On Tue, Aug 7, 2018 at 6:50 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote: > Well, I think it pretty clearly is a free speech issue (though not, for > the obvious reason, a First Amendment issue). Labeling it thus does not > mean Facebook et al are in the wrong; free speech is not an absolute value, > and we accept limitations on it all the time. I think there is a good > argument to block Jones, but I think it does have to be placed within the > free speech debate. > > I am always worried when speech is limited (anywhere) in response to > pressure from emotionally charged majorities. In a country that has > historically placed the highest value on free speech, I think we have to be > prepared to err on the side of too much rather than too little. Again, that > does not mean it is wrong to ban Jones on FB - a good argument can be made > that his poison nonsense is clearly over the line of what is acceptable. > > The problem for me is that the line being used here is not clearly > defined. I reject the notion that the line is whatever the loudest majority > feels it to be at the current moment. I would prefer some set of concrete > criteria be provided that users of social media could consider in advance. > I would prefer that rather than banning Jones in toto, specific instances > in which he has violated those criteria in the past are banned, and he (and > everyone else) are given maybe 3 strikes in the future before they are > permanently banned going forward. > > What are the criteria? I am not sure - and that is what makes me nervous > about this situation. Should we man all “hate speech”? I don’t even know > what that is. I hate Donald Trump - having posted that on this corner of > social media, should I now be banned? Use of the “N-Word” to express threat > and devaluation is anathema to me, but no, I do not want to see Richard > Pryor or rap music banned. Anti-semitism is appalling and disgusting, but, > again, no, I do not want to see Shakespeare banned. > > Probably no set of criteria would ever be perfect - but any set would be > better than a vague sense of “most of us really don’t like that shit.” > Expression which is harmful or incites serious harm towards others is > probably a good place to start, though that already is plenty ambiguous. > Expression which is non-transparent (where the real source/funding is > hidden or distorted) might also be part of useful criteria - although, for > someone who signs his posts on this site as “PGage” that might seem a bit > hypocritical - and at least underlines the difficulty. > > Questions with easy answers: > 1. Is Alex Jones reprehensible? (Yes) > 2. Does Facebook have the right to ban Alex Jones? (Yes) > > A question with more difficulty answers: > 3. How do we protect not just the right of but the access to free > expression of very unpopular people? > > I think anytime anyone’s ability to express themselvs is limited (even > when justified) we have to spend a lot of time thinking long and seriously > about answers to question #3. >
We have to recognize the differences here from mass media. Facebook and Google (including YouTube) have acquired incredible power in a short time. With all the capital and labor spent on the technical side, there has been virtually no effort to think of their roles on the policy side. Government has followed way behind as most elected officials are older and see those services as distractions for young people rather than the replacement for mass media and major drivers of the news. When these and other social media platforms were introduced everybody had rosy visions of what they could bring: connecting people by interest regardless of geographical location, sharing news in real time, getting around censorship in restrictive countries. Nobody in these companies thought about massive fraud through bots, bullying by bigots, encouragement of violence, etc. The companies set up terms of service and suspend/expel violators but that's always a gray area. Going forward these companies are going to have to come up with workable guidelines to preserve free speech principles while keeping users from being traumatized by what goes into their feeds. The problem with Alex Jones on social media is different from what would happen on mass media. Social media is about clicks, likes, recommendations, and the role of algorithms. If we were dealing with mass media, then the Alex Jones story would be like ABC exiling Roseanne. But it's not like that. As I wrote before, anybody can Google Alex Jones or Infowars, go to his website and watch all the videos they can stomach. What the social media platforms are doing are recommending Alex Jones based on keywords. A UNC professor named Zeynep Tufekci has been publishing, presenting at conferences, and tweeting about YouTube and polarization. If you do a YT search for a topic and find a video to watch, a list of recommendations will be in a column on the right of the video. That recommendation list is generated by algorithms. What she found is that YT's recommendations tend to be toward more radical videos. <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html>(LINK) Watch a video about the Holocaust and videos from Holocaust deniers will show up. Watch one for vegetarianism and videos for veganism will show up. Watch a news story about Sandy Hook and an Alex Jones denial video will show up. And if you have YT set to autoplay it just pops up and you watch. So YT has to deal with this: a middle school student is given homework to do a report on Sandy Hook (or 9/11 or the moon landing). While doing research they go to YT and watch a couple of videos based on autoplay. Then they turn in a report saying we don't know if Sandy Hook actually happened. Who is responsible for the student's failure? We can look among ourselves and think the situation far fetched but we are all older, well educated, and discerning. We can't say that about tweens and teens. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
