I struggle with this concept. One of my problems with these platforms is that de-platforming someone can be argued to be a violation of free speech (there are valid counter arguments as well). I don't know how to solve that because I think that no one forces news papers to accept articles from people they think are crazy.
Can we separate the "data storage" at this scale from the message delivery. Where de-platforming someone doesn't mean losing your hosting of the videos but instead pushes you to a fringe "subscription and recommendation" tool?
This is a massive hand waiving over simplification so please correct gross assumptions I'm making here.
Youtube has services that could be broken into separate "categories" if you would.
Platform to post videos.
Platform to subscribe to videos.
Platform for recommendations of videos.
Platform with "top" videos as watched by everyone.
Then you've got Google Search which doesn't control the data but caches it and it has a database of the inter-relationships between sites and you and can recommend sites to you. Up until they started customizing data to a user I'd say there was only one issue here. But now that they customize, you actually have two sets of data in search.
Your data.
The Internet's interconnected relationships.
I don't know how you break this data apart in a reasonable way. I mean Google did create all of it or buy a platform and expand it in the case of YouTube. They deserve to be rewarded for their innovation (obviously my opinion) but we need an equal ability to compete.
I am obviously concerned when you can be "de-platformed" for a TOS violation and silenced. Especially when some of these platforms are so ubiquitous that being de-platformed from them all could completely silence an individual. But at the same time a company should have the right to choose who their customers are if there aren't fair regulations that address this.
So it's complicated and I think this sort of thing deserves a lot of conversation. I still think action isn't appropriate because if we did have twitter owned by the government we'd also need to keep free speech on there. It'd have to get a court order for data to come down as libel or something similar.
I don't know how to solve that because I think that no one forces newspapers to accept articles from people they think are crazy.
I don't think this is tangential... I don't think this necessarily resolves to a perfectly fundamental principle, in a philosophically loophole-free way. Maybe a newspaper isn't a good analogy.
Here's one example. A large portion of elected officials around the world communicates with (and mostly to) their electorate mostly on social media. It is how they get elected, argue positions, etc. The argument (I'm not sure I agree, but I think there's an argument) is that twitter, fb, etc have crossed some sort of the threshold where there is a lot at stake.
This is a good point. I think some people treat facebook and twitter as their main news source which is why I drew that correlation.
The twitter blast out by politicians is a new thing, that hasn't really existed before from what I can see. It's common to try to draw a parallel to something that arleady exists (like I did). I think you're right that my example was a miss.
I don't think it is a clear miss. The way we think of law, and right-and-wrong generally, tends to be principled. Rules and laws as embodiments of abstract principles that are consistently true.
That's what the analogy does is check for inconsistencies. That's what lawyers do, argue by analogy. High judges can invalidate laws if they create inconsistencies.
But... the laws aren't really abstract truths. They tend to be point solutions to specific problems.
Social media has created new realities that just didn't exist in as meaningful a firm before.
Personally, I'm happy that proprietary social media platforms just get replaced by open platforms a la WWW or email. There's no real reason to have a multi billion dollar company behind twitter, text messaging and such.
That'd make the choice between bureaucratic or monopolistic control moot.
> de-platforming someone can be argued to be a violation of free speech
That's not what free spech is about.
Free speech means that governments will not arrest you for what you say. It doesn't mean that you can say everything you want on a platform, run by a third entity, just as you can't demand to have an article by some crazy guy printed in a newspaper.
> One of my problems with these platforms is that de-platforming someone can be argued to be a violation of free speech (there are valid counter arguments as well).
Dude. Full sentence quotes please. I should have used a comma.
Can we separate the "data storage" at this scale from the message delivery. Where de-platforming someone doesn't mean losing your hosting of the videos but instead pushes you to a fringe "subscription and recommendation" tool?
This is a massive hand waiving over simplification so please correct gross assumptions I'm making here.
Youtube has services that could be broken into separate "categories" if you would. Platform to post videos. Platform to subscribe to videos. Platform for recommendations of videos. Platform with "top" videos as watched by everyone.
Then you've got Google Search which doesn't control the data but caches it and it has a database of the inter-relationships between sites and you and can recommend sites to you. Up until they started customizing data to a user I'd say there was only one issue here. But now that they customize, you actually have two sets of data in search. Your data. The Internet's interconnected relationships.
I don't know how you break this data apart in a reasonable way. I mean Google did create all of it or buy a platform and expand it in the case of YouTube. They deserve to be rewarded for their innovation (obviously my opinion) but we need an equal ability to compete.
I am obviously concerned when you can be "de-platformed" for a TOS violation and silenced. Especially when some of these platforms are so ubiquitous that being de-platformed from them all could completely silence an individual. But at the same time a company should have the right to choose who their customers are if there aren't fair regulations that address this.
So it's complicated and I think this sort of thing deserves a lot of conversation. I still think action isn't appropriate because if we did have twitter owned by the government we'd also need to keep free speech on there. It'd have to get a court order for data to come down as libel or something similar.