As a US citizen who takes our country’s free speech norms seriously, I don’t think Meta should be aiming to deplatform even the hateful content I vehemently disagree with.

I think government should work more on helping people find alternatives to social media. The “town square effect” that makes people feel forced to use these apps is real and pernicious. That feels like a better target for regulation and taxation than content. If your business moat is based on network effects, perhaps there should be the equivalent of a land value tax on your network.

I think there is a distinct difference between deplatforming content, and simply not monetizing it. You have the right to shout in the town square but I do not have to put money in your cup when you do it.

I think that's an incredibly dangerous slippery slope.

If you effectively control what is monetised, you effectively control what is said en masse. It's a distinction without a difference.

I have no problem with deplatforming American, Russian, Chinese and Israeli intelligence assets.

Sadly we are finding out that our way of life is under threat 24/7 by nefarious barbarians.

bring back the iron curtain. cut the undersea cables.

I think we’ve only got here because social platforms are large and also own advertising auction platforms.

I wonder how it would look like as a new antitrust vertical slice to enforce against.

Plus you can always self host content and set up your own monetizing partners.

> If the right can learn to tolerate different opinions that they find offensive

Ah look, it's the hallmark of well-reasoned thinking. I have seen this exact phrasing numerous times over the past week, did the bots learn a new talking point? "The right" sure is doing a lot of tolerating around abortion, trans identities and women's bathrooms and sports.

Or break the companies up like we did with Bell. Any social media platform with over 20 million MAU in the US gets broken in two, and companies with over 1M MAU must offer open federation under some reasonable terms.

I suppose you are not at the end of the hateful content. It's easy when it's a group, but how small does the group have to be before they should deplatform it? 100k, 10k? 1000? 10, 1? Is one person okay? If I and a bunch of fellow idiots publish rubbish about you and you alone attacking you on facebook with our fellow 1,000,000 followers, would you still vehemently disagree with facebook deplatforming the hateful content?

Business is not bound to any sort of freedom of speech. There is no such thing, it does not exist. The first amendment covers government actions only.

If I owned a social media network, I wouldn’t let Nazis, MLM peddlers, transphobes, pro-gun advocates, or anti-vaxxers, among others, on my network. That’s where my moral compass lies.

Now, you might say that’s unfair, that’s not an open forum. I’m not being open-minded to other ideas or freedom-oriented.

You don’t have to agree with me. Go use someone else’s product.

The thing is, Zuckerberg has uniquely overarching control over Meta in ways that most public companies don’t. He has controlling special founder’s votes, he is the guy in charge, equivalent to a dictatorship.

That means that anything Meta allows on their platform is a reflection of Zuckerberg himself. Whether or not that’s how the eyes of the law views it is very different than how it is from a moralistic “who is responsible?” angle.

Zuckerberg can stop all hate and anger on his platform in one business meeting. Plenty of other platforms (public and private companies) including HN don’t allow the kind of conduct that Facebook and Instagram allow wholeheartedly.

He chooses not to hold high standards for his platform because anger, fear, snake oil sales, and purposeful disinformation campaigns, among other shady business ventures, are profitable.

And here we are, debating whether he and his company are responsible. After all, they just provide a neutral platform, right? If I get hit by an Amazon truck, it’s not their fault, that was a subcontractor! Companies enthusiastically create these mechanisms to detach themselves from the harm they bring.

I think you may be misunderstanding the post. He is not saying that Meta is prohibited from censorship by the First Amendment.

He is saying that the US has free speech norms (not laws) where it is acceptable for people to get together and rant about X, Y, or Z. There are limits (e.g. calls for violence), but they are few. Anyone who does not like the speech can leave the room, try to argue with the speaker, or make their own speech in another room. It is not the social norm to shut down the speaker, make the speaker unemployable, trash or bankrupt the venue, etc. Those actions are contrary to the norm.

That is simply not true. One example is a hilarious skit by an Australian comedian (John Safran) going to salt lake city and knocking on doors asking if he could talk to people about atheism. The amount of violent threads he received is quite revealing.

In my personal experience having lived in the US and several other countries, I found officially people can say much more things (i.e. due to the strong freedom of expression laws), but in personal settings you are much more likely to be shut down, fired, threatened with violence, ostracized... for stating unpopular (in that social environment) opinions, in the US compared to the other countries.

Meta is a private organization[1]. It is not “the US.” In fact, most of its customers aren’t even in the US.

Private organizations dictate their own social constructs. It’s not acceptable to proposition sex at a book club, but it’s acceptable to do that at a swingers club.

This idea that private companies follow the social norms in the US is only partially true at best.

It’s socially normal for me to talk about how my company sucks and I hate my boss with 100% of my friends and family, but doing so at my place of employment isn’t okay. That’s one major example where my company doesn’t follow social norms.

If what you say is true then YouTube should allow hardcore pornography since over 90% of men watch pornography. It’s socially and legally acceptable, with numerous legal brick and mortar businesses specializing in that market. But they don’t allow that because they are a business that doesn’t want to engage in that business activity.

I think it’s easy to mistake the current state of private social media as “open” in the way you describe just because it looks open. To your point, not a lot of speech is banned outright, which seems parallel to US social norms, but whether or not something is banned or removed from social media is almost meaningless because promotion and multiplicative reach is the domain of the algorithm.

The algorithm doesn’t promote and multiply the reach of content based on whether that content is most aligned with social norms. It’s promoted based on whether it makes money or causes users to stay watching the platform.

In real life, you don’t hang out with your friends and family most who make you the most mad or generate the most shocking content. But that’s how social media works because social media isn’t real life.

This idea that today’s social media platforms are a neutral vessel for speech is flawed right from the start because of that algorithm.

[1] publicly traded, private as in “private property”

The problem is not speech but amplification.

Facebook wants to get that speech in as many rooms as they can, because they figured out a way to profit off of the emotional reaction of the people who were already there. They offer free hosting for community groups of all sorts in order to bring people to the rooms they can profit from.

Thank you for this poignant allegory - its so spot on - it will really open some people's minds here who are overthinking and rationalizing their current Big Corp employments.

They put you in several opposing camps. They identify the most insane content and show only that to everyone in the opposing camp.

No one cares if you clean up after your dog makes a nr 2. The anti dog poop people want to hear you don't give a fk and let Herman poop wherever he likes.

Similarly the dog owners don't want to hear you understand. They want you to talk about little poopers getting stuck in your barbed wire with razorblades.