Americans Don't Trust Content Decisions Made By Social Media Giants, Study Says (cnet.com) 89
Most Americans don't trust social media companies to police the content on their platforms, according to a poll published Tuesday from Gallup and the Knight Foundation. CNET reports: The poll found that 80% of Americans don't trust big tech companies to make the right decisions about what content appears on their sites and what should be removed. People, especially conservatives, trust the government even less than social media companies to make these decisions, according to the report. The poll explored several topics around free speech online and the threat of misinformation.
Most Americans also support, in principle, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects Facebook, Twitter and other online companies from liability for content posted by their users. Although President Donald Trump and some in Congress are pushing to reform the law, the poll found almost two-thirds of Americans support keeping the existing regulation. People and groups who favor the rule say Section 230 protects free speech and allows for an open marketplace of ideas.
Most Americans also support, in principle, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects Facebook, Twitter and other online companies from liability for content posted by their users. Although President Donald Trump and some in Congress are pushing to reform the law, the poll found almost two-thirds of Americans support keeping the existing regulation. People and groups who favor the rule say Section 230 protects free speech and allows for an open marketplace of ideas.
No shit Sherlock (Score:2, Insightful)
You made everything about guns and gold. Nobody trusts anyone else.
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Yep, I mean, I'm sure it was just an oversight that in the summary for this piece, they're sure to mention Trump wanting to "reform" the law, while neglecting the fact that Biden wants to revoke it altogether. [slashdot.org]
But sure, editors on sites like /. would never take any partisan political stances, would they? /s
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Americans kinda lack empathy for others not in their immediate social circle, and that's highly reflective in how people use Facebook, Twitter, and various other platforms that have comment systems.
Somehow this mindset of one-upping or trying to "own" others turns into it's own sport of who will blink, and yet everyone around the interaction is just goading the activity to continue rather than to break it up. Some things just never evolve from schoolyard bullying.
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Perhaps the findings aren't as obvious as many think, since I haven't found many posts which are pointing out that a slight majority of the respondents don't trust the platforms because they aren't going far enough to moderate content. So it appears a majority do trust the companies enough to moderate but are simply disappointed that the platforms aren't doing it.
About 99% of respondents were proponents of content moderation in some form (child pornography being the strongest reason), so it is obviously wro
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I don't care what people say on social media. I do care about politicians using it explicitly because they're 'allowed' to lie there. Fact-checking is not censorship, and to lump it in with other forms of moderation that are is a fallacy.
When the fairness doctrine was trashed, the rationale was that, with all the outlets now available, there's no need to present both sides, or be held to any truthfulness standards. Competing viewpoints will always be out there. But when a large portion of the public use
The bottom line for their vetting of content (Score:2)
Re: The bottom line for their vetting of content (Score:5, Insightful)
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I really really wish all that mattered to these companies was the bottom line.
Recent evidence (Star Wars, Star Trek, The Last of US, Battlefield, etc) have shown us time and time again that the bottom line matters to the guys in charge, but to the people actually making decisions about what products get pushed out the door the bottom line doesn't matter at all. They have a higher purpose. A more "noble" goal. Which doesn't make a whole lot of money, but makes all the blue checkmarks on twitter think they ar
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Lol, you simple child.
Twitter starting shit with Trump means Twitter gets plastered over the airwaves. All of the MSM slaps their logo on screen and talks about them. Then a whole bunch of viewers pick up Twitter for the first time in 2 weeks to go see what the fuss is about.
Getting your brand associated with the most highly visible, most covered people in the world is the absolute dream of pretty much every company. That's millions of dollars of advertising that you don't need to pay for.
I haven't thought
Silicon Valley warped perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
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Google isn't fighting for anyone but their piggy bank.
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Get Woke, Go Broke.
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Get Woke, Go Broke.
Yeah Google's getting REALLY hammered.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q... [yahoo.com] /s
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Wow, check out that P/E ratio.
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Counter examples: Apple, Google, Microsoft and Twitter are all (trying to be) woke and are worth more than many countries.
Sometimes it's just a matter of time. Colin Kaepernick was proven right in the end and the NFL even apologised. He polls very well these days and companies that supported him like Nike do too. Right side of history and all that.
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The game is far from over.
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Hey, I'm no lefty nutjob, in fact quite the opposite, but you're talking about this "The Federalist", right?
"The Federalist was subsequently temporarily suspended from Twitter for promoting fringe ideas that contradicted public health experts and were harmful to public health. Reddit also removed links to The Federalist article on its platform..."
So yeah, defunding them is probably not too evil.
Hiding or "stealth blocking" them in search results would be, but Google doesn't seem to be doing that.
