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Comment by esalman | Hacker News Reader

If a car manufacturer is faced with a problem so that it loses the ability to prevent accidents, would you let that manufacturer continue its business?

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We do allow car companies to continue to build cars that cannot prevent accidents. Even beyond preventing accidents we as a society also allow the car companies to build cars with varying levels of safety and have a rating system for them.

We do. However, car manufacturers usually try to downplay reports of issues with the cars to the point when they can't do anymore. That's when something like a recall happens, which results in a substantial financial loss for them. Obviously not every affected vehicle owner can or may afford to have their vehicle serviced, so many keep using them despite the risk- like the people who are using social media knowing its weaknesses.

I think social media are at a point when they are forcefully downplaying the social issues which they are actually responsible for. We've already seen state and other actors exploit the social media and cause mass epidemics; anti-vaxx, white nationalism, Rohingya issue etc. to name a few. Let's see how far it goes before the damage is too much.

Oh please, this is as ridiculous as blaming the manufacturer of the truck for the psychopath that used it to run people over in France. As far as I know Facebook doesn't released public numbers on this kind of information, but their automated systems and human moderators have undoubtedly caught millions of objectionable content streams, you just don't hear about them. If we're making car analogies they would probably be the safest vehicle on the road.

> it loses the ability to prevent accidents

Car manufacturers can't prevent accidents - what do you mean?

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