I think you misunderstood me. The people spreading misinformation have mostly been Reps, and Reps are also more commonly victims of censorship (these things are connected, obv). As a consequence, the Dems are more interested in stopping misinformation from spreading, and also less concerned about censorship since it’s less likely to affect them (they have the majority of the media on their side).
So when the Reps were in power there was more reason to worry about misinformation, and now the Dems are in power there is more reason to worry about censorship.
Do you support these laws that allow employees to be fired for no reason and with no notice, then? Employment conditions in the US seem pretty barbaric from a European perspective.
I have no idea what the laws are about this so I don’t even know where to start.
One side promotes bigotry, cruelty, and misinformation, and the other side maybe is occasionally a bit too harsh with its criticism. These are not equivalent. You’re “both sides are crazy” nonsense is the worst kind of lazy argument.
That’s not what I see at all. One side spreads fake news and conspiracy theories, the other is determined to enforce ideological conformity at any cost.
I think that social media companies are capable of developing their own framework and their own standards for content that is offensive, obscene, patently false, and whatever else – the question is, once they’ve developed that framework, how consistently do they apply that standard?
In the past, social media companies have clearly had the ability to flag misinformation; they just chose not to act on it until fairly recently, once their practices came under closer scrutiny. In the past, social media companies have clearly had the ability to flag and ban users for misinformation; they just chose not to act on it consistently until fairly recently, (again) once their practices came under closer scrutiny.
Social media would probably have the justification to take down a post if they had some standards (TOS), which they apparently do have, and evidence that a post violated those standards. And developing standards, though admittedly imperfect and always evolving, isn’t impossible. It’s very possible for social media to develop standards of acceptable content. They have the ability to conclude that calling the survivors of a school shooting ‘crisis actors’ is completely over the boundary of what is acceptable. They have the ability to conclude that any claim that the election was stolen is, at minimum, disputable. It’s a question of whether they have the will to take action.
In the end, maybe government regulation isn’t absolutely necessary to compel companies to act - maybe the threat of action alone is enough to spring them into action, which is fine by me. I’d prefer that to actual regulation if that can be achieved. But sitting around and hiding behind phony first amendment defenses is not an option, in my view.
I get the fact that it’s the users who are the ones responsible for generating the harmful content, whatever it may be, but it’s the platforms themselves that essentially give them disproportionate capabilities in terms of being able to spread these socially and politically corrosive ideas, and few objective people can deny that the fact that they’re corrosive enough to undermine liberal democracy if given enough time.
That’s not happening, except in instances in which someone’s used their powers to promote bigotry (i.e. Trump and his enablers in office). They should have their reputations ruined, and they should be hounded from public office.
But criticism and even getting fired isn’t close to “trying to ruin people’s lives”. So many conservative snowflakes just can’t take criticism, and equate it with this because they’ve never faced serious criticism before. And you’re helping them in this delusion.
Are you fucking kidding me? You don’t think Trump should have his reputation ruined and be prevented from holding public office? And you think attempts to do this are “cruelty”?