> Who gets to choose who gets pick the things amplified or not?

I get that you're asking this question rhetorically, but the "obvious" answer is the correct one: the people that own and operate the amplification system as their business model get to pick. Why should it be otherwise?

If the powerful choose what is and is not amplified, they will try to avoid amplifying things which hurt their causes, and to amplify things which support them.

I don't want to be a pawn of the wealthy, or of governments, or powerful people in general. I don't trust my own government to do what's in my best interests, let alone foreign governments. I certainly don't trust the wealthy, either. That's why I think it should be otherwise.

> I don't want to be a pawn of the wealthy, or of governments, or powerful people in general.

Then don't. It's your choice to get all your news from facebook or twitter. You're here on HN, so I believe you already understand that the contents of facebook and twitter shouldn't determine the contents of your thoughts.

I don't want countless people to be pawns of the wealthy. I don't think very many people themselves want to be pawns of the wealthy.

Yet very many of these people will continue to use Facebook and Twitter for news, rather than changing to an alternative. So your solution to the problem fails.

> I don't want countless people to be pawns of the wealthy. I don't think very many people themselves want to be pawns of the wealthy.

It's not up to you. People can visit whatever websites they want, your subjective judgements about the nature of the content on the website isn't relevant. If they have a problem with the website they are free to visit another one.

> Very many people will continue to use Facebook and Twitter for news.

That's their choice. Very many people will continue to use pornhub and there is nothing the church can do about it... yet.

For me, it's simple. Facebook is doing bad things. I don't like bad things. I think we should stop Facebook from doing bad things.

Is up to me to stop it? No. Of course not. Obviously not. In fact, even if I had the power to single-handedly, unilaterally, stop Facebook from doing these things, I wouldn't. Because I don't believe that might makes right (that's my wider point, after all).

What I want is a popular, democratic movement to regulate the websites that people use, in the way that the informed population think they should be regulated.

Allowing countless to be made pawns of in the name of liberty seems foolish.

> I don't want countless people to be pawns of the wealthy

Too late. People are too easy to manipulate when you can amplify whatever you want.

> I don't want to be a pawn of the wealthy, or of governments, or powerful people in general.

yeah - this is the same sentiment out founding fathers had (in US obv.)

> I don't trust my own government to do what's in my best interests...

That's why we vote. The system created relieves us of worrying about being manipulated by powerful people, by letting the people run the government.

The truth is, your opinion only counts as much as your vote. That's how it should be. Your fringe opinions shouldn't count more than the rest of the people's opinions. So go vote. And let that be that.

Voting is a small part of a functioning democracy. Voting, then letting that be that, is very undemocratic.

This comment is arguing against something I didn't say.

I disagree. You say voting equals government by the people. I say voting does not equal government by the people.

then don't use twitter and convince others you know to do the same

Of course convincing individuals not to use these services is important. But it's not a solution to the problem.

The dirty secret is that no-one picks that. There's no-one turning the knobs to adjust your news feeds, just like there's no-one managing your Gmail inbox who you can turn to for help. It's all machines. Algorithms automatically amplify what's most engaging, and flame wars are more engaging than calm discussions.

Algorithms are designed by people. People who have--whether benevolent / well-intentioned or not--particular values, agendas and biases.

Not the algorithms OP is referring to. Those are black-box learning models which discover what to recommend based on - in the case of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter - what generates the most advertising revenue.

The "particular values, agendas and biases" you're referring to are just advertising revenue, not some political bias installed by the developer. If you WANT to believe there are such developers working at those companies, I can't stop you. But the evidence isn't really there. Make some friends who work at those companies and see what you can find out from the people who actually develop the tools you're accusing of having such political bias in.

Now, if we are talking about political bias in these platforms' policies, you might have something.

Calling it an amplifying algorithm is an insult to the term - literally a sort by most recent or appending to the bottom of a text file primitives posting would favor flame wars as "engagement". The rhetoric of sinister algorithims has been passed around a lot by propaganda "documentaryists" but really with even a bit of knowledge knows trying to cast a correlation algorithim as a singularity in a box master manipulator is absurd. What is next? Putting the wind on trial for billions of sexual assault charges because of all of the skirts it blew up without their consent?

Algorithms didn't silence this article.

The fact that machines are helping these people accomplish their goals does not mean that people don’t have goals and that they shouldn’t be liable for the consequences of accomplishing their goals.

You didnt read the article, did you?

People dont really understand how dangerous of a situation were in right now. When big tech platforms can amplify or decrease thoughts, sources, and even political candidates voices, they literally decide politics. Democracy is being challenged. We need to decide if we want kings or democratically elected representatives to be in charge of the country.

The only thing that has changed is that the power that used to be in the hand of the press and those with access and control of the press is now in other hands and in some ways more transparent.

A lot of the people yelling about the power of social media giants now are yelling because they represent the old status quo, not because they want democratisation of thought.

People choose which press to go to based on what they thought of the information provided there. People choose social networks based on which people are on them. Social networks controlling what you see is therefore much more dangerous than newspapers controlling what you see, since if you don't like what you see in a newspaper you can just switch but if you don't like twitter removing your posts most of your reasons to stay are still there.

> When big tech platforms can amplify or decrease thoughts, sources, and even political candidates voices, they literally decide politics.

That's been happening for some time now, by algorithms that are optimized for outrage, engagement, clicks, etc.

> People dont really understand how dangerous of a situation were in right now. When big tech platforms can amplify or decrease thoughts,

Every form of media has that power, social media is not at all special in this respect. A post getting banned from twitter makes no difference to someone that gets their news from Fox News and talk radio. It's up to the people to manage their own thoughts, same as it ever was.

> It's up to the people to manage their own thoughts, same as it ever was.

So let them read what you don't want them to. If it isn't illegal or incitement of violence, it doesn't need to be removed.

> If it isn't illegal or incitement of violence, it doesn't need to be removed.

But it can be removed, because its one of many millions of privately owned websites on the internet... This is the great thing about the internet, anyone can create a website and run it however they want and users are free to visit whichever sites they like the most. This is a win-win for everyone except for those who want to control what site owners do with their own websites.

"Can be" and therefore "must be because I say so" are two entirely different things.

It's still an option to just leave it alone. What is this obsession our culture recently has that says "Just because I CAN do something, I MUST do something"?

It's an option to leave it alone, but it's the site owner's prerogative. If you don't like the site owner's moderation practices that's fine, but there's no reason that your opinion should override the owner's intentions with respect to how the site is run and the type of content on the site.

Perhaps a better question than “who gets to choose which things get amplified?” is “who is liable for the consequences of amplifying certain things?”