). There are people who can be more easily held accountable for their words, and people for whom it is difficult, or inappropriate, to punish for spouting false information. The responsible broadcaster amplifies the words of people that can be held accountable, and amplifies voices of people that cannot be held accountable only cautiously, and inside certain framed mindset (e.g. reported speech, call out lies, provide a contrasting perspective by a person who can be more easily be held accountable).
With respect to social media, it is clear that it is inappropriate and impossible to hold most laypeople accountable for spreading false information, and so it is responsible broadcasting to only amplify these voices to a limited extent.
I think that it is clear to you that I don't support unconditional free broadcast of factual claims in the Internet age, but one where one's reach must be matched by how much they have staked on the correctness of their information, proportional to the severity of the issue they are weighing in on.
Probably over 50% of movies glamorizes dangerous drug usage, affairs, violence, etc. Same with video games. Does that mean they should be held responsible when someone does something and says, well I thought that was normal because I heard/saw it there?
And untethered fake news propaganda leads to world wars and butchery of millions of innocent people. There's a balance to be struck and right now, with unfettered capitalism and no social contract in USA, there's just too many people that wish to abuse news to hurt and even cause death of other people.
Agree. An exception is when one or more sides are playing foul game by using fake accounts to spread propaganda.
E.g. look at Bot Sentinel top 100 trollbots [1].
#1 @BrandonBeckham_ is (from my judgment) a fake twitter account [2]. He poses as a veteran Christian that loves everything Trump. All he posts is pro-Trump stuff & Donald J. Trump retweets him frequently.
This is the stuff that needs moderation for misinformation. But somehow this stuff is just ignored by Big Tech.
Either they are publishers or platforms.
They can always put disclaimers by every “news.”