Meta's revenue is down, Twitter may be Elon Musk's today, Apple and Microsoft predict a slow down. It doesn't bode well economically and suggests something is a bit rotten in the state of social media
>> Musk’s potential gutting of staff and promises to “restore free speech” (read: less content moderation), do not offer a good prognosis for democracy or online wellbeing.<<
It is funny how you understand democracy. Democracy is when people can freely express their views and opinions, without fear of persecution or ousting. If you suppress free speech to avoid people being offended by other views or rethink their own ones, then you are technically promoting totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is defined by only state sanctioned opinions are allowed to be expressed. And if you make corporations doing the dirty censorship work for you, when you mingle state and corporations, you end up in a fascist system.
Lets see if you are democratic enough to let my comment pass your moderation :)
Your comment is absolutely fine. There would be no moderation policy on any platform where that wouldn't be allowed to be said. But you're not being anti-semitic, nor inciting violence, nor sharing a live stream of a masscare - examples where content moderation is entirely appropriate.
There are multiple forms of moderation, and the censorship of social media that is mostly criticized recently is about opinions and facts on certain pharmacological products and measurements on epidemics and the organizations behind it, and alternative views on Ukraine conflict and its origins. Censoring antisemitic stuff is IMHO contra-productive, as if you want to know who is anti-semitic, let them speak openly and expose their silly arguments - if you can. By pushing them and their insane arguments into underground platforms you lose visibility and form opinionated bubbles that tend to even more extremist views. If you want a balanced society, people have to be able to speak and listen to each other. If you want a fractured society, suppress it.
I personally got my social media accounts on quora and neighbourly permanently closed for mentioning that Ivermectin is more than just horse paste, and that mRNA therapy is a form of gene therapy, and on Reddit I got automatically write-suspended for engaging in one of the "questionable" groups - for posts asking for some clarification - so just for talking to the wrong people I got my bans. My partner, who was running for local government recently got in the middle of her campaign a 30 day ban on facebook - and it was not for antisemitism or showing gore videos.
>> Musk’s potential gutting of staff and promises to “restore free speech” (read: less content moderation), do not offer a good prognosis for democracy or online wellbeing.<<
It is funny how you understand democracy. Democracy is when people can freely express their views and opinions, without fear of persecution or ousting. If you suppress free speech to avoid people being offended by other views or rethink their own ones, then you are technically promoting totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is defined by only state sanctioned opinions are allowed to be expressed. And if you make corporations doing the dirty censorship work for you, when you mingle state and corporations, you end up in a fascist system.
Lets see if you are democratic enough to let my comment pass your moderation :)
Your comment is absolutely fine. There would be no moderation policy on any platform where that wouldn't be allowed to be said. But you're not being anti-semitic, nor inciting violence, nor sharing a live stream of a masscare - examples where content moderation is entirely appropriate.
There are multiple forms of moderation, and the censorship of social media that is mostly criticized recently is about opinions and facts on certain pharmacological products and measurements on epidemics and the organizations behind it, and alternative views on Ukraine conflict and its origins. Censoring antisemitic stuff is IMHO contra-productive, as if you want to know who is anti-semitic, let them speak openly and expose their silly arguments - if you can. By pushing them and their insane arguments into underground platforms you lose visibility and form opinionated bubbles that tend to even more extremist views. If you want a balanced society, people have to be able to speak and listen to each other. If you want a fractured society, suppress it.
I personally got my social media accounts on quora and neighbourly permanently closed for mentioning that Ivermectin is more than just horse paste, and that mRNA therapy is a form of gene therapy, and on Reddit I got automatically write-suspended for engaging in one of the "questionable" groups - for posts asking for some clarification - so just for talking to the wrong people I got my bans. My partner, who was running for local government recently got in the middle of her campaign a 30 day ban on facebook - and it was not for antisemitism or showing gore videos.