LogFAQs > #947734665

The problem with it is the question of what's offensive and what's false. With the exception of outright lies, there's always some wiggle room when it comes to falsehood and curation largely become a partisan issue. As for offensive content, most social media platforms *already* curate their platforms to remove the absolute worst stuff and the rest has, once again, largely become partisan and social.

On a fundamental level, as private businesses these companies should be allowed to do whatever they want (which isn't wasn't happening, since it's largely leftists right now taking over and dictating how these platforms operation) and, one would hope, they would skew towards freedom excluding the worst of the worst behavior. However, when it comes to failing to curate some content on their platform, they should probably be open to libel laws (especially since I'm reasonably sure under certain circumstances newspapers themselves can be sued for providing a medium for a knowingly false claim)

faramir77 posted...

The issue of false information spreading on social media is setting itself up to be the single most damaging thing to democracy in history.

The inaction of Twitter and Facebook on dealing with the spread of fake news has hurt democracy more than any dictator ever has. There's an alarming number of people that refuse to believe anything that isn't presented as a conspiracy that aligns with their pre-established worldviews on Facebook.

I'm sure the media is certainly outraged over no longer being the leading source for misinformation and fake news =p

However, one of largest potential problems with social media these days is the companies themselves skewing information by using content curation to advance a narrative and acting in a partisan matter (such as inundating voters from one party with get out & vote messages rather than giving equal consideration to all voters). These companies are set up in a way that they can actively engage in stealthy shit.

As for social media echo chambers, alternative (and even mainstream) media *already* exists and does literally that same thing. You don't need Twitter or Facebook to promote conspiracy theories when publications when "trusted" media outlets serves that same function and lend a far greater authority. The internet is full of potential misinformers, generally disguised to give themselves the appearance of credibility. How many times has somebody on this site tried to use mediabiasfactcheck.com in an argument purely because it has a domain that ranks highly on search results? This is despite the fact that the site's author takes pride in having zero credentials (meaning he's as authoritative as Erik P) and, more importantly, the fact that the site's author seemingly has no public social media footprint, meaning he might not even exist at all.

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