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Should we have regulations, restrictions, or laws regarding Facebook or social media in general? Despite being a huge fan of capitalism, I have a big problem with these big tech companies’ unrestricted freedoms. There are a few reasons why I oppose giving them absolute freedom, and I will explain them in this article.
Let us start with the practical aspect: a free market is the best way to move the economy forward and make it thrive. But as regulators have said about drug companies: money is not the only thing that matters to us. There are other things to consider, such as health, security, freedom of speech, democracy, property rights, and much more.
Whenever there is a conflict between values, we launch a system of compromises.
What if there is some anomaly in the market that even the Founding Fathers failed to predict? Frankly speaking, what chance did they have of predicting such things as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and social networks in general? These companies manage to abuse one facet of freedom in order to hurt another, as they censor the freedom of speech and at the same time block any possibility for real competition in a most effective way. Thus, they hurt the free market.
So, in this case, I want to make an exclusion and support regulations. Why is this situation so problematic?
Facebook is not a traditional private company. It is an open public environment, which allows anyone to enter. It has existed longer, not as an exclusive club or a closed forum, but as a public place with very little difference from any other public space. They have a platform; this is true. It’s just that Facebook’s platform is actually something pretty simple to copy. Even 8 years ago, some platforms could have built a more sophisticated Facebook with many more options available for the user.
If so, why hasn’t anyone successfully copied Facebook? The Emojis and Stories feature that Facebook added not long ago was available on other platforms for a long time before that; does anyone know that? I don’t think so – you have to be on these platforms to know that.
Facebook’s asset is not technology. It is you. You are its asset.
No one will switch to Facebook 2.0 if there are no people on Facebook 2.0. Even if the new platform is ten times more advanced and every new user gets a private massage just for joining. (Well, maybe, in this case, people will just join but will not be active on the platform.)
It does not even matter if there are 5 Facebook platforms. If users are the property, then if John Doe is only registered to Facebook 3, it makes Facebook 3 a monopoly over John Doe. It appears that Twitter and Facebook are not really a cartel and not really a single monopoly. They are something in between. Or maybe, just maybe… they are a sort of a public place.
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Can one express his/her opinion on another platform? Of course, they can, but who will read it if all the attention is on Twitter and Facebook? What if somebody tells you that you are not allowed to come to a particular part of a city to say what you think, even if everyone else is allowed?
Some people might say that what they did to Donald Trump was right because they don’t like him. But this is precisely the problem. Alexei Navalny, the in-prisoned opposition leader in Russia, said not long ago that he disagrees with Trump, but censoring him is a wrong and a dangerous move. Alexei knows a lot about dealing with dictators like Putin, and his opinion on this matter is more than just relevant.
I believe that Mr. Navalny can predict the future repercussions of this dangerous move, just like the rest of us. It is not less than censoring freedom of speech for political reasons. We may disagree about whether or not the election was stolen, but deleting Trump’s account set a much more dangerous precedent than merely speculating about the election results on Twitter.
This is a situation that the free market has not experienced yet, and the creators of capitalism and the free market could not predict. Facebook is actually becoming a kind of hybrid between public space and a digital state. This is just one of the problems of these networks.
Cellular companies used to hold your phone numbers hostage. That way, no one could switch from one company to the other. It was too much hassle to tell everyone you have a new number until the new law told them that the number is the user’s property and not the company’s property. Since the law came out, the prices for cellular communications lowered dramatically. You cannot have any company holding your property as a hostage. Isn’t this precisely what the social networks are doing?
Not all regulations are harmful, just as not all violence is terrible. For example, if someone is about to assault you with a clear intention to kill, self-defense justifies violence in most states. If a pharmaceutical company is willing to sell a defective drug, regulation is something that will save lives. In most cases, I am against regulations and a pro-free market. But in some cases, regulation actually makes sense.
Facebook, of course, prevents any possibility of extracting information from it, and even if the content you produce belongs to a user, according to the law, they will not let someone conveniently access this information. Do you want to move your content elsewhere? Do it manually.
But it is not just that. These social networks’ algorithms have become so sophisticated that they can cause addiction, change habits, behavior, or individual emotions in a short time.
Something you see on Facebook can and eventually will change the way you behave in the real world. This is exactly what they sell to advertisers. They can literally trigger your depression if they like, and studies prove this claim beyond any doubt. Social networks already increased the suicide rate substantially, and the scary part is that they can do it on purpose.
Anyone who has seen the movie “The Social Dilemma” knows that the situation is getting worse, and we are losing control. However, we can do something about it without destroying the benefits of social media platforms.
What do I suggest?
A few things:
- Social networks shall not be allowed to delete or censor (or reduce exposure) to content that does not contravene the country’s laws. Facebook is the platform, but it is not the regulator and does not determine what is allowed and what is not allowed in the public space.
- Any user at any given moment shall be able to retrieve any and all the details about themselves, including posts, photos, or activities, in a usable way. Your information and your creations belong to you!
- At any given moment, any user should be able to log in and check which algorithms are currently running and affecting his experience. A user should also be able to cancel them. For example, stop highlighting posts with the word “organization” or “vaccines,” or posts that have received a certain percentage of angry emojis, in case Facebook decided that this is what it shows you. It is your wall, and therefore your right to oppose any info-treatment you are getting.
That way, these networks will really become a free and transparent place, and there will be no need for censors to check if you posted a banned word.
Senia Waldberg is the author of three books, a marketing specialist, and a political consultant from Israel.
COVID-19 lockdowns are taking down an independent news outlet
Nobody said running a media site would be easy. We could use some help keeping this site afloat.
Colleagues have called me the worst fundraiser ever. My skills are squarely rooted on the journalistic side of running a news outlet. Paying the bills has never been my forte, but we’ve survived. We have ads on the site that help, but since the site’s inception this has been a labor of love that otherwise doesn’t bring in the level of revenue necessary to justify it.
When I left a nice, corporate career in 2017, I did so knowing I wouldn’t make nearly as much money. But what we do at NOQ Report to deliver the truth and fight the progressive mainstream media narrative that has plagued this nation is too important for me to sacrifice it for the sake of wealth. We know we’ll never make a ton of money this way, and we’re okay with that.
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Things have become harder with the coronavirus lockdowns. Both ad money and donations that have kept us afloat for a while have dropped dramatically. We thought we could weather the storm, but the resurgence of lockdowns that mainstream media and Democrats are pushing has put our prospects in jeopardy. In short, we are now in desperate need of financial assistance.
The best way NOQ Report readers can help is to donate. Our Giving Fuel page makes it easy to donate one-time or monthly. Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal as well. We need approximately $17,300 to stay afloat through March when we hope the economy will be more open, but more would be wonderful and any amount that brings us closer to our goal is greatly appreciated.
The second way to help is to become a partner. We’ve strongly considered seeking angel investors in the past but because we were paying the bills, it didn’t seem necessary. Now, we’re struggling to pay the bills. This shouldn’t be the case as our traffic the last year has been going up dramatically. June, 2018, we had 11,678 visitors. A year later in June, 2019, we were up to 116,194. In June, 2020, we had 614,192. In November, 2020, we hit 1.2 million visitors.
We’re heading in the right direction and we believe we’re ready talk to patriotic investors who want to not only “get in on the action” but more importantly who want to help America hear the truth. Interested investors should contact me directly with the contact button above.
As the world spirals towards radical progressivism, the need for truthful journalism has never been greater. But in these times, we need as many conservative media voices as possible. Please help keep NOQ Report going.
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