I’m certainly not saying that Elon Musk can’t tweet his opinion about politics.
Comparing a
known endorsement—whether that be Obama or Trump endorsing someone, or a properly labeled editorial in a newspaper, to biased control of the overall flow of information is a false equivalency. Endorsements aren’t the issue. In fact, a person giving a political opinion isn’t my issue with this.[\QUOTE]
All good there then.
I could always read an editorial in a newspaper, but it was clearly labeled as such, and elsewhere in the paper I could expect to actually read the news, which had certain standards of journalistic integrity. This is my main concern: the lack of standards for journalism in general, and like you said, this is just as relevant with MSNBC as it is with FOX (for example). This becomes extremely problematic if “news” sources are allowed to publish complete horseshit, and then social media companies use algorithms which favor it.
I agree with that and frequently complain about journalist standards but I also think some weight belongs on the individual as well. News isn’t going to be as centralized as it was fifty years ago at this point. People have to get better at understanding what should be credible and what shouldn’t. Though I agree there is definitely good and bad ways of doing this, I don’t necessarily think there is an fixed perfect way and there’s a lot of room in arguing about a story and it’s implications. But again, ultimately this is going to depend on people. If we get to the point where everyone are like boomers with social media and don’t understand how to vet a source, we are fucked. Government stepping in isn’t going to make that all that much better. Maybe at most schools need to do a better job in teaching civics to also involve journalist standards and vetting a publication.
A person stating their political opinion is fine—although if we are talking about public figures, media outlets, etc., it should probably be clearly labeled as such. As a private company, if Twitter or FB or whomever used an algorithm which somehow favors one ideology over another, I suppose that’s their right.
Publications do have reporting and opinion sections already. People just don’t usually understand the distinction. That’s an education problem that I don’t fault on a reputable publication.
What is more troubling is that the OANs, Dinesh D’Souza’s, Tim Pools, etc are able to publish absolute dogshit as news, and then massive social media companies could potentially favor the spread of one flavor of dogshit over another flavor (so to speak).
This gets to my other point about understanding social media. If people are allowing a social media site to aggregate or filter their news, they already are in a bad spot. Social media is never going to be some good arbiter of reliable information though there’s constant pressure and demand for them to somehow rise to that position in society. Public criticism is fine as it’s the same speech I’m defending in my prior post but any remedies beyond it to me are far more dangerous imo. Also, these companies (just like news publications) are trying to maintain a reputation which will continue to make them popular and thus profitable. That isn’t to say the incentives are the same here as social media is looking ultimately at screen time but I do think it’s part of their calculation.
I wouldn’t call doing such a thing “rigging an election,” but it certainly an attempt to stack the deck by shaping the political views of people in extremely false and misleading ways. It’s hard to call it fair.
The practice of doing it isn’t necessarily fair but I don’t extend that over to the election and say it is now unfair. There are many many factors that do or don’t go into a voters decision and not all of them are good or “fair” necessarily. The more important thing is we don’t start questioning the right to vote of one person over another and we don’t point to any topics like this and claim foul on the election itself. A democracy can’t have handholding like that and still be expected to be a free place imo.
When we’re talking about the spread of straight misinformation planted by a foreign power, that’s even more problematic.
I agree any attempts by foreign interests to spread lies should be addressed and companies deserve flack for whether they address it well and timely. However, it isn’t as easy as it looks to do that. At the bare minimum, there’s bots which the majority would agree is a problem. But then after that, you might have a mixture of Americans carrying a narrative which a foreign interest amplifies or perverts. At some point it gets back to the things we mention above. Are people vetting publications well and all the grey areas that come with that all while still being in a constantly ongoing politically charged national debate
