Robert Reich notes that, though the hue and cry is safeguarding free speech, it's big men at the top of the economic ladder, multi-billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who are calling the shots with influential social media platforms. The rest of us do not get a say about whether people spreading hate and disinformation are normalized by being given a platform.
(1 of 2)
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/should-trump-get-back-his-giant-megaphones
@wdlindsy Throughout much of our country's history, that power was held exclusively by the few rich hands that owned newspapers.
I'd argue that we're inherently better off now, because people have so many sources of information, and those billionaires you decry are forced to act at the whims of the masses for whom they've democratized information sharing.
Sure, some jackasses find platforms on social media, but so many more positive influences and role models also find platforms there.
@wdlindsy Sure. Please do. Ask about Black Twitter and the sense of community it created. Look into the safe spaces for LGBT youth to feel heard and not so alone in the world.
Those things came out of social media.
@LouisIngenthron And ask about the neo-Nazis and white supremacists to whom Elon Musk is now giving a platform and how that affects vulnerable human beings who are susceptible to trollling, doxxing, and other forms of online harassment.
Libertarian fantasies about "free" marketplaces always sound so nice on paper. In real life, they never work out to be so nice.
@LouisIngenthron And having said that, I'm going to bow out of this conversation and wish you a good day.
@wdlindsy There will always be bad people in the world. No system is going to ever fix that. It's human nature.
All we can do is discourage it to the best of our abilities.
And advertisers fleeing Musk's platform as he re-invites bigots is the free marketplace of ideas punishing him for his bigotry.
It may not work immediately, but few things of so grand a scale do.
And I truly believe that the free marketplace of ideas will bend, in the long run, towards justice, because that's what most people want.
@LouisIngenthron I think perhaps to get a really useful picture of how well the media serve our needs at gathering and disseminating information, we might need to ask those historically excluded, not invited to the table, not given a voice, how well the media — which is owned by super-rich people, almost always white men — are working.