Twitter and Facebook are working overtime to throw the election to Joe Biden. It's so obvious now that it doesn't require links to sources or paragraphs illustrating it with examples, so let's move on to the solution. I think it's pretty simple.
If we remove their protection as platforms and name them publishers, they would be immediately exposed to an avalanche of lawsuits for defamation, slander, libel and more. They'd be wiped out instantly. I would bet that both would close within a week, unless ... unless they started to charge customers for accounts.
Charging customers for accounts would allow them to raise money for legal costs and would go a long way towards cleaning up the platforms. Trolls who now troll for free would probably go find something else to do. If the account fee was high enough, Twitter might become a replacement for the AP, a professional guild of journalists.
Alternately, they could go back to being the phone company, a simple platform with no editorial control. If the social justice crazies wanted to post about how horrible white people are, they could post all ... wait. That's what they do now. How about: the people who don't think men can have babies could post all they wanted without interference from Twitter and Facebook.
If they became platforms, we'd have to learn to accept that people who thought differently are allowed to express their opinions no matter how much we were offended. We might learn to stop being offended at everything.
Bonus Question: Why is Big Tech so utterly in bed with the Democrats? There's more money to be made supporting Trump, so it's not about the Benjamins. It's got to be something else. Maybe they're True Believers in the social justice madness. That's the only conclusion I can reach.
Oh goody.
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7 comments:
I fail to see the downside of Twitter and Facebook going bankrupt and ceasing to exist.
Tim - Concur. Not only do I not see a down side, I see a huge upside if they and YouTube and Instagram and the whole bunch go “quietly into the night”. Just think people might actually start talking to people in person again...
Which reminds me... One day a few years before I retired I was talking to a youngster at work and he said that if I were to post about, for example, the donut I’d had that morning, I’d be more of a ‘real person’. After a moment of cognitive dissonance, I asked ‘so that would make
me “more of a real person” than my standing here and talking to you face-to-face?’ He actually thought and said, ‘I guess that is kind of stupid isn’t it?’ But he also still insisted it was true. I think that generation may be a loss.
Also:
"Why is Big Tech so utterly in bed with the Democrats? There's more money to be made supporting Trump"
Is that actually true? It looks to me like the money in Big Tech comes from advertisers and online purchases. And who would you expect to be more swayed by advertising, and to spend more money online? Youngsters who have just started getting some significant money, still believe advertisers are honest, and haven't learned how to manage their money yet? Or a bunch of cynical old conservative tightwads?
I definitely agree the world would be better off without them. They are an impediment to deep thought and concrete action.
As for Big Tech reaping ad benefits, I don't see how that would change if they supported Mr. Corporate Tax Cuts or were at least supinely neutral. After all, where else are the advertisers going to go?
Just think people might actually start talking to people in person again...
The problem with current culture isn't that folks don't talk.
It's that the tactic of 'getting in their faces' and generally being insane and rude-- promoted by Rules for Radicals and popularized by protesters in the 60s-- is now standard in far too many social groups.
There are a lot of people who hate text based conversation because they can say whatever they want in person, and be verbally abusive to those who don't fall in line. Face to face conversation matters as a social enforcement measure to the online activism.
I can't count the number of times a relative has talked about how so-and-so is just so horrible on social media, they can't believe it, blah blah blah...and when I carefully ask if they've paid attention to how the person acts in person, with a few leading questions, they realize that the behavior isn't different. The social pressures to shut up and accept the bad behavior are different, when the person can't throw a snit and bully you into being quiet and accepting whatever garbage they just threw out.
This is especially bad with the relatives who never said what they said, if what they said was wrong. You "misunderstood."
Twitter and Facebook are just smalltalk in a format that can be seen more easily. They are a means of connection. That most of the folks on them, I wouldn't care to connect with, is an entirely different problem... (one which matches the rest of reality)
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They try to control social media for the same reason that they try to control social interaction. They want power. It's controlling people.
Foxfire - What I said was people talk TO each other. What you described is people talking at/past each other. That is the very essence of the problem. Otherwise I agree with everything you wrote.
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I don't know how to fix it, though.
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