What to do about social media corporations?

[BoxCrayonTales]

Maybe net neutrality would help, at least to make alternatives feasible. Section 230 doesn't seem to be the actual obstacle; being able to sue Twitter would just mean Twitter would either vanish or become very bland to avoid liability. We need a way to break up any monopolies like the telephone one - forcing the monopoly to give access to small competitors. But it's not just the bandwidth that net neutrality might help with, but hosting and access through internet searches.

It might be a good start.

[consolcwby]

Look, this is what you people wanted: Ban everything your masters disagree with, because you disagree with it too. Now, because it may THREATEN YOU, you want to stop it?
BWA-HAHAHAHAHAH!

SORRY RETARDS - NO NORMALIZATION FOR ME!

All you faggot-maggots can go fuck yourselves in digital-hell for ALL I FUCKING CARE!
(but i did warn you... poor poor babies!)

[Null42]

How practical is a boycott? They shut Parler down...

[oggsmash]

After the stock wars going on, and big tech moving in very fast at the command of the white house and big finance allies, it is looking more and more like Project Mayhem is going to end up being an actual solution to this mess.   I look at it a couple of ways, something like that is likely to hurt people who are not in their intention day to day malicious.  But as the philosophers of the movie "Clerks" discussed, if you choose to work on the deathstar for Lord Vader and the Empire, can you really be that salty if it gets blown up?

[Spinachcat]

The solution for social media is simple.
Choose to be a publisher or a platform.
Act accordingly, and if you violate that, get legally hammered.

It's not rocket science if you support free speech. 

But what if somebody says something that offends me???
Pick one:
A) Avoid the platforms and stick to the publishers where all speech is edited / moderated / censored.
B) Grow a pair and stay on the platforms.

[BoxCrayonTales]

The solution for social media is simple.
Choose to be a publisher or a platform.
Act accordingly, and if you violate that, get legally hammered.

It's not rocket science if you support free speech. 

But what if somebody says something that offends me???
Pick one:
A) Avoid the platforms and stick to the publishers where all speech is edited / moderated / censored.
B) Grow a pair and stay on the platforms.

C) Politely inform them that they offended you and ask them to be more sensitive in the future

[Kyle Aaron]

It's simple, but not easy: give people ownership of their own data. Currently all my data - age, gender, location, profession, my browsing habits, etc - are given straight over to social media without monetary compensation, and they then sell this data off in the form of targeted advertising.

Historically people were paid to do marketing surveys, etc. So: give people legal ownership of their data. When I sign up for social media, I should be able to go through and tick boxes to rent them my data - and the more data I'm willing to share with them, the more they have to pay me.

This would solve most privacy concerns.

This would have flow-on effects to the censorship concerns. Social media companies would then decide themselves how they want to police their sites. If I'm running a social media company and paying for your data, I am effectively paying for your presence on my site. I will then make a rational decision as to whether your presence is worth what I'm paying for it. Of course, if i kick you off and stop paying you, then I can no longer use your data.

Thus if I as a social media company wish to exclude about one-half the adult citizenry (such as FB excluding conservatives, and Parler excluding lefties), this will limit the value of the data I have to sell to advertisers.

[Pat]

Here's one approach:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9218405/Florida-governor-Ron-DeSantis-declares-war-big-tech-cartels.html

The governor of Florida is trying to get a bill passed that will fine big tech companies $100,000/day if they deplatform a political candidate.

[zircher]

That works for me.  Hit them in the wallet to get their attention if that is what is needed for them to play fair.

[moonsweeper]

Here's one approach:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9218405/Florida-governor-Ron-DeSantis-declares-war-big-tech-cartels.html

The governor of Florida is trying to get a bill passed that will fine big tech companies $100,000/day if they deplatform a political candidate.

I do like the idea, but...

The problem is, it won't even phase them.  If they only target a few important ones it won't matter.
Say 10 candidates for 30 days...$30 million in fines...Amazon made $3.3 billion net in Q4 of 2019...they won't even blink with that as a deterrent.

...although it does work as a revenue boost for the state.

They need to be hit with the FEC violations for in-kind contribution but that won't happen.

[Shasarak]

The governor of Florida is trying to get a bill passed that will fine big tech companies $100,000/day if they deplatform a political candidate.

