Google too is laying intellectual groundwork for censorship-in-all-but-name. Schmidt: "I am strongly not in favor of censorship. I am very strongly in favor of ranking… de-rank — that is, lower-rank — information that was repetitive, exploitive, false..." thenewatlantis.com/publications/g…
or "...likely to have been weaponized." Just this April, Google announced, "We’ve adjusted our signals to help surface [rank higher] more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content." You really must read @adamjwhitedc on this: thenewatlantis.com/publications/g…
That Google's top brass — however pure they believe their intentions; however salutary the effect of removing Infowars nonsense — doesn't understand that this will *increase* rather than decrease paranoia is almost more troubling than the censorship itself.
The likely reason SV leadership not only disbelieves but doesn't even seem concerned about balancing these things is that they are deep in an ideological bubble. Which makes doubly ironic the failure and growing internal betrayal of their information-will-set-you-free premise.
If I were in charge of FB, Twitter, or Google, I too would be terrified by what my product is doing to the national discourse. But I'd be more terrified of what lies down the path of anointing myself arbiter.
What's striking is not just that the companies are making the choices they are — bad choices, but ones with a certain rationale behind them — but that they give no indication of viewing this as a fraught balance at all. To them it's all "conversational health work" and the like.
To say nothing of whether tech's market share over discourse is so large that they ought to recognize free-speech protections, they offer no limiting principle, and seem blithe to the risk that their actions will further fray social cohesion. That's the reason to worry.
