re: #157 HappyWarrior

It’s all double edged. I don’t crap on FB and Twitter. I think in the abstract they’re both excellent tools but tools can be abused. I don’t hate newspaper or radio because Julius Streicher and Joseph Goebells abused them in the Nazi era. There does need to be some regulation of social media but what that is, that’s tough to determine since social media isn’t and nor do I think is something you should need a license for.

I crap on them. Noted above Twitter’s stock rise, despite not doing things like enforcing their terms against such thins as rape threats against women, Facebook streaming a snuff film from New Zealand and suicides from around the world, &c.

The regulation on social media sites? Anti-trust lawsuits. Break them up. Stop allowing them to gobble up competitors. Impose real fines for hosting illegal content.

Newspapers and radio did and do not build the largest database of individual people in the world for sale to the highest bidder.

I used to belong to a small social media site for people with epilepsy. The site did well for its size, then Facebook came in to purchase it.

The response was swift and fatal to the site. It was abandoned en masse by the users, rendering the site worthless, collapsing the deal, and bankrupting the owners who made that mistake.

That’s what needs to happen to Facebook for promoting genocide, rape and murder threats, and snuff films. Any other argument can be weighed against the ethics of the company.