> Bosworth defended Facebook's role in combatting COVID, noting that the company ran one of the largest information campaigns in the world to spread authoritative information.
I find this to be such a creepy, off-putting statement. The last thing I want in my society is to have profit-driven tech corporations deciding what is and is not "authoritative information".
Especially given how time and time again they have censored "misinformation" which then proceeded to have merit.
The last thing that Facebook wants is to be forced into a position where they have to decide what is and is not "authoritative information". They are only doing it because society gives them no other choice except to shut down the whole business.
Of course they don't want to be in such a position because it costs them money. Similarly, it costs e.g Dupont money to be responsibly disposing of chemicals, but we're comfortable requiring them to do it or else face being shut down.
We learned our lesson with Dupont when they were poisoning water supplies. Similarly, I believe Facebook is poisoning our information supplies, which you can see in the rapid uptick in QAnon believers. Hell, they whipped themselves into enough of a frenzy to storm the Capitol building to overthrow an election.
I'm not making any political statements, truly. I'm just noting that these groups and ideas simply would not exist and perpetuate without being facilitated by Facebook's rampant misinformation problem.
> The last thing I want in my society is to have profit-driven tech corporations deciding what is and is not "authoritative information".
Most of the National Press (NTY, WaPo etc.) is profit-driven though, isn't it? They're the one's who generally report and decide what's authoritative...
I feel like the “toxic” big tech social media platforms have been a lot more impartial than any of the MSM sources these days. I don’t think the parent comment argued for that though.
That's why I think combatting fake news actually promoted them and made the world a worse place: when people hear "fake news", they've learnt to doubt the "fake" part and start thinking this news is "so worth it that Facebook/Google/the media is combatting it, so I remain ignorant of that information that is vital to me".
That's how I think combatting fake news made things worse for the very people we're trying to protect: it pushed them deeper into the fakeverse (TM).
Well said. I wonder how long it will take legislation to catch up to the unregulated information highways that dominate so much of our national and global thought and perceptions!
Won’t the regulation force them to censor? I get not wanting corporations to moderate discourse, but I can’t help but feel they get shit from both ends.
Fuck you if you censor, and fuck you if you don’t.
I don't think censorship is necessary given that it isn't the only way to address the problem of misinformation. For example, providing metrics on how trustworthy a source is by reasonable metrics isn't censorship, but providing information that's useful in gauging how much credibility to assign to a certain report.
Do I think they should censor information? No. But we're all ill-informed with respect to almost all subjects, so knowing whether or not a climate report came from e.g. a group of Ivy-league researcher vs. ExxonMobil is important, and knowing whether or not information on evolution comes from PhD evolutionary biologists vs. the Young Earth Creationist Museum matters a lot. What I think we're seeing is the growing distrust of subject-matter experts, but only in select highly political domains.
I understand what you said about pressure from both ends, but Facebook is a trillion dollar company with an extremely robust AI team. I'm sure they can figure out a solution, or at least come up with a gameplan on how to work their way towards one.
I also understand a trepidation with respect to legislation considering the not infrequent tendency to under-legislate or over-legislate, but this is common in every area of law and eventually the pendulum swings slow down to a reasonable medium.
I find this to be such a creepy, off-putting statement. The last thing I want in my society is to have profit-driven tech corporations deciding what is and is not "authoritative information".
Especially given how time and time again they have censored "misinformation" which then proceeded to have merit.
No thank you.