Political neutrality is a charitable assumption, made because even in this (best) case, the problem is obviously so horrific and difficult that we will need everyone's help and cooperation (especially including Facebook's) to navigate it humanely. You cannot live in a society this large and complex without some give and take, and affection and good faith are the glue that hold us together through those moments of giving and taking. We
need it to be true that Facebook intends to do right by everyone, even those they politically disagree with.
Fortunately for us, Facebook believes in its own political neutrality and very much wants us to believe it too. It is a conceit and a fiction -- I think we all know that -- nothing in the world is ever actually politically neutral, and the behavior of these entities is, at times, over the line of how close to perfection you might expect someone making a reasonable and principled effort to get. (An understatement, I know. I still choose to interpret what is happening as a sign of distress, not malice, on Facebook's part.) But we should nonetheless take their conceit at face value, hold them to that standard, expect them to try hard to get close to that ideal, and even assume they were trying and made a human error when they fall short and help and expect them do better. It is a tremendous gift that they are trying and think it is worth it to try. Even if that effort is not principled and sincere -- even if they're just trying to make others think they're politically neutral -- it's a massive gift. Run with that. Take it for all it's worth. Believe them and help them succeed and tell them that you're willing to believe they mean well if they act, not even perfectly, but reasonably. The alternative -- a world in which they cannot win and might as well not try, in which we have an openly and unapologetically politically non-neutral entity with this much power -- is far worse.
Facebook may have a lot of power, but it is not so much that going to war with half their countrymen is a good idea -- this is true both for them and for society. Perhaps they would be within their rights to do it, but the effect would be very bad for everyone. The predictable result of that scenario -- the establishment of a competing social media option with a competing flavor of censorship -- eliminates the possibility of healthy, democratic discourse. Our traditional media is in this state right now, which is why both sides are so useless. They cannot talk to each other. They can only talk to themselves. They cannot think high-mindedly about what is best for society. They can only talk about how wrong their enemies are. In an echo chamber and a war, everyone goes crazy, no matter how right they were at the beginning or overall. We need to be able to listen to each other, and choosing to fight instead would just hurt everyone. Loud bias on two sides does not moderate towards reason -- it accelerates towards two flavors of insanity.
We need each other. If we fight, all we will do is break the system, and -- as we see in traditional media -- this isn't worth it. As we navigate society-wide issues, it is easy to see that it would be really nice to have an information infrastructure that worked, but alas, in a short-sighted effort to win an election here or an issue there, we broke it. This is unfortunate because a functioning and rational information infrastructure would be a really helpful tool to have when you need to address a bigger problem like a pandemic. Even looking just domestically, the truth is that neither side needs to win half so badly as they need to be able to trust each other, and need the wisdom that they can come up with together. But of course, this information problem is not primarily domestic. It is revolutionary and it is global. We absolutely cannot afford to fight bitterly over stupid, provincial issues while trying to think about the sort of massive political and philosophical problem that is private companies in California pretending they are not running information infrastructure in Burma. Putting that infrastructure in the center of a US-based political war is a horrific idea to contemplate.
We can't go down that road here. Can't. And even if it looks like Facebook is going down it, responding by fighting is going down it with them. We have no choice but to figure out how to get along. We need high minded wisdom, we need the ability to listen to a huge, global community and make sacrifices for each other. We need excellent vision, and we need good ideals, and we need pragmatic political understanding. Affection and trust and good faith and cooperation are too important to sacrifice. We cannot fly apart, we cannot become enemies, we cannot take offense over small things. The only way to get to where we need to be is to insist on expecting everyone to be doing their best to get along and to accept nothing less. Facebook may be politically biased, but I refuse to accept that. To the degree that it is the case, they can do better, and I believe they want to, and I will help.
The cynical attitude may be true, but the deeper truth is that we cannot afford it.
