Slashdot Mirror
FCC Chairman Keeps Up Assault on Social Media (axios.com)
Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is doubling down on his critique of tech companies, asking whether social media is "a net benefit to American society" in remarks at the Media Institute on Wednesday. "Now, I will tell you upfront that I don't have an answer." From a report: What he said: Pai made the case that social media has been key to the politicization of many aspects of American life. "Everything nowadays is political. Everything. ... This view that politics-is-all is often made worse by social media," he said, per his prepared remarks.
He dare not confront his boss directly, so he makes veiled statements whose meaning is clear to the Twitmeister.
It's strange to me that social media providers and users have gotten so riled up about net neutrality, yet it's like they're oblivious to how non-neutral their social media platforms of choice are.
It doesn't even matter which social media platform we're talking about. I can't think of one that hasn't engaged in some sort of censorship. I'm not even talking about content that has been deemed illegal by some government, and has to be removed to avoid a police-imposed shutdown of the platform in question. We see routine censorship when people express ideas that are perfectly legal to express, but that conflict with leftist ideology in some way. Sometimes the censorship happens when somebody expresses a leftist idea, but it isn't far enough to the left!
Then there are the sites like Reddit and Hacker News, where voting stories/comments up or down is a core part of the platform. That activity is all about showing preference to certain content over other content, and worse, it often results in the disliked content being hidden in some way (aka censored). This kind of partiality is the complete opposite of neutrality.
It's all very hypocritical. The people who are insisting the loudest that others be neutral are themselves unwilling to engage in anything resembling true neutrality. They're still perfectly fine with censorship and banning and showing preference, just as long as they're the ones doing it and nobody else is allowed to.
I don't think that any social media operator or user can say they support net neutrality as long as they continue to support the impartiality that's so prevalent on pretty much every social media platform that I can think of. Even Slashdot isn't immune, with comments being hidden by default, especially those that have been downmodded.
Ironic, since Pai only has the job because of Russian manipulation of social media.
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