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Comment by tantalor | Hacker News Reader

You'll have to be more specific about "the current backlash"

You're right. My question was to be taken from a privacy standpoint, and I was referring to some critics today (both inside and outside the tech community) of how Google and FB specifically handle privacy.

Purely personal opinion, but to me the now more immediate and pressing issue is how these platforms do very little to combat the spread of clear and obvious dis/mis information for either political or just completely idiotic purposes.

Do you think they might have an interest in spreading them, besides user engagement? Also, I'm not implying anything, but what makes you think they are not trying to fight this spread?

I would go as far to say the _majority_ of information spread through Facebook is fake news. So when does "protecting people from dangerous information" become censorship?

No the real solution is people actually need to be taught critical thinking skills at school. It's not Facebook's role to be the next nanny state.

I would have to assume OP is referencing the plethora of pre-COVID19 pieces relating to the issues of enabling disinformation spread and privacy.

Actually the funny thing is I wasn't thinking about COVID-19 at all... (maybe I should get out of my cave sometimes)

Which mainly stems from the main stream media itself who are competing for attention and ad revenue against Google or Facebook.

Now one could argue that yes, Google and Facebook did profit financially from "fake news" during the last election because they make money from "attention", and did nothing to stop websites relaying misinformation because they were displaying Google ads or misinformation relayed on Facebook pages. Was there a "conflict of interest"? Always.

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