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0 pointsBoorishBears5y ago0 comments

> All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country.

Where did this happen?

Because I saw some specific tags blocked calling for a VP to be killed blocked (vs some generic "kill all humans" hyperbole)... and specific account blocked after its owner triggered an attack on the Capitol that resulted in 5 casualties (and breaking the rules of the platform for 4+ years)

Are you trying to say people who were pro-talking about killing Pence and storming the Capitol are a significant population?

Because last time I checked there were still tens of millions of conservatives on Twitter who aren't banned

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kstenerud5y ago· 2 in thread

What I'm talking about isn't so narrow as liberals or conservatives; it's about social cohesion and the censorship that's necessary in order to preserve it. We've been living charmed lives up until now because the ability to broadcast to large audiences has only been within the capabilities of a select few media outlets that were vetted and controlled to varying degrees by the government to make sure they didn't sow too much discord. And this is healthy, because a divided nation loses its international competitiveness and in the worst case risks collapse.

We're now in the unprecedented situation where individual people can out-broadcast even nation states with the help of social media companies, most of which have their head offices in the USA, limiting their dependency upon and reachability from other governments of the world. It's a decent situation all around because having such companies headquartered in a repressive regime would have damaging effects worldwide. But we still run into some problems:

1. Their morals are local, but their reach is international. This has caused a lot of friction in the past, and that friction will only increase going forward.

2. They're being pressured to bow to local "truths" or risk being banned in a number of nations. These "truths" generally come to light from local issues, and while they can be easy to decypher in autocratic regimes, they absolutely will NOT be so easy to arbitrate in functioning democracies. We'll eventually reach the point where every social media company will need a team of sociologists and political strategists in order to figure out what's behind every government's complaints over what's being broadcast by their citizens, and how best to respond (making them higher arbiters of truth than even the government). The national self-determination issues alone are staggering.

The endgame of this is increased government regulation and increased pressure for a single national "truth", which must be defended vigorously in order to keep the government functional. The increased conflict between these American companies and local governments will increase to the point where eventually the companies will win and essentially set the policy of truth worldwide, which leaves us in a very centralized and fragile state when it comes to corruption, especially since companies - unlike governments - have only profit as a motive, and do not answer to the people.

BoorishBearsOP5y ago

This is so so many words about a overly discussed slippery slope, that do not address a very simple point.

You said this:

> All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country.

Where is this large population? Who is this large population?

Thus entire comment you typed is an distressingly large stretch if you can't identify the population you're using as a diving board to truly go into the deep end here.

kstenerud5y ago

In this case, the population is Parler members. But the instance and people involved are largely irrelevant; it's merely the illustration of a point that will become more and more pronounced as more people realize this power. And it'll be confounded by the fact that no company can be fully up to date with the local foibles of country X and their issues that the company must now decide the truth of and censor whomever they believe to be the bad actors (yeah, good luck!).

Although social media companies have allowed more of us to broadcast to an unprecedentedly large audience, we're not actually ready for the Pandora's box this opens in terms of free speech, corporate rights and obligations, and national sovereignty. The near-term solution will be selective censorship by companies and blocking by governments unhappy with the censorship choices (for both good and bad reasons). But as the decade drags on, we'll be forced to recognize our lack of psychological adaptability to this kind of influential power that can destabilize societies to such a degree (by individual, group, AND state actors), and try to come up with a least-worst solution that we're probably not going to like.

It's not like this is completely new; larger countries with information dissemination advantages have used that power to destabilize smaller countries for centuries, most recently in South America and the Middle East. But it's quite another thing to be on the receiving end, by anyone able to harness a sufficient audience (i.e. not just state actors), and find yourself unable to effectively defend against it.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

kstenerud5y ago· 2 in thread

1. Their morals are local, but their reach is international. This has caused a lot of friction in the past, and that friction will only increase going forward.

BoorishBearsOP5y ago

This is so so many words about a overly discussed slippery slope, that do not address a very simple point.

You said this:

> All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country.

Where is this large population? Who is this large population?

Thus entire comment you typed is an distressingly large stretch if you can't identify the population you're using as a diving board to truly go into the deep end here.

kstenerud5y ago

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