zlacker

>>southe+(OP)
Facebook, Instagram, etc. moderating content isn't a free speech issue. They are just glorified bulletin boards. They try to raise everyone's sense of their importance by claiming it to be a free speech issue, but they are awful garbage and the sooner everyone realizes the better for society.

>>greent+b4
We're talking about nearly 200 million posts, at least, having been wiped and suppressed [0]. Many of these were both 100% true and highly important. The effects of their suppression are still felt to this day; in broken minds, broken relationships, destroyed careers, a stunted generation, and unnecessary excess deaths. Serious and brave academics were threatened and had their voices stilled.

Describing Zuck's censorship of nearly 200 million posts on Facebook alone as "moderating content" is like calling a tsunami "a bit of rain". It's irresponsible.

Calling a platform with 3 billion monthly users a "glorified bulletin board" doesn't sound very credible to me either.

0 - https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1170

>>mandma+i6
Why would the number of posts matter? I don't care if it was 200 or 200 billion. Nothing in my original comment changes. Same for number of users. These are private platforms, not public spaces. They are not open. They are not free. They use the lie that they have anything to do with free speech as a marketing tool. Stop falling for it.

>>greent+5b
> Why would the number of posts matter?

Scale matters. Everyone on HN knows this.

Why would the Biden Admin have a right to lean on FB to censor true and important information?

"We need you to censor this false [read: true] information from your 3 billion users, because reasons" - not a very defensible position.

By the way, I've advocated for tearing Meta apart and putting it in global public ownership for years, partly because of their acceptance of over-censorship. There's such a thing as public responsibility, and Meta has repeatedly failed. I said so here, just yesterday.

I'm 100% fine with Meta and others censoring some things: drug sales, scams (I wish they would!), and worse.

But censoring scientists trying to say true things of a devastating pandemic, or minimize the harms from terrible policy? Censoring discussion of stories that politicians find embarrassing? Censoring the word "Zionist"??!! That's indefensible.

Again, there's a basic responsibility there; whether enshrined in law or not, and whether the law is enforced or not. Allowing a platform used by nearly half all people on Earth to warp our collective understanding of issues up to and including war, plague, genocide and famine is unacceptable, whether by government "request" or not.

>>mandma+he
Scale does not matter. Where in the constitution does it say “scale”?You have freedom to censor your small online forum as you see fit, you are welcome to censor your mega-super Facebook platform as you see fit. There is no distinction here. Those people who get kicked off a platform are free to set up their own forums (or go to telegram or whatever)and yell into the cloud about the wrongs done to them and set up their propaganda bot; no law says you have to host them.

>>EasyMa+5u
It should matter. In fact, this is why antitrust law exists. If ideas are a marketplace, then Facebook has pricing power in that market. Facebook is big enough that it's actions alone dictate the opinion of a large portion of America. Twitter used to be the same way.

The answer to all this censorship is simple: break up Facebook. If we absolutely, positively can't, then make them a common carrier, regulate them like a utility, and strip out all the profit incentive to keep bad actors on the system. The funny thing is that Facebook's crimes are not merely censoring what they believe to be disinformation, but also amplifying people who break their own rules. Facebook and Twitter had world leaders policies intended to justify keeping politicians who break their rules on platform, specifically so they could amplify them, because it made the company money.

In other words, everyone angry that Twitter banned Trump in 2021 should also be angry that Twitter didn't ban him in 2017.