Newspapers are default-deny. The editors decide which letters to the editor to publish.
Social media platforms are default-allow. If they were default-deny, it would take months to get your newsfeed posts approved.
Newspapers were also not designed to be a way for readers to express themselves. Social media platforms exist so that users can express themselves.
I'm not saying that social media companies are doing a good job, or that their moderation practices are good, or that their quest for increasing engagement above all else is good. In fact I wouldn't mind if FB, Twitter, etc. just disappeared tomorrow. But comparing them to newspapers is just not a reasonable thing to do.
With the current state of AI text processing, checking if the contents of a user submitted text would be approved really shouldn't take months but instead seconds.
Sentiment analyzers which take bug reports as toxic but consider beyond the pale statements like "I hope you enjoy eating your family." the opposite of toxic?
Social media platforms are default-allow. If they were default-deny, it would take months to get your newsfeed posts approved.
Newspapers were also not designed to be a way for readers to express themselves. Social media platforms exist so that users can express themselves.
I'm not saying that social media companies are doing a good job, or that their moderation practices are good, or that their quest for increasing engagement above all else is good. In fact I wouldn't mind if FB, Twitter, etc. just disappeared tomorrow. But comparing them to newspapers is just not a reasonable thing to do.