Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate
lgraham.senate.gov

Meaningful conversations will disappear into niches where capable people use secure encryption.

Our authenticity policy is the cornerstone of how we prevent abuse on our platform, and was the basis of our internal investigation and what we found. From the beginning, we have always believed that Facebook is a place for authentic dialogue, and that the best way to ensure authenticity is to require people to use the names they are known by. Fake accounts undermine this objective, and are closely related to the creation and spread of inauthentic communication such as spam—as well as used to carry out disinformation campaigns like the one associated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian company located in St. Petersburg.

Authenticity Policy went partially out the window when non-.edu addresses were able to register, and eventually completely out the window when new account registration was opened to everyone. Not really sure how big F can claim they have any sort of Authenticity Standards for user accounts. It seems to me that they encourage people to make multiple accounts, throwaways, business only accounts, pages for celebrities, pretty much everything but using your real name is encouraged at this point.

They [Facebook AND Twitter] also count "impressions" as the number of times something appeared on screen, which is laughably inaccurate for how "impressed" some piece of news or media became on someone's psyche.

Still no mention of a veracity metric or any sort of Bullshit-o-meter by neither Facebook, Twitter, nor Google.

Then, Finally, I got to Clinn Watts' testimony, and this human is a saint:

I propose "nutrition labels" for information outlets, a rating icon for news producing outlets displayed next to their news links in social media feeds and search engines. The icon would provide users an assessment of the news outlet's ratio of fact versus fiction and reporting versus opinion. The opt-out rating system would not infringe freedom of speech or freedom of press, but would inform users as to the veracity of content and its disposition.

Clinn Watts, friend of veracity, thank you for this timely and appropriate suggestion. I pray the big players take heed to your idea.

Then the only challenge is to invent some cross between the biohazard and radiation hazard symbols, and just plaster it on 99% of the net.