Banning shitter - sounds okay to me
I'm not a believer in any form of censorship. That's not how you fight against shit ideas or products.
Also, what would be next? Ban people not voting for the right candidate and then, those wearing socks the wrong color? According to who? That's a dangerously slippery slope...
I’m sorry if this is not a good community for this question. If not please point me to one.
'Buy from EU' as I see it is not 'force people to buy from EU' it's more about 'encourage people by showing them EU alternatives as honestly as possible' (they're not perfect, nor are they always as feature-rich as the US alternatives) ;)
hear hear
To be honest, I wouldn't mind. I also wouldn't mind banning any and all of social media.
The experiment was fun while it lasted but as is often the case some people poison the well. And that happened to every social media. In my eyes every social media is very much a propaganda tool and destabilizes the democracies around the world. The corporations behind these are not moderating enough because they don't want to or it is to costly for them or just - what I can understand - too much to do feasibly.
So every social media should be banned. I understand that this is not what everyone thinks or wants to hear, but in my eyes the car already hit the wall and we have to live with the consequences.
(I do fully understand that this means reddit, feddit, youtube and others. I would really miss feddit and youtube but well... I like to live in a progressive society and not in a dystopian, propaganda riddled shadow of its former self.)
It sounds like your advocating banning open communication
I understand your concerns and effectivly if put it that way I'm advocating just that. I concur that this will put me in a bad spot.
Open communication is a very powerful tool especially in politics and academia. The thing is propaganda is also a powerful tool in politics. Propaganda and populism. With social media both of them became ubiquitous much to the detriment of the western democracies. The corona pandemic and all things about vaccination are a prime example of this trend.
While I still would very much like to have the ability to chat with someone from Australia or see pictures of people in Bali or share recipies with people of Norway, I see the downsides and am very worried of the trend that is emerging. The political discourse is rife with populism and the divided masses go into the fox holes for every matter be it as small as an atom and without any merit to argue about.
I have the feeling that compassion, understanding, and sympathy is going downhill and social media is giving a minority a voice to sound like a majority. I have the feeling that social media is exasperating all the negative emotions of the people. And to be honest that scares me.
So unless social media is heavily moderated - to battle e.g. hate speech and propaganda - I think a shutdown of every social media is needed.
But I have a question for you: Do you think of phpbb forums and blogs as open communication? If that's the case, I'd say that I'm ambivalent of this issue since I wouldn't mind blogs and forums since they are (typically) moderated.
P.S.: Reading all this again I see that it could be positive to give a minority a voice - like people with rare diseases so they could get better help, like repressed people and so on and so forth. But I still believe that sadly the cons outweigh the pros.
In my opinion, the advantages of these platforms will far outweigh the disadvantages - provided that the abuse of power can be curbed (opaque algorithms that present fringe positions to a large audience, censorship by the owner, etc.). Regulatory measures are needed for all actors: rules for algorithm transparency, audits. If disclosure or audit fails, platforms can continue to be accessible but must shut down algorithms.
There are still some ways to use banned apps and programmes. Besides it takes away opportunity of making your own decisions and creates the atmosphere of censorship.
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