El Reg vs Facebook - both are publishers but only El Reg behaves responsibly
Exactly! The difference here is that El Reg largely speaking behaves as a publisher and Facebook believes in "free speech" as long as it increases its bottom line and doesn't require it to fact check or block any hate speech or other toxicity.
The "social media" model is completely broken and cannot be fixed. Throwing more "AI" (nothing of the sort of course) or even more after the event humanoid moderators at it will not result in any perceptible improvement and FB, Twitter et al know full well that it won't but they like to pretend it will to get rid of bothersome objections of politicians.
Ultimately the only way to stop the poison that FB thrives on is to strike out the laws that allow them to pretend that they aren't publishers and make them directly responsible for all comments posted on their platforms. This would of course result in their operations having to close down but so what? Nobody would die and the globe would keep on revolving without them.
If a national newspaper were to allow anonymous posting of vile content via its letters page and not check this beforehand because (to use FB style excuses) "it would take too long and cost too much" then it would be closed down within the week and rightly so. Why is Facebook allowed to deliberately allow anonymous hate speech and other toxic content without meaningful punishment in return?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
