Democracy dies on a screen in your hand

X abandoned content moderation, giving Meta and YouTube permission to follow

When I relaunched this newsletter to represent my growing interest in and dedication to science and media literacy, I decided to focus (at least in part) on solutions—not only only identifying problems. 

Now, mere weeks into this project, Meta and Google have made that exponentially harder. Despite being some of the most powerful companies on earth, they’ve decided that content moderation is just too hard, and gets in the way of profits.

We’ve—those of us active on social media—watched the demise of Twitter in real-time. Not that it was ever a haven for great information, but it really was better Before Elon (BE). I followed a lot of credible new organizations and journalists and stayed current in my news consumption. Twitter was a reliable companion to my other news sources—never the sole source, but an important one, especially as it easily linked out to the actual media sites (another feature Musk is about to destroy).

Sure, there’s always been misinformation and disinformation to go along with the trolling, xenophobia, racism, and bigotry. But you could configure the algorithm (somewhat) on your own terms. Since I research misinformation for a living, I would get served up nonsense, but that too became part of my reporting. 

After Elon (AE), that all changed. Now I have to wade through a Great Pacific Garbage Patch of toxicity and paranoia to find credible news.  At the very least, I kept telling myself, it was only this bad on this platform. 

No longer. Facebook and YouTube are shedding misinformation specialists to trim down staff and keep C-level bonuses sky-high:

Mass layoffs at Meta and other major tech companies have gutted teams dedicated to promoting accurate information online. An aggressive legal battle over claims that the Biden administration pressured social media platforms to silence certain speech has blocked a key path to detecting election interference.

The reason? Musk “reset industry standards.” Meta was preparing to ban political advertising on Facebook, but decided against it to stay competitive with X in yet another example of “free market rules.” And these rules are only implemented to suit the needs of a small cohort of executives, not the public good.

These are the rules that let tech companies claim immunity from responsible journalism. The companies have fought revising Section 230 tooth and nail; rolling back content moderation rules are the consequences. And we all become poorer due to it.