This would be an issue, but I dispute point 1 because the leaders of the tech industry would very much like to wash their hands of politics and be seen as neutral platforms so they can save money on moderation. Most of these same platforms pretty much had an anything goes unless it's illegal attitude from the time they were started until a few years ago when they started getting a lot of political blowback and blame for "helping Trump" by not moderating more.
esoterica|5 years ago
joshuamorton|5 years ago
No, they'd like to be approachable by the broadest groups possible (or really the broadest set of ad-viewing groups possible). Calls to violence are unappealing to most people. This is the reason unmoderated platforms fail: people don't enjoy spending time on them. To be palatable to normal people, the sites need moderation, which they do, to appeal to users.
> Most of these same platforms pretty much had an anything goes unless it's illegal attitude from the time they were started until a few years ago when they started getting a lot of political blowback and blame for "helping Trump" by not moderating more.
This is completely untrue. Here's one of the first Trump related posts I can find: https://www.fastcompany.com/3054611/when-does-hate-speech-cr..., notably "Though it apparently violated Facebook’s own internal guidelines, Trump’s video was not removed".
They've been, since the beginning, getting blowback for making exceptions for politicians instead of evenhandedly applying their policies. What you've seen over the past 5 years is simply the platforms growing in influence (and thus controversy).
The act of not moderating trump when he violated existing policies was an attempt to appear neutral to conservative users, while actually biasing to more loosely moderate a particular conservative. I can only hope platforms have learned from their mistakes.
travisoneill1|5 years ago