Facebook and YouTube are receding from their role as watchdogs against conspiracy theories ahead of the 2024 presidential election
I’m glad the EU is acting to combat this, but there’s a deeper problem. The amount of people who lack basic critical thinking skills, and can’t figure out the truth of facts for themselves. The amount of people who’ve become convinced vaccines are dangerous, being just one recent example of this.
Eroding the aspects of public education that contribute to people’s critical thinking skills and civics knowledge has been in the republican playbook since the Regan administration. Not that we were all that known for it before then…
I mean it’s pretty bad to have private corporations as gatekeepers of “the truth” in any case.
What is disinformation but free speech by another name? And every American has the constitutional right to free speech regardless of how unhinged and divorced from reality that speech may be.
8 hrs later, an update:
I don’t believe this. There are absolutely limits to free speech.
Constitutional right to free speech does not equal a right to a platform for that speech. Disinformation should not be legally prosecuted but, it’s absolute horse shit to claim that social media companies owe it the same indifference as the government does.
Stop conflating the legal right to free speech with the (non-existent) right to use someone else’s platform for said speech.
Constitutional right to free speech does not equal a right to a platform for that speech.
Exactly. That’s why communists don’t have a voice anywhere. It’s no one’s fault that rich and/or politically powerful people more easily align with authoritarianism and fascism and just so happen to own those platforms. It does mean that groups and individuals advocating for under-represented perspective languish in obscurity. And there’s no reason why those voices should be represented on any mainstream platform. They have a constitutional right to scream at the top of their fossil-fuel charred lungs about climate change on the corner of the street like any homeless person. They don’t have the right to do it on Twitter or Facebook.
People say this but no one ever wants to nationalize social media
Much like screaming FIRE!! in a crowded venue, there has to be a limit on free speech, and that limit is typically when it causes harm to other people
