This is what I don't get. People are screaming for digital channels to not allow disinformation even though they are just a passive communication channel. Is anyone screaming at printing presses for printing the NY Post? It's a garbage publication and this information is at least suspicious, but why are we holding Twitter to such a high standard of integrity and not actually journalists?
> why are we holding Twitter to such a high standard of integrity and not actually journalists?
Virality. Information spreads in a fundamentally different way over print [1] versus social media. It spreads faster. It spreads more insidiously. And it mutates--not per se, but in the context attached to it.
There is also social media's concentration. Before cable news, broadcast television was held to stringent standards. As competition emerged that went away. Facebook and Twitter are singular in their domains. Holding them to a higher standard while an election is underway seems reasonable.
[1] A newspaper on a website still behaves like print media. It has to be explicitly shared.
Social media isn't a "passive communication channel", not when likes and algorithms magnify the reach of content.
> Is anyone screaming at printing presses for printing the NY Post?
You...you mean screaming at the NY post for printing itself? Yes, people do that constantly.
Hahaha. You're not wrong.
I think new things do have the potential to vastly change the status quo in a way that well understood institutions like the news media don't. Social media and recommendation algorithms are a truly new thing. We're just starting to understand how they intersect with society. Mass media has to be widely palatable to spread. The flat earth society would struggle to pay to run national newspaper let alone a TV station, but you can find hours of "quality" flat earth videos on the intent. We now have systems that can pick out for you exactly the group that agrees with you. Where before you'd only get exposed to the opinions of your surrounding community now, it's easy to find that there are thousands of people who agree with the little bits of racism that you subscribe to.
I think I agree that this article shouldn't have been blocked partially because it don't fit perfectly into this distinction
Bonus second reason why people might feel differently. People know and treat the NY Post as suspect. People like me don't read it. Probably some advertisers won't touch it, but I do use Twitter and FB. Most people do. They are arguably natural monopolies
What's passive about an algorithmic news feed maximizing outrage?
They're not passive
NY Post has always been trash and will always remain trash