Musk has decided to censor content on his platform when he disagrees with it. He’s an opportunist, plain and simple.
Is that what’s happening on X, open and public debate?
The point isn’t to equate speech to violence. The point is that with our rights, come responsibilities. People who fail to accept this will only contribute to our rights being stripped away.
There are consequences to speech, sometimes violence. Some of the worst atrocities committed by humans were ignited by speech.
Analogy alert!
X/Twitter is like a giant, unregulated food market. There is no doubt some good stuff there, but the risk of eating something that will put worms in your brain is high. Much better to eat at a restaurant that gets inspected.
Only a fool gets their news from social media like X. Do it long enough and worms in the brain are inevitable. Much better to get news from institutions with standards.
Social media is the proverbial apple of good and evil in the garden that is democracy. Eat of it and democracy dies.
I would like to make a correction to this statement.
All I know is history has shown suppression of speech by government is usually the start of authoritarian societies not the end of them.
Suppression of speech by non-government private entities has occurred throughout our American history. As others pointed out, Musk hypocritically will censor posts he disagrees with. When I worked, every company I worked for limited my speech in the workplace. Talk of politics or religion was banned. Racist or misogynistic speech would get me fired.
The Constitution only addresses the government limiting free speech.
There is no dispute over that fact. Private entities have the right to set different standards on censorship. What is not being discussed is the apparent action by Government to censor via private entities. It’s clear that there were attempts by Govt agencies, by proxy, to force twitter and other platforms to censor both individuals and news outlets.
Musk seems to recognize that danger and is attempting to create a digital version of the public square. He has said publicly that goal is to have a platform where any censorship, as much as possible, mirrors the laws of the land regarding free speech and free expression. In other words, applying the standard held to limiting Govt censorship of speech to a private forum. Whether he follows through on that is another question.
In the US, there are few if any traditional news outlets where citizens are getting truly objective information. The current levels of public mistrust of the standard bearers for news is a clear indication. It creates a vacuum and an opportunity for X to become a source of objective news and also a free exchange of opinions and ideas.
If Musk follows through on his promise, it provides an important outlet for the exchange of ideas, which is critical to the proper functioning of a free and open society. Like I said, if that happens, it may end up being his greatest contribution.
Which institutions would you say are reliable and objective sources of news?
Are institutions supposed to be sources of news? I guess that depends on the definition of institution. As for news sources themselves, I have always gone to Reuters or BBC for the most objective and that seems to be a consensus.
Pete
Your choice, but at a minimum I think one should demand news sources that are not anonymous, have some expertise in journalism, and can be held accountable if they get things wrong. It is all a matter of degree.
If I want information on how to distinguish poisonous from edible mushrooms I could go to books authored by Ph.D.s, or classes given by credentialed mycologists, or workshops hosted by professional chefs. Alternatively I could try X. Which do you suppose runs the greatest risk of food poisoning?
The fact that there is no one perfect news source doesn’t mean one should settle for or even take into consideration the anonymous suggestion.
Using X for news is like taking medical advice from a survey of opinions at the local biker bar.
I think it’s also helpful to distinguish between the source of content and the publisher of that content.
Twitter/X (or most social media companies) are mostly analogous to publishers. They are conduits - the “pipes” through which other people’s content flows. They’re not an institution that reports or generates news content - they’re just a mechanism by which lots of private parties transmit that content.
So social media are not analogous to a newspaper or news program of old, where the news content generator and the publisher are usually two divisions of a single business; and where not, the publisher has a strong business relationship and economic incentive to specifically vet the content generator. Even in industries where that’s not as tightly the case (as with book publishing), there’s usually some effort to fact-check the content. Where people go wrong with social media, I think, is in conflating those two functions. In assuming the social media platform (like X or Facebook) has in anyway served that vetting function.
Saying you get your news from X or Facebook is like saying you get your news from Comcast cable rather than the news show you’re watching on TV - it’s literally true that Comcast cable might be the one that transmits the news to you, but you’re getting your news from ABC (or CNN or Fox), not from Comcast.
