- it is certain that governments want to control the narrative, and it is not always done in our interests
- sometime actions are done to help us, but [disinformation enters the room]
- Everything at CEO level is "political"
- centralization of social media and forums allowed for this behavior. It would be impossible to "control" the Internet with federated Internet
- various powers fight over the Internet (governments, China, Russia, corporations, billionaires etc.). This is why it difficult to tell what is the truth, everyone tries to shift our perception
- YouTube removed thumbs down not to protect small creators. Moderation on social media is also not to protect ordinary people, but to retain clean image, or to keep investors happy
- sometimes when social media removes post is censorship. Sometimes it is not, but both scenarios occur
- some people that complain about free speech might be influenced by foreign powers
- some people that say moderation is required want just more control over social media for their own benefit, agenda
- I do not know if there is a clean, ethical way to "run the social media"
My hand-wavy proposal:
1. there needs to be something akin to a constitution where all players involved (users of social media, social media companies) can express some shared set of values. For example kids shouldn't get depressed, data should be private, widely spread information should be reasonably accurate.
2. There needs to be a few institutions with enough power and checks and balances to be able to steer the system towards these values.
This will be hand-waved away as being caused by other influences
> data should be private
Sure, it's private: we know literally everything about you down to when you use the toilet, and so do all of our data brokers and your government. But it's tied to a token, and you'd have to do a SQL join to attach that token to your name, and we put up a flyer in the break room telling people not to do that SQL join.
> widely spread information should be reasonably accurate.
There are so, so many opportunities to frame things in extremely misleading ways to drive a certain narrative and the entire social media and corporate news establishment does this. And when they get caught making stuff up, just call it a mistake and run a retraction in fine print that no one sees