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by twblalock 3021 days ago
We should absolutely not want corporations to be arbiters of morality.
1 comments

No, of course not, but like everything, it's a spectrum. I wouldn't want a big corporation like FB to play a meaningful role in deciding what is and what is not moral (or factual), but at the same time I don't want FB to be a trivially manipulated medium for targeted disinformation and divisive propaganda. For example, a hostile state actor doing things like showing white rural retirees ads for fictional BLM recruitment drives to stoke fear/hatred/misunderstanding among the US population.

A completely hands-off approach is also corrosive and destructive. They're stuck trying to thread the needle, to balance civic responsibility while avoiding being an overbearing gatekeeper. I don't think it's possible to pull it off in such a way that they are not overstepping bounds in one direction or another, but as long as the pros outweigh the cons of whatever approach they take, it'd still be infinitely better than doing nothing.