[liberationtech] Facebook Asks - Hard Questions: Social Media and Democracy
Richard Brooks
rrb at g.clemson.edu
Mon Jan 22 10:01:30 PST 2018
>
> 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.
>
A general concern should be who does the regulation and
to what ends? The UN is questionable, since the majority
of its members are autocrats. The non-autocrats are
typically controlled by the large corporations.
I think the question of how to have a globally open
forum for legitimate discourse is probably unsolvable,
since I do not think we can have a consensus on what
"legitimate discourse" is.
Should it allow antifa? Should it include racists?
How do you fact check? If you exclude antifa and
racists (I am not drawing an equivalency here, I
am just citing groups that would be likely to
be excluded), wouldn't you be excluding the
dis-satisfied groups that are disturbing democratic
norms?
I wonder, honestly, if an abuse resistant platform
is possible. Also, I wonder if it would be desirable.
And, I have no good answers to any of these questions.
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