[RNCTX]

Indeed.

I wonder what the cell phone generation would think of our pulp paper fake Necronomicons from the 1970s? There was also a book of spells at my local library in the very-white very-evangelical suburbs of Little Rock, AR when I was a kid, too. I liked the one about how to become a werewolf a lot, but didn't really get to the point of going and murdering a dog and painting myself with its blood and boiled fat.

The pearl-clutching about social media is because power has been taken away. Media executives can no longer fancy themselves in control of people's minds, because they no longer have a monopoly on eyeballs via print and TV information.

Worse yet (for them), the user customizable nature of social media feeds mean that they can't even know what people really see.

If people use the internet to make themselves worse that's a failure of people not the internet.

[mnsc]

But back in Little Rock, AR when you were a kid. Are you sure that there was someone who sat in on every private gettogether in every house, located in a corner listening for keywords and when someone said something mildly racist this cornerman gently told your uncle that "these racist inclination you seem to have, did you know that the local bookstore White Pages™ has a book called Mein Kampf that confirms your suspicions, you should read that one, if you like of course, not telling you, just a friendly suggestion, it's actually on sale now".

[close04]

Does this mean you consider scale to be irrelevant to this situation? Because that's pretty much what the difference boils down to. You mention "media" as s singular entity but in reality the media of the past was a mosaic of thousands of individual outlets, newspapers, radios, TV stations. Today FB is a singular entity with the combined power of most of those together. Do you agree that changes the game?

FB has almost every eyeball now. Can you say the same about your fake Necronomicon? Book of spells? The media that controlled your mind?

The last statement is basically one against any form of control or regulation. If people use the x to make themselves worse that's a failure of people not x. Sometimes people need help.

[disgruntledphd2]

But it's not. The news on Facebook is in fact those newspapers, TV shows and whatnot, plus loads more amateurs than ever before.

They are a platform rather than a publisher, in my view at least.

[close04]

Saying that scale is irrelevant makes me think you are intentionally obtuse about this. FB picks which newspaper's article to show you just like newspapers choose which journalist's article to show you. And just like newspapers give a tremendous amount of power to one individual (the journalist) compared to another (you), FB can do the same for individual articles and outlets. Except FB has the kind of reach no newspaper ever had or will. They give a podium for others to climb on, they decide who gets the front seats, and they monetize it.

For all intents and purposes they should be responsible for everything that happens on the platform regardless of where the content was picked up from. They should have a responsibility but this comes in conflict with their goal to to drive engagement and profits.

Their algorithm curates what people see, shows specific links, and influences opinions. And when you can influence opinions on such a large scale and monetize it we have a conflict of interest and even a weapon. FB and others have proven this in the past. Why do you think the media is regulated so tightly around election time? FB can take even a blog post and push it so aggressively right before elections that they manage to sway opinions but still claim they were just a platform.

[RNCTX]

The counter-argument is that it's easier than ever for an individual to find critical analyses of that information. If you were suspect of the information on TV in 1983 there was no one to tell you any different, unless you put effort into finding it.

Let's put it in terms other than politics...

In the early 1980s a full third of all households in the US watched the TV show "Dallas" every weekend. Was "Dallas" the greatest performance ever made or just the best option out of 3 choices?