Ten years ago I would have said, "No censorship. Turn on the firehose of information, and let me choose what's 'acceptable' and what's not."
No more.
That presumes some sort of equal playing field and a meritocracy of ideas.
That's clearly not the case. The reality is that good-faith content takes more effort than bad-faith content.
The 2016 US Election in particular showed us what happens when a platform takes a "hands off" approach - platforms become absolutely saturated with false, hateful information... much of it produced by large and even state-level organizations.
It's not just evident when it comes to political content.
Craigslist. Amazon. Etc. None of these platforms work with a completely laissez-faire approach on behalf of the platform owners. To think otherwise is utterly naive.
Platforms need to curate. There's no other way. Yes, this means we will need to place trust in those platforms and monitor their curation. Platforms will, in turn, have an obligation to be transparent w.r.t. how they curate.
No more.
That presumes some sort of equal playing field and a meritocracy of ideas.
That's clearly not the case. The reality is that good-faith content takes more effort than bad-faith content.
The 2016 US Election in particular showed us what happens when a platform takes a "hands off" approach - platforms become absolutely saturated with false, hateful information... much of it produced by large and even state-level organizations.
It's not just evident when it comes to political content.
Craigslist. Amazon. Etc. None of these platforms work with a completely laissez-faire approach on behalf of the platform owners. To think otherwise is utterly naive.
Platforms need to curate. There's no other way. Yes, this means we will need to place trust in those platforms and monitor their curation. Platforms will, in turn, have an obligation to be transparent w.r.t. how they curate.