What seems inevitable is the US government starts hosting public forums to talk; but being bound by free speech. Virtually anything goes unless it's an actual crime. What happens after this?
Everyone gets tired of 19 out of every 20 posts being about why they need Viagra, and goes back to MySpace.
So lets say advertising is considered free speech and you may freely do it. In essence it would be a tragedy of the commons. The out of control advertising would eliminate the usefulness of the forum.
So "just don't follow" is not only meaningless advice but it's painfully naive.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals
Perhaps you should give these a read and edit your comment accordingly: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you use Twitter as is, there are a lot of things promoted for you but it's not any sort of public feed, it's (theoretically) based on who people you follow follow, who they like tweets from consistently, that sort of thing. No Viagra ads are going to be showing up in that.
We better tell every big tech company that what they’ve been doing forever is impossible to do if they don’t also de platform those deplorables.
We know exactly what happens because it's been attempted. It fills up with spam and screaming bigots and nobody uses it beside spammers and screaming bigots. Which is why the the only 'inevitable' thing about such a government-run forum is that it won't happen.
When have we ever had a government-run social network before? And why aren't physical, offline public squares full of screaming bigots?
We've had many failed attempts at 'anything as long as it's not breaking a law' online spaces.
why aren't physical, offline public squares full of screaming bigots?
Because we impose severe social costs on people for that sort of thing. The screaming bigots are only bold and screaming when they feel they can avoid them. An 'anything goes' pseudonymous online forum is effectively a gift to them and mostly them - most people prioritize other things in their online social spaces far above 'anything goes'.
Because the security guards responsible for the event probably throw them out. If you behave like a crazy person at a public debate or gathering you'll probably get removed from the venue or delegated to the protest area with the other crazy people and their signs.
If you're attenting a townhall, a community meeting, a church gathering or what have you you've always been expected to behave like a civilized human being, moderation is omnipresent in the good old offline world. This anthing goes mentality on the internet has no precedent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_(legal)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
They are, but only now and then.
The reason is that, for most (not all) communities, there are only a few screaming bigots within easy reach of the town square, so their demonstrations often look like this[0].
With teh Internets tubes, you can gather together all those little groups of nutters, into one big nutball, so it looks like there's a lot more of them, per capita, than there actually are.
4chan
How can you give people a platform, but at the same time, tame the conversation?