I think the same approach as with spam is best.

If you can determine that a particular piece of information belongs to some unpleasant or dangerous category, mark it as that, like a spam filter does, or vaguely how FB does with posts. Importantly, do not remove it unless the law forces you to.

Then let users switch between the filtered and unfiltered view, or look at the analog of the "Spam" folder.

This allows to study pieces of information that are deemed "controversial" or even "malevolent" and make your own opinion, if you're so inclined.

Even more, it could apply several different cultural filters, like "content likely offensive for X", where X is a major religious or cultural group, much the same way as many providers currently mark content as inappropriate for children.

Twitter does add warnings to tweets that are questionable in their claims (anti vax, fake news etc). Is that what you were thinking?

and then there will be a million "Top 10 things the government doesn't want you to know" videos that amplify whatever it was they were trying to censor

But the point is in not trying to censor.

No, they're not "ok", but I personally believe that outright censorship is worse. ymmv.

It is a hard problem.

The Govt pontificates about big tech issues without putting in the effort of making laws. Big tech is forced to anticipate what might defame them or be used by the Govt as ammo to garner public sympathy. It is a delicate balancing act between censorship and freedom.

Zuck tried to put the onus on the Govt to define right and wrong, true and false, but to no avail. It is hard to please everybody unfortunately.

I really don’t see the hard part. Just because we consider something to be harmful and negative (like propaganda) doesn’t mean making it illegal is desirable.

Even for the things that are illegal, it can be illegal to publish something but legal to provide connectivity services to the offender.

Net neutrality is not a delicate balance.

Or what’s a tricky edge case you have in mind?

I apologize if I missed your point, but in the case of fake news for instance, iiuc, you're arguing that fake news on FB is legal and that FB isn't responsible for such content on their platform.

Information warfare is fairly real and potent in how it has weakened US democracy and vaccination efforts recently. Ultimately, arguably, this has real consequences for the economy, national security etc.

I am not saying that FB is not responsible. I am saying that FB should not have their services blocked by ISPs or government because of fake news on their platform.

You're correct in your observation but state-sanctioned censorship is not the solution.

In case we're talking around each other; what kind of laws would you like to see put in place?

Agree with the idea.

I don't have strong opinions on solutions here, and don't mind the status quo.

Better that misguided individuals be free to speak, than misguided self-appointed “fact checkers” silence truth.

> So user generated fake news is ok, and so is foreign propaganda influencing elections?

I mean... yes? People are ultimately responsible for their own worldview and vote. They are also perfectly entitled to consume any information from any source they please, aren't they?

A side note: foreign propaganda is not worse than domestic propaganda. Swarms of dedicated activists using rioting and other violence to achieve political goals (the dictionary definition of terrorism), in collusion with a sympathetic tech industry that suppresses any dissenting thought, is propaganda and it does influence elections. When these companies do things like ban Trump, they are illegally making a campaign contribution without abiding by the laws of campaign finance. When they do things like censor discussions of the lab leak theory, they propagandize the entire world by freeing the CCP of the bare minimum for accountability.

I am not a fan of any approach here and largely agree with you.

Media censorship did very well exist in pre-tech journalism as well and was more blatant. Eg. Iraq war WMD claims etc. Big tech censorship mirrors this but in a very limited manner since we know it is happening at any point in time and such information is available outside of the major platforms, which wasn't the case pre mainstream internet.

Ultimately, big tech regulation of content is similar to how a WSJ or NYT would manage what they publish. They've been forced into this position with all the criticism over the last few years - it isn't something they wanted to invest in. It looks more like censorship because of the stepping back from the previously laissez faire approach to content, whereas NYT's baseline was self regulation (so it wasn't as apparent). Big tech media is privately held like a bar or a restaurant and in my opinion have every right to control who is on the platform and what is not ok to say - if one doesn't like it - they can leave.