Re:Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private
by glenstein on Thursday April 14, 2022 @08:30AM
(#31026007)
Concepts like "objective" and "politically neutral" are what Walter Bryce Gallie called "essentially contested concepts."
Even in a system where moderation was administered perfectly, there would be some percentage of people who fundamentally objected to the accuracy and even legitimacy of moderation based on its outcome. A "correctly" administered system would probably still be one in which disgruntled people dismissed "correct" choices as activism, biased motives, etc.
Getting rid of vaccine misinformation would lead to antivax cranks saying the pharmaceutical industry is using their financial power to influence moderating. Getting rid of 2020 election misinformation will lead to conservative narratives about "mainstream" media silencing their voices out of political bias. The liberal narrative on moderation decisions would say it excludes minority and disempowered voices. And all sides would invoke concepts like "objectivity."
The problem is that not that all sides do it, but the opposite, that there really is a real underlying truth out there, and it really will be the case that some people are going to be systematically wrong at every level at which they register objections to moderation, and the correct response is that their concerns are unfounded.
Of course that won't make people happy, but it shows that the limits of what is possible are limits relating to human nature that won't be uniformly satisfied by any system.
Even in a system where moderation was administered perfectly, there would be some percentage of people who fundamentally objected to the accuracy and even legitimacy of moderation based on its outcome. A "correctly" administered system would probably still be one in which disgruntled people dismissed "correct" choices as activism, biased motives, etc.
Getting rid of vaccine misinformation would lead to antivax cranks saying the pharmaceutical industry is using their financial power to influence moderating. Getting rid of 2020 election misinformation will lead to conservative narratives about "mainstream" media silencing their voices out of political bias. The liberal narrative on moderation decisions would say it excludes minority and disempowered voices. And all sides would invoke concepts like "objectivity."
The problem is that not that all sides do it, but the opposite, that there really is a real underlying truth out there, and it really will be the case that some people are going to be systematically wrong at every level at which they register objections to moderation, and the correct response is that their concerns are unfounded.
Of course that won't make people happy, but it shows that the limits of what is possible are limits relating to human nature that won't be uniformly satisfied by any system.