Social media is a scourge on society, mostly bcz of the propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation campaigns from state actors. This is a very different and real issue we as a species are dealing with.
Social media is a scourge on society, mostly bcz of the propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation campaigns from state actors. This is a very different and real issue we as a species are dealing with.
rumba@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
Social media is just one of many forms of open communication that any technological society will eventually have to weather.
What’s going on now could have happened in email chains or newsgroups (truthfully worse had probably happened on usenet just at smaller scales)
As much as social media leaves a vile taste in our mouths, I’d say the problem is beyond social media itself; it’s just the transport, or the messenger if you will. People are sending the drivel, projectile vomiting it back and forth, anonymous, non-anonymous, verified, paid-verified.
The bar used to be well if you leave things unchecked, you end up with kiddie pics, but that apparently isn’t bad enough anymore.
Public forums need to be moderated. Some basic level of morals, voted on openly by the masses, needs to set the moral limits of speech. Free Speech at the cost of hate speech? Free Speech at the cost of facist takeovers? How about another fairness in broadcasting act. How about penalties for fake news? How about penalties for opinion pieces filled with lies?
We are incapable of moderating ourselves well enough not to have some safeguards in place. We are also incapable of letting the “elected officials” decide what those safeguards should be. Shit needs to be WAAAAY more democratic than Bob Moneybags deciding that pornhub is too much because he managed to gerrymander his way into power. Morale laws get voted on directly from the individual, and all Bob gets to do is suggest what goes on the ballot.