How to fix Big Tech and Social Media

[Berkut]

I am fairly pessimistic about the future of democracy. I hope it will somehow weather the current crisis, but it may well be the case that the experiment will come to an end (modern democracy has only existed for a century). Freedom of speech and the rule of law could in theory survive the fall of democracy, but my guess is they will be gone too.

Most major Western countries are still democracies. Ie their peoples decide their fate. I have neither obligation nor inclination to protect peoples of democracies from the effects of their actions. If they want to end democracy it will end. Hopefully with a whimper and not with a bang.

I think freedom of speech is a very important component of a good society. AFAICT the state telling people that they are wrongspeaking or telling them how they should communicate is not the way forward. There are limits to freedom of speech in place, and I think they are sufficient (in Sweden the limits are too strict IMHO). The state telling haters "honey, you're wrongfeeling again" is not the way forward.

I am fully aware that few people are in favor of democracy, freedom of speech, or the rule of law when they go against them. Even if they all go against me I will consider them better than the alternative until I see evidence of a better option. I may well see such evidence at some point in the future, but at present I do not.

Those who have read my crap over the years know that I don't like Communism. Sweden has had a Communist party in parliament for many decades. I think their presence has poisoned Swedish political discourse and has led to worse political outcomes for the country. But I have NEVER been of the opinion that they shouldn't be allowed to freely spew their hateful garbage. Because it is not the way.

I don't think I am talking about the same thing you are talking about. I am not suggesting any kind of controls on free speech in the manner you are rejecting. At least...I don't think that I am.

[The Brain]

I mean (take that, Yi), are there individual state actions regarding this problem that in isolation wouldn't be a huge problem and that I could be OK with as isolated actions? Probably. But I am very wary of the state taking actions against ways of communicating that the state thinks have resulted in wrongthink. In addition to other considerations there are huge numbers of people on the "good" side of the aisle who have very little regard for freedom of speech or understanding of the deeper advantages of it, if they smell blood a feeding frenzy isn't far away.

I have observed in Sweden a trend that I find disturbing. As part of fighting the good fight against the rising Sverigedemokraterna (SD, the xenophobic nutjob party) some established parties have dismantled a bunch of valuable taboos. They have given detailed political directives regarding what state museums should say about their fields. They have done the same for government-funded arts, science and similar. They are shamelessly discussing changing the constitution to make it harder for SD to mess with it. In short, they have gone out of their way to kill off taboos that would have slowed down the SD if/when they get in power (and also made museums and others say weird stuff cheapening them etc etc which in itself is quite harmful). Telling museums and others that they should now talk about the glorious history of white Swedes if they want funding? Changing the constitution to limit the power of non-SD parties? Yeah sure go ahead, these are all normal and established practice now. I think this kind of strategy is unsound.

[Admiral Yi]

I share some of your concerns (I mean), and that's why i think it's a huge blessing that private companies are trying to correct misinformation without the government's involvement.

[crazy canuck]

If the US had the modern equivalent of the Fairness Doctrine then perhaps people would not have to rely on private actors with a near monopoly doing the right thing.

[crazy canuck]

The Brain, what do you think of rules that:

1. Puts some level of limit on the type of lies that can be presented as the truth?

2. Require some level of "fair access" for different perspectives on a market level (i.e. prevent a monopoly or duopoly from pushing specific political viewpoints while freezing out all others)?

3. Provides some set of limits to how private actors can engage with and/ or spend money on elections?

As I understand it democracies have had varying levels of strict laws on those topics at different times and places. From my perspective, it looks like democracy tends to be weaker once those rules get too weak. That is not to say that autocrats and worse can't use similar arguments to stifle free expression and their opposition, but to my eyes that's typically not associated merely with regulation.

1. I don't have a problem with the present situation where there's a bunch of situations where lies are illegal for specific reasons. For instance declared contents of food etc etc etc. As for some kind of general ban on lying I think it's a horrible concept. In the words of Pontius Pilate: "And what is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?". Even if you somehow restrict it to harmful lies it would pretty much kill off political and religious communication, among others.