I didn’t define them as institutions @btresist did and I just asked him/her to identify them. All the sources you have mentioned are able provide content on Twitter. It is simply platform but one that is allowing consumers for a broader choice. It’s for the user to determine whom has credibility and who does not. Since it provides a level playing field for a news media that was historically dominated by a few key players, I think it puts pressure on the traditional sources to make a decision about whether to be a megaphone for biased groups or objective sources of information. Either way, the public benefits from the increased competition for the consumer’s attention.
Do we have any proof of that, however? That we benefit from that? I’d say no, we don’t. Most would probably say we had the best news back in the day of 3 major sources: ABC, CBS, NBC. Throw in PBS/NPR. And I would argue that fighting for attention does not rely on quality journalism, that quite likely what is required for quality will not get you out fast enough and you lose the eyeballs. The current model rewards being first and loud, not being unbiased and factual.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/08/india-twitter-online-censorship/ (subscription likely required).
Dan Rather I think gave an interview awhile back talking about the long term shift in content of the major news networks and the budgetary pressures as a for profit corporation. The two biggest declines have been in the amount of news dedicated to local or regional events and then global news. These companies are unable to profitably provide coverage in these areas, particularly as it relates to world events. As a result, less content, at least of nightly news, is directed at these segments.
To answer the question, yes, I think the public is better served by more sources and a platform where the cost to provide news may be appreciably less expensive. The end user is free to limit their own experiences ands feeds as they see fit.
Read “Bad News” by Tom Fenton. Back in the day I spoke of the nightly news was a loss leader. News cost them more to produce than they got in advertising revenue. But they did it, mostly as a public service. Quality journalism is expensive, and Tom points out as to why. It’s not a cost to provide issue (i.e. posting on Twitter is free), its a cost to create issue.
And if that’s all that social media did, you might be right.
But social media provides the public with literally millions of “sources,” and a platform where the cost to provide things that look like news falls to near zero. For many users, which sources they end up with will be determined by the algorithm - which is going to be pretty effective at matching them with the “news” they want to be true, rather than sorting them to actual news that is true.
With very few sources and a high up-front cost to producing content, the economic incentives skew towards creating actual news that can appeal to a broad base. With millions of sources and near-zero cost of production, the economic incentives skew towards creating the news that a niche slice of that audience wants to hear, whether that’s actual or not.
This works because there is a huge market in the audience for news that looks real, but tells them what they want to hear. A huge swath of the public wants to be lied to by a source that they can believe is telling the truth.
Social media platforms serve that up. It’s what the public wants, but the public is assuredly not better served by getting it.
The question is whether social media should be required to do that vetting function, which in my mind means passing laws that hold social media accountable for what they “publish”.
I don’t see holding an institution (like X of Facebook) responsible for what it publishes as being an abridgement of Free speech.
True. But what Comcast cable can do is determine whether that “news” show is legitimate enough to be put in its News category or labeled as entertainment.
I am a sufficient advocate of free speech to have joined the ACLU, so I am not a fan of censorship. However, I don’t believe there is a constitutional right to avoid accountability for what one says behind a wall of anonymity or layers of false facades. When it comes to stuff labeled as “News” I believe that institutions like X and Facebook need to provide enough information about the source so that the average person can easily determine whether it is from journalists, a company trying to sell something, or a front for a foreign government.
This is empirically incorrect. Substitute financial advice for news and you have lots of retirement savings disappearing to any number of scam artists. Foreign actors have found ways to effectively manipulate elections in multiple countries by providing “news” on such platforms. And let’s not even think about all the medical misinformation going around. The public is no better served by an unregulated X than it would be by unregulated airlines.
At very least, providers of News should be held accountable for ensuring that what they are providing comes from legitimate News sources. We can argue the definitions of “legitimate” and “News” and these may ultimately have to be decided by legislation or the court, but I think it should be the minimum standard.
