I like your approach that this is more a symptom of the much deeper issue of Big Tech's influence. Companies like Meta, Twitter, and YouTube have a crazy amount of power over a) what is seen and read by people and b) the livelihoods of their creators (in YT's case).
The policy approach to Big Tech companies is novel because they're really a new kind of thing. Yes they're private companies, but they are also these monopolies on what has become the town square. And the town square probably shouldn't be subject to partisan or ideological decisions being made, it isn't healthy for discourse.
I can’t help myself by pushing back on this though, “And the town square probably shouldn't be subject to partisan or ideological decisions being made, it isn't healthy for discourse.”
Because as I briefly mentioned in the post everyone has bias. There is a massive danger in thinking we can remove “ideological decisions” because even pragmatism is an ideologue since it’s easy to justify expanding the state by looking at each issue one at a time. My Democrat professors would point to Walter Cronkite as the golden era of news because he was a Democrat too although he wasn’t as overt with his bias as journalists are today, which I’m not entirely sure is a positive or negative. Personally, I find it more intellectually honest to be upfront while being courageous enough to not let our bias hold us back from exploring difficult questions.
I much prefer open-source transparency — as Elon Musk has said he’d do for Twitter — so we can at least see where the bias lies.
We should break up the concentration of power so that for example if a company like Parler wants to compete with Twitter then Apple and Google with their 99% control over mobile operating systems can’t keep it off their App Stores. Once social media sites have to compete more then economics will force the largest ones to move toward the center so as to capture more consumers.
And then lastly, we must understand the root problem of our growing polarization. It isn’t social media, but academia. We need to end student loans and grants so fewer Americans would be forced to go to college in order to be indoctrinated so as to get a job that once didn’t even require a high school diploma. I just posted about this today: https://www.anthonygalli.com/p/bidens-college-loan-forgiveness-is
I like your approach that this is more a symptom of the much deeper issue of Big Tech's influence. Companies like Meta, Twitter, and YouTube have a crazy amount of power over a) what is seen and read by people and b) the livelihoods of their creators (in YT's case).
The policy approach to Big Tech companies is novel because they're really a new kind of thing. Yes they're private companies, but they are also these monopolies on what has become the town square. And the town square probably shouldn't be subject to partisan or ideological decisions being made, it isn't healthy for discourse.
Thanks Holden!
I can’t help myself by pushing back on this though, “And the town square probably shouldn't be subject to partisan or ideological decisions being made, it isn't healthy for discourse.”
Because as I briefly mentioned in the post everyone has bias. There is a massive danger in thinking we can remove “ideological decisions” because even pragmatism is an ideologue since it’s easy to justify expanding the state by looking at each issue one at a time. My Democrat professors would point to Walter Cronkite as the golden era of news because he was a Democrat too although he wasn’t as overt with his bias as journalists are today, which I’m not entirely sure is a positive or negative. Personally, I find it more intellectually honest to be upfront while being courageous enough to not let our bias hold us back from exploring difficult questions.
I much prefer open-source transparency — as Elon Musk has said he’d do for Twitter — so we can at least see where the bias lies.
We should break up the concentration of power so that for example if a company like Parler wants to compete with Twitter then Apple and Google with their 99% control over mobile operating systems can’t keep it off their App Stores. Once social media sites have to compete more then economics will force the largest ones to move toward the center so as to capture more consumers.
And then lastly, we must understand the root problem of our growing polarization. It isn’t social media, but academia. We need to end student loans and grants so fewer Americans would be forced to go to college in order to be indoctrinated so as to get a job that once didn’t even require a high school diploma. I just posted about this today: https://www.anthonygalli.com/p/bidens-college-loan-forgiveness-is
Cheers!