It's astounding to me that too little censorship is characterized as "antithetical to our values", "highly dubious ethically", and worthy of potential legal sanction in the top-ranked comment on HN.
Is it too little censorship or rather amplifying problematic things and suppressing heathier things because of perverse incentives? FB and Instagram timelines are not raw feeds from ones friends/follows. They are tuned by human calibrated algorithms.
Kids need to eat vegetables and lean protein sources. But if school districts instead optimize for profit they may end up feeding the kids borderline poison like sodas and candy. When companies come to dominate a public space, like huge parts of digital comms, then maybe it's OK to demand more responsible behavior of them.
> Kids need to eat vegetables and lean protein sources. But if school districts instead optimize for profit they may end up feeding the kids borderline poison like sodas and candy. When companies come to dominate a public space, like huge parts of digital comms, then maybe it's OK to demand more responsible behavior of them.
Adults are not children and social media sites are not school districts.
The school district analogy also doesn't really hold up on its own terms unless you're talking about boarding schools, which you probably aren't given the term "school district". When I was a kid, I ate at least 2 out of 3 meals at home, and more often than not, I brought a sack lunch. I know that poorer kids rely on school lunches a lot more than I did, but that's still just one meal a day. My high school actually did have a Coca-Cola machine, but I think that's old enough for kids to start making some of their own life decisions, like whether or not to have a Coke with their lunch. I mean, high school is around the same time that students start planning for their future career and/or higher education, so if you can be trusted to decide between taking vocational classes and fulfilling college admissions requirements, I think you can also be trusted to decide whether or not to drink a Coke. 14 isn't that far off from 13, which is the legal minimum age to get a social media account.
Also, unlike going to school, nobody is forced by the government to spend multiple hours a day using social media. Of course we regulate schools. We also regulate prisons to make sure that prisoners are humanely treated, or at least we're supposed to. The better analogy isn't school districts but convenience stores, in an alternate universe where children under the age of 13 were prohibited from entering convenience stores and some people were complaining that still wasn't enough.
> Adults are not children and social media sites are not school districts.
> The school district analogy also doesn't really hold up on its own terms unless you're talking about boarding schools
Non-technical adults don't understand the minutiae of algorithms or the tuning of social platforms designed to manipulate them. These platforms control how over 2 billion people communicate. Once the networks become entrenched people can become essentially locked in, or risk becoming ostracized from support groups if they don't want to play along.
What people choose to "amplify" is none of the government's business. People are allowed to be wrong. Yes, even if you think it's about something really important.
What if it is not censorship but rather we apply same standards for Facebook feed that we have for newspapers. If a newspaper publishes something false that hurts someone, they can sue newspapers because editors should have caught false information.
Facebook or social media algorithms now optimize feeds for engagement even if information is false or harmful. To me algorithms are new editors. So people who are hurt by these algorithms should be able to sue companies that run these algorithms.
If social media companies want section 230 protection, then they should not use any form of algorithms. Show everything without prioritizing anything.
Newspapers are a poor analog to social media for this exact reason. A newspaper is the same newspaper for everyone.
The better analogue to social media, at least from the user’s perspective, is direct mail. If someone mails out libelous political fundraising letters, the liability is on whoever wrote the letter, not the postal service. The only difference with social media is that social media has ranking algorithms, but that’s because the volume of social media far outstrips the volume of direct mail. Even Gmail uses algorithms to filter your various inboxes.
If social media worked the same way as direct mail, you’d basically be forced to dig through every social media post within your subscriptions at random to make sure you didn’t miss anything you wanted to see. Which means the primary effect of the algorithm is subtractive. The algorithm sometimes adds content you weren’t otherwise subscribed to, but most of the time, it works by hiding content you are subscribed to. The primary complaint seems to be that Facebook isn’t hiding enough content.
Finally, I think you’re understating the problem with mainstream media. Settling defamation lawsuits out of court, on the rare case that false and harmful news media actually crosses that line, does not even come close to undoing the initial damage. Especially since under US law, public figures—who are the primary targets of media coverage—have a much higher burden of proof to sue for defamation. (Whenever politicians propose reforming these defamation laws, these mainstream media outlets respond with passive-aggressive antics like printing “Democracy Dies In Darkness” on their mastheads. I bet Zuckerberg wishes he could get away with that kind of thing.)
Facebook is essentially a media company. All of the ad revenue and none of the regulations or responsibilities. Facebook may claim otherwise— but if it looks like a duck …
It's astounding that something like a chronological timeline free of Facebooks outrage algorithms is portrayed as censorship.
And honestly the defense of Facebooks unethical behaviour is following a real simple pattern at this point: Shift blame to the users and make it look like Facebook critics want "more censorship".
Facebook shareholders making a few dollars less (if thats even the case) is absolutely not my problem.
> make it look like Facebook critics want "more censorship".
Unfortunately a lot of them do plainly want more censorship. Worse, they want it for the whole net. Many people always advocated to be careful sharing your life with facebook. They were completely ignored. Now when the users understood they have no control about their own data and the information that gets shared, they want to make the whole net happy with content regulations with the help of the state.
Facebook doesn't care much about ethics, that is true for any companies. But the users certainly had a choice here. Exception might be people in media that also has alsodependent on Facebook in the meantime.
