The problem with that approach is that social networks are where people are getting educated. For large numbers of people, social media is their gateway to other sources of information, including news, opinion & their interests.
> That more or less already worked and everyone tries to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, so this isn't even a problem.
Given that there is still large scale climate change denial and opposition to renewable power, I don't think you can be confident in that statement. Until recently, one of the largest polluters & economic powers in the world had a government that actively promoted fossil fuels over renewables and denied the fundamentals of anthropomorphic climate change. Environmental awareness & harm reduction is far from a given.
> Given that there is still large scale climate change denial and opposition to renewable power
You will never reach 100% consensus on any topic and acknowledging it does also not mean that you have to support certain policies.
Don't point your finger at those that are in denial of your perspective, it won't help you solve anything.
If you try to ban them, they will get secondary support at least from people that support human rights like freedom of expression, which is also valid for wrong or stupid opinions.
So you have to go the difficult route of making a good argument for your position and convince others. There is no shortcut here.
Not looking for 100% consensus but it seems that we're barely just at majority consensus for the idea of anthropomorphic climate change and definitely not a majority consensus when it comes to potential solutions.
There is a parallel here with the paradox of tolerance, in that allowing equal free speech is definitely not an effective & consistent way of reaching the proper & correct consensus. Free speech is too often an academic argument used to justify our inhumanity.
For many people free speech seems to mean equal airtime & consideration for opposition minority & fringe ideas. But when the majority consensus of experts in a scientific field say one thing, providing equal public airtime to the fringe opposition is not accurate nor is it good education. Opposing ideas circulate within expert circles and it is there that they should be reviewed, not presented to the public as equal worth to the majority of other evidence.
I think the articles main position is that if facebook says that it is committed to climate action, then it needs to enforce its own policies around that, which means stopping misinformation & disinformation that does not align with the majority consensus of experts. To me that's an uncontroversial position.
However I have no expectation that facebook has the capabilities needed to ever fully & correctly enforce its policies and to expect it to do so is unrealistic wishful thinking. Unfortunately.
> allowing equal free speech is definitely not an effective & consistent way of reaching the proper & correct consensus.
I disagree profoundly with this assessment. I believe that a well researched and articulated position doesn't need to fear objection at all, it will grow with it in any case.
There are interests at play here that will deny established knowledge for self-serving purposes. These conflicts of interest need transparency. That is as true for companies as it is for any committee.
I admire your optimism for the marketplace of ideas but ultimately fear it bears little relation to reality. Not only are humans are terrible at making objective & rational choices but the marketplace itself is far from fair and balanced with regard to how people are exposed to ideas & positions. The marketplace assumes that humans are in general rational, decent and not purely motivated by self-interest or groupthink. The wide range of ideological forces and prejudices that exist in the world easily dispel this idea.
Even within a single mind we see people regularly holding two contradictory beliefs and accepting both of them, so if the marketplace of ideas fails in a single mind then I think is has little luck when it encounters large populations.
The marketplace of ideas doesn't always work. Same is true for art, the most popular isn't necessary the best. I have no illusions about this.
But I have to compare it to the alternatives and those do not convince at all.
There is no purely rational and selfless comittee. How would such a group be less self-interested and less vulnerable to group-think? Or less ideological or prejudiced? Because they have some self-imposed mission to a higher cause? Who doesn't?
You can have your benevolent dictator that handles logistical problems of exposure to ideas, but the less error prone way to get the best ideas implemented is a mechanism to boot him out, or in other words, his ideas need justification on the marketplace of ideas. So I must always allow objections.
How do you prevent the creation of McCarthyism 2.0? After all the current form of government is the best one, and anyone that says otherwise is spreading misinformation and must be deplatformed.
In the pro-choise vs pro-life case, should the wrong side be blocked from publishing adds?
What about drinking alcohol at 18? It's legal in most of the world.
Who is going to decide in each case? Are you sure they will have the same opinion than you?
It's true that this approach limits variance of reasonable opinion to within the Overton window (plus a bit or radical thinking either side). That is pretty much how society functions anyway. The window moves slowly but does get moved by many factors.
How strange that survival is something you have to convince people of the value of.
The mere fact that our collective behavior is what is causing this means that at some point there will be a fight for the steering wheel.
Humanity appears incapable of collective action. Any future historians, perhaps some kind of advanced insectoid races archeologists, will say that humanities Achilles heel was being incapable of collective action.
Piquing that uniquely human pride and arrogance is a deliberate strategy by some, but the consequences are dismissed by the same, as they are unable to grasp that this will lead to their own downfall too.
Even the most dystopian arms dealer must eventually eat.
> That more or less already worked and everyone tries to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, so this isn't even a problem.
Given that there is still large scale climate change denial and opposition to renewable power, I don't think you can be confident in that statement. Until recently, one of the largest polluters & economic powers in the world had a government that actively promoted fossil fuels over renewables and denied the fundamentals of anthropomorphic climate change. Environmental awareness & harm reduction is far from a given.