In a free society sites like liveleaks and wikileaks absolutely have a right to exist. As well as all the fringe conspiracy sites.
The problem with censorship by Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Google is different. Here the government is putting pressure on the tech companies to censor content they don't like. Censor the bad people or risk antitrust action.
It's so gross and so clearly in violation of the first amendment. Even elected officials and professors are not exempted. It doesn't matter if you're elected by the people or if you're an expert in your field, if you say something that is considered 'misinformation' by the Ministry of Truth you get censored. It's outrageous, and if big tech doesn't change course we need to start building alternative platforms. But it might already be too late.
It doesn’t matter if competing platforms are built. Normal people don’t care one way or another, especially outside of how those other platforms are popularly characterized, so those other platforms will never take off. Only a minority of people are conscious of their liberties and subsequently any potential infringement to them.
As far as I can tell, no shift of the overton window begins with 'normal people', rather it always ends with 'normal people'. Any campaign of this nature is a long and sustained effort over months and years. One requiring that normal people precede them on the wave of change is a guarantee that one will never begin to move in the first place.
All of the major platforms of today will surely be replaced eventually. Snapchat and TikTok came seemingly out of nowhere in roughly the same FAANG environment as today.
This is the problem, isn't it? You seem to be posting an easy question to answer. But it's not, is it? Who is Google to judge what anyone would "consider violent or garbage?"
I don't remember electing them to control this aspect of life. And where does it stop? What is the line? Who is actually defining these things?
When a small group of people control the definition of "wrong think" then we're gonna have a problem regardless of which side of the argument those people are on.
While your question is innocent enough, I get the feeling you already knew the answer.
> This is the problem, isn't it? You seem to be posting an easy question to answer. But it's not, is it? Who is Google to judge what anyone would "consider violent or garbage?"
You aren't even touching on the complexities. The original article was about "misleading content". Google is asserting that they will take action on "content that deceives, misleads, or confuses users".
Speech is violence nowadays. Silence is also violence.
One of these days, I'm going to go live in the woods and no internet. People clearly do not want a free society anymore so I may as well just check out.
Or just migrate to a country that aligns more with your views, like many immigrants have done and do today. John Locke never said anything about needing form new ones.
The, "Won't somebody please think of my children" excuse is a little selfish considering there are people with differing opinions (who may or may not have children too).
would be great if fbk and twitter did the same thing!
any group like 'occupy democrats' 'vets against trump' - would be gone.
If they would do these to the search results, most of the news sites would not longer have top positions! I'm liking this now.
"content that deceives, misleads, or confuses users"
- funny that I used to ask people on fbook some years ago when they posted some things, 'do you believe the thing you are re-posting is true or fake? Is it funny or serious? Do you think your 'followers' think it's true when they see you post it?
Trying to determine the understanding of the re-poster - but also the 'intent' of them re-sharing - sadly I think most of the time it was to 'deceive' aka virtue signal tribe thing - even when they admitted things may not be true, they still wanted the thing posted and shared - and knowing others may not look at it and not know it's not true.
need to think on this longer. Wait, when g/f/t thought the hunter laptop was fake they affected our national elections and discourse, when they did not care if golden shower oppo research was true or fake it affected real world stuff.
Not so sure these folks can be trusted with deciding what should be shared as true/false actually. The reach and effects of these decisions are large and serious.
>Who is Google to judge what anyone would "consider violent or garbage?"
They own and operate a service called Google Drive. They offer that service under whatever terms they decide. And the decisions they make are relevant to their own service. They likely also don't allow you to use their service to distribute illegal material.
>I don't remember electing them to control this aspect of life. And where does it stop? What is the line? Who is actually defining these things?
Google has the right to make this decision on their own platform. They don't have the right to make this decision outside of their platform, and are not attempting to do so. They're not a government. They cannot control what other sites do. They don't have an army. They're not burning textbooks or jailing teachers. They're not controlling the definition of "wrong think."
If you don't like what they're doing, you're welcome not to use their service. Google Drive isn't the only cloud-based document backup service by a long shot.
