> I don't think that's what people want from their social networks nowadays. FB, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, etc all do not work this way anymore.

They don't work this way because it makes shareholder's the most money, not because it is the best experience for the user.

> Advertising plays a very small part in this. Most of what you would call "disinformation" is spread through reposts, which are not affected by advertising.

A completely false ad about a candidate of a different political party is much less likely to be called out or reported because it is only shown to a highly targeted group of people. This lack of accountability creates disinformation. These ads could not be ran as a billboard advertisement or in a non-personalized ad space.

All of the counter arguments always come down to this: Facebook would make less money. And, yes, of course that is going to be the case because if any of these changes would make them more money they would have implemented them themselves. It requires a public corporation to accept that they are making the world a worse place, and to choose to make less money to stop doing that.

>All of the counter arguments always come down to this: Facebook would make less money. And, yes, of course that is going to be the case because if any of these changes would make them more money they would have implemented them themselves. It requires a public corporation to accept that they are making the world a worse place, and to choose to make less money to stop doing that.

And it would also require them to make a product that people desire less, and risk losing to a competitor that gave people what they want. People want to cluster in silos, chase novelty, and spout off with 100% confidence about topics they know nothing about.

> Facebook doesn't profit from divisiveness, they profit from engagement. The fact that divisive posts encourage more engagement tells me more about people in general, rather than Facebook's business model.

"Crack dealers don't profit from drug addiction, they profit from the pleasurable effects of consuming crack. The fact that very addictive drugs are pleasurable to consume tells me more about people in general, rather than crack dealer's business model."

there are a lot of pro-legalization folks on this forum that would likely be inclined to agree.

I’m fine with legalizing crack as long as producers and distributors are heavily regulated and held accountable for their impact on public health, just like the alcohol and tobacco industry.

Social media conglomerates manipulate how billions of people perceive the world around them, with disastrous effects. They should be held accountable for that.

Absolving them of all guilt, and blaming all the nefarious effects of social media on the consumers, accomplishes nothing.

Yes, and I don't see crack dealers as the problem in your example. The bigger problem is how society views drugs, addiction, and the criminalization of both. We've all seen how well that's worked for us. Thinking we could apply similar bans on speech we don't agree with is just as stupid.

Both things can be true. Some dangerous drugs are excessively criminalized and that causes enormous problems. Others are legal but heavily regulated, like alcohol and tobacco. Some are legal and insufficiently regulated, which causes enormous problems too: see for example the ongoing opioid crisis in the US.

Nothing good comes from denying the dangers of an addictive drug, or leaving its distributors free to misbehave without consequence. That is the current situation with social media companies and their enormous influence on our minds.

I don’t think we should ban social media. But not holding multi-billion dollar social media conglomerates accountable at all is lunacy.