2. I'm fine with them when there is an actual monopoly, for instance back in the day when Sweden had a state monopoly on radio and TV news. In the age of the internet of course there is very rarely an actual monopoly. For instance Facebook isn't even close to having a monopoly on information on the internet.

3. I don't have a problem with the normal limits that exist in modern democracies (my uninformed impression is that there are significant differences in details between different countries). NB I don't even know what they look like in Sweden.

1. Hillary Clinton is involved with a pedo ring run out of a pizza shop was a lie.  Under US law somehow such lies are allowed.  It never becomes a truth.  Just a lie which continues to be told as truth.

2. The problem is when a person taking in the information does not see other points of view.  If the bar is set so high that nothing should be done until one entity dominates all information it would become impossible to have a sane regulatory environment.  The simple solution is that no mode of communication can have only one point of view - regulated balance. 

[grumbler]

If the US had the modern equivalent of the Fairness Doctrine then perhaps people would not have to rely on private actors with a near monopoly doing the right thing.

If people only understood the meaning of words like "monopoly" and phrases like "the modern equivalent of the Fairness Doctrine" they wouldn't say silly things like this.

[grumbler]

The problem with Big Tech and Social media isn't the providers, it is the users.

No one can force users to see alternate points of view, nor even force them to understand the importance of seeing opposing points of view.  One can only educate them on the dangers of seeing only those POVs that they already agree with, and hope that some, at least, will break away from the cults.  Deprogramming is hard, but it generally works.

[Jacob]

The problem with Big Tech and Social media isn't the providers, it is the users.

No one can force users to see alternate points of view, nor even force them to understand the importance of seeing opposing points of view.  One can only educate them on the dangers of seeing only those POVs that they already agree with, and hope that some, at least, will break away from the cults.  Deprogramming is hard, but it generally works.

Who are the ones who will engage in the deprogramming? And how do they go about it?

[DGuller]

No one can force users to see alternate points of view, nor even force them to understand the importance of seeing opposing points of view.  One can only educate them on the dangers of seeing only those POVs that they already agree with, and hope that some, at least, will break away from the cults.  Deprogramming is hard, but it generally works.

Who's going to force the users to undergo deprogramming, though?  From what I understand, it's generally not an activity one chooses for themselves to undergo, and conceptually it probably can't be.

[crazy canuck]

The problem with Big Tech and Social media isn't the providers, it is the users.

No one can force users to see alternate points of view, nor even force them to understand the importance of seeing opposing points of view.  One can only educate them on the dangers of seeing only those POVs that they already agree with, and hope that some, at least, will break away from the cults.  Deprogramming is hard, but it generally works.

Facebook is probably looking for some good PR people at the moment.  "Big Tech isn't the problem, its the users"  may be exactly the slogan they are looking for.  Might even fool some people into thinking the user gets to choose whatever it is they want to see and that specific information isn't actually being fed to them.

[grumbler]

Who are the ones who will engage in the deprogramming? And how do they go about it?

Big Tech and Social Media.  They just need incentives, like freedom from foundations dedicated to make them conform.

[Jacob]

Big Tech and Social Media.  They just need incentives, like freedom from foundations dedicated to make them conform.

I suspect big tech and social media will - absent external pressure - prioritize 1) generating profit for shareholders; and 2) wielding political influence to serve their business interests.

[Tamas]

I still think the novelty of people falling into echo chambers and the evil influences is overstated, so I am with The Brain on this one.

Sure, there are people who actually believe Hillary Clinton ran a pedo ring from a pizza place but are they really a bigger portion of the populace than, say, followers of Scientology? And the "milder" form of Trumpism where everything not supporting their ignorant narrative is a lie - I hate to break it to you people but that's how a lot of people thought about politics before the Internet. You just weren't aware of it. If this level of ignorance can overtake half your country the problem perhaps is not with Facebook.