They dont even need to deplatform people when they can just crush them under the algorithm.

[jhkim]

It's simple, but not easy: give people ownership of their own data. Currently all my data - age, gender, location, profession, my browsing habits, etc - are given straight over to social media without monetary compensation, and they then sell this data off in the form of targeted advertising.

Historically people were paid to do marketing surveys, etc. So: give people legal ownership of their data. When I sign up for social media, I should be able to go through and tick boxes to rent them
my data - and the more data I'm willing to share with them, the more they have to pay me.

That's the idea behind the EU's "right to be forgotten" laws. By allowing people to take back their data, it in principle allows them to demand more money or services in exchange for their data. They own their data, and can take it back or sell it. The problem is that right now, the market price for personal data is quite low - effectively free. People are happy to give away personal data in exchange for free services. Still, I think "right to be forgotten" is important and could be strengthened by making it easier to be forgotten. Also, forcing privacy to be the default - and collecting personal data to be an explicit transaction.

This would have flow-on effects to the censorship concerns. Social media companies would then decide themselves how they want to police their sites. If I'm running a social media company and paying for your data, I am effectively paying for your presence on my site. I will then make a rational decision as to whether your presence is worth what I'm paying for it. Of course, if i kick you off and stop paying you, then I can no longer use your data.

Thus if I as a social media company wish to exclude about one-half the adult citizenry (such as FB excluding conservatives, and Parler excluding lefties), this will limit the value of the data I have to sell to advertisers.

For the most part, companies don't care about personal data of people who aren't using the product. The value of the personal data is in *combination* with the eyeballs, because it lets them sell more targeted ads. If they can't sell ads because the person isn't using them, then the personal data isn't worth much - though they will happily sell it for cheap to third parties.

We may well evolve to have dual sets of social media companies - just like traditional media companies now specialize in left-leaning (Washington Post) and right-leaning (Breitbart). I don't know if that will change the bigger picture though. If they have to pay more for data, they'll just try even harder to make their products addictive -- luring people in with outrage and clickbait.

[Pat]

The problem is that right now, the market price for personal data is quite low - effectively free. People are happy to give away personal data in exchange for free services.

That's not true. I'm not going to quote a specific number because it's been several years since I've been involved, but there's a huge market for personal data, and companies regularly pay non-trivial amounts per person. The problem is similar to one of the core problems with healthcare -- the costs are hidden from the end user.

[jhkim]

The problem is that right now, the market price for personal data is quite low - effectively free. People are happy to give away personal data in exchange for free services.

That's not true. I'm not going to quote a specific number because it's been several years since I've been involved, but there's a huge market for personal data, and companies regularly pay non-trivial amounts per person. The problem is similar to one of the core problems with healthcare -- the costs are hidden from the end user.

I don't think you're actually disagreeing that people are happy to give away their own personal data in exchange for free services. When companies buy personal data, they're buying aggregated and digested personal data of many users. It's the data collection and formatting that they're paying for.

Generally, users can avoid collecting personal data - for example, by using incognito mode on their browser. But then they don't get to the sites and services that they want that way, so they are willing to go ahead and give up the personal data.

[Pat]

The problem is that right now, the market price for personal data is quite low - effectively free. People are happy to give away personal data in exchange for free services.

That's not true. I'm not going to quote a specific number because it's been several years since I've been involved, but there's a huge market for personal data, and companies regularly pay non-trivial amounts per person. The problem is similar to one of the core problems with healthcare -- the costs are hidden from the end user.

I don't think you're actually disagreeing that people are happy to give away their own personal data in exchange for free services. When companies buy personal data, they're buying aggregated and digested personal data of many users. It's the data collection and formatting that they're paying for.

Generally, users can avoid collecting personal data - for example, by using incognito mode on their browser. But then they don't get to the sites and services that they want that way, so they are willing to go ahead and give up the personal data.

I'm disagreeing with the part I quoted. I said nothing about whether people are happy. You have some idea of the general issues, but you clearly don't have any experience with the ecosystem of companies buying and selling personal data or how tracking works, so some of the details are misleading or even wrong. For instance, incognito mode doesn't really do anything except hide what web sites you visit from other users of the same computer. All the sites you visit still track you, because they can do that without cookies.