| The key difference here is that the speech is already highly managed and influenced to a degree never before seen in history. To think otherwise would be foolish. Twitter isn't some natural state of the world that is pristine and unassailable; Facebook isn't the square in the park where people can speak their voice, and other choose to listen, participate, or walk along. Neither are anything like a book or newspaper. If you're saying we shouldn't optimize or manage or turn the dials of these systems, then that's accepting that the current management and optimization and dials are somehow, inexplicably, acceptable or natural. Someone has designed these systems and is influencing speech with their decisions. I don't have any power over them, but someone does, and the dials and designs of the system and the type of speech and communication they reinforce or encourage will change over time. What gives them, the designers of the systems, any more right to manage their own system and the speech on it by their design choices? Are we to simply accept the corporations' design of their systems without critique or argument? Not taking any action is to accept the current action, which still influences society. Not managing systems is to accept the current state of those systems, which still manages speech. I do not see any difference whatsoever in those paths, so I will argue for trying to improve the systems. |