Re:We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
by contravariant on Friday December 11, 2020 @07:58AM
(#25385204)
When a single platform controls a large part of public discourse, without democratic control, and actively stifles competition (the jury's still out on that one, but that is the allegation), then that places a lot of power in private hands.
This doesn't mean that power is being abused (though it gets increasingly hard to tell) but it's hard to call that kind of platform 'free'.
Sure you might be fairly certain that Facebook isn't limiting free speech right now, but the main reason you know this is through other channels. When their monopoly is complete there'd be no way to tell if speech truly is or isn't free.
And of course there's no way to tell if your posts are unpopular because of some well intentioned algorithm, or a more malicious algorithm. At the very least Facebook's incentives don't align with the rest of society.
This doesn't mean that power is being abused (though it gets increasingly hard to tell) but it's hard to call that kind of platform 'free'.
Sure you might be fairly certain that Facebook isn't limiting free speech right now, but the main reason you know this is through other channels. When their monopoly is complete there'd be no way to tell if speech truly is or isn't free.
And of course there's no way to tell if your posts are unpopular because of some well intentioned algorithm, or a more malicious algorithm. At the very least Facebook's incentives don't align with the rest of society.