[rwmj]

You are missing the whole point. Facebook (and Youtube etc) do not simply show you all opinions in the world at the same time with equal weight. They select things for you to view based on your prior interactions with the website. So they can emphasize and deemphasize articles and videos to show you next. Across their entire userbase selecting articles that are based in reality will have a large effect.

[ojnabieoot]

This is the real point: Facebook's "Ministry of Truth" is currently a "Ministry of Clicks and Ad Engagement" and Facebook is happy to interfere in the free flow of information if they can make a quick buck off it. Likewise with Google searches, Twitter feeds, and so on. There is no such thing as a for-profit internet content platform which truly engages in some competitive free market. Reddit is sort of close, at least in principle - Google and Facebook aren't even on paper.

I would agree that this is gross and I don't personally use Facebook. But the idea that profit-motived filtering and selection is OK, yet additionally filtering out clear and dangerous misinformation is somehow 1984-level authoritarianism, is just dumb. Considering Facebook has been complicit in stolen elections and genocide, it's dangerously dumb.

[creaghpatr]

>So they can emphasize and deemphasize articles and videos to show you next.

Maybe they should stop doing that then.

[rwmj]

I mean, that's their vastly lucrative model to engage the attention of people on their websites, but sure we could ask them to stop I suppose.