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How about People? (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly don't trust most people to responsibly use social media (or the internet in general). Most people stay ignorant on principle and do everything they can to not learn about the world around them. Social media makes all of that worse.
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Wouldn't a system like NK be better, where we only had the approved news and contact within our own isolated country?
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Wouldn't a system like NK be better, where we only had the approved news and contact within our own isolated country?
Trump appears to be subscribing to that idea.
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Isn't this kind of what we had for a while, except the more benevolent version?
Broadcasters licensed by the government and their content meant to be in the community interest? Broadcasters achieve this by hiring educated professionals with bonafide credentials to collect and report information? The technical and market limitations of scale keeping radical/fringe ideas mostly out of mainstream media?
Radical/fringe ideas aren't blocked by law, but by the combination of government regulation and requirements
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Or how about the opposite where people actually care about being informed before making a decision?
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Isn't this evidence of the exact opposite though? People are now more sceptical of social media and don't believe all the BS that gets posted there, i.e. they have become more responsible users.
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Some people, maybe. But there's still too many people who don't and couldn't be bothered to be informed.
What it does not Allow (Score:2)
It does not allow censorship, the alteration of the platform to produce only the ideas the corporation approves of, no free market of ideas. A controlled propaganda platform controlled by the corporation that owns it, they contrived platform is the work of the corporation and they should not have protection for that. Sure uncensored except by law and the courts but once to curate it to present what you prefer to present, you immediately alter it's nature and lose protection, deservedly so. They purposefully
So NOW we're supposed to trust them? (Score:4, Insightful)
For the past 4 years it's been a steady diet of russian disinformation this, russian disinformation that, the election was stolen because of bad facebookinstagramtwitter posts by russian bots even as late as a few months ago!
NOW you're whining because nobody trusts the news from the BigTech sites?
You guys really need to think out your propaganda campaigns better.
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Yes because if a certain person hadn't been dismissing it all as fake news and actually tried to do something about it then it wouldn't still be a problem. The fact that Robert Mueller said it pretty much guaranteed that nothing would be done about it, at least until there is a change of leadership.
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Trump pointing out that the fake news merchants peddle in fake news isn't the problem.
Good to know he's still living up there rent free though.
Don't have to trust the Media - can choose another (Score:2, Insightful)
You do not like Twitter, join Facebook. You don't like any of the existing, start your own "ConservativeLiesSocialMedia".
That what Freedom of The Press MEANS. It does not mean you get to tell Facebook, Twitter, or anyone else what to put up on the internet.
But don't expect anyone else to believe the garbage you do. The reason they post what they do is that the majority of the country believes they are honest, despite what the vocal minority says.
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There are a few lesser known Social Media Platforms.
And FB, Twitter et al are not all that secure in their position. I'm not worried about them, eventually they'll jump the shark.
Re:Don't have to trust the Media - can choose anot (Score:4, Insightful)
You just literally posted "the majority of the country believes they are honest" as a comment on a story which reveals "The poll found that 80% of Americans don't trust big tech companies to make the right decisions about what content appears on their sites and what should be removed."
Did you not even read the summary, or are you just that bad at racist stuff like math, reasoning and statistics?
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Did you not even read the summary, or are you just that bad at racist stuff like math, reasoning and statistics?
You may have read the story, but did you read the actual study? The 80% statistic is very misleading, considering 54% of the respondents distrusted the platforms " "for not going far enough to police harmful content [rather] than for going too far." It is similar to the reporting for how people disliked Obamacare, since most people fell under the "didn't go far enough" and "went too far" camp, leaving few people in the "just right" camp.
I still don't agree with the OP's comment that people post on social me
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Nobody should be able to say anything (Score:4, Insightful)
That I disagree with.
It is appalling that people can just use social media to say whatever they like.
It needs to be policed! By people that agree with me!
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It needs to be policed! By people that agree with me!
I agree!
Why would they? (Score:3)
All Social Media is about as trustworthy as a Trump tweet.
Age old adage (Score:1)
Mods are fags.
News at 11.
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Why don't you just stop the coverup and come out already? You know you want to.
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Well you know I didn't agree until you reached for the homophobic slur. Now I'm convinced.
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The leaders of the Big Tech companies are enemies of the people.
Viva la revolution!
Wait did you mean to sound like a communist revolutionary?
What the hell happened? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in school in the 1980s, those numbers would've been the other way around. Democrats who felt freedom of speech was nearly absolute. Republicans who felt it should be limited. What the hell happened?
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It was difficult to see how cheap, instantaneous communications would let us treat each other.
And then we got to see. Natural experiment.
Those poll numbers are probably something like a mix of generational change, coupled with voters' reactions to the experiment.
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A single "Are you sure you want to post this?" button in the right place would do wonders.
