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Comment by codemac | Hacker News Reader

A measure of this community will be how successfully we can manage a conversation about this topic.

My bet - we will fail.

I'm completely lost on how we should approach this for various social media like fb or twitter where the platform is ubiquitous.

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Social media should be regulated and forced to federate to combat their monopoly, for one. People spend years and years building up followings on these platforms, and since users themselves are the creators of the content that Facebook and Twitter are selling, they should have more legal protections of their rights. Like the 20th century labor movements, there needs to be a 21st century user/consumer movement. Users should have certain rights protected by law, including the right to transfer to a compatible and competing service (just as users have the right to retain their cell phone number when transferring carriers) and the right to consume content from compatible services in their social media feed.

As for filtering content, users should have the power there, too, just as they do their spam filter in their email account. They should have the ability to set their own parameters and leave it at that. Unless its blatantly illegal content, it should be protected, period, or the platforms should be classified as publishers and be subject to all the same legal liabilities that publishers are.

An internet user's bill of rights would be a good first step here. Define the requirements up front and then let the companies adapt to them. I really, really don't want the government dictating technical specs to the broader community.

Look to the requirement for phone number portability as an example. The providers weeped and gnashed their teeth, and then got together and implemented a working system.

I find I don't think of hackernews as a community anymore, haven't in a long time. To me what I read here is 50-75% of intentional argumentation and spreading of what's essentially FUD by people who are drawn here by the sites popularity, and who are just a likely to be on a payroll or otherwise promoting an agenda.

It's the small percentage of genuine people with reasonable, coherent things to say that keep me coming back. It's a trope, but the quality of discourse has declined markedly in recent years (imo).

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