https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/06/everyone-at-facebook-is-qwh...
As private companies, Facebook and Twitter can do what they like. Likewise people are free to
- use their services (or not) - complain about their policy choices and/or advocate for different choices - make personal judgements about the people who choose to work there
In a world with no social media, how do you spread your message? You can yell from the rooftops, pass out fliers, publish a book, go on TV, etc. In every case there's a human or organization involved helping spread your message. When that message is vile, the TV station or book publisher is rightly held accountable for helping to promote it.
Facebook gives people a platform to spread their messages. If those messages are vile, then Facebook is just as complicit as if it were a book publisher or person handing our fliers. The difference is that Facebook says "we operate at a scale which does not allow moderation", which is true, and it's the same reason that you can reach so many people so quickly with your messages.
Facebook is actively spreading hate by giving Trump a platform. They need to be accountable. Without Facebook, Twitter, etc, Trump would just be shouting hate to himself. With FB, trump shouts hate at everyone.
Is that actually true though? Sure he has an unfiltered platform via FB and Twitter but somehow I doubt that if he didn't have those and merely screamed his rhetoric from the whitehouse front lawn or at press conferences that the various media organizations wouldn't gleefully reprint it word for word.
Of course we can argue that the media is also responsible for giving him a platform (and in some ways we'd be right), at the same time it seems like a bad idea to champion the idea of not allowing the truth of who or what the president is to be revealed, however ugly it might be. And it likewise seems a bad idea to encourage a situation where people's only access to their elected officials bloviating is by way of pre-ordained gatekeepers.
Granted that's how it was in the past, but this seems like a genie we can't put back in the bottle. Best case scenario trump just takes over the whitehouse web page to publish whatever he wants on the front page. And we definitely don't want to get into the can of worms that would be white house staff preventing the president (or any politician) from speaking to their constituents by denying him that access.
Ah, but they’d contextualise it, the nasty hobbitses. Which is what he’s upset about twitter doing in the first place. So that probably wouldn’t work for him.
By the way, I thought hackers were against censorship so I'm very puzzled by all of this. What would the right action for Facebook be in this case?
Not taking any stance here, just genuinely curious.