Facebook just wants to show you sensationalist trash and call it "engagement."
Where to draw the line is the point of the discussion, because the democracy of the viral nonsense is causing more damage than a straight up dictatorship, IMO.
Let people make their own decisions.
But as neither nationalization of a large tech company such as Facebook nor giving it a monopoly over information seems desirable, why don’t we just agree that it should stay out of this completely.
The ship has, in a word, sailed.
If you create a vast, global, instant, high-fidelity, interactive content dissemination system with a strongly aspirational and appealing audience, then parasitic opportunists who seek only to serve their own rather than others' interests will flock to it. And have, in spades.
And I've seen this game play out repeatedly: in print, on radio, television, Usenet, email, and since approximately 1997, on the Web and mobile Internet.
There are parties already making truth determinations, and their doing a demonstrably horrible job at it from a common weal perspective. And that is the problem.
"Just don't use Facebook" doesn't work for two principle reasons:
1. Facebook is increasingly central to, or required for, numerous real-world interactions.
2. Even if, as I do, you don't use the service, you live in the world it creates. Facebook has massive negative externalities. Like, oh, say, civil war and genocide in Myanmar, to mention only one aspect.
(There are others closer to home for most readers here. I'm hoping HN won't lose its collective mind if I don't mention these.)
Another element that factors in is that Big Lie propaganda is reliant on disseminating the Big Lie. Scale is directly the problem, and offering unrestricted access to, choose the amplification metaphor of your choice, the printing press, microphone, camera, TV/Radio station, etc., has risks. Especially for those who would see the tools themselves burned down along with all else.
In which case, drastically curtailing the spread of any content from identified actors and their associated networks responsible for spreading obvious and notable disinformation ... is highly defensible.
I'm well aware of numerous arguments, predicated on or observing exceptions to free speech, which typically follow such statements. I find both the free-speech absolutist and the private property / private actor restriction privilege arguments tired and uninspired. The reality is complex, and I don't have either simple solutions or any which are conformant simultaneously with "free speech" or "property rights" positions.
Both, to my mind, exist in a nexus and network of overlapping interests and rights. I've suggested "information autonomy" as an alternative to "free speech", though the expansion of that notion quickly points out internal conflicts. Common weal might offer one path out.
Their claims are dubious at best.
Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines so often that I think we need to ban this account. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you've read the guidelines and genuinely want to use the site as intended.
The parallels between the internet and the printing press are many.
I don't. I think that memory is from small subset of the general public who were early adopters and developers of the Internet.
