Should social media be nationalized?

[Ziggurat]

China does have a constitution guaranteeing certain rights;

No. China has a constitution that pretends citizens have certain rights. They do not actually have those rights.

It is the USA that refuses to recognise human rights. China is a signatory to many human rights conventions e.g. the UN rights of the child that the US is not a signatory to.

Bwahahahahaha! No. The UN is a farce when it comes to human rights. None of its conventions are enforceable, and China becoming a signatory doesn't mean it abides by any of them. It regularly violates them.

In practice US citizens in the US today may be freer than Chinese citizens in China

That seems like it should be the main point in any comparison between the US and China in regards to rights.

but it is wrong to say China has no 'bill of rights'.

Fair enough. It's got legal claims of rights, despite the fact that these rights don't actually exist in practice.

It is worth remembering how much protection the bill of rights gave to a black man in e.g. Alabama when it came into force before citing it as an example of excellence in human rights.

Also true: it matters not only what rights the law claims we have, but how those claims are actually enforced. And in that regard, there's really no comparison between the US and China.

 

[Bob001]

It does seem like Facebook is getting blamed for failing at being something it was never meant to be, intended to be, or presented/advertised itself as... a primary news site.

But that's what has become. That's the problem.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...a-news-source-for-many-but-only-incidentally/

 

[Bob001]

I'd love to hear someone explain the logistics on just how, exactly, any one singular country could "nationalize" (read: regulate, restrict, and dictate) the rest of the planet's social media usage.
....

"Nationalize" has a specific meaning: Government ownership. It is not the same as regulation. Nobody thinks the government should own Facebook or Google, anymore than it should own the New York Times or General Electric. But every business is subject to regulation for the common good, from environmental laws, labor protections, zoning restrictions, anti-monopoly enforcement to the size of the signs it can put on its buildings. Even a neighborhood diner is licensed, regulated, subjected to health inspections and more. These massive internet corporations have developed faster than the laws could keep up. But there is no good reason why they can't be regulated to limit their power and influence.

 

[kellyb]

It does seem like Facebook is getting blamed for failing at being something it was never meant to be, intended to be, or presented/advertised itself as... a primary news site.

Yeah, that's been an issue for a while.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/can-we-be-saved-from-facebook-629567/

Which brings us back to Facebook, which to this day seems at best to dimly understand how the news business works, as is evident in its longstanding insistence that it’s not a media company. Wired was even inspired to publish a sarcastic self-help quiz for Facebook execs on “How to tell if you’re a media company.” It included such questions as “Are you the country’s largest source of news?”

The answer is a resounding yes. An astonishing 45 percent of Americans get their news from this single source. Add Google, and above 70 percent of Americans get their news from a pair of outlets.

 

[PhantomWolf]

I don't think a US citizen can expect to have the same rights in the UK as in the US.

But the US person is not in the UK. You are suggesting that the UK Government should be allowed to act against a US Citizen who is in the US because their actions might be illegal were they in the UK, but they aren't. They are in the US where such actions are perfectly legal. How can you justify the UK forcing those that aren't in the UK to follow UK laws?

 

[carlitos]

Patronizing won't work here. It is simply too easy for so many people, especially those that cut the cord, to open their app on their phone and rely on it to let them know what is going on in the world.

If only there were an app on their phone that said "News" - they could try that instead of Facebook.

 

[theprestige]

If only there were an app on their phone that said "News" - they could try that instead of Facebook.

There are already apps like that. Seems like most phones come with at least one installed and running out of the box.

But hold on. Are we talking about a state run news agency? Because it sounds like we're talking about a state run news agency.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

But as it stand now, it's Zuck getting Henry Kissinger to be the mod, and he's banned Telesure and a leftwing gov page from Venezuela.

https://btlonline.org/fear-of-russi...legitimate-left-and-right-political-websites/


ETA: and from the Taibbi interview:

I don't have time to listen to the audio file.

