I bet this kind of mess is exactly what Zuck was trying to avoid when he didn't want to implement free speech restrictions or fact checking, because there's no solution to be found here - if you don't mark anti climate change material as false, your fact checkers are worthless and you're kowtowing to political/moneyed elements that are against it; and if you do, those elements will declare you biased, claim censorship, and seek political action. Of course, the other side will eventually seek political action in the first case as well, so there's no winning.
It's been entertaining to watch him gradually tightening the screws on speech over the years though, as if this kind of end result was ever in doubt. Outrage is stronger than principle, and the same thing can be seen on reddit at smaller scale (in the last decade reddit has banned, more or less in order - pedo-adjacent, hate, violence, harassment/doxing, gore and illegal commerce communities). I don't think there's any way for a social media giant to avoid these kinds of restrictions - communities will spring up around any kind of material, other people will find them and the news will write about them (with the amusing side effect that you'll get a Streisand effect if you don't shut it down due to the increased attention).
Facebook has it worse it seems - they're actively taking money from some of the groups they're restricting/fact-checking, which is all kinds of messy and filled with conflicts of interest. It seems the money is winning out, which is about what I'd expect. It'll be interesting to see how they resolve these issues in the coming years.
> It's been entertaining to watch him gradually tightening the screws on speech over the years though
It's sad to read the Terms of Service and easily count Facebook PR scandals like rings in a tree-trunk. My "favorite" example is the years-long fights over breastfeeding photos on individual profiles and in parenting groups: https://bc.ctvnews.ca/facebook-policy-on-breastfeeding-photo...
When a policy gets so specific that it starts talking about times the "child is latched" my eyes just glaze over and I can only read it like "DEAR WOMAN, please remember your body is disgusting, you're disgusting for having it, and it must remain covered aside from these extremely-specific legally-mandated exceptions. With love, everyone at FB."
Id say the problem is with American culture tho. The US has a weird puritan stance towards nudity. Facebook in this case just panders to the crowd... as they do to the leftists in regards of censorship. So yeah, no need to be hysterical and talk about "disgusting bodies".
> and if you do, those elements will declare you biased, claim censorship, and seek political action. Of course, the other side will eventually seek political action in the first case as well, so there's no winning.
I mean, this may be close to the root problem. At this point, the political atmosphere in the US is charged enough that scientific facts have become a matter of political debate.
The problem is that not all anti climate change materials nor all anti mask material are false. There are plenty of legitimate studies on those sides, fact checking them away would be lying. So your fact checkers would need to be way more competent than your average journalist, so scaling that up to moderate the whole worlds communication is simply not possible.
But if this job is hard already for professional journalists on a full-time job, how exactly is an average person with no background knowledge and limited time and attention supposed to do it?
To me this argument sounds like "Sometimes life vests are faulty, therefore they provide a false sense of security, therefore we should get rid of all life vests and just hope people have good swimming skills".
> There are plenty of legitimate studies on those sides, fact checking them away would be lying.
If they are legitimate, why would a fact checker say otherwise?
I wouldn't know without examining the studies who to trust more there. Harvard might be getting money from some fancy "non-profit" to put out some dubious study as well.
Agreed if it were just between those two parties, one wanted to sell me a questionable product, and the other wanted me to be informed about the questionable product.
It's been entertaining to watch him gradually tightening the screws on speech over the years though, as if this kind of end result was ever in doubt. Outrage is stronger than principle, and the same thing can be seen on reddit at smaller scale (in the last decade reddit has banned, more or less in order - pedo-adjacent, hate, violence, harassment/doxing, gore and illegal commerce communities). I don't think there's any way for a social media giant to avoid these kinds of restrictions - communities will spring up around any kind of material, other people will find them and the news will write about them (with the amusing side effect that you'll get a Streisand effect if you don't shut it down due to the increased attention).
Facebook has it worse it seems - they're actively taking money from some of the groups they're restricting/fact-checking, which is all kinds of messy and filled with conflicts of interest. It seems the money is winning out, which is about what I'd expect. It'll be interesting to see how they resolve these issues in the coming years.