This is an extraordinary document in a bunch of ways. 1/
https://twitter.com/justinhendrix/status/1386749711755980801
One way to understand it is that Facebook didn’t do a good enough job of identifying and suppressing a dangerous, harmful movement. Events lend some urgency to this point of view. 2/
But another way is to notice that Facebook is actively in the business of researching and improving techniques to suppress social movements on its platform, not just astroturfed, but what employees describe as "organic harmful movements". 3/
Who decides which organic social movements are harmful? What is worse, Facebook's failure to prevent itself from becoming infrastructure for the January 6 incursion of the Capitol, or that it was de facto deputized to judge and suppress communications of an activist movement? 4/
Legitimate order, social stability, and nonviolence are really important. So are freedom of expression and association, and the right of people to organize movements that act in ways opponents will tar as illegitimate. 5/
It's not clear how we reconcile these values in our brave new world. The flashmobbiness of the modern internet threatens the first set, the chokeholds of internet mega platforms threatens the second. 6/
I worry that, when all is said and done, we may keep neither. /fin
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