No one wants political censuring, but there are thousands of fake accounts. It doesn't surprise me some legit accounts will be deleted and some fake accounts will be missed.

 

[carlitos]

There are already apps like that. Seems like most phones come with at least one installed and running out of the box.

I was being sarcastic. Apple phones come with apple news feed on the home screen, and android phones have google news on them. Not to mention the thousands of other news apps you could install on either.

But hold on. Are we talking about a state run news agency? Because it sounds like we're talking about a state run news agency

I have the BBC app, but I'm a gringo. Does that count?




ETA - Holy crap, Travis buried the lede. Here is the money quote from the article in the OP:

“By the way, Bing is the is the best search engine. The least biased in Bing. For whatever reason, that’s what I’ve discovered.”

 

[kellyb]

I don't have time to listen to the audio file.

No one wants political censuring, but there are thousands of fake accounts. It doesn't surprise me some legit accounts will be deleted and some fake accounts will be missed.

There's a transcript of the interview. Matt seems to think a lot of the deletions of legitimate accounts are very much intentional.

https://therealnews.com/stories/facebook-google-play-the-censor-are-our-civil-liberties-endangered

MARC STEINER: I said before we started, this is a really dangerous piece we’re looking at. I mean, the pieces we’ve done so far on this can almost make it seem arbitrary, being done by technocrats or technology that are unseen by all of us. But what you’re implying and writing about, it goes a great deal deeper than that.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, I think the really, the wakeup call for me was the news that Facebook announced a partnership with a group called the Atlantic Council. Which is essentially sort of a NATO-backed think tank. If you look at its board it’s packed with ex-security state officials; people like Henry Kissinger and Michael Morrell, the former acting CIA Director Michael Hayden. It’s a quasi-governmental agency that sees itself essentially as a sort of government in exile. It imagines itself as the sort of watchdog that would have existed had Hillary Clinton won the presidency.

And Facebook has been working in conjunction with the Atlantic Council for some time now. They’ve also been consulting with Congress, and apparently also some White House officials to police what they call ‘inauthentic content,’ which theoretically means that they’re deleting fake news accounts. But it could mean more than that. And we’re not exactly sure what the methodology is. And that’s very scary, and has very serious First Amendment implications.

And what we have here is a sort of two-stage story. The first stage of the story happened over the course of the past few decades, when Google and Facebook essentially became a duopoly in terms of media distribution in this country. They control somewhere between 70 and 75 percent of the media distribution. That means most people get their news from one of those two sources. So if you control Google and Facebook, and they’re allowed to decide who gets in the feed and who gets deemphasized, then you can really control the media. And so the idea that they’re working with governmental bodies to push some content down and push others up is unbelievable. It’s a situation that we’ve never had a parallel to in this country before.

They’re not a news organization. They’ve never really claimed to be. In fact, they’ve aggressively- you know, Facebook, up until a year and a half ago, was openly saying that’s not what we do. We are not editors. We don’t sift through content. So inevitably what’s going to happen is they’re going to appeal to an outside body for help in sifting through all this material, and that’s where you have this issue of their cooperating with something like the Atlantic Council in the United States, or you have a situation like in China, where Google is cooperating with the Chinese government to maybe sift out content there. The Israeli government is also working with both of these companies. That’s where you have the problem. These are not news organizations. They don’t have the traditional urge to be separate from governments the way that news organizations do. They want to work with the governments, and that’s, that’s a serious problem.

MATT TAIBBI: Well, look, if the United States government had an open contract with Facebook, then it would be a clear First Amendment violation. So it can’t be done in that way. The way it’s done now, if you have a private organization- and the Atlantic Council still is that, technically- working with that other private organization, which Facebook is, which Google is, which Twitter is, then there’s no First Amendment issue. Technically, at least not yet, because the First Amendment only speaks to the government suppressing or regulating speech. If it’s done on private property they can get around that entire issue. And that’s my concern with this, is that this is really an end run around the First Amendment. You take a bunch of quasi-governmental ideas and you have them work with these duopolistic corporations, and you’re essentially controlling the flow of information.

