Mark Zuckerberg still doesn't get it

I think Zuck "gets it" much more than the reporter does: being evasive and dishonest can be extremely lucrative in today's world if you do it exactly right. Zuck has always seemed to possess a natural talent in this regard, and now has become a true master of the craft. That's why he travels in a private jet while reporters fly coach.

Facebook was used in 2016 by the Kremlin for disinformation warfare with the express purpose of swaying the results of our presidential election. Facebook recently adopted an official policy that they will not remove political ads which are blatantly, demonstrably false. This policy was drafted by Katie Harbath, Facebook's Public Policy Director of Global Elections, who was previously Chief Digital Strategist for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Freedom of speech is a straw man. It only applies to government interference in the free speech of individuals. Facebook is a private platform, with no obligation to protect the free speech of its users. They are using it as an excuse to protect the spread of disinformation.

Yet another reason that Facebook is toxic.

It’s pretty well debated throughout history that society is ultimately free to put whatever constraints on behaviors that it decides are infecting it’s organic agency. John Stuart Mill is the first name that comes to mind. Paulo Freire discusses being forced to “import” a model of culture as authoritarian in nature.

I don’t owe billionaires my emotional & political deference to some notion of “in an objective vacuum”.

You can point at a method for counting that you agree with. I can still tell you to get fucked.

That this is even a question of being within the purview of a society to mitigate spooky action at a distance potential for telling the species “what’s real” if you have the $$ to buy enough ads is absurd.

The tech scene is acting like the Boomers. Entitled to control of our work and the problems we align to.

That’s not a politically defensible position. That’s exactly what religion does. What a shock a culture with deeply puritanical origins continues to feel we’re just a flock to be is emotionally curated. So much for objective views of reality.

Are you not beginning to struggle with the contradictions of your political ideas? You want a central authority to ban the spread of "blatantly false" ideas that you fear may cause plebians to vote the wrong way, yet you support affording plebians with the full right to vote? Would it not be simpler to bans plebians from voting, and therefore remove your worry entirely that they may vote the wrong way when hearing "blatantly false" ideas?

I think your comment and Zuckerberg’s framing of the issue hides the ball in a way that appears dishonest, though I do not think that is your intent.

For instance, what do you mean by this?:

> But I do think that any cure will be worse than the disease

Because it all depends on what "cure" and "disease" mean, right? Free speech is good is blithe and techno-utopian in the sense that it makes a blanket statement that refuses to get into the details and have opinions. Facebook used for ethnic cleansing? Well, free speech is good and Facebook is all bout free speech; the problem has to lie elsewhere. Guess we should fix that ethnic cleansing problem somewhere else.

Sticking to a high-level generality implies that, because your basic aim is good we must frame solutions or restrictions in a different way. We must remedy the damage done with speech using ideas and methods that aren't related to speech, somehow.

I don't know what is in Zuckerberg’s heart, but it strikes me that this position is extremely kind to Facebook's business model. As long as everyone is committed to unmoderated speech being central to digital spaces, they can avoid expensive moderation. They can also distance themselves from the consequences of the use of the platform they designed and provide. We should not let them do either one of those things.

Edit:

To use a non-speech example: This seems to me like someone claiming that we can't do anything about drunk driving because "people need to drive to work." Of course, the statement is true and people do need to drive to work. It simply glosses over all of the many changes we can make to how we let people drive that can crack down on drunk driving. It refuses to engage with the issue by asserting a general principle that, actually, does not present any obstacle to regulation and is unresponsive to the critique.