Elon Musk makes $43 Billion offer for private buyout of Twitter

efil4stnias said
I think part of the problem is that now, the cart is ahead of the horse.

X, FB, Instagram...have gotten so large and with really no controls over content (hiding behind free speech) and so many have gotten used to being able to say anything (even getting positive feedback thru "likes" for really inappropriate comments) and it starts to create this "feedback loop (not unlike in an ecosystem, which social media is kinda like).

when that feedback loop is operating in a detrimental way, it simply continues its decent. Folks will continually push the social norms/acceptability, get more likes and the next person will up the ante to get more likes.

And here we are.

20 years ago folks talked about some of this crap in private. And if there were 10 ppl in a room and 8 didn't agree with the premise, they either said nothing or spoken to the other 2 privately. And that's pretty much where it ended.
Today, if it's controversial enough, it doesn't get suppressed, it actually gets amplified.

And you aren't having to say this in person, to a bunch of people standing around you. It's pretty anonymous and if too far, delete it.

It's a mess. But installing guardrails NOW is going to a heck of an achievement because those same folks who feel liberated to post every dumb thought and get some satisfaction (likes or even getting into arguments) will claim it's free speech infringement.

Any sort of content moderation is going to have to come from the platforms themselves because the First Amendment just makes it hard to for the government to be the arbiter of content. Then, of course, when they do it, it opens those platforms up to criticism from those who don't like being moderated.

It's this weird combination where our First Amendment allows us to say these things and is, in part, what keeps us from seeing some of the crack-downs that our countries have done on misinformation online . . . and that has allowed for the amplification of some pretty nasty and untrue ideas that can actually harm our communities. But that same wide scope of protection keeps us free to be critical of government, which is a critical feature distinguishing our society from more controlled, even autocratic nations.

It's a really challenging issue, and deep-fake AI-assisted content is only going to make it harder. Either the Supreme Court evolves our First Amendment standard to include some kind of exception for deliberately false, harmful information (but again, it's much easier to say than to faithfully perform) or we continue to have to live with this tradeoff.