[herostratus101]

Sure, they can. Should they? And should they be allowed to looking forward, or are they now an active threat to democracy? By the way, I say this speaking as a conservative who opposes basically everything the Socialist Workers Party stands for, but who is more threatened by autocratic tech censorship than by opposing ideas.

[SllX]

There isn’t a shortage of means to socialize and communicate digitally. Facebook rises and falls on its own merits and if your speech depends on Facebook, that’s a personal problem, and reflects your own personal choices.

20 years ago Facebook didn’t exist. Now we have Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr, WordPress (both the service and the software), YouTube, SoundCloud, the Fediverse, Twitch, Slack, Discord, iMessage groups, whatever the 3 Google messengers of the day are, XMPP clients and servers, IRC (which is admittedly more than 20 years old), countless dating sites, Reddit, and countless other “social networks”. When the bars re-open, we’ll have those too, and that is an ancient institution.

And for what it’s worth, there’s also the comments section of NRO and The Dispatch. Oh, and the forum we’re talking on.

[bostonsre]

Sure, there isn't a shortage of digital communication, but they are responsible for a large proportion of that communication and they hold the power of tilting democracies by choice of those in charge of the company or by seemingly random bearucratic decisions made by their employees. They are a medium of information distribution. If certain phone companies decide to not put through calls years ago in an effort to sway democracies, would that have been acceptable? They are a for profit business ruled by one individual that has extraordinary power. As a society, are we really supposed to just let them do whatever they want just because there are less popular alternatives?

[SllX]

There was an argument to be made to treat phone companies like common carriers, I’m not entirely sure that was the best way to handle them, but it happened, and it was a good argument nonetheless, or at least well argued.

Social media isn’t like that at all. Social media proliferates and in different forms and it does so internationally with popular and unpopular opinions easily spreading like wildfire. I have no problem with the Facebooks and the Twitters of the world running their servers with the carte blanche of the private property owners that they are because what you and others perceive as a lack of options and alternatives looks more to me like there’s not a lot of options today compared to how many there will be 20 years from now.

Go look back at the history of the web, here’s an incomplete and not comprehensive list of sites and internet services which have existed, do exist, ceased to exist, got gobbled up by bigger fish and spawned smaller networks of their own and probably in some small way contributed to the political conscience of most Americans alive today and definitely not concerning ourselves with all of the countless web forums, Usenet groups, and mailing lists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_serv...

