I am just concerned about whether it grows over time into eroding away the ability to speak on the internet.
This is just one thing. We don't even have any visibility in the true special sauce - the algorithms that determine what to show to people. Do you see the problem with this or you think that people who are responsible for these algos are good samaritans and they don't need any public oversight?
By this reasoning, we'd be crippled to make any decision for fear of what that may lead to. This leads back into the slippery slope fallacy. When something larger is at hand, then we can re-visit, but this is not large enough to merit that amount of mental and emotional effort to justify and discuss. Granted, that's entirely subjective, but I fail to see this as a very large issue. It's only making the news because these social media companies have gone so long without enforcing these policies.
> This is just one thing. We don't even have any visibility in the true special sauce - the algorithms that determine what to show to people. Do you see the problem with this or you think that people who are responsible for these algos are good samaritans and they don't need any public oversight?
This is extremely problematic and I agree. This isn't really the topic of this discussion, but it's definitely a problem. Social media companies are already censoring and filtering posts via their algorithms. That wouldn't be the case if feeds were purely based on a time-series (as they used to be).
Regarding the algos, I agree, it is an entirely separate problem.
Literally every platform, including HN, has guidelines around what should and should not be allowed when users contribute. Having those rules defined is great, but enforcement is what makes sure the rules are followed. For a long time, and perhaps still, Twitter was selectively enforcing those rules to users. Facebook seems to be doing the same. Twitter finally applied those rules, rather loosely, to Trump via a couple of minor footnotes to his posts (not censoring at all). Then Twitter put a soft censor, meaning it was still viewable though not through normal user behavior, on a post that very clearly incited violence. I think the fact that these platforms have gone so long without enforcing their policies to this particular person has given the impression that there are no policies and no enforcement and, by extension, that they're open platforms accepting all speech. They aren't, never were, and as private entities are not beholden to be.