I think this is a very compelling point, and much better than most of the "fediverse is for freedom" talking points I have seen on HN:
> I have participated in many a public forum on Internet governance, and whenever anyone pointed out that social platforms like Facebook need to do more as far as content moderation is concerned, Facebook would complain that it’s difficult in their huge network, since regulation and cultures are so different across the world.
> They’re not wrong! But while their goal was to stifle further regulation, they were in fact making a very good argument for decentralisation.
> After all the very reason they are in this “difficult position” is their business decision to insist on providing centrally-controlled global social media platforms, trying to push the round peg of a myriad of cultures into a square hole of a single moderation policy.
I think if there was a more robust social media market instead of a Facebook/Twitter duopoly, we would have seen at least _some_ platforms move to restrict things sooner, and maybe even a majority of platforms. That would have kept us from hitting a moment so fraught that the President ended up banned from all social media overnight.
I agree with your assertion. And I would add a bit on the "content moderation is difficult" argument.
The current state of content moderation - or lack thereof - on these platforms didn't happen by accident. It's the direct consequence of their business model.
If you create a digital space and you host millions of people, you will also pull in the fraught complexity of human relationships. The digital space isn't free from the same challenges regarding governance of communities you'd encounter in the physical world.
However, the businesses that provide the infrastructure and engineering that underpins digital spaces aren't in the "building communities" business. They are selling advertising and business intelligence. Which is a very different proposition.
As such, the very design of the large platforms never quite incorporated proper tooling that models the complexities of (self) governing millions of people in a central digital space. On the contrary.
Recommendation engines - people who you know, people to follow, this might interest you as well, this article was shared x times,... - do the exact opposite. They have helped shape emerging social dynamics which are spilling over in the real world, with real world consequences, creating social feedback loops that escape control.
Rather then acknowledging this fundamental issue, these centralized platforms assumed that they could solve this through centralized content filtering, or through centralized human moderation teams which have to follow company policies. Which is an incredibly difficult proposition considering the amount of digital data produced daily by billions of people.
So, why did they chose this type of content moderation? Because the social issues that stem from these platforms are seen as an expense which ought to be externalized. There's only an incentive to invest in content moderation to the point where the issues caused by the people they host are threatening the performance of the business model.
In that regard, I think that a "social media market" were platforms provide affordances for equitable (self)governance of communities involves a fundamental reflection/reshaping/rethinking/overhaul of the business models and business incentives that underpin such a market.
The communities or groups who have gone "rogue" aren't going to care for moderation, they're going to ban/block anyone with a dissenting argument/narrative - even if it's reason and truth - which then externalizes the cost to the rest of society into the physical world in the form of violence, terror.
There are always going to be communities like that. The problem with Facebook and Twitter is that they provide a "radicalization pipeline" to get people into communities like that. And one of the big issues with the riot at the Capitol is that there was an interplay between what Trump/Cruz/Hawley/others were saying on social media and what these radicalized groups were saying. That only happens because there's a very porous border between things, so that you can have a radicalized Qanon group sharing the same space as official government accounts.
> I have participated in many a public forum on Internet governance, and whenever anyone pointed out that social platforms like Facebook need to do more as far as content moderation is concerned, Facebook would complain that it’s difficult in their huge network, since regulation and cultures are so different across the world.
> They’re not wrong! But while their goal was to stifle further regulation, they were in fact making a very good argument for decentralisation.
> After all the very reason they are in this “difficult position” is their business decision to insist on providing centrally-controlled global social media platforms, trying to push the round peg of a myriad of cultures into a square hole of a single moderation policy.
I think if there was a more robust social media market instead of a Facebook/Twitter duopoly, we would have seen at least _some_ platforms move to restrict things sooner, and maybe even a majority of platforms. That would have kept us from hitting a moment so fraught that the President ended up banned from all social media overnight.