Facebook Should Not Worry About the First Amendment.
Why is Facebook worrying about restricting the speech of its users? Isn't it a private company? A company can prohibit union organizers from organizing on its premises. A newspaper can censor letters to its editor, or the articles of its reporters, or even the content of paid advertising. Why can't Facebook censor the content of anything happening on its platform?
Facebook could simply state that it has the right to prohibit anything on its platform which it deems objectionable, just as a bakery can deny service to a gay couple wanting a wedding cake, or Hobby Lobby can deny birth control coverage to its employees.
They may lose a few million users who will leave out of "principle", but what is a few million out of two billion? If Facebook is as useful and as integrated into the fabric of society and the capitalist system as they claim, they will eventually regain their lost users who will return because of the usefulness of Facebook to their lives; principle has little to offer in exchange for the loss of a Facebook account.
By simply and brutally cutting people off from Facebook if they do not comply with its rules, whatever those rules might be, people will learn that they must either follow those rules without question, or be cut out of the social network.
This is the time to do it because Facebook is in such a dominant position that other smaller networks would follow Facebook's example out of fear of similar government attacks. This may drive bad actors underground or into specialized networks. But that in itself is something of a solution since it isolates and identifies the bad actors -- which was Facebook's problem in that on its site, the bad actors were masquerading as good actors.
It is probably the case that the vast majority, the overwhelming majority, of Facebook users would not be aware that the site was being censored. In fact, Facebook could simply prohibit political speech, as some families do at Thanksgiving, and simply tell those people that if they want to talk politics, to go elsewhere.
By the way, Facebook's problems of enabling hate speech and promoting genocide is a logical outcome of its motto, “Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.” What are these outcomes if not the result of a more open and connected world? A more open and connected world is what these outcomes thrive on. The current Facebook and its effects is an example of the result of a free market. In more human scale societies there is lots of censorship. People self-censor or are told to watch what they say; and people comply because they will have to deal with the people whom they may insult another day. In a human-scale society -- a group of friends, a small town, an office -- there are consequences for bad behavior that cannot be escaped by simply unfriending someone.
Facebook could simply state that it has the right to prohibit anything on its platform which it deems objectionable, just as a bakery can deny service to a gay couple wanting a wedding cake, or Hobby Lobby can deny birth control coverage to its employees.
They may lose a few million users who will leave out of "principle", but what is a few million out of two billion? If Facebook is as useful and as integrated into the fabric of society and the capitalist system as they claim, they will eventually regain their lost users who will return because of the usefulness of Facebook to their lives; principle has little to offer in exchange for the loss of a Facebook account.
By simply and brutally cutting people off from Facebook if they do not comply with its rules, whatever those rules might be, people will learn that they must either follow those rules without question, or be cut out of the social network.
This is the time to do it because Facebook is in such a dominant position that other smaller networks would follow Facebook's example out of fear of similar government attacks. This may drive bad actors underground or into specialized networks. But that in itself is something of a solution since it isolates and identifies the bad actors -- which was Facebook's problem in that on its site, the bad actors were masquerading as good actors.
It is probably the case that the vast majority, the overwhelming majority, of Facebook users would not be aware that the site was being censored. In fact, Facebook could simply prohibit political speech, as some families do at Thanksgiving, and simply tell those people that if they want to talk politics, to go elsewhere.
By the way, Facebook's problems of enabling hate speech and promoting genocide is a logical outcome of its motto, “Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.” What are these outcomes if not the result of a more open and connected world? A more open and connected world is what these outcomes thrive on. The current Facebook and its effects is an example of the result of a free market. In more human scale societies there is lots of censorship. People self-censor or are told to watch what they say; and people comply because they will have to deal with the people whom they may insult another day. In a human-scale society -- a group of friends, a small town, an office -- there are consequences for bad behavior that cannot be escaped by simply unfriending someone.
posted by Godel at 12:14 AM
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