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>Making decisions about what content your audience sees is an act of publishing, even if it's executed via complex algorithm. This is true. And it is more difficult than most people want to even come close to dealing with. Let's say that you wave a wand and you have a bot that will 100% eliminate every racist claim ever made on the service, burying it and showing it to no one. You have just made it impossible to talk about racism. By killing the discussion, you will enlarge the groups of people who would never think to use a racial epithet, but who harbor deep convictions that different races have genetically-driven differences in capability and some need coddling. That is racism. But you can't even point that out, let alone discuss why it is factually wrong, on a sanitized platform. On a sanitized Twitter, Megan Phelps-Roper and her sister would still be members of Westover Baptist Church, protesting gay funerals and spewing vitriol. They might not be able to do it on Twitter, but they'd be doing it elsewhere. Because Twitter was NOT sanitized, and because it WAS possible to confront people with total refutation and challenge to their most closely-held beliefs, Megan Phelps-Roper was convinced that her own position was wrong and destructive. And because of that lack of censorship, that permission to offend and call out, Westover Baptist has 2 fewer people working daily to hurt others. Anyone calling for a sanitized online platform is calling for a death of discussion, a death of social progress, and a death of any opportunity for the ignorant to learn. In the 1960s, it was profane, disgusting, and obscene to suggest that interracial marriage should be allowed. It wasn't just 'a different opinion.' It was a view that made people sick, that riled up violence, that led to name-calling and hate. And it was only because the public forum was able to bear that hate, those insults, etc, that progress eventually happened. Eric Schmidt in his book 'A New Digital Age' makes the argument that people like himself should take the reigns and kill discussion so that he might make the decisions for society. Were he around in the 60s, he would be fighting to lock down discussions about interracial marriage. He, and many like him, see the public having heated discussions and roiling in conflict and conclude they are mindless and incapable of policing themselves. This is a view as old as time. It's Conservatism. The old kind. The kind that backed kings, pharoahs, chieftains, etc. The kind that said some people are simply Better and destined to lead, while others are Lesser and destined to follow. Don't be surprised, but many are comfortable to accept that role as a follower if it means less responsibility or need to think. Conservatism died out near the end of the 18th century and through the 19th but there is no reason it couldn't re-establish itself with a fresh coat of paint and maybe with the help of some automation. |