Google/YouTube & Facebook/Instagram together constitute a bloc that can censor a message very effectively.

I agree that Twitter doesn't quite fit this pattern though.

Has any group of people in history ever had so much control over public discourse at such a large scale as Facebook, or Twitter?

Facebook and Twitter do not control public discourse.

If they do not control public discourse, why were there allegations that misinformation on those platforms can affect elections? Isn't this new policy of Twitter an admission that they do affect discourse, and thus need to be more responsible?

Is shaping it by selectively removing it a form of control?

Operational control of a website does not equate to control of public discourse. Other things exist on the internet besides social media.

Are you suggesting the President is incapable of other forms of communication?

Obviously not, I was asking whether or not algorithmic or otherwise selectively moderated could shape how millions of the public can communicate their ideas. Let alone thought leaders and others the public interacts with to guide societal questions and answers.

>control: the power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events

This is seems to indicate they are stepping into a form of control.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every...

They also do in the form of moderation, (secret) algorithms and suggestions based on (undisclosed) advertisers

Then who controls the code that their platforms run on, and how is FB able to conduct emotional manipulation experiments?

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every...

If you don't want to be manipulated by Facebook then don't use it. Yes, Facebook is very popular. Anyway, don't use it.

I quit FB many years ago, because I'm technically and historically literate. And yet there are billions of other people who are not, and who do use it, and this strongly effects my life

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

This is a silly argument. The service that Facebook offers is becoming so important that asking people not to use it is like asking people not to breathe, and over time it will become moreso.

> The service that Facebook offers is becoming so important that asking people not to use it is like asking people not to breathe

Utterly absurd hyperbole. There are a billions of people in the world who do not use Facebook, comparing the use of Facebook to drawing breath is about as ridiculous as it gets.

It's not ridiculous. If you want to have friends, promote a brand etc in the modern world you need these networks.

The reason that activists engage in deplatforming activity is that it's effective at destroying movements; brands like Milo Yianopolous and Generation Identity were totally destroyed by deplatforming by a few key social networks.

I can provide the evidence on those if you don't believe me.

> If you want to have friends, promote a brand etc in the modern world you need these networks.

A total falsehood that is easily disproven by the many millions of people who have friends that don't use social media and the many thousands of successful companies that don't advertise on social media.

Well, just off the top of my head:

* The PRC government right now

* Pretty much any government behind the iron curtain during the cold war

* The Catholic church over much of its history

...

I mean, come on. Pick any reasonably competent totalitarian regime and you'll find that one of core pillars of the support structure is precisely "control over public discourse".

So maybe in context putting a fact check link under a tweet doesn't sound so bad?

Try again, your only example that comes close to the scale and number of users of FB (2.6B MAU), is PRC (1.4B citizens), and that does not exactly help your case that FB is too powerful.

MAUs are not a measurement of control over an individual. For the vast majority of Facebook users, Facebook is a very small slice of their life composing only a few minutes of activity per use. If someone opens up the Facebook app for 5 minutes a month they are considered a MAU. Suggesting that browsing an app for a few minutes out of a day is comparable to authoritarian control over 1.4 billion people demonstrates a complete lack of perspective in reality.

What measurement would you suggest we use to approximate the number of people whose communication is under the control of a particular organization?

>If someone opens up the Facebook app for 5 minutes a month they are considered a MAU. Suggesting that browsing an app for a few minutes out of a day is comparable to authoritarian control over 1.4 billion people demonstrates a complete lack of perspective in reality.

Your strawman is what lacks perspective of reality. The average FB user spends 30-60 minutes on Facebook each day, depending on the source.

> What measurement would you suggest we use to approximate the number of people whose communication is under the control of a particular organization

You'd first have to a establish a definition for the term "control".

> The average FB user spends 30-60 minutes on Facebook each day

Voluntarily interacting with an app for 45 minutes a day does not in any concevibile interpretation meet the definition of "control". The user is literally in complete control of the apps they interact with on their phone or computer.

>You'd first have to a establish a definition for the term "control"

Let me google that for you:

>control: the power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events.

Rupert Murdoch

Zuckerberg > Murdoch