“Arbiter of truth” is too big of a word. People easily forget two important things:
Facebook is a social media, emphasis on media: it allows the dissemination of content, it does not produce it;
Facebook is a private, for profit enterprise: it exists to generate a revenue, not to provide a service to citizens.
Force 1 obviously acts against any censoring or control besides what is strictly illegal, but force 2 pushes for the creation of an environment that is customer friendly. That is the only reason why there is some form of control on the content published: because doing otherwise would lose customers.
People are silly if they delegate the responsibility of verifying the truth of a content to the transport layer, and the only reason that a flag button is present is because doing otherwise would lose customers. That said, to answer your question:
No, Facebook does not have any responsability beyond what is strictly illegal. That from power comes responsibility is a silly implication written in a comic book, but it’s not true in real life (it’s almost the opposite). As a general rule of life, do not acquire your facts from comics.
“That from power comes responsibility is a silly implication written in a comic book, but it’s not true in real life (it’s almost the opposite). ”
Evidence? I 100% disagree with your claim. Looking at governments or business, the people with more power tend to have a lot of responsibility both to other people in the gov’t/company and to the gov’t/company itself. The only kind of power I can think of that doesn’t come with some responsibility is gun ownership. Even Facebook’s power of content distribution comes with a responsibility to monetize, which then has downstream responsibilities.
You’re looking only at the walled garden of institutions inside a democracy. But if you look at past history, authoritarian governments or muddled legal situations (say some global corporations), you’ll find out that as long as the structure of power is kept intact, people in power can do pretty much as they please with little or no backlash.
“Arbiter of truth” is too big of a word.
People easily forget two important things:
Facebook is a social media, emphasis on media: it allows the dissemination of content, it does not produce it;
Facebook is a private, for profit enterprise: it exists to generate a revenue, not to provide a service to citizens.
Force 1 obviously acts against any censoring or control besides what is strictly illegal, but force 2 pushes for the creation of an environment that is customer friendly. That is the only reason why there is some form of control on the content published: because doing otherwise would lose customers.
People are silly if they delegate the responsibility of verifying the truth of a content to the transport layer, and the only reason that a flag button is present is because doing otherwise would lose customers.
That said, to answer your question:
No, Facebook does not have any responsability beyond what is strictly illegal. That from power comes responsibility is a silly implication written in a comic book, but it’s not true in real life (it’s almost the opposite). As a general rule of life, do not acquire your facts from comics.
Since we’re talking about Facebook, it’s worth reminding that the customers are the advertisers. All y’all are just the product being sold.
Right, the chain has one more step, but still: if people start unsubscribing from Facebook, then money goes elsewhere and so does advertisers.
“That from power comes responsibility is a silly implication written in a comic book, but it’s not true in real life (it’s almost the opposite). ”
Evidence? I 100% disagree with your claim. Looking at governments or business, the people with more power tend to have a lot of responsibility both to other people in the gov’t/company and to the gov’t/company itself. The only kind of power I can think of that doesn’t come with some responsibility is gun ownership. Even Facebook’s power of content distribution comes with a responsibility to monetize, which then has downstream responsibilities.
You’re looking only at the walled garden of institutions inside a democracy. But if you look at past history, authoritarian governments or muddled legal situations (say some global corporations), you’ll find out that as long as the structure of power is kept intact, people in power can do pretty much as they please with little or no backlash.