Thread by @ggreeneva

In most eras, it’s taken some cultural competence to build a media property in a country: an understanding not only of the language, but of class, politics, history, and other aspects that require nuance and sensitivity.

For a social-media firm, it only takes a URL and a server.

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1452306918098313223

Many of the phenomena documented around FB’s colonization of other countries — fueling religious extremism in India, ethnic cleansing in Burma, and so on — show an unexpected downside of the global web: the facilitation of communication unfettered by cultural competence …

… with perilous — even deadly — results. nytimes.com/2018/10/15/tec…

I get the concern brought up here. The business of FB, however, is not speech per se. It’s the facilitation of speech — the provision of an open platform, which algorithms shape to surface speech that holds readers’ attention.

That role sounds neutral — but …

https://twitter.com/conor64/status/1452019872158736385

… in the absence of ethics or cultural competence, Facebook’s impact — especially outside the U.S. — has been anything but neutral. wsj.com/articles/faceb…

This memo from FB shows how the company tries to efface a crucial distinction. The ‘readers decide for themselves’ line used here is a myth.

In reality, FB readers sit downstream from FB algorithms that curate what readers see. One gatekeeper has merely given way to another.

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1452335341231292424