[Tuckerism]

I would say the distinction here is allowing some parties "direct influence over millions of people" and not others. As other commenters have pointed out, it feels like the decision on who gets access to the "virtual town square" is a small, un-elected, and limited-accountability group.

I do agree with your final point-- if social media went dark tomorrow, no ones rights would be diminished. But if it went dark for only certain people, I think we would agree that -something- is being diminished (even if it's not necessarily a right or that it's in the best interest of everyone).

I fully believe that this is a topic where people get to land differently, and I respect those that do their mental calculus differently. There's so many second-order and third-order effects when it comes to speech, and then you amplify it to global-level... there's no great, clean answer. But ultimately, we get to choose what we weigh as most important-- as I've heard others on HN say, "If we wrap ourselves around every conceivable axle then nothing will be achieved."

[dlisboa]

I agree with you it's a hard topic. I consider myself jaded. I'm not even old and am starting to think the "olden days" (20 years ago) were simpler and saner. My perspective is of someone who is completely disillusioned with all of it. I don't think Social Media can have a net-positive impact in the world at all, even if I use it and find many good parts in it. The ugly bits will always outweigh the positive.

We have to ask ourselves: what are these new tools and inventions being used for? Are we better off today, where everyone has access to this virtual square, or 30 years ago where no one really had a place to say what were on their minds? I think it's clear, with respect to COVID-19, we're much worse off since the tools like YouTube and Facebook are being used to worsen the epidemic, not make it better.

Obviously it can have a good impact. I use YouTube everyday to educate myself on multiple topics (mainly history, computer science, architecture -- non-contentious things). I love that aspect of it, I have more access to knowledge now than I ever thought possible. But in order to limit YouTube to that it'll have to be heavily regulated and stripped down. Which raises the questions of free speech.

Still, I think we may find in a few decades that things like Facebook/Twitter/Youtube were better off left uninvented, never to have seen the light of day, like VX gas and nuclear bombs.

[exporectomy]

I wonder if the thing that should be uninvented is the profit motive for political speech. Why do people have to be paid to share their political opinions? We could still have Youtube and people saying whatever they like, but in a way that neither Youtube nor the creator is financially rewarded for popularity. Somehow. Of course that applies to traditional media too which is divisive because its profitable.