I have to disagree. It’s not about pleasing both sides; it’s about being a fair and unbiased platform. And on that front I think big tech absolutely blew it this time across the board.

Our society is fractured. There is so much hate and whining online. So much righteousness and loathing. And big tech has only amplified the problem. At times they even fan the flames, what with dubious fact checkers and their “hate speech” bans.

I can’t even go on Reddit anymore. I find myself disagreeing with absolutely everyone now that the dissenting opinions have been pushed out and banned.

And it’s only getting worse.

I mean, I was replying to someone who defined their failure explicitly in terms of it pissing off both sides. Which was always going to happen, unless they unequivocally took one side.

But I have absolutely no doubt that whatever you consider to be 'fair and unbiased' others will regard as unfair, unbalanced and unpleasant.

In today’s political landscape, being unbiased in content moderation will anger both sides because of the intense polarization that is occurring.

Then if you go the way of Reddit you will please one side and make the other even more angry.

I think the problem is that we see what is happening in the US with poverty and the middle class, but instead we focus on tribalism.

Not sure what the solution is here.

I tend to have a similar mindset - I have an allergy to groupthink, and when I see groups of people saying false things, even if I generally normally agree with the spirit of the group, I have to at least 'fact check' with a response. But in this strange new bifurcated reality, you get pinned as 'Other' as in, I must be the 'Other side' and thus subject to to some sort of retaliation.

I don't get 'banned' but I get downvoted - as I did on this thread with no real explanation.

I have absolutely no problem with "Fact checking" because at least it shows the original thing. I have a big problem with shadow banning, deleting and outright banning. The latter is censorship.

I agree. I don't envy the position these platforms were put in. The platforms already had policies, but those did not foresee a time when the POTUS would act this way. When someone on the platform with the reach and power of POTUS says things that are objectively false (and potentially dangerous), how should those be handled? I'm not talking about dissenting opinions or a favorable way to look at a topic, but the equivalent of 1+1=3.

There was this ideal of the internet with information being freely distributed and available, that people would seek out truth. What we have seen though is that large groups of people just believe whoever has the bigger microphone.

> The platforms already had policies, but those did not foresee a time when the POTUS would act this way

Yes they did. In fact, in Twitter's case, they explictly altered their policies so that the failure to take action against this very same POTUS would no longer be a blatant failure to enforce it's generally-applicable policies.

Twitter has apparently had something of a change of heart about that blatant favoritism, and adopted completely new rules to reign in the monster their own rule change created on their platform, but it is not at all the case that the rules that were in place until recently were not crafted with this kind of Presidential action in mind; not only was it generally in minf, the rules were, in fact, created to license this kind of action for the benefit of this specific President, without allowing a level playing field for his opponents.

> the other side

The other side has outright banned questioning important tribal narratives. (That I happen to agree with those tribal narratives is besides the point)

That's exactly my point. They could have been completely fair and impartial and everyone still would have hated them.

That's why the fact they even tried, at least in my mind, guaranteed they would fail.