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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
But I'm uncomfortable with this sort of thing because it is crafting consensus.
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No one is comfortable with this sort of thing, least of all the platforms themselves, who are not "crafting consensus" and do not want to be in that business at all. They want people to behave and not cause problems so the platforms can monetize them, but people keep misbehaving in different ways and causing problems, and they have to do moderation, which is impossible to do well or at scale, and then governments and politicians get involved, and CEOs have to waste their time going up to the Hill, etc. etc.
Having you looked at Facebook or Twitter or Tiktok lately? "Crafting consensus?" What are you, nuts? Consensus was when every town had one or two newspapers and a few TV stations and they all said the same centrist stuff in order to avoid scaring away advertisers. With social media, everyone can post anything they want, and the basic incentives -- say something edgy and different, stand out, get people rlled up -- are the complete opposite of "crafting consensus."
You are worrying about free speech problems from the 1970s, but it's half a century later and things have changed.
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Platforms only suck when they're sanitized and number of views expressed on them narrowed. That's how you get echo chambers.
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Take it from someone who worked at a platform: Platforms suck when there is zero moderation. Rank the following in order of where you spend money: Amazon, eBay, Craigslist. In that order, right? Who is doing sanitation and who isn't? Here's a hint: Jeff Bezos is the richest guy in the world, Pierre Omidyar is wealthy but not Jeff Bezos, and Craig Newmark is the answer to a trivia question.
The platforms that become echo chambers are the ones like 4Chan where anything goes, because then no one normal wants to go there.
