Free Men Free Minds@jack, @jack, @jack
Jack Dorsey has a blog post up titled a native internet protocol for social media. In that post, which has generated alot of news copy, Dorsey provides readers with his personal Mea culpa as to why he believes Twitter went off the rails with censorship, blaming himself, somewhat, though he also throws shade at billionaire vulture capitalist Paul Singer.
But the real reason for my noting and linking to Dorsey’s blog post is Dorsey’s list of principles for how a social media platform with the reach of Twitter should operate.
- Social media must be resilient to corporate and government control.
- Only the original author may remove content they produce.
- Moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice.
Principles number 1 and number 2 are, in my opinion, solid principles to adhere to and embrace. But principle number 3 is in complete opposition to principles 1 and 2. Jack, Jack, Jack, do you not understand that your stated principle number 3 is a complete fraud and repudiation of principles 1 and 2? Any algorithm which could perform the function of moderation you speak of would be designed by humans with their own prejudices of what is allowable content or what is not allowable content built right into it. Either a social media platform is a free speech platform, or it is not a free speech platform. In your stated third principle, Jack, Twitter would simply revert back to be a controller of information and not a platform for free speech. It cannot be both. Jack Dorsey needs to work on his principles.
