Phone companies don't set up incentive structures that encourage a certain kind of content. Facebook has an "algorithmic" feed, likes, and "engagement" metrics that rewards certain behaviours and punish others. They are rightly being pilloried when these incentives encourage and promote constant outrage, conspiracies, and completely fact-free fear mongering.

This is a thought-provoking answer, and it shows how Facebook (and others) are straddling the line between publisher and platform.

IMHO, because they do perform curation, both algorithmic and manual, they should be considered publishers.

Seems to me that their argument against censorship should be even stronger, then, as editorializing is protected expression.

It would be, yes, and if Trump acts on his threats to investigate censure on social media then this may be a good position to take.

The problem is that being a publisher brings greater legal liability for the content that they publish; whereas as carrier/platform can wash their hands of the data that they transmit and claim that they have no part of it.

> Phone companies don't set up incentive structures that encourage a certain kind of content.

I'm not convinced of that. Through technical and billing means, phones encourage one-on-one conversations while discouraging conversations with multiple participants. By disincentivizing certain kinds of conversations, they disincentivize certain kinds of content. It's hard to say exactly what sort of impact this may have on society, but I doubt it doesn't have any.

This may be a far cry from Facebook's deliberate algorithmic tweaking to manipulate the emotions of their users, but I think it's interesting to consider in it's own right.

If you mean that Facebook should be regulated as a utility, by all means make that argument - I think you’ll find broad support.

As it is, Facebook is constantly making editorial decisions in terms of what content is shown (which posts, in what order, with what presentation). Their own research had found that some of those editorial decisions have externalities in the form of increasing social conflict. Rather than take steps to address it, or even research this question more, they wiped their hands of it.

> If you mean that Facebook should be regulated as a utility, by all means make that argument - I think you’ll find broad support.

In this case, would Facebook become compulsory for American citizens?

My guess is it's because phone or cable companies don't apply comparable measures, at least not that I know of. Targeted content for example.

Note the voting on your questions as opposed to the engagement of the discourse you've started. There are a percentage of users who don't like you asking these questions and a percentage of them who want to understand what these questions mean.

Phone and cable companies do not create polarization because they carry ALL data (usually). Services like Facebook, Twitter and HN all provide the ability to modify the content, in place. This is done with automation (code) and we can expect that automation to become more aware moving forward (AI).

This ability to modify content in place by the companies produces revenue at the same time it creates the ability for some types of divisiveness to form. Humans are divisive, under certain conditions, and there isn't much that can be done about it other than education about how to stop being divisive.

Education becomes impossible when the entities controlling the channels do so in a way that prevent users changing what type of content they see (such as education about how to avoid divisiveness), maybe due to the fact it kills revenue.

Worse, the more choice you give users (free, decentralized internet anyone?), the more some users will choose to introduce behaviors that give way to divisiveness in a given group. Trolls using imagery to build propaganda filled stories.

Trolls have taken over the Republican party, if nobody has figured this out by now. Note how they use strong imagery to glue their never-ending stories together.

It's a no-win situation. The best thing to do is simply walk away from it or maybe build a personal search engine AI crawler thing that works for just you and only you.

"Here's your content, Boss." "Thanks, Sidekick!"

Phone and cable companies are extensively regulated.

Agreed, if you look at cable news channels these day its all about division and fighting.