
Free Speech in the Age of Algorithmic Megaphones - rafaelc
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-domestic-disinformation-algorithmic-megaphones/
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core-questions
> The only way to avoid politicized battles and conspiracies around moderation
> is transparency. As domestic accounts begin to be caught up in terms of
> service violations that impact their speech, platforms must be crystal clear
> about how these judgement calls were made. Since there will undoubtedly be
> false positives, they’ll also need a clearly articulated and transparent
> appeals process. But as we wade into this debate, it’s important to remember
> that censorship is the silencing of specific voices—or the silencing of a
> specific point of view—out of a desire to repress that point of view. That
> is not what’s happening here.

I think you'll find that the viewpoints and adherants that are being
systematically censored across all major social media platforms would disagree
with this. Even speech that is entirely within the bounds of the terms-of-
service and could be reasonably construed as not-harassment is routinely shut
down or shadowbanned on multiple platforms.

(Where's the evidence, you might ask? Alas, you'll have to trust archive
sites, deleted-comment sites, screenshots, etc. to get anecdotal evidence on
this at the current stage).

It's not sufficient for "transparent judgement calls" if the result is still
the same: that certain viewpoints are deemed unfit for public discussion,
regardless of any evidence and regardless of how polite and genteel the
commentators are.

> This kind of moderation, which we are likely going to see a lot more of, is
> viewpoint agnostic. It’s based on quantifiable evidence of manipulative
> activity.

Removing posts you disagree with is also manipulative activity, particularly
when it comes about in a very inorganic way (social media companies moderating
discussions, rather than moderators coming from the communities themselves
setting their own standards).

It's all well and good to suggest that people who want to have these
conversations do so elsewhere, but this is _deplatforming_, and it has the
same effect as censorship in a world where only a small group of people truly
know how to use the Internet outside of the walled garden. Social media
companies are using tons of public infrastructure and are the inheritors of
everything from DARPA projects to software developed in the public interest by
F/OSS developers. They're not entirely private companies, in that sense; and
as such they should understand their role as the modern public square and more
closely respect the principles behind the cultures that spawned them.

In other words, if Facebook doesn't like what you're saying, it shouldn't
really be up to them to silence you - but it _is_.

