In an ideal world, which we do not live in.
> They're still going to
... and that's what makes the question of the role of Twitter and Facebook in modern society so dang complicated.
Now, in a world where Facebook exists, we should probably consider the effect that its particular flow of information has on society. Keep in mind: this is the same company caught running A/B tests on its users without their knowledge on whether running "happy" or "sad" stories had effect on their observable behavior.
The public should probably care about what effect Facebook has on it, because Facebook cares about what effect it has on the public.
The principle of putting the brakes on unverified stuff is good, but, of course, you have to decide what counts as "unverified", and you have to do that objectively, and quickly. What would the NYT say if there was an unverified anti-Trump story a week before the election, but twitter slowed the spread of it until it could be confirmed?
Are there any non tabloids left? All of the major news organizations have ideologically and clickbait driven debacles in the last few years.
Excuse me? This seems like quite a claim to be making, if it is in good faith. Or we have very different conceptions of the pretty clear-cut term "genocide" (such as the dog whistle misappropriation, "white genocide.") Care to elaborate or provide any evidence at all for these supposed widespread calls for mass murder?
I used to be all aboard the "social media is the problem" train, but...
>> "The point of this is not to debate whether or not the email story was true, or Hunter Biden’s laptop story. Rather, it’s to establish that while social media publishes everything, from mountains of misinformation and conspiracy theories to critical information about an impending pandemic, making something matter requires more than manufacturing zero marginal cost content. The New York Times has that power by default, while Twitter and Facebook only has that power to the extent they do the opposite of what most expect from them (which is to act as a utility for the conveyance of information)."
It really does seem like a long list of Very Serious News Organizations taking it seriously enough to publish hundreds of articles on these things does more harm than it floating out there in the goofball ether. No one should have taken a tabloid seriously. They're still going to, because it's profitable, so the solution is probably not "block it" or "don't write about it." The article has some good ideas.
edit: in particular the comparison between responses from Twitter and Facebook. Facebook slowed rather than blocked. That gave fact checkers time to warm up without dumping go juice into the conspiracy loop. I haven't heard the same apoplectic screaming about Facebook.