Where nobody is willing to stand in on the editorial side, the decision is being made, effectively, by the submitter pool with the largest content creation capacity, and its interaction with algorithmic and promoted content dissemination. That is,
the decision is already being made, the only question is whether or not the results have strong truth valance.The ship has, in a word, sailed.
If you create a vast, global, instant, high-fidelity, interactive content dissemination system with a strongly aspirational and appealing audience, then parasitic opportunists who seek only to serve their own rather than others' interests will flock to it. And have, in spades.
And I've seen this game play out repeatedly: in print, on radio, television, Usenet, email, and since approximately 1997, on the Web and mobile Internet.
There are parties already making truth determinations, and their doing a demonstrably horrible job at it from a common weal perspective. And that is the problem.
"Just don't use Facebook" doesn't work for two principle reasons:
1. Facebook is increasingly central to, or required for, numerous real-world interactions.
2. Even if, as I do, you don't use the service, you live in the world it creates. Facebook has massive negative externalities. Like, oh, say, civil war and genocide in Myanmar, to mention only one aspect.
(There are others closer to home for most readers here. I'm hoping HN won't lose its collective mind if I don't mention these.)
Another element that factors in is that Big Lie propaganda is reliant on disseminating the Big Lie. Scale is directly the problem, and offering unrestricted access to, choose the amplification metaphor of your choice, the printing press, microphone, camera, TV/Radio station, etc., has risks. Especially for those who would see the tools themselves burned down along with all else.
In which case, drastically curtailing the spread of any content from identified actors and their associated networks responsible for spreading obvious and notable disinformation ... is highly defensible.
I'm well aware of numerous arguments, predicated on or observing exceptions to free speech, which typically follow such statements. I find both the free-speech absolutist and the private property / private actor restriction privilege arguments tired and uninspired. The reality is complex, and I don't have either simple solutions or any which are conformant simultaneously with "free speech" or "property rights" positions.
Both, to my mind, exist in a nexus and network of overlapping interests and rights. I've suggested "information autonomy" as an alternative to "free speech", though the expansion of that notion quickly points out internal conflicts. Common weal might offer one path out.