And now we see the same kind of cooperation perhaps taking place in the United States. And we never had a public conversation about this. And I think that’s that’s what’s really troubling, is that this could happen in a flash. We could have a, you know, essentially a government censorship body, or something like that, without ever having talked about it. And that’s a real problem.

 

[dudalb]

Social media nationalized as in a socialistic way or nationalized in the current fascist way?

Don't see much difference if it ends in the Government having a monopoly on Social Media.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

There's a transcript of the interview. Matt seems to think a lot of the deletions of legitimate accounts are very much intentional.

https://therealnews.com/stories/facebook-google-play-the-censor-are-our-civil-liberties-endangered

Thanks.

Looking at the Sourcewatch page on the Atlantic Council Kissinger is but one of ~150 board members and given his age, I doubt he'll be contributing much to sorting fake accounts.

It does look like there are many countries listed as part of the council so right there it's better than just FB employees involved. I can see why Zuckerberg went this direction.

Matt Taibi:

It’s a quasi-governmental agency that sees itself essentially as a sort of government in exile. It imagines itself as the sort of watchdog that would have existed had Hillary Clinton won the presidency.

Not exactly criticism.

He complains about no transparency of the algorithm. But if you spelled that out it would be easy to defeat it, wouldn't it? So a damned if you do kind of problem.

As for this:

So if you control Google and Facebook, and they’re allowed to decide who gets in the feed and who gets deemphasized, then you can really control the media. And so the idea that they’re working with governmental bodies to push some content down and push others up is unbelievable. It’s a situation that we’ve never had a parallel to in this country before.

We already have that problem, it's inherent in the concept of Google and Facebook except maybe big corporations are the one with the most influence even if Google uses traffic to control top hits with searches. That problem needs resolving regardless of the current purging of fake accounts.


Then there's this:

These are not news organizations. They don’t have the traditional urge to be separate from governments the way that news organizations do. They want to work with the governments, and that’s, that’s a serious problem.

OMG where do I start? The mainstream news gave us Trump all because their current business model is profit, not supplier of information.

The MSN media only functions as a sort of government watchdog as long as it's a sellable scandal, amplifiable outrage, or faux controversy—everything has two equal sides even when it doesn't.

Matt is living in the past when maybe the news was a neutral body.

Looking at where he's coming from he's implying the Atlantic Council is a US puppet, the US government in disguise, ergo the US government would be censoring FB. But that's not what they are doing, they are purging fake accounts. Taibbi might be right this kind of thing could end up sliding down a slippery slope. But the alternative is more of the same and that is asking for more years of a US government that is not for the people/by the people.

 

[dudalb]

"Nationalize" has a specific meaning: Government ownership. It is not the same as regulation. Nobody thinks the government should own Facebook or Google, anymore than it should own the New York Times or General Electric. But every business is subject to regulation for the common good, from environmental laws, labor protections, zoning restrictions, anti-monopoly enforcement to the size of the signs it can put on its buildings. Even a neighborhood diner is licensed, regulated, subjected to health inspections and more. These massive internet corporations have developed faster than the laws could keep up. But there is no good reason why they can't be regulated to limit their power and influence.

Exactly how would you regulate Facebook or Google? Limit the number of customers the can have?
I think this one area where I think the best solution would be to let the market decide. It's not like there is not pleny of room for completion from new social media companies.
I an not a Libertarian who hates all regulatation, but I find it hard not to feel that some progressives want to regulate just for the sake of regulation because they don't like large businesses, frankly.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

One solution, have a procedure for a censored FB customer to prove they are not a troll or a bot.

 

[kellyb]

One solution, have a procedure for a censored FB customer to prove they are not a troll or a bot.

I've never understood why they don't do that. I guess they just think it would be too time-consuming?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I've never understood why they don't do that. I guess they just think it would be too time-consuming?

