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0 pointscsa5y ago0 comments

> Nothing about Facebook's nature forces them to go beyond that and act as de facto language legislators

The ethics of being a/the major institution of mass communication in large parts of the world may not force FB to act as language legislators, but these ethics certainly should compel them to do so.

Relevant points:

- If FB’s status as a mass comms source is threatened, then the company itself is threatened. This threat can be due to a lack in trust in the platform and/or legislation that effectively legislates them out of existence (see below re free speech). This existential issue should compel them to factor language legislation into their corporate policies.

- Stockholders certainly care about FB’s status as a mass comms source even if no one else does.

- Stakeholders obviously care about this, too.

- Relying on governments to regulate mass communications is a Pandora’s box for FB since FB is an international platform.

- In the US, in order to facilitate and encourage free speech, mass comms laws are not particularly restrictive, but they are built on an underlying assumption about social-based regulation that generally hold up but seem to be completely broken with platforms like FB. If FB doesn’t address this issue, then the laws that end up addressing this issue may end up legislating FB out of existence.

To close, whether playing the language legislator is part of FB’s nature, an emergent property, or something else, there are very real reasons that FB has policies on regulating language. Whether they do this well or not is a completely different issue, but putting the onus on government legislators to address the problem with formal laws seems, at best, overly dismissive.

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themacguffinman5y ago

Relying on governments to regulate mass communications is strictly better for Facebook than the alternative, where governments disagree with Facebook's chosen policies and punish them instead. This is why most companies prefer to comply with local law, only enforcing universal policy where it doesn't potentially conflict with local law.

Companies don't just have no reason to regulate language, they also have no serious authority to do so. The onus has always been and can only be on government legislators to address these issues in the most fundamental sense.

I'd like to see Facebook try to take on the Democrat/Republican eternal conflict in the US or the CCP in China on adopting a universal policy that they don't agree with, armed with powerful arguments like "the power of ethics compels me!" or "it's a Pandora's box because we're international!" or "stockholders care about our status!". Going above and beyond their most basic policy obligations has been a great way to attract the ire of political authorities who are now agitated over whether Facebook's policy is intentionally empowering or weakening their political enemies.

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