And making very sure The Truth is labelled as such and distributed won't help much on it's own. When Protestantism started to take hold, official channels of communication very forcefully branded it fake news, to no avail. In communist Hungary right-wing and nationalistic thoughts were -sometimes actively, sometimes passively- discouraged and hounded and considered offensive for 50 years, but came out to the open the moment it was safe to do so. Etc.

If anything, what should be done -like my esteemed Swedish colleague mentioned- is to utilise the tools to spread the facts or even your own ecochambers' thoughts, instead of trying to suppress those tools. The state wants to spread fact sheets to people exclusively watching Stop the Steal channels? Tag their fact videos with "#stopthesteal". When radio and TV came around the answer (most) states found wasn't to fight it and ban it but to set up channels which would spread their versions of events, which in better countries was mostly the truth. I can't see any viable option here either. If they are really worried they can force Facebook to put their state channel into all users' news feed. The ones you really one to reach will still ignore these but then they'd do so with everything else.

Then Trump's spiritual successor with actual brains will come around and turn all this against you.

[DGuller]

I really have a hard time seeing how things are the same as they always have been.  I'm not laboring under an illusion that the average voter was a hyper-rational human being in the past, but their critical thinking weaknesses weren't intentionally or unintentionally abused to the max by the algorithms.  Both anecdotally and statistically, it seems like people are far more entrenched in their echo chambers than they've ever been, to the point that many are openly discussing coup or civil war. 

As I said previously, Trump's competent successor won't need anything in place to turn it against us, he'll build something up from scratch.  This is the same kind of thinking that keeps Democrats on the backfoot politically, as they refuse to challenge the norms, ceding the ground to Republicans who have no such inhibitions.

[Berkut]

I still think the novelty of people falling into echo chambers and the evil influences is overstated, so I am with The Brain on this one.

Sure, there are people who actually believe Hillary Clinton ran a pedo ring from a pizza place but are they really a bigger portion of the populace than, say, followers of Scientology? And the "milder" form of Trumpism where everything not supporting their ignorant narrative is a lie - I hate to break it to you people but that's how a lot of people thought about politics before the Internet. You just weren't aware of it. If this level of ignorance can overtake half your country the problem perhaps is not with Facebook.

And making very sure The Truth is labelled as such and distributed won't help much on it's own. When Protestantism started to take hold, official channels of communication very forcefully branded it fake news, to no avail. In communist Hungary right-wing and nationalistic thoughts were -sometimes actively, sometimes passively- discouraged and hounded and considered offensive for 50 years, but came out to the open the moment it was safe to do so. Etc.

If anything, what should be done -like my esteemed Swedish colleague mentioned- is to utilise the tools to spread the facts or even your own ecochambers' thoughts, instead of trying to suppress those tools. The state wants to spread fact sheets to people exclusively watching Stop the Steal channels? Tag their fact videos with "#stopthesteal". When radio and TV came around the answer (most) states found wasn't to fight it and ban it but to set up channels which would spread their versions of events, which in better countries was mostly the truth. I can't see any viable option here either. If they are really worried they can force Facebook to put their state channel into all users' news feed. The ones you really one to reach will still ignore these but then they'd do so with everything else.

Radio and TV were both very regulated industries. That was partially a result of the limitations of their technology - the government controlled the bandwidth of both, and hence could mandate restrictions on content.

Internet bandwidth is effectively unlimited, and there is zero control on content.

Referring to "history" here makes no damn sense. Historically, the government regulated media companies extensively. What we are talking about now is regulated this industry as well.

I think the current attempts to identify and "ban" content that some person or group considers "fake news" is a overly blunt, restrictive, and eventually fruitless endeavor. The problem is not the content, the problem is the delivery and using technology to craft more and more extreme messages in order to capture a viewership. Fox News did this even without the internet, and the bad faith actors (and the neutral actors who have perverse incentives to assist them) are only going to get better and better and better at crafting that content.

Hell, you don't even have to lie to do this - you can craft an outrage machine while never technically saying something that is strictly a lie.