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Comment by ramblerman | Hacker News Reader

As someone very concerned with the increasing editorial and political power of these platforms I'm quite happy to read silly articles like this. Because they (the people who want more editing) are shooting themselves in the foot.

This article comes after facebook just deplatformed a sitting president, but according to these crusaders it is of course... not enough. Their absolute best goal would be to sit tight for a bit, and let the discussion blow over - the boiling frog analogy.

Instead, they decide to try and pull that lever more and more, which in turn provides a better chance of public perception actually shifting enough against this nonsense.

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Have you considered that their deplatforming of a sitting president was justified? I don't understand how you could decide that this article is silly right off the bat, unless you 1) think buzzfeed is just silly or 2) already just think these platforms ban "conservative" voices and so this article is just delusion. But I personally don't think that just the fact that facebook removed the president suggests they clearly have a liberal bias. In fact it seems like they have agonized about removing him/these non information channels like alex jones for years. Unless you think they just shouldn't remove anyone... but they are a private company - not a public square..

I was arguing more against the slippery slope of editorial power. I think you are making the case that it is ok because in this case it may be justified?

Personally I'm happy Trump is gone, but these are entirely different points.

Once we accept this road to be "Ok" what's next. Perhaps google starts modifying pagerank to promote content it feels better fits its politics. And again they may be justified today, but there is a danger in allowing such an instrument to exist in the first place.

A benevolent dictator is great, until his son comes along.

>Perhaps google starts modifying pagerank to promote content it feels better fits its politics.

Honestly I don't think this is a political issue or the Mark Zuckerberg's of the world decisions are necessarily motivated by politics. Facebook turns a blind eye to everything until it becomes a potential financial liability. How many hate groups still thrive on Facebook? Alex Jones only started to get deplatformed after he was sued over Sandy Hook. Alex Jones became a financial liability. Facebook could have been sued too so Mark banned Alex to minimize risk but allowed Jones's supporters to stay to maximize profit. Politics to people like Mark is just a means to an end for profit.

Or maybe they could simply not promote any political content at all. Or even de-emphasize/throttle political content - as long as its applied evenly, across the board.

What they're doing now is over-promoting "conservative" content, and throttling liberal content. If the reverse was happening, you can be sure that Fox/OANN/Daily * would be screaming about platform bias. On second thought, scratch that. They are making such claims, even though the evidence shows the exact opposite is happening.

> Or maybe they could simply not promote any political content at all. Or even de-emphasize/throttle political content - as long as its applied evenly, across the board.

How can they do that when in today's climate "all things are political", "silence is violence", you're offending someone's free expression, how do they determine that my art is political?

That's not in any way an accurate description of "today's climate". It's cherry picking quotes from a very small - but very vocal - minority of only one side of the overall political spectrum that is "today's climate"

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