The Social Media Problem
&gt; It would really help if both Facebook and Twitter would be far more pro-active in shutting down these fountains of nonsense.<p>When I see this, especially from someone who bills themselves as<p>&gt;  &quot;Professionally I get paid to separate fact from fiction&quot;<p>it horrifies me. What they&#x27;re saying is that the existing draconian control of speech that is implemented on the social media networks is not enough, that we need to hire even more people to do moderation, that free speech needs to die even harder, because we can&#x27;t trust poor stupid people to make their own decisions, read what they want to read, and say what they want to say.<p>What a bunch of elitist bullshit. Small wonder that people are increasingly finding people like Jacques Mattheij to be unpalatable, nanny-state toadies that are to be routed around at best and attacked argumentatively when needed.<p>Yes, there&#x27;s bullshit about COVID and chemtrails and aliens all over the internet. Why do you care so much? You&#x27;re so worried that people are going to make their own choices, live their own lives, make mistakes that impact others?<p>This shows me that people have not learned what free speech is, what it is for, and why it was a hard-fought right that continues to need fervent defense. Mattheij can&#x27;t conceive of a world where his draconian moderation system could possibly backfire. Mattheij hasn&#x27;t looked at what&#x27;s happening in Belarus, in India&#x2F;Pakistan, and what happened during the Arab Spring when governments decided to use the power at their disposal to shut down on the people&#x27;s ability to freely converse with one another, even about Unapproved Topics, even with Officially Illegal Opinions. Mattheij either didn&#x27;t read any of the excellent 20th century dystopian science fiction, or thought it was a user&#x27;s manual for how to create an idealized totalitarian state.<p>Because of course, gigantic corporations and the government are going to choose what&#x27;s in everyone&#x27;s best interests. Of course, it is inconceivable that they would have any agenda of their own, or would want to make cultural changes at scale without the full consent of society. It&#x27;s never been tried, anywhere, right? Never ends badly?<p>Ahh, but it&#x27;s to save us from ourselves, right?