Time To Rein In The Cess Pit?

[ToraToraTora]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58805965

[New Judge]

//Facebook harms children and weakens democracy: ex-employee//

I've also heard that The Pope is not a Muslim and that bears do not use public toilets.

[youngmafbog]

Ideally yes, but what exactly can you do?

[Zacs-Master]

Facecloth employs too many people and sells too many goods for anything other than a token gesture slap on the wrist. Welcome to the C21st.

[youngmafbog]

Well it did go down for 7 hours the other day. Perhaps dark forces are at work. :-)

[archibaldy]

// Ideally yes, but what exactly can you do? //

Restrict what users are allowed to access the site and restrict what they can post on it.

Which is all well and good until the decisions on which people, organisations or content that are banned are ones that some people disagree with, in which case it just stokes up even more division in society.

[youngmafbog]

//Restrict what users are allowed to access the site and restrict what they can post on it.//

Only TwitFace can do that, and they wont and it would be virtually impossible to force them. What Government would put such draconian measures that would stop people using it. Not really a vote winner is it?

And of course then you get the censorship, politically or whatever. Trump is a gleaming example of this, dont like him so they banned him.

[archibaldy]

// Only TwitFace can do that //

Twitter, Facebook, all of them, they are only computer programs and they can be made to do whatever the owners want or get told to do.

But yes Trump is indeed a gleaming example or my second point, he was deemed by some to be stoking up divisions so he got banned and some people didn't agree with that, stoking more divisions.

[youngmafbog]

I know they are programs and I know what can be done (I programmed for a living).

BUT, why would the owners change it?

[archibaldy]

For the same reason that other businesses don't do exactly what they would like to do, because governments regulate them or people won't start, or will stop, using them.

Although plenty of people don't use Facebook because they don't like the company or their product, lack of users is hardly an issue for them at the moment so it's government regulation. How this pans out is yet to be seen, social media is a relatively fledgling industry hence lack of regulations however they have a lot of power, especially in the field of who gets voted in to a position to make (or not make) those very regulations.