[brianpan]

If they get credit for the Arab Spring, they should get credit for this, too. This is not solving a problem, this is a part of understanding how the world is changing and what is contributing to it.

If we don't identify and understand what is going on, we won't have an informed response.

[aylmao]

> If they get credit for the Arab Spring, they should get credit for this, too.

Facebook shouldn't get credit for the Arab Spring. They didn't start it, they were just one of many mediums used for its organization and dissemination.

What they and all social media get credit for is existing as a communications platform that's largely uncensored.

[vkou]

If the government controlled in what order you saw things on television, or whether or not you saw some of them at all, would you call television largely uncensored?

Why does Facebook's algorithmic ranking of feed content get a free pass, here?

[closeparen]

Television is censored. So is radio. In exchange for the use of spectrum, media companies agreed to restrictions on content. Even beyond the injunctions against certain behavior (swearing, nudity, etc.) broadcasters are subject to positive responsibilities about how they use their airtime. TV networks are legally obligated to run news programming.

The FCC is insulated enough from partisan politics that its censorship doesn't run along partisan lines, and is therefore not very controversial. But TV is absolutely censored.

[aptwebapps]

Broadcast television is probably censored everywhere, but we're talking about Myanmar (and in this subthread, India) so the FCC is not highly relevant.

[zbentley]

Crediting technology platforms with the Arab Spring is a really misleading and troublesome narrative that a lot of people blindly accept.

"Credit" confuses causal importance with (human) responsibility.

Normal Borlaug engineered a variety of wheat that fed a lot of people and saved a lot of lives. What deserves credit? The wheat or the inventor? Or Mendel et.al, for pioneering the principles of genetics that Borlaug used in his work? Even if "someone else would have done it if Borlaug didn't", he is still (one of) the most important human actors responsible for averting the crisis. The materials/products used are causally important; not humanly-responsible.

In this case, humans were responsible for the Arab Spring. For the most part, social media platforms were causally important to the process.

It gets much harder to draw that line, though, when the platforms are behaving in activist ways (e.g. $literally_any_technology_headline_in_the_last_week).

[zbentley]

*Norman Borlaug. Not "Normal".

[thriftwy]

> credit for the Arab Spring

Is it still viewed as a positive event? Any countries where it lead to improvements instead of instability?

[emodendroket]

In retrospect, they might not want credit for the Arab Spring either.