It's wild to read HN comments advocating for significantly more government control of private companies.
A decade ago that would be pure heresy on any tech forum. Now it's (currently) the top comment on one of the top stories on HN.
That said, I guarantee that a government-controlled or otherwise heavily regulated platform would have far, far more instances of benign content removed for violating obscure rules. Once the consequences rise to the level of regulatory violations, the companies will pull content without thinking because nobody wants to risk the fines or worse.
These companies are rushing to self-censor their own content as a way to get out ahead of potential future regulation. Politicians and journalists can, and will, seize upon even the slightest missteps or unpopular comment to lambaste tech companies as evil. This move was definitely a mistake, but it's part of a larger movement to aggressively err on the side of safety when it comes to any potentially controversial content.
Very few people on this forum would disagree with the government telling private companies that they cannot discriminate against people based on protected classes. And yet, the idea of the government telling social media companies they cannot discriminate between types of user generated content is so much more difficult to swallow?
A decade ago that would be pure heresy on any tech forum. Now it's (currently) the top comment on one of the top stories on HN.
That said, I guarantee that a government-controlled or otherwise heavily regulated platform would have far, far more instances of benign content removed for violating obscure rules. Once the consequences rise to the level of regulatory violations, the companies will pull content without thinking because nobody wants to risk the fines or worse.
These companies are rushing to self-censor their own content as a way to get out ahead of potential future regulation. Politicians and journalists can, and will, seize upon even the slightest missteps or unpopular comment to lambaste tech companies as evil. This move was definitely a mistake, but it's part of a larger movement to aggressively err on the side of safety when it comes to any potentially controversial content.