[oregontim]

BTW, Lex hit on the most interesting First Amendment issue that will be with us for a while:  whether Facebook, Twitter, and IG platforms should be subject to the First Amendment.  I think there is a decent chance that ultimately they will be, even though efforts to date have failed.   Those platforms now control (or are the springboard) for the majority of speech going on in this country.  Will be interesting to see how "government" gets inserted into those entities for First Amendment applicability purposes . . .

I agree with Teejers and Lex on the importance of this new problem, and the lack of any obvious solution so far.

1. The real problem isn't free speech. We're talking about Facebook and Twitter here. They are being forced to play referee but they don't want to; they do it poorly; and they are private, not government. They don't want to be censors and are trying not to. So not only does the first amendment not apply ... it also just confuses the real issues.
   
2. The worst problem posed by leading social media is not free speech but fake speech. Money and ideologues creating a fake word of mouth. Word of mouth, meaning a friend's recommendations, is very powerful in the way we humans think and decide things. Related power is that of opinion leader, or, the new fashionable word, the "influencers." Social media harnesses those special human power tools and offers the power of some kind of enormously amplified word of mouth that is essentially fake word of mouth, as in millions of dollars spent via bots and scripts and such, and posting farms, distorting public opinion with a tsunami of fake opinion.
   
3. Let me offer a specific example: I can take my opinion from this forum and post it on Facebook as me. No big deals. My Facebook friends can see it. But — and here's the problem — I can also pay Facebook unlimited sums of money to put me and my opinion in front of millions and even billions (if I pay enough) of people. So I can spread, say, false claims of election fraud, as much as I can afford to pay.
   
4. Here's another example: Google "Facebook accounts for sale" and you'll see competing vendors selling thousands of fake Facebook accounts for small fees, $29, $39, and up. So if I'm competent at some scripting language I can orchestrate thousands of fake people that seem to all the world like real people. Think of the Mickey Mouse sorcerer in the Disney version of the Sorcerer's apprentice.
   

Social media has had substantial impact on the decline and fall of truth in the 21st century. Give me the right budget and skills I can overwhelm real truth with anything I want to sell. Or generate death threats against Fauci, or undermine an election. Or undermine the wearing of masks during a pandemic. I can be a foreign government and churn up violence and division on both sides, building fake identities of trumped-up BLM, Antifa, and proud boys. I can use fake word of mouth on both extremes to make everybody angrier and more convinced of their righteousness and their place in the "right" crowd.

This is a brobdingnagian problem on which the first amendment has nothing to say. Can we, as a society, regulate all this? How? Do we turn these private sector tech companies into the arbiters of truth?

I have two small suggestions, FWIW ... steps in the right direction:

1. Make social media platforms every last paid-for post as a paid-for post. Make that law. Just like the newspapers set aside the fake news infomercials with banners top and bottom that say "paid advertising."
   
2. Make social media platforms accountable for policing the activities of fake accounts, scripts, and bots. They can do that. They don't want to because they make money on fake accounts and bots and scripts. Make that law and punish them for failure.
   

[oregontim]

BTW, Lex hit on the most interesting First Amendment issue that will be with us for a while:  whether Facebook, Twitter, and IG platforms should be subject to the First Amendment.  I think there is a decent chance that ultimately they will be, even though efforts to date have failed.   Those platforms now control (or are the springboard) for the majority of speech going on in this country.  Will be interesting to see how "government" gets inserted into those entities for First Amendment applicability purposes . . .

I agree with Teejers and Lex on the importance of this new problem, and the lack of any obvious solution so far.

1. The real problem isn't free speech. We're talking about Facebook and Twitter here. They are being forced to play referee but they don't want to; they do it poorly; and they are private, not government. They don't want to be censors and are trying not to. So not only does the first amendment not apply ... it also just confuses the real issues.
   
2. The worst problem posed by leading social media is not free speech but fake speech. Money and ideologues creating a fake word of mouth. Word of mouth, meaning a friend's recommendations, is very powerful in the way we humans think and decide things. Related power is that of opinion leader, or, the new fashionable word, the "influencers." Social media harnesses those special human power tools and offers the power of some kind of enormously amplified word of mouth that is essentially fake word of mouth, as in millions of dollars spent via bots and scripts and such, and posting farms, distorting public opinion with a tsunami of fake opinion.
   
3. Let me offer a specific example: I can take my opinion from this forum and post it on Facebook as me. No big deals. My Facebook friends can see it. But — and here's the problem — I can also pay Facebook unlimited sums of money to put me and my opinion in front of millions and even billions (if I pay enough) of people. So I can spread, say, false claims of election fraud, as much as I can afford to pay.
   
4. Here's another example: Google "Facebook accounts for sale" and you'll see competing vendors selling thousands of fake Facebook accounts for small fees, $29, $39, and up. So if I'm competent at some scripting language I can orchestrate thousands of fake people that seem to all the world like real people. Think of the Mickey Mouse sorcerer in the Disney version of the Sorcerer's apprentice.
   

Social media has had substantial impact on the decline and fall of truth in the 21st century. Give me the right budget and skills I can overwhelm real truth with anything I want to sell. Or generate death threats against Fauci, or undermine an election. Or undermine the wearing of masks during a pandemic. I can be a foreign government and churn up violence and division on both sides, building fake identities of trumped-up BLM, Antifa, and proud boys. I can use fake word of mouth on both extremes to make everybody angrier and more convinced of their righteousness and their place in the "right" crowd.

This is a brobdingnagian problem on which the first amendment has nothing to say. Can we, as a society, regulate all this? How? Do we turn these private sector tech companies into the arbiters of truth?

I have two small suggestions, FWIW ... steps in the right direction:

1. Make social media platforms every last paid-for post as a paid-for post. Make that law. Just like the newspapers set aside the fake news infomercials with banners top and bottom that say "paid advertising."
   
2. Make social media platforms accountable for policing the activities of fake accounts, scripts, and bots. They can do that. They don't want to because they make money on fake accounts and bots and scripts. Make that law and punish them for failure.