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‘Harmful’ content should not be promoted via social media algorithms, peers say
(www.nationalworld.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Who is in charge of what's deemed "harmful"? How do they decide? Who put them in charge?
The only practical answer is that users should be able to decide for themselves.
Anything else just devolves into government or corporate censorship.
There’s no such thing as corporate censorship. That’s largely been manufactured from some who have a persecution complex. The only way corporations can censor someone is if that person is accessing property or platforms that the corporation owns. At which point, they have freedom to do what they please when it comes to who they will host. That would be like saying your neighbor is censoring you because they won’t let you on their property or use their things. They can’t legally do anything more than remove you or deny you access to things they operate. The government censorship is a logically real thing in that they have the power to create laws that affect you regardless of property/object ownership
I think you are thinking of the american First Amendment, but just because corporate censorship doesn't fall foul of that, it doesn't mean it isn't a thing. Yeah there is corporate censorship. Not only on the internet, but when even when it comes to traditional media, newspapers, publishing, studios, writers and artists often need to deal with censorship that companies they work for or with imposes upon them.
Considering that private companies control the vast majority internet communications, there isn't even a public social media in the way that there are public physical spaces, and social media companies aren't neutral parties in the way that mail and phone services are, as common carriers.
But I get the sentiment here, that platform owners have the right to control what happens in it in the same way a hosts can set rules of conduct and have the right to kick you out for not following them. But in practice it's pretty messy. Some rules are reasonable for polite coexistence and others are just overbearing whims, or downright prejudice.
LGBTQ people regularly have to deal with their existences being deemed obscene. The most modest images and basic information about them is treated as unnacceptable. They get their posts hid, removed or they get downright banned. You could argue that the owners have the right to do this, but is it a good thing that this happens? Whatever you may think, it is censorship regardless.
At best of times it's difficult to find a balance of how platforms ought to be handled, but unfortunately they aren't always handled with good faith considerations for interests of the people in it. I believe that a lot of people are here because they had to face that.
I appreciate your response. And I recognize how much control the news media have throughout the U.S. which has the realm I am speaking from. But even with artists and media, asking them to pay an artist for content they don’t fully support is unreasonable. And I understand how that power can be wielded, but I believe if your ideas aren’t fully welcomed by an entity, it’s the wrong partnership to begin with, unless you’re strategically leveraging them for a better platform in the future.
I think I would love the idea of public social media, as far as it relates to ownership, but I doubt that that would ever happen, because the ideas we’re discussing now is a huge non-starter. No one will want to be responsible for hosting content, without being able to define policies and behavior. I think the Fediverse is the closest we’ll get to public social media.
Aye corporations can do no wrong, they've never tried to censor unions or the working class.
Your insinuation doesn’t even apply. Ideas are complex and black and white views, don’t accurately depict the colorful world we live in. As someone who is very pro-Union, remind me what unions have to do with social media recommendation algorithms? Actually, I don’t even know what you’re trying to say. Nevermind.
This is a semantic argument made to ignore the issue. The reality is that social media platforms effectively have become the "town square" where ideas are shared. Stifling legal speech in that environment is very effective censorship of ideas.
You can argue that corporations have that right because they own the network. I disagree. Curation of what can be said on their platform turns them into a publisher, not a communications provider. Any lawyer active in that space could tell you how insanely detrimental it would be for that distinction to be made, at least in the U.S.
Imagine your phone company deciding you can't say certain words to other people using their service without facing dropped calls, suspensions of service, or being banned. All because your legal speech goes against the morality of the majority.
That's essentially what social media does at the moment. They are legally defined as, and receive the benefits of, a communications service. But they are acting like a publisher, deciding what is and is not allowed to be said. It's a serious problem.
I’m not being semantic or trying to ignore an issue. I think corporations should have the ability to determine what content or ideas they want to promote or host on their platforms. And it has nothing to do with morality of majority, as much as I personally despise Fox News and specifically Rupert Murdock, they’ve created an identity that caters to people with a certain viewpoint. They’ve gone further and actually shaped it, but anything less than creative control over what appears on their platform is effectively forcing corporations to share viewpoints they might not agree with. And legal speech clauses, etc have nothing to do with corporations. The notion of legal/free speech only comes from the federal government, as free and legal speech is only applicable to interactions between citizens and the government, not citizens and corporations, or citizens and citizens. And I’m not familiar with the town square concept as it relates to laws. If I set up a social media company with the ideals that black people have a safe space, an actual black twitter for example, I should be able to remove people who want to share views that are antithetical to a safe space for black people. I shouldn’t be forced to platform anti black ideas simply because my platform has a large user base. Ideas as simple as “black people don’t know science or math” are legal ideas to hold, but that doesn’t mean they should be welcome if I deem them harmful. Town square or not.