It’s not censorship to hold people accountable for making editorial decisions on media platforms, and as long as FB, Twitter, and others are weighting different kinds of content in their algorithms (which they are), they should be held accountable financially and legally for the consequences.
ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
On the one hand, I’m against censorship. But on the other, every bit of content on Facebook and X should be removed and all their hardware run through industrial shredders. It’s quite the conundrum.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ulrich@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
What do you think censorship is, exactly?
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
it becomes a form of censorship when snall websites and forums shut down because they don’t have the capacity to comply.
this also applies to lemmy, but strictly tech help forums too.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
it becomes a form of censorship when snall websites and forums shut down because they don’t have the capacity to comply.
In this scenario that’s not a consideration.
We’re talking about algorithmically-driven content, which wouldn’t apply to Lemmy, Mastodon, or many mom-and-pop sized pages and forums. Those have human moderation anyway, which the big sites don’t. If you’re making editorial decisions by weighting algorithmically-driven content, it’s not censorship to hold you accountable for the consequences of your editorial decisions. (Just as we would any major media outlet.)
ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
The same way your right to wave your hands ends before they reach other people's faces, free speech can't include speech infringing on other people's dignity (in the legal/philosophical sense).
Regulating speech within this frame is as bad as stopping a bar fight by dragging the participants away.
Ulrich@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
free speech can’t include speech infringing on other people’s dignity
Actually, that’s exactly what free speech is for. Nobody needs free speech to tell their neighbor their hair looks nice today.
ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
You are thinking about dignity and imagining a British aristocrat drinking tea from a fine porcelain cup with the pinky held up while plotting world domination. That's the vernacular meaning of dignity.
In the context of human rights, dignity is the natural right of every single person to be valued and respected for their own sake, and to be treated ethically.
You don't infringe it by saying that your government is being managed by incompetent or immoral people. You infringe it when you say women belong in the kitchen and not in the office, or that black people are naturally inferior to black people, or that gay people don't have right to love who they love, etc.
Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Censorship is bad, but Facebook and X’s entire business models revolve around spreading content that is at once false and inflammatory, either just to create engagement or for more malicious purposes, and they reach a huge portion of the population directly, including children, teenagers, the mentally ill and other vulnerable populations. This requires a new understanding of accountability for spreading information.
I wouldn’t agree that it makes sense to hold a Mastodon instance responsible for what its users post, because they don’t have a financial incentive or the ability to promote misinformation at a massive scale. Twitter does. As Aristotle said, we must treat equals equally, and treat the unequal unequally according to the form and extent of their inequality.
balder1991@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The algorithms optimized for engagement with no ethics was the point the world starts going downhill.