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ArgiriosNickasFirstPaper 3 - 10 May 2018 - Main.EbenMoglen
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The Structural Problem | |
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< | Corporations are legally driven by shareholder profit. The aforementioned millenials (and each similar, subsequent generation of adopters) are the demographic who most use social media and are thus the target demographic of social media companies. If a large, growing portion of the user base is okay with (or prefers) censorship then it may be in a company’s interest to censor. But, that can’t be the whole answer. If Facebook censors a liberal-leaning viewpoint, Facebook risks significant blowback from conservatives, and visa versa. If both sides are equal in their representation on the platform—which is the case—then, “the only winning move is not to play” because any censorship which benefits one party will be met with an equal and opposite negative reaction from the other. Unless, of course, no one cares (or one party cares less) that content is being censored at all. More likely, I think the problem is a lack of transparency regarding censorship. Other than the Facebook Files leak, which revealed general, internal Facebook censorship guidelines, we know very little about how Facebook and other social media sites actually censor (especially in response to user reports). Moreover, whatever information the leaked guidelines provide is limited: (1) the leak was last summer and guidelines can be changed without notice and (2) work-load volume: moderators receive millions of reports and must respond immediately—the job itself prevents consultation with the manual. | >
> | Corporations are legally driven by shareholder profit. The aforementioned millenials (and each similar, subsequent generation of adopters) are the demographic who most use social media and are thus the target demographic of social media companies. If a large, growing portion of the user base is okay with (or prefers) censorship then it may be in a company’s interest to censor. But, that can’t be the whole answer. If Facebook censors a liberal-leaning viewpoint, Facebook risks significant blowback from conservatives,
Is It not the other way around?
and visa versa. If both sides are equal in their representation on the platform—which is the case—then, “the only winning move is not to play” because any censorship which benefits one party will be met with an equal and opposite negative reaction from the other. Unless, of course, no one cares (or one party cares less) that content is being censored at all. More likely, I think the problem is a lack of transparency regarding censorship. Other than the Facebook Files leak, which revealed general, internal Facebook censorship guidelines, we know very little about how Facebook and other social media sites actually censor (especially in response to user reports). Moreover, whatever information the leaked guidelines provide is limited: (1) the leak was last summer and guidelines can be changed without notice and (2) work-load volume: moderators receive millions of reports and must respond immediately—the job itself prevents consultation with the manual. | | | Because moderators are forced to react quickly, and their censorship largely does not undergo public scrutiny, mostly due to a lack of mandated (or even voluntary) reporting on user-initiated censorship, it’s inevitable that implicit biases (here, political) effect split-second decision-making. I think that’s how domestic censorship has played out in practice: that conservative positions are more often censored because social media company ownership and operation is homogenous and strongly left-leaning. But, regardless of whether I’m correct in my assessment of how censorship has partisanly played out, the core problem is worse: that companies have (and do exercise) the near-unilateral ability to curate content. | | | Word Count: ~990 | |
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That depends. If the German regulatory approach actually results in very large fines being regularly imposed, the results will be different from the "terms of service" enforcement forms of private censorship on the platforms.
But the conflation between speech on the platforms and speech on the
Net, or on the Web, is a serious limitation in the analysis. I
speak on the Web quite a bit, and I have no accounts on any of the
platforms. My own servers are in the Web just as much as they are,
are indexed by search engines, and provide just as much "ability to
speak" as the platforms, with none of their control. People who
want to speak on the Net can do so, regardless of platform company
behavior. The public force, on the other hand, can impose itself
where the body of the speaker is. That difference is no narrower
than the space between freedom and tyranny, it seems to me.
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