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Karen Langston's avatar

and this is the problem right here. "Who decides what we can say or not in public, in private, or in private-communities" The million dollar question

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Chris Cocuzzo's avatar

Exactly. Glad it stood out.

Much of the news about Meta suggests that people really want it to filter and ban more aggressively. That's ok. Just understand that, if so, it will do so in ways that both please and displease plenty of people.

And the inverse is true: filtering/banning nothing pleases and displeases people.

So, do you want Meta to decide where to draw the line?

The community fact-check/report is a solution but I'm in wait and see mode to understand if it works. Folks will dig into the data soon.

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Lee Bacon's avatar

Meta's showing its hand: The real customers are advertisers, not the people scrolling the feed.

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Chris Cocuzzo's avatar

For sure.

True now. True for quite some time, in fact.

I know it's difficult to look at the decision exclusively and purely through that lens but I wanted to share the point anyways. Something you need to remember every time you look at one of these companies does.

The business does not exist to please everyone on moral grounds. It exists to make money for its shareholders.

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Henny Hiemenz's avatar

What do you think the chances are of a Substack-esque competitor changing the dynamic? Lots of people seem fed up with Facebook, similar to their feelings for Twitter/X.

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Chris Cocuzzo's avatar

Proof in action, my friend.

I don't know Substack's policies but understand it has already seen some high-profile defections (e.g. Casey Newton) for allowing content that I won't describe again here. Engagement based platforms need more engagement.

Mastodon/Bluesky are the two more interesting counter-examples. But need to dig more into their strategies before commenting on them.

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Kathleen Thorne RN, LMT's avatar

Free speech does exist. It’s a choice.

These companies, social media whatever it is don’t want to allow it - we just don’t use them and we don’t spend our dollars with them and that’s how we get the vote on it.

I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point where we don’t have any at all because I know I will fight to death for my freedom of speech.

I think there’s many people out there like it. They may not speak openly about it like I do, but time will tell.

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