Classmates.com: 1995

GameFAQs: 1995

Newgrounds: 1995

ICQ: 1996

AIM: 1997

CaringBridge: 1997

Slashdot: 1997

Penny Arcade: 1998

Yahoo Messenger: 1998

BlackPlanet: 1999

Blogger: 1999

Fark: 1999

Kiwibox: 1999

LiveJournal: 1999

Metafilter: 1999

Neopets: 1999

Something Awful: 1999

Xanga: 1999

CrossFit: 2000

DeviantArt: 2000

Radio UserLand: 2000

Wikipedia: 2001

YTMND: 2001

Yahoo Groups: 2001

last.fm: 2002

Meetup: 2002

4chan: 2003

Gaia Online: 2003

LinkedIn: 2003

MEETin: 2003

MySpace: 2003

Second Life: 2003

Steam: 2003

WordPress: 2003

Digg: 2004

Facebook: 2004

Flickr: 2004

hi5: 2004

IMVU: 2004

PatientsLikeMe: 2004

RoosterTeeth Forums: 2004

TV Tropes: 2004

World of Warcraft: 2004

Yelp: 2004

Vimeo: 2004

Dailymotion: 2005

Google Talk: 2005

LibraryThing: 2005

Ning: 2005

Reddit: 2005

YouTube: 2005

CafeMom: 2006

Flixster: 2006

Goodreads: 2006

iLike: 2006

ReverbNation: 2006

Twitter: 2006

Chess.com: 2007

Italki: 2007

SoundCloud: 2007

Tumblr: 2007

Hacker News: 2007

Justin.tv: 2007

Academia.edu: 2008

GovLoop: 2008

identi.ca: 2008

Nextdoor: 2008

Formspring: 2009

Foursquare: 2009

Grindr: 2009

Pinterest: 2009

Quora: 2009

WhatsApp: 2009

Friendica: 2010

Instagram: 2010

Untappd: 2010

Duolingo: 2011

Fishbrain: 2011

I Had Cancer: 2011

Letterboxd: 2011

Twitch: 2011

Whisper: 2012

Google Hangouts: 2013

Slack: 2013

Vine: 2013

Voat: 2014

Yo: 2014

Discord: 2015

Periscope: 2015

Gab: 2016

Houseparty: 2016

Mastodon: 2016

Peach: 2016

micro.blog: 2017

Parler: 2018

So let’s break this down.

> Sure, there isn't a shortage of digital communication, but they are responsible for a large proportion of that communication and they hold the power of tilting democracies by choice of those in charge of the company or by seemingly random bearucratic decisions made by their employees.

No. We are responsible for our own communications and when we don’t trust the messenger, we encode our messages or we use a different messenger. We are also the ones responsible for the upkeep of our own democracy and the upkeep of the institutions which maintain it because it’s ours and our responsibility. Corporations, as it turns out, as organizations which represent the aggregate interests of their owners and employees, are also actors in aggregate within the framework of our democracy, much like name a group of three or more people.

How ten thousand people voted in one place or fifty-thousand voted in another isn’t Facebook’s responsibility, or Twitter’s, or Reddit’s, or Slack’s. It’s the responsibility of every single person who cast their own vote, which should be all of the people who cast votes in every election.

> They are a medium of information distribution.

They are a handful out of the millions of ways that exist to distribute information.

> They are a for profit business ruled by one individual that has extraordinary power. As a society, are we really supposed to just let them do whatever they want just because there are less popular alternatives?

They are dust. If our free speech depended on the whims of one Mark Zuckerberg and one Jack Dorsey, then we didn’t have free speech to begin with. Facebook and Twitter are critters of the last 20 years, there have been others, and there will be more like them, but also entirely unlike them.

The way people talk about social media companies today they make it sound like we need some sort of Social Media Public Commission to control the moderation policies and enforce the publication of government speech. We don’t, because we have what we need: competition and the many many technologies that enable it and a free flow of cash and labor and capital.

It’s disgusting to me how freely conspiracy theorists, socialists, PRC apologists and neo-Nazis can easily congregate and talk themselves up into a furor about seizing the means of killing the Jews before Bill Gates takes over the world and prevents Chairman Winnie the Pooh from leading us into glorious revolution, but that’s the mark of a free society that they can find a way and will always find a way. So is being able to tell the President and anyone else to get off your lawn and/or servers.

[bostonsre]

> the list Just because there are hundreds of extremely less popular social media platforms does not erase the fact that they have most of the users. Decisions they make about filtering content impact a large majority of our population.

> They are dust.

How is having 223 million users in the United States in 2020 equate to facebook being dust? They have a strangle hold on the market and a large portion of the United States uses facebook as their primary news source.

> If our free speech depended on the whims of one Mark Zuckerberg and one Jack Dorsey, then we didn’t have free speech to begin with.

I either don't understand what you mean by this or it sounds incorrect to me. People use facebook as a means of communication and as a means of receiving news. Why does that fact have any bearing over whether or not we had free speech before they came along? And are you saying that just because we didn't have free speech before means its ok that free speech is entirely free now?

> Facebook and Twitter are critters of the last 20 years, there have been others, and there will be more like them, but also entirely unlike them.

Does it really matter what the state of social media companies was before or in the future in this conversation? They are infringing on speech now. Their goals are not aligned with the United States, they are aligned with making money.

> The way people talk about social media companies today they make it sound like we need some sort of Social Media Public Commission to control the moderation policies and enforce the publication of government speech. We don’t, because we have what we need: competition and the many many technologies that enable it and a free flow of cash and labor and capital.

