[liberationtech] Facebook Asks - Hard Questions: Social Media and Democracy

[carlo von lynX]

No need to follow the link, here are the interesting snippets:

> Now, we’re as determined as ever to fight the negative influences and ensure that our platform is unquestionably a source for democratic good.

Just like democracy is no longer a democracy if somebody could
decide to switch off, say, separation of powers or verifiability
of vote, democracy is no longer a democracy if one corporation
has the choice on whether to be a "source of democratic good" or
secretively possibly unvoluntarily be not so. Therefore, the fact
that Facebook has achieved such a role is unconstitutional.
Actually, the way the whole Internet is easy to eavesdrop and do
big data analysis upon is making every democracy whose voters use
it struturally a post-democracy. How long until we regulate this?

> Our role is to ensure that the good outweighs the forces that can compromise healthy discourse.

Incorrect. No online platform should have this much power to
make such decisions.

Further articles comment on the good and bad of social media,
entirely neglecting that a properly regulated Internet would
eliminate the risks of social media and only leave us with
the good aspects of it, so there is zero reason to continue
dealing with the threats of technology as if the benefits are
inevitabily interweaved. That is a fallacy, albeit a
remarkably popular one.

So do yourself a favor and skip reading those articles, they
are only trying to convince you that Facebook is a reasonable
company to entrust with the power to corrupt democracy, as if
the Malvinas incident in 2009 hadn't already proven the opposite.

You can have all the apps and Internet fun you like, but to
betray democracy must be technically impossible. Such an
abuse-resistant Internet is possible. Society has to care
and to regulate.

If anything of that sounds wrong or exaggerated, then you are 
missing some of the clues. I can fill you in.

-- 
  E-mail is public! Talk to me in private using encryption:
         http://loupsycedyglgamf.onion/LynX/
          irc://loupsycedyglgamf.onion:67/lynX
         https://psyced.org:34443/LynX/