Chris Navin

My two cents: High-end algorithmic design and development takes a fair amount of brains. In terms of access, we’ve gone from usenet backwaters to very popular global wave pools, disrupting many old forms of communication aggregation and technology.

Rule-making and enforcement is hard, and some of the problems found therein can bedevil anyone (political/ideological disputes, violent actors, child predators etc). Twas ever thus. You want the people, you get the problems. And there are some serious f**kin’ problems.

Each one of us gets what we pay for, I suppose. So, in choosing to use these companies’ products, each of chooses to play some part, however small.

My vague predictions: Companies tend to get co-opted by the organizational structures that have grown up within them (often run by 2nd and 3rd-raters, loud voices, and/or bureaucrats). The best talent goes elsewhere or moves on to other problems. Or maybe the company’s overtaken by new rivals. Or it stagnates against new technologies. Or maybe they are made to answer other centers of power, authority, and influence. Or….things fall apart.

Some people on the Left, feeling the pull of authoritarian undercurrents or dashed against the sharp, totalitarian edges of many others on the Left, have been the ones suggesting modeling these platforms’ speech policies on 1st amendment protections or ideas found in J.S. Mill’s thinking.

Those designs have worked much better, for much longer.

As for me, I’m not holding my breath. I’m pretty sure I don’t trust the lifeguards at the global wave pools.

Within minutes of @YouTube‘s announcement of a new purge it appears they caught my outlet, which documents activism and extremism, in the crossfire.

I was just notified my entire channel has been demonetized. I am a journalist whose work there is used in dozens of documentaries. pic.twitter.com/HscG2S4dWh

— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) June 5, 2019

‘….disrupts people’s experience…’

You may not use Twitter’s services in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience on Twitter. https://t.co/AyT3TOb34k

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) June 6, 2019