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Republicans owned the newspapers and tv stations?
Re:What the hell happened? (Score:5, Interesting)
Natural political cycle. There's a reason why "democrats were a party of KKK" and also the party of the anti-racists in 1980s. There's a reason why 1980s republicans were moral panic "sensor all the media" party, and today are "hands off my free speech" party.
It's a natural cycle of parties, that reshuffle every couple of generations to new positions. Right now, we're in the final stages of reshuffle of Republicans, who ejected NatSec and rejected anti-speech religious groups, and went hard for poor working class. Democrats are only now starting to realise that they are no longer a neoliberal "ACLU that defends civil rights of nazis" party, and most of their current constituents are clearly anti-freedom and pro-safety rich white racists. The group that thirty years ago voted solidly republican.
This cycles occur every two generations in US politics. You can trace this back at least a century if not more. This is normal. Healthy even. This sort of reshuffle nominally breaks up political structures and alliances that begin to calcify into corrupt end state, forcing a political renewal.
Problem with this cycle seems to be that propaganda has gone completely off the rails into truly Goebbelsian levels on the left, with open statements that are opposite of factual reality on pretty much anything Trump. Which to be fair is understandable, as Trump is a 1990s democrat running on what is a heavily modified 1990s democrat platform. He basically took what Democrats started to distance themselves from as a losing strategy, appealing to poor whites, and made it into a winning ticket, blowing both Democratic and Republican ideological coalitions up. He also purged all old school republicans who were more offended by his upending of decades old party policy in 2018 midterms, which is why Republican party is nominally in the end game of its morphing into the new form. Democrats had to face this only in recent years, and are still flat footed and in a complete disarray, as their presidential elections primaries showed.
Which is why social media giants that are founded and operated out of massively pro-Democrat regions has gone into overdrive to maximize demonization of Republicans. When you're caught flat-footed by your opponent, you need to use any tools at your disposal to regroup. And in this case, Goebbelsian "nothing new on Eastern Front" level of insanity appears to be the natural outcome of "we have no good news on our political coalition and political future until we actually get a leader who can unify the party and define the new Democratic coalition that can oppose Republicans".
That's why we're getting all the "Russia collusion, no wait Ukrainian collusion, no wait Nazis in Charlottesville being praised by Trump, no wait..." laundry list of utter insanity that is completely disconnected from reality being shoved down our throats. It's a stalling tactic until a unifying element that can oppose Trump and redefine Democratic party coalition can be found. Until then, all that can be done is maximum demonization of "the other" regardless of merits of those accusations.
Frankly, I wish they'd get on with it and actually get it done, because this social media censorship insanity is getting downright Maoist with those struggle sessions on live TV.
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Very well stated. I usually summarize it like this:
> This cycles occur every two generations in US politics
Not just politics. This binary polarization happens because kids don't want to be like their parents.'
i.e.
* Grandparents believe A
* Parents believe ~A
* Kids believe ~(~A), which is the same as A.
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I agree with this thesis in general, but the weird part is that it takes more than a generation for the cycle to occur, and end position of the cycle tends to include different people.
So yes, you are absolutely correct that people of the same lineage tend to change and hold opinions different from that of their parents. But that cannot be the only, or even main explanation for the change where entire demographics turn around and as a result, often completely reshuffle entire party's voter base and which int
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While there are some pearls of wisdom in your post, your own political biases are certainly on overdrive. As a former nearly-Republican myself (I considered myself Independent, but mostly voted Republican) I probably share many of your views of 90's Democrats, but your viewpoints of what has happened to the parties in the past two decades are horribly warped. The Democrats never stopped being the party of the working class, they just stopped being the party of the white working class. Becoming more inclusiv
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Pretending the USA is a fundamentally racist country is not optimistic
You are showcasing the difference between being optimistic and being in denial. Calling the USA a fundamentally racist country is very subjective, so it's impossible to properly respond without knowing what you mean by that. Racism is certainly quite strong and widespread in the USA, even if in most cases it is more subtle than a half century ago. Segregation is still widespread; the practice just became more underhanded after Brown v Board of Education. Legal outcomes for minorities compared to whites, for
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It becomes increasingly difficult for some folks to see an argument against either political party as anything other than a rallying cry for the other. I wish more people realized that both parties are at an absolutely disgusting level of absurdity at this point in time. Me pointing out Trump is disconnected from reality doesn't mean I see the Democrats as some sort of moral pillar. Just the same, me pointing out Pelosi is a self-serving narcissist and the entire Democratic primary process was a complete
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Problem here is that this is projecting situation of the Democratic party on Republican party. Trump isn't "disconnected from reality". This is easily observable in amount of factual things he got right, ranging from problem China poses to US to problems of political correctness, to the fact that poor whites exist and matter (as opposed to "black kids are just as good as rich kids Democratic party leader of today). This list can be continued for a very long time.
