Tuesday Talk*: Who Should Rule the Virtual World?

Zuck owns Facebook. Jack owns Twitter. Biden is president. At Reason, Robby Soave argues that the war over Section 230, reining in disinformation, hate speech, harassment and whatever other ills come at you through the ether, is really about the big question: Who should be in charge of the web?

Note as well that bowing to the Vietnamese government’s demand for greater censorship is being treated as a bad thing by some of the same outlets that are shaming Facebook for not bowing to the U.S. government’s request for greater censorship. The site’s failure to take down extremism, hate speech, and misinformation related to U.S. presidential elections and the COVID-19 pandemic is considered a grave moral failing. U.S. senators scream at Facebook for doing the bidding of other governments while engaged in the very act of trying to compel Facebook to do the bidding of the U.S. Senate.

That’s the central idea behind the mainstream media’s framing of the Facebook Papers: The social media site is unsafe because there’s too much content that the mainstream media and the government would prefer users not see. They’re upset that the person in charge of deciding what belongs on Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg and not Joe Biden—and no amount of handwringing about addictive platforms or monopolistic practices can disguise the fact that the site is losing popularity with young people, and increasingly looks like a dying star.

Whether FB has lost its panache is a question about which I know nothing, as I’m neither a fan nor user. And it may well be that the battle is about who gets to own the minds in our impressionable youth, strong, passionate and dumber than dirt so that they can be easily manipulated to believe what they’re told to believe, provided it’s reduced to small words and short slogans.

But the argument Robby raises has long been one of real concern. Sure, FB is a private company, and Zuck can censor or not as he deems fit, but nobody in government seems all that thrilled at the prospect of private corporations, particularly those controlled by individuals, having vastly more influence over the minds of mush than they do.

And to be fair, just because Zuck’s baby beat out MySpace for the hip place to pretend your life doesn’t suck, and then later to get a million likes before it does, does not make Mark Zuckerberg a good steward of the public consciousness. Nobody elected him to be censor in chief, except that by clicking on your acceptance of his TOS you kinda did vote with your keyboard.

But what about the alternatives, from Joe Biden to Donald Trump to whoever comes after? Would they be better stewards of the web? The progressive argument of the moment is that Biden certainly would, assuming of course that he puts some trusted deputy in charge of the nuts and bolts. Maybe Neera Tanden or Mary Anne Franks would be suitable to the current administration. Would they be your choice?

But the assumption that the Democrats will hold power for 10,000 years, unless the Republicans cheat and steal the election if that sounds familiar, might be a bit rosy. That they fail to consider placing the power in the hands of Darth Cheeto seems too obvious to dispute.

Should the breadth of acceptable discourse be left to the discretion of unaccountable nerds or put into the hands of the Senate confirmed Minister of Truth? Whom would you trust to decide the worthiness of your words and ideas, other than yourself and me? As Humpty Dumpty presciently put it, “Who is to be master; that is all”?

*Tuesday Talk rules apply.

22 thoughts on “Tuesday Talk*: Who Should Rule the Virtual World?

      1. Sgt. Schultz

        Just gonna say what everyone is thinking. Barleycorn has naked pictures of Judge Kopf and Greenfield is letting him comment to protect his buddy from becoming a viral sex symbol.

        1. John Barleycorn

          The Robed Rider is already a viral sex symbol, as you suggest.

          But I would think such an image would be more valuable as a iconographic good luck charm than a trinket of fame.

          I bid you success in your pursuit Sgt.

          In the meanwhile don’t forget to always step to the side of the shit with seeds to find the path. Anything else, including the assumptive over-step is sure to bring you continued bad luck and confusion.

        2. L. Phillips

          Interesting theory, but Judge Kopf graphically described the condition of his lower extremities in a post some months back, effectively terminating any possibility of sex symbol status. That just leaves Greenfield.

          1. John Barleycorn

            I already have the patent on textured wallpaper and other wall coverings that simulate excessively hairy chest, back, knuckle, and pubic hair.*

            So, even though Greenfield is probably cute enough to go viral, he is not handsome enough to slip under either the state or corporate non-binary unisex bar, to really be a “symbol”.

            I could probably get a photo of his “Trashed Posts Folder” to go viral in a meme, but alas he has declined all offers to secure a screen shot of such a folder.

            *Would be happy to send you some samples for your van or office L.Phillips, just let me know what colors you are interested in?

