Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

I believe the trust crisis is about social media itself - about physical ability to write anonymously. It couldn't not result in avalanche of lies, both honest and malintentional - the infamous "Putin's bots" are a part of the problem but not even such a big part. Problem is because everyone can post, opinions sparking most outrage will be reposted and thus multiply the most - because the neutral, centrist opinions are just not clickbait-y enough. It results in division naturally - because soon almost half of everything posted is offensive to half the people, as the middle ground disappears. That amplifying, and thus divisive, power of ability to repost is by itself enough to split society in groups.

Maybe solution is to tax social media, in a way that they become more like traditional media? Essentially, you pay based on how many people saw your content - it may be cents per year if you just share your vacation photos with a bunch of friends, but if you post an anti-mask meme, it will drain your pre-paid account in minutes as it is being reposted, and then disappears and no longer seen by anyone (along with the rest of your content) when you reach zero, before you refill?

I see no problem with the principle of free speech here: there was free speech before social media but you could never go on TV, publish a newspaper ad, or print a pamphlet for free. Free speech is about freedom, not price. And just ban all "free as in free beer" social media outright.

The issue with that approach to me is you end up saying every piece of information is as valid as any other.

We know some things are wrong, we have evidence that they're wrong, and believing in some of those things can cause people to take actions which endanger and even kill others.

So what do you do? I'm not advocating censorship as a solution, but simply throwing up your hands and saying "who are you to judge?" isn't really working either.

The barrier for making your own “Twitter clone” is low, unless it actually has to scale to Twitter’s perf. The barrier to making a “Twitter clone which has absolutely zero moderation” (which is close to what Parler said) means that you are unlikely to be able to find any vendors in the USA which will accept those contract terms or want to accept the liability.

Analogy: try couch surfing to minimize paying rent. A person with a good reputation and good roommate habits can easily find a place to stay and it will likely be cheap with lots of options for places to stay.

But if that person starts to consume the food that was bought by and marked for others, doesn’t do their part of the chores, starts arguments with roommates and guests, doesn’t pay their rent on time, disrespects the property, violates norms of conduct, then they cause harm to the responsible parties living in that home. Don’t be surprised when they get evicted and their social credibility (like AirBnB ratings) fall off and no one wants to host them. This is remarkably close to what happened when Parler was kicked off of the App Stores and then lost their CDN, DNS, and hosting.

They aren’t acting “in lock step”, they are all equally afraid of the consequences of hosting a high liability client and are looking for a contractual reason to cut their liability.

Have you seen the death threats a Plumber in Texas got because his truck was sold then ended up in ISIS in Syria/Iraq with his company logo on it? Branding and association have real world costs.

It’s also not clear if upstream providers have zero liability if they allow content that is blatantly illegal. I seem to remember that DHS / FBI will just barge into data centers with a warrant and pull servers off the rack with little concern for the other clients that are co-hosted on that physical hardware. The collateral damage of being a client in an unmoderated data center is far more than being in a data center where the moderation rules weed out the riskiest clients.

The funny thing is that everyone commenting here thinks that we're headed towards an authoritarian nightmare, but for different reasons.

It's not until you sit with someone and nut out what they mean by "authoritarian" and "censorship" and so on that you realise you're completely morally and politically opposed to them.

This shallow political take is what allows so many strange bedfellows to unite on the "political right" (which is no longer really a relevant tag).

I'm reminded of this amazing review by George Orwell:

"Yet each writer is convinced that the other’s policy leads directly to slavery, and the alarming thing is that they may both be right."

https://maudestavern.com/2008/10/09/george-orwell-review/