Are you seriously saying that fair competition is currently happening in the social media market? Facebook is currently being sued for being a monopoly. They have unfairly crushed numerous companies and will continue to do so.

Is your conclusion that everything is fine and that companies should do whatever they can to make money no matter the impact it has on people or our democracy?

Facebook dominates the social media market right now. They are making decisions on speech of a large proportion of our country. They themselves have attempted to setup commissions to better define how to moderate content fairly, but to this point they have failed. Why would laws detailing how they should moderate content be a bad thing? There are already laws around horrible content that should not be served, could it really hurt to extend it and make free speech content moderation a public policy decision of our democracy?

[SllX]

Look forward, and look back.

Facebook and Twitter are a blip in history. Their relevance today pales in comparison to their historic and future relevance. All 233M, scratch that, all billion or two billion or however many of those users have other things to do with their time besides Facebook all day. Facebook in that case is a part of their lives, it is not a replacement for their lives nor what ultimately determines their lives and choices, meaning it does not absolve anyone of personal responsibility for the choices they make.

So yes, they are dust, as dusty as the lot of us together. Reactionary policies and laws would do more to cement their place and continued presence in society than letting new generations grow up and make determinations about which social networks they value and develop antibodies to the shrillness of mass to mass communication. There is value in Facebook, so new users continue to make accounts and make use of the service much as people continue to buy smartphones and PCs and automobiles, but the value looks different to every person.

If Facebook and Twitter were the only two socialization methods available to society, I might be more concerned. They’re simply not, and most people have multiple means of socialization and multiple social networks.

EDIT: Forgot one bit in particular I wanted to address.

> Their goals are not aligned with the United States, they are aligned with making money.

That is correct. We’re not just one big unified hunky dory family all marching towards the same ends and the same future. We’re a bunch of people, with our own interests, and mostly unconcerned with the government and the State until we need to be. Facebook is concerned with making money, I’m concerned with my own affairs, and you are also concerned with your own affairs. That’s life, and if we see each other on the street, let’s get along.

[bostonsre]

> Facebook and Twitter are a blip in history. Their relevance today pales in comparison to their historic and future relevance. All 233M, scratch that, all billion or two billion or however many of those users have other things to do with their time besides Facebook all day. Facebook in that case is a part of their lives, it is not a replacement for their lives nor what ultimately determines their lives and choices, meaning it does not absolve anyone of personal responsibility for the choices they make.

Why does the past or future matter? Their decisions can impact our democracy now. The fact is, they own the market now and they can impact our democracy now.

Are you in favor of a completely "free" market? You really believe that competition alone will ensure consumers have the final say? What about standard oil? Did that go well? Monopolies and oligopolies strangle out competition and harm the consumer. That is why laws were put in place to prevent those types of things from happening. That is why facebook is being sued by the FTC right now. Their business practices are unfair to competition and are not in the best interest of our society.

> That is correct. We’re not just one big unified hunky dory family all marching towards the same ends and the same future. We’re a bunch of people, with our own interests, and mostly unconcerned with the government and the State until we need to be. Facebook is concerned with making money, I’m concerned with my own affairs, and you are also concerned with your own affairs. That’s life, and if we see each other on the street, let’s get along.

So are you saying we just let facebook do whatever they want until they are replaced by competition? What if that impacts our society negatively for a year? A decade? 100 years? At what point do we step in and enact laws to protect our society from negative consequences?

The point of the government is to be a steward of our society and to ensure it is fair, healthy and prosperous. Laws are put in place to do just that. The content moderation practices of facebook can impact our society. It seems logical to me that the government should enact laws to do the same in this case as it would in other activities detrimental to society (e.g. murder, drunk driving, etc).

[mnd999]

> socialists

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Not just you either.

[SllX]

It does, I don’t often, and I don’t use it as a synonym for non-socialist parties and ideologies.

Try again mate.

[throwaway45349]

I mean, that's fine, but I take issue with one party having this massive megaphone to the world, with the other side having theirs completely snuffed.

Either ban them all, or ban none of them.