It’s a hard question, because social media can’t really exist if you do that. This message board couldn’t exist if you do that. Platforms that are held accountable for what they publish meet that obligation by exercising prior review of all content. Things don’t get published in the New York Times, or broadcast on NBC, or published by Random House, without some employee of the company having read it first.
I agree that doing so wouldn’t pose a problem under the First Amendment. I just don’t think it’s possible to do that with social media and still have it exist in anything like its current form. If every tweet or FB post or message board comment had to be reviewed and cleared before publishing, then nothing like social media would remain.
Whether that’s a good or bad thing is another question. But I don’t think you can have both.
The purpose of the free flow of information and conversation is not to protect the ill-informed or the apathetic. It is to allow the exchange of ideas. It is a way to vent through speech what might otherwise surface later as action. It also just goes to a fundamental belief in one’s right to discern information for oneself.
It’s messy and social media has made getting information more like drinking from a fire hose. We’ll have to figure out a way to adapt to it. But in mind, the solution is not walking back fundamental rights or some third party serving as the judge and jury of what should be considered credible content.
We have developed all kinds of objective standards for rating different product and services. There is no reason why the same couldn’t be done to help consumers evaluate news and information sources. The key is that it be for the individual to decide.
What the founders meant by a free press was not a particular form of business or production but rather the long time evolved ecology of interacting people and entities engaged in civil discussion echoing ancient forums and augmented by Guttenberg.
That ecology is now profoundly disrupted. Start there.
d fb
Or not.
The point raised above was whether the public was better served by having these platforms. They’re not. Drinking from a fire hose is bad. Yes, I know it’s a metaphor - but if you actually tried to drink from a firehose you would be injured, perhaps quite badly. We don’t replace water fountains with firehoses and then blithely suggest we’ll learn how to adapt.
Instead of a small number of news sources that faced enormous financial incentives to keep their reporting accurate, we now have access to a near-infinite number of news sources with varying degrees of inaccuracies. You have more choice, but almost all of your new choices are pretty bad.
Yes, there is a reason. Several. First, there’s too many different news and information sources for that to work. Second, these new information platforms face enormous economic incentives to have their users not to engage with ratings standards. Third, that takes enormous amounts of time and resources both for producers to produce and for users to use. And fourth, many (most?) users won’t want to engage with those ratings standards.
Again, the product that’s being sold is access to a “news” source that tells you exactly what you want most to hear and that you can (falsely) believe isn’t just telling you what you want to hear.
It’s the “unsafe food” situation. When you go to a grocery store in the US, all your choices are limited only to safe foods. Foods that have passed some minimum health and safety standards (for the most part). If grocers were permitted to sell food that was spoiled, adulterated, contaminated, hazardous, or falsely labelled then you would have a lot more choices. Choice is good! So we should let grocers sell all kinds of terrible unsafe food! Consumers that care about food safety can research the ones they want, and everyone else can just do their own thing with more choice!
But we know that intuitively that’s wrong. Because although having more choice is a positive thing in the abstract, adding tons of bad choices to your options is not a positive thing. It’s a bad thing. It makes it harder to get to a thing you want, it increases the chances you get a thing that will damage you, and the transactional costs to avoid both of those negative outcomes are quite high.
So, no - having more choice isn’t always a positive outcome for the consumer. Because the benefit of the choice can be outweighed by the costs that come along with it.
Algorithms disrupt everything.
The purpose of social media companies is to drive user engagement on their platforms. That’s what they care about, period. Frustration and anger are the biggest drivers of engagement. Platforms take advantage of this.
Holocaust deniers are not fed information to change their mind, they’re fed information to reinforce their toxic beliefs. I suppose you could say that such a person could search out different information, to which I’d respond…get freaking real!
One person’s venting can easily lead to another person’s action. The idea that users’ circle-jerk of hate mongering somehow reduces their desire to commit violent acts is bonkers. What’s more likely - they become super radicalized, making them more prone to act out violently.