Read on Twitter
It’s interesting to watch the Official Information Tickers on Facebook and Instagram, which started up during election season, go from “It’s normal to not get results from an election for days and even weeks” to “Biden is the projected winner now and there’s no fraud whatsoever.”
It’s also interesting that the Official Info Tickers note that “election officials note that fraud is not prevalent and the worst kind of malfeasance are arguments that put the validity of elections in doubt” which you will notice was not something claimed after 2016 or 2000.
These Official Information Tickers are not going away after the election, I can guarantee you. There is too much value in having a voice of authority like that every time you open your social media app.
These tickers are curated and edited and tailored to respond to events outside the ostensible purview of the running of a platform, which seem like the actions of a publisher to me.
Another thing that will not go away after the election is the flagging of tweets that are “disputed”. Again, this voice of authority is too valuable to be discarded. In the future other viewpoints and statements seen as problematic are sure to also be flagged.
This isn’t done by algorithm as far as I can tell. Earlier I tried tweeting a generic tweet about election fraud and the election being stolen. Neither were automatically flagged. Someone is manually flagging the tweets of mostly large accounts with these problematic views
Editorializing on your users’ content, no matter how “correct” you might be, is not the action of a platform but that of a publisher. As with blanket statements that, no matter how “correct”, promote a certain view. It’s difficult to construe any other interpretation
“Terms of Service” is always the defense. “If you don’t like being told to shut up then just leave” is seemingly the advice, which seems odd for “platforms” whose sole purpose is speech. And that seems like an awfully convenient argument in the first place.
The policing roles of social media platforms should be to curtail harassment and to end threats and “hate speech” as defined by racially and ethnically derogatory statements. That’s kind of it.
To pretend that social media has an additional societal responsibility to promote “correct” thinking and discourage “problematic” thinking, particularly when these “platforms” are worldwide and have massive influence, is to me a dangerous proposition.
Is it idiotic that people use Twitter and Facebook to promote flat earth theories? Yes. But if you’re merely a platform and not a publisher, then you don’t make that call.
If a user is saying “drinking bleach is healthy” then that’s a physically harmful message that should be flagged. But if you’re flagging ideas and arguments as “harmful”, I’m not sure that’s healthy at all.
I don’t know what the fix is for this. It’s not simply to leave social media, to cede that battleground and rely on scratching out messages on tree bark as an alternative.
Government regulation seems like an overreach as well. However with Twitter & Facebook actively flagging politicians and suppressing news stories that might influence a national political election, essentially stepping into the ring, it’s hard to simply call them neutral actors
What I can tell you is that social media as they are currently constituted, not providing an open platform but taking on more of an activist role with widespread reach and power, is not healthy for our national or global discourse
