We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
the.ink

I don’t like the idea democracy can only survive if governments censor and remove platforms for spreading information (however false that may be).

We already have rules regarding what we consider to be acceptable both in general society and in a legal context with regards to free speech so the line in the sand already exists.

Trying to wave away this debate by just shouting “censorship” contributes nothing meaningful to a debate that is sorely missing from society.

Edit: There are some interesting points in the replies that I think could be answered with some clarifications.

I think there is something that is very unique about social media specifically that should have a higher standard about it than other forms of speech. My argument is not at all about trying to force "the one acceptable point of view" or anything like that. History has a long long list of ideas that were once considered dangerous that not only stood the test of time but instead became something much more and in order to continue having that diversity of opinion is generally a good thing.

There are fundamental problems with how the economics of a social media platform function. Never before has a tool existed that allowed everyone to broadcast any unfiltered thought they had to everyone else in the world with basically zero effort.

Furthermore, they can do this both anonymously and without any kind of repercussion. That sounds great in theory as some libertarian fantasy where you might expect the "marketplace of ideas" to take care of everything and the cream would rise to the top. The reality of what that looks like in 2020 however is actually very different and I think now would be a great time to have that discussion about what guardrails we can all generally agree on that would address some of the many downsides that have come out of this experiment so far.

All of the current iterations of major social networks came pretty much exclusively from a group of people who had zero background in anything then Computer Science. At no point have we reached out to groups like sociologists, ethicists, historians, psychologists or anyone else who might have some really valuable thoughts on how to arrange anonymous social interactions in a way that might not devolve into the shit fight we have on our hands currently.

As an example Facebook was started by a guy who by all accounts is not exactly known for having great social skills where he could rate women on campus. Twitter is a platform that purposely doesn't allow for nuance. I think they were both a terrible starting point and that perhaps we should rethink what social media COULD look like from the ground up and learning from all of the mistakes we made with it the first time around.

Yes, Facebook has its downsides just as any other social platform would. Yes, you can live without it. But I don't believe that the negatives Facebook has enabled comes close to the utility it has provided to society.