Social media posts inciting hate and division have “real world consequences” and there is a responsibility to regulate content, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted on Friday, following Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking programme in the United States.
And that’s exactly what the user you’re replying to has been saying all along.
This post is about the UN, as in, a governmental authority. The whole discussion here is that moderation isn’t something for the government to do (outside of prosecutable crimes), it’s for private entities to do. Meta can moderate its platforms however it chooses, and users can similarly choose to stop using the platform. Governments shouldn’t force Meta to moderate or not moderate, that’s completely outside its bailiwick.
Meta pushes opinions, advertisements, and engagement. The government can and should regulate their bullshittery. Our privacy has been violated along with our rights.
Your view of these platforms and what they do is completely disconnected from reality. They are advertising platforms that are used to influence elections not a “platform for speech”.
You can’t ignore the reality of what they have already done and we are past pretending it is in any way altruistic.
There is no moving onto other platforms when they they use their profits to buy up all their competitors. You can look at the current dating site situation to see how without government regulations monopolies have formed.
Your hands off approach is unetainable and also ignores that other free countries have things like anti-hate laws and they are doing way better than we are.
The solution is to fix the government and then regulate the hell out of these fuckers. This is the way.