Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig...
by boulos on Friday October 16, 2020 @01:27AM
(#24797782)
> without being accountable to the public
Edit (I should have included this), Disclosure: I work at Google Cloud and have worked with folks at Twitter (but never their policy teams or anything).
I would say that compared to many cable news sources, the mean time to response of Twitter and Facebook is actually better. No media company is perfect. Unfortunately, no media company is particularly accountable to the public (anymore).
It’s fair (right?) to be concerned about control of media. I think it’s less clear that Twitter is less accountable, less responsive, or more impactful than other major media sources.
The root of the issue here is that Twitter is the one deciding this in the first place. What appears on their platform influences large numbers of people. I know it, you know it, and know it too--influencing people to e.g. buy stuff is how they make money after all. It's not hard to understand why a company with such influence making such large impacts without being accountable to the public scares people, particularly those who evidently think differently than those who run these companies.