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A few thoughts on the week of Trump deplatforming. Main point: it is a distraction from both the root causes of the problem (the design, scale and market concentration of platforms), and the solutions to it - democratic governance. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-trumps-social-media-ban-clouds-a-bigger-crisis-the-power-and-systemic/
These bans could be the platforms "taking a broader view of their responsibilities" or more cynically, a deference to an incoming power the day Trump lost his. They are likely both. They are also a distraction.
They are a distraction from the failures of content moderation. More specifically, the failure of our experiment in outsourcing the moderation of speech in our societies to a small number of private companies mediating the speech of billions of people at a global scale.
They are a distraction from the consequences of market concertration shown by the Google/Apple/AWS deplatforming of a platform: Parler. Companies that own the infrastructure making unilateral decisions about the companies that use it and thus shaping political and econ activity.
Playing whack-a-mole with bad content/actors (and the subsequent legitimate free speech debates), confuses the symptoms for the structural elements of the problem: how the platforms are designed to work.
As the @SMLabTO @RyersonU @PhMai recently found, after the U.S. election “Facebook’s algorithm drove 100 new people to join the first ‘Stop The Steal’ group every 10 seconds.” This is a design problem, not a user problem. https://theconversation.com/twitter-permanently-suspends-trump-after-u-s-capitol-siege-citing-risk-of-further-violence-152924
A focus on Trump's tweets is therefore also a distraction from the solutions. Governments have largely left the governance of our digital lives to a handful of private companies, whose goals may or may not be aligned with the public good. This approach has failed.
Democratic governments must now lead difficult conversations: about what speech should be allowed online, about implementing accountability and transparency mechanisms for the data-driven economy, and about the necessity of competition in what has become an oligarchic industry.
Only by asking these questions, and bringing them into our systems and processes of democratic governance, accountability, and legitimacy will we address the root causes of the problem. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-trumps-social-media-ban-clouds-a-bigger-crisis-the-power-and-systemic/
Couple of additional thoughts. First, governments being involved in speech decisions is fraught, but if you are concerned with unaccountable global companies making these decision in a failed market, then democratic accountability is the best path forward.
2nd, this is a tremendously privileged perspective. For many in the world national democratically accountable governance is absent or insufficient. And so we are left with a governance disconnect. One hope is that democratic policies will spill over into global platform changes.
