Would Facebook be better if they implemented a "no political content" rule and paid users who flagged political material?

I suspect they'll do a blanket ban too, their business model is attracting advertisers, getting into political debates does little good for them. And it's been thoroughly toxic for society, from fostering violent groups, spreading conspiracies and allowing foreign interference

@plungesponge If you haven't seen it yet you should definitely try to catch "The Social Dilemma." An excellent, sort of strange, documentary that revolves around the people responsible for creating social media and search functions. MIND BLOWING. The consensus is that the genie is out of the bottle and there's no getting it back. So some big broad actions, like you mentioned, seem to be in the cards. They can't keep having to face Congress the way they are.

@Fired Yes. Yes it is. The word "censorship" is on of the most frequently misused words out there. For obvious reasons. But it doesn't change what it means. If Facebook decided to delete all posts by people named "Steve" they're well within their rights to do that.

@Ynotisay It highlights the issue of how important things like social media is in modern times, as mentioned before, it can easily be used as a tool to incite violence and so forth.

Censorship needs to be adapted to cover these vital services as well, as large corporations like Facebook, are extremely powerful, and they could easily orchestrate movements through controlling their platform in a certain way.

It isn’t that it isn’t censorship, it is that the old protections are outdated, as corporate manipulation is a more common danger in these modern times than government interference.

@Ynotisay When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power.