Maybe they do do it and the news is more exciting if they just don't mention that.

I'm sure it's frustrating and ridiculous but there is a way to prove you are you:
What types of ID does Facebook accept?

Who knows what else you need to do, I don't have time to keep looking.

 

[The Norseman]

Don't see much difference if it ends in the Government having a monopoly on Social Media.

I think if we're being earnest, do see differences though; throughout Scandanavia, internet is cheap and fast and nearly ubiquitous and there are strong measures in place to help protect people from getting data stolen and so on. Those are real and measurable harms that the government in this case is effectively dealing with.

In the US, the people have zero say in what happens to their data and there is almost zero regulation that benefits anyone other than the corps.

Exactly how would you regulate Facebook or Google? Limit the number of customers the can have?
I think this one area where I think the best solution would be to let the market decide. It's not like there is not pleny of room for completion from new social media companies.
I an not a Libertarian who hates all regulatation, but I find it hard not to feel that some progressives want to regulate just for the sake of regulation because they don't like large businesses, frankly.

I am definitely anti-capitalist, so looks like I fit your bill there in a sense that I don't like large businesses but I also don't think that government regulation can fix everything either.

 

[Cain]

A friend of mine told me about an allegedly humorous White Power podcast called The Daily Shoah. I searched it on Youtube and clicked on a video, but then there was an advisory warning about the content, which I thought was odd because I'm using my old account, and I'm technically an adult, so I shouldn't get the 18 and under stuff admonishment. Finally I clicked past all of that and then they said the Youtube community has deemed the material inappropriate, so comments on the video had been disabled and similar content had been redacted (so all of the recommendations on the right hand side were blank. I mean, they didn't even just recommend unrelated cat videos. I've never seen something like that before.

As for the podcast, it was just three guys bitching about the NFL, Milo Yiannapololllosjerkface, Twitter, "faggots" and leftists. It wasn't funny, though in fairness I didn't make it to their "Merchant Minute" segment. I do have a problem with all of these platforms restricting this expression. Youtube has an unlimited number of channels, so that shouldn't bother.

 

[LSSBB]

A friend of mine told me about an allegedly humorous White Power podcast called The Daily Shoah. I searched it on Youtube and clicked on a video, but then there was an advisory warning about the content, which I thought was odd because I'm using my old account, and I'm technically an adult, so I shouldn't get the 18 and under stuff admonishment. Finally I clicked past all of that and then they said the Youtube community has deemed the material inappropriate, so comments on the video had been disabled and similar content had been redacted (so all of the recommendations on the right hand side were blank. I mean, they didn't even just recommend unrelated cat videos. I've never seen something like that before.

As for the podcast, it was just three guys bitching about the NFL, Milo Yiannapololllosjerkface, Twitter, "faggots" and leftists. It wasn't funny, though in fairness I didn't make it to their "Merchant Minute" segment. I do have a problem with all of these platforms restricting this expression. Youtube has an unlimited number of channels, so that shouldn't bother.

So it looks like you found a "nothing", and took a lot of work to get there.

We should have our "nothings" free and easy to waste our time watching on. 10 x 0 + 5 x 0 should equal more!

By all means, a great investment for our tax dollars.

 

[kellyb]

Don't see much difference if it ends in the Government having a monopoly on Social Media.

This is the difference:
https://therealnews.com/stories/facebook-google-play-the-censor-are-our-civil-liberties-endangered

Well, look, if the United States government had an open contract with Facebook, then it would be a clear First Amendment violation. So it can’t be done in that way. The way it’s done now, if you have a private organization- and the Atlantic Council still is that, technically- working with that other private organization, which Facebook is, which Google is, which Twitter is, then there’s no First Amendment issue. Technically, at least not yet, because the First Amendment only speaks to the government suppressing or regulating speech. If it’s done on private property they can get around that entire issue. And that’s my concern with this, is that this is really an end run around the First Amendment.