  1. Bruce Coulson

    Churchill once said, ‘Democracy is the worst form of government; except when you compare it to all the others.’ That, unfortunately, is the situation here. The current crop of people in charge of the internet are terrible; but the government would be much, much worse. The times that the government HAS interfered with freedom of speech (the Spanish Flu pandemic comes to mind) speak for themselves. It’s better, bad as it is, to let the free market battle out who should be hosting the voice of the populace than to let the government, even with the best of intentions, do so.

    1. PseudonymousKid

      You lose points for starting out with that Churchill quote of all things. I’m as sick of that one as every single thing Orwell ever said. Then you accept the dichotomy, demonstrate a weak grasp of history, make weak mention of “the free market” whatever that is, and land with such a lukewarm conclusion. I may be in a foul mood and spoiling for a fight as always, but what you said is stupid and deserves to be called stupid. I know I shouldn’t do this at least because the next thing you say is going to be worse in addition to all the other reasons.

  2. Anonymous Coward

    Neither billionaires nor politicians should control the Internet and as the folks at Techdirt.com frequently explain repealing section 230 would do just that since only behemoths like Facebook and Google could handle the enormous costs of compliance and lawsuits absent the protection of Section 230. If anti vax and Jew hate are the price of freedom, so be it

  3. PseudonymousKid

    No one should determine the breadth of acceptable discussion, not Zuck, not the government. I am master of what I say, and you are master of what you say. The anarchic “anything goes” attitude where each idea once expressed is as free as the air and the author does us the favor of dying is the only way. In practical application that might lead to conspiracy theory bullshit and radicalization, but I’m firm in my opinion that social media is a mistake and cannot be saved by censorship whomever imposes it.

    Someone, anyone, please tell me I’m stupid and wrong and this whole thing isn’t hopeless. Give this disappointed optimist something to hang onto and not from. I’m between wanting to see it all destroyed and opening the floodgates. Both options suck. Is there no middle position?

    1. angrychiatty

      Yours is the correct take. Anyone advocating for government interference or “voluntary restrictions” by the providers is either too young to remember or is too old and has forgotten the BS we all went through in the 1980s when Gore et. al. -financed by religious right organizations- attempted to make it virtually impossible to buy music in stores with “explicit lyrics” (to be determined by some panel as to what constitutes “explicit”) Thankfully that crap didn’t get very far thanks to John Denver, Zappa, and Dee Schneider- and 30 years later digital technology and the access it provided would have made the debate mostly irrelevant. I say mostly. I am hopeful that somehow reactive forces will be able to keep the censors at bay until something happens to change the status quo and reduce the noisy sounds calling for speech regulation. I have no idea what that will be; back in the 80s nobody really foresaw the development of digital music and how we wouldn’t need to rely on brick and mortar stores carrying albums anymore. I have to remain hopeful because there is no damn way that these attempts to regulate content will result in anything positive for anyone. There is no “middle position” because any such position requires a person or person to decide what’s acceptable, and anyone who wants that job is always the last person in the world who should have it.

  4. Pedantic Grammar Police

    The reason you’re confused is because you think that there are two parties. There is one party, and it works for the same people regardless of the actor playing the role of president. Thus their lack of concern over the dire consequences that will occur when the evil other guy gets to pretend to be in charge.

    Will Trump 2024 censor abortion clinic facebook pages? They don’t care; all of the “differences” between the parties are made-up hot button issues that they use to divide and conquer the rest of us.

  5. Rengit

    It’s hard to see how we can avoid the internet becoming “de-globalized”; national governments around the world increasingly place onerous content moderation laws and demands, or strong requests in the case of the US, on social media platforms, and in many cases these demands, laws, and regulations are directly at odds with those of other governments, or if not other governments, would offend significant amounts of users in other jurisdictions.

  6. Jake

    In my opinion, the internet must continue to be a decentralized, egalitarian, free market for speech and ideas.

      1. Jake

        You may be surprised to know, there is a whole other network of computers governed by section 230 serving and receiving information outside of the reach of social media companies’ terms of service, that still allow you to print anything you like.

    1. Sacho

      Agree with Jake. In a sense, the virtual world is a democracy – people vote via participation on where online speech happens, and Zuckerberg is as much elected to be in charge as Biden,with a minor caveat – Facebook is much less likely to bring armed men to shut down someone’s little seditious blog or forum.

      We have way more free speech than we used to, and these complaints directed at FB strike me as those of a drug addict demanding his overdose. Meanwhile, the same governments that supposedly implement our will continue to shape speech in a myriad of ways FB simply has no access to – legislation, education, academic funding… comparatively, the “rulers” of the internet practice benign neglect to the benefit of speech for all.

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