It is a tough nut to crack. Social media as we know it today brings some benefits. I thank some aspects of "woke" twitter for making me realize the reality of several societal ills, pulling me out of the "theory only" political alignment that is Libertarianism (IMO). Letting everyday people, including the poor, minorities, and targeted groups, have a direct platform to share their story with the world, is a positive thing. In other words, good-faith usage of the platform.
Clearly, there is flipside. Private Facebook groups to share hate speech or otherwise echo awful thoughts. Legions of bots controlled by political organizations or nation-states trying to divide and conquer a population. It is a losing battle to moderate these platforms.
Facebook has no inherent right to exist as it does, or rather, make a profit as it does - and I wonder if extreme measures, such as a partial repeal of section 230, should be considered. Like all laws, small-p-progressive measures should be taken. Small and medium websites should not necessarily be held liable for content posted by others. But as a network grows to have hundreds of millions of users, perhaps they should?
I am not on twitter, deactivate my FB accounts. Not a boycott, rather an attempt at quarantine. I want to remain friends with my friends at both ends of the political spectrum.
I feel that if we collectively understood social graph theory better we could propose tweaks to make these networks more "fair" and by fair I dont mean with a respect towards a point of view, but rather less likely to create emergent, undesirable social phenomena like ISIS, genocide, white nationalist rebellion.
But I have never seen any papers that explore these topics, on the other hand my interests have been elsewhere.
Clearly, there is flipside. Private Facebook groups to share hate speech or otherwise echo awful thoughts. Legions of bots controlled by political organizations or nation-states trying to divide and conquer a population. It is a losing battle to moderate these platforms.
Facebook has no inherent right to exist as it does, or rather, make a profit as it does - and I wonder if extreme measures, such as a partial repeal of section 230, should be considered. Like all laws, small-p-progressive measures should be taken. Small and medium websites should not necessarily be held liable for content posted by others. But as a network grows to have hundreds of millions of users, perhaps they should?
I'm not sure either.