Ok, thread.

I believe that we shouldn’t hold platforms accountable for decisions their users make. That would break a lot things.

But there is a sense that that means platforms are free from wrong-doing because they don’t create content...they just host it.

Bullshit.

Platforms create billions of hugely influential pieces of content per day. Far more important than any individual creator. Maybe more important than all of their users combined: Recommendations.

“But a recommendation isn’t content,” you might think. But hell yes it is. A recommendation is an editorial decision. Through recommendations, platforms don’t just determine what gets seen, they determine what gets made (because creators make way more of stuff that succeeds.)

What is more harmful:
1. A man, alone, in his home making white nationalist conspiracy videos.

2. A platform with global reach poking tens of millions of young white men and saying, “hey, you should watch this.”

Both are creating content, one of them did far more harm.

We need to internalize the reality that computer programs have made and are making billions of morally repugnant decisions that, if any employee at one of these companies made, /they would get fired for./

Don’t believe me, make a couple of “recommendations” to your boss...see how it goes. “IT WASNT CONTENT” you cry on your way to pack your desk, “IT WAS JUST A SUGGESTION”

Platforms should not be responsible for a person making awful content. They are absolutely responsible when they put it in front of people who didn’t even know it existed. They should know the difference between hosting awful content and choosing to broadcast it. We all should.