The reason why you think Trump is disconnecte
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I'm a staunch voter of Finnish Social Democratic Party. Whatever political biases you projected on me are your own.
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Here's what happened:
"Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they
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You don't even have to quote a disgusting person like Kazinsky. Just look at what happened in Seatle. The leftist took control, threw up a wall and a few thugs appointed themselves as "the new police", then started shaking down the people that live there.
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It's a weird time though. Republicans that were throwing around RINO as a term have faded from the fore-view of our current administrations supporters.
People who were Democrats but leaned more socially liberal have largely gotten tired of all of the righ
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It is partly current events, partly human nature, partly the questions asked and partly your interpretation of the results.
Freedom of speech has never been absolute and this poll is not evidence that democrats no longer support freedom of speech or that republicans are now the champions of it. That would be hysterical.
If pollsters focused on the actual issues at hand and asked more focused questions, the results might be more informative. For example if "their views" in the first question were replaced wi
I love it (Score:2)
I love it when an organization makes opaque decisions in clandestine panels and gives me no choice or even visibility into the process. Doesn't everyone?
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Pretty much describes our entire social structure, governments, amd corporations.
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Modern Western nation state is the most transparent social, governmental and even corporate structure to have ever existed on large scale. Everything and everyone else got it far worse when scaled to similar levels.
It's easy to compare things to utopia in your head. It's how you get modern communists telling us in full seriousness that PRC isn't communist. Because it obviously doens't match the utopian vision in their heads. It's just that when you try to implement said utopia, you run into real world that
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>PRC is central authoritarian. It has little to do with communism, other than being the consequence of most implementations of communism (Leninism really).
Yes, that's what I said above:
>It's how you get modern communists telling us in full seriousness that PRC isn't communist. Because it obviously doens't match the utopian vision in their heads. It's just that when you try to implement said utopia, you run into real world that doesn't care about your delusions of grandeur. It will instead crush then a
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There is no way to get to your utopian "communism" with humans. That utopia would require every human to be intelligent, selfless, and moral.
The VAST majority of people are stupid, selfish beyond reason, and only situationally moral.
The only way to get to communism is by setting up a centrally controlled economy to decide abilities vs needs, and as soon as yo do that, the stupidest, most selfish and least moral move in and take control. That is why every communism experiment has ended in the exact same wa
Trust (Score:2)
...People, especially conservatives, trust the government even less than social media companies...
To 95% of the human race, this simply shows how weird people in the USA are.
Even the majority of people I hugely disagree with in government originally got into politics to improve things in some way(s). People who are in business are either in it to push an idea/device or they are in it to make a living.
Showing less trust in (hopefully) well intentioned people is illogical. Blindly showing more trust in people who are in it for the money is just insane!
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Fact check: Look up the occupation of most of the people sitting on city councils. You'll notice that real estate brokers and construction contractors over sample to a ridiculous degree. You think that might be a coincidence?
Protect platforms that do not censor (Score:2)
The platforms absolutely deserve to be protected, but only as long as they don't editorialize. However, currently, they consider themselves to be the arbiters of truth. They have no business deciding what is fake news, what is politically correct, or anything else. They should only remove content if so instructed by a valid court order.
No prioritizing or de-ranking, except through their normal algorithms, which must be as content-neutral as possible. No censorship, nada, zilch. Do you want to write about Na
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So much wrong with this.
First, your idealism is meaningless if problems that are destroying society aren't solved.
Second, you throw around words like "censor", "editorialize", "platform", "arbiters of truth", "fake news", "politically correct", all of which has a subjective component yet you speak in absolutes.
Third, your solution..."valid court order"...does nothing. It is too slow to make any dent in the problem.
Finally, these "platforms" you say "deserve to be protected" have no obligation to be neutral
Why should they? (Score:1)
After Facebook was caught 'trending' anti-trump stories in 2016
-from expired domains picked up by a Washington PR company first purchased, then tried to hide their domain purchases prior to the 2016 election
-that had close to zero traffic according to alexa web statistics
it became very clear that Facebook was being used to spread disinformation on Trump and interfere with the US election.
Add on top of that that Facebook is actively suppressing information regarding the Israeli illegal occupation of Palestin
Section 230 ... (Score:1)
No, it does not. Not yours and mine. It protects Mark Zuckerbergs free speech, in that he can manipulate the visibility of material posted on his site to tailor whatever messages he desires. It may look like free speech and have the feeling of representing the grassroots thinking of the public at large. But the grass has been very carefully landscaped to produce the view that its owners want.