Writing for NRO last week, David Harsanyi noted how “‘content moderation’ is little more than an effort to control political discourse,” and then ran through some telling reactions to the prospect of a bid by Elon Musk for Twitter.
Do read the whole of David’s piece, but I’ll add another reaction to the collection he has already assembled, this one from Timothy L. O’Brien, writing for Bloomberg (an organization with absolutely no connection to any billionaire):
There’s another essential task for owners of media companies, one that Musk has thus far not shown any interest in: vetting the quality and veracity of the information they publish.
They do?
O’Brien:
Yes, I know I am being old school here, and that social media sites are not newspapers, but the reason for this requirement transcends debates about print vs. digital or old vs. new: Lies, misinformation, disinformation and propaganda are virulent and wildly destructive. That stuff has to be monitored, because it can lead those who absorb it to make bad decisions.
To hold up newspapers, whether now or in the past, as some sort of virtuous example in this respect is quite something. Some newspapers sometimes, perhaps.
And that word, “monitored,” especially when accompanied with the reference to people making “bad decisions,” well . . .
As a wise Roman once wrote: “Quis ipsos custodes custodiet?” (In this case, “who monitors the monitors?” would work well as a translation.)
O’Brien:
Constructive responses to the existential crises of our time — climate change, a global pandemic, the rise of authoritarianism, political polarization, racism — have been blunted because social media platforms value “openness” more than facts.
The promise of social media was that it was supposed to give voice to those who hadn’t traditionally been heard. Gatekeepers would be disintermediated, to use the preferred jargon. Everyone would be their own publisher, and unfiltered views would have global reach. The reality of social media isn’t so rosy. Platforms such as Facebook are awash in poisonous dreck that divides individuals and communities and gives flight to a deeper dumbness.
The trick is how to preserve social media’s accessibility and grass-roots power while also recognizing that it needs oversight and monitoring. That will be hard, but social media companies have the money and talent. Besides, newspapers — yes, stodgy, old-fashioned newspapers — engineered their operations to strike that balance. They didn’t always do it effectively, but at least they tried…
Hmmm . . .
“Constructive responses,” “deeper dumbness”: No agenda, there, of course.
O’Brien:
The trick is how to preserve social media’s accessibility and grass-roots power while also recognizing that it needs oversight and monitoring…
Musk, on the other hand, apparently wants “control.” Control is bad, but “monitoring” (which should never be confused with control) is good, especially, I suppose, when it is designed to engineer what someone somewhere has decided are “constructive responses.”