Are social media platforms that utilize algorithmic feeds inherently anti-free-speech?

Catweazle

@jon, every honest opinion is valid, but not so Fake-news, hate speech and xeno/homophobic propaganda, in where 🤬itter is the worst example, since Musk converted it in a far right wing personal blog.

Same in the newspapers/media, always need to look who pay the ink and always the need to contrast the content.Sadly independent media are currently the minority between ll the manipulated policy propaganda paid by big corporations.

PioneerSketches

@jon I use both Facebook and twitter, to a certain degree, but I only use groups and lists. That is the only way I can filter away the *trash* in the main feeds.

Tim Chambers

@jon I'd agree that closed, proprietary algos definitely bless some speech and surpresss others. Studies show YouTube's algo recommendation drives over 77 percent of all video views. What I hope for the Fediverse is that most clients default to just a reverse-chron algo, but then also let USERS create, share and tweak algorithms, that they are empowered to use, or not use.

Tyrion 🐧🏴‍☠️

@jon

The pedantic in me notes that "algorithms" can be a bit vague (after all, old/new sort is an algorithm ), but I do understand you mean the more modern, AI-infused ones, such as engagement, allowed narratives, sentiment (positive/negative, happy/angry), whether bigger/verified/famous accounts interact with the piece of content, etc. provided that the content itself is not hate speech or otherwise illegal.

One of the reasons I like Mastodon over lemmy/reddit is that here we do not have the negative interaction (downvotes) and therefore do not have a negative algorithm that plunges things to the bottom or auto-hides them. If someone is merely saying something like "I like drinking coffee with hotdog water" we can safely ignore them. If we feel strongly, we can reply, and that in itself can mitigate some negativity, as opposed to a downvote and making the person feel bad for their personal tastes. ️

taxet

@jon having rules against hate speech is not and has never been anti-free speech, they're in fact vital for actual free speech to flourish. But whatever the hell Musk is doing on his propaganda site definitely is against free speech, because he's currently explicitly doing the thing he claimed past leadership of the site was doing to him and his kind; boosting himself and his friends while deliberately ranking others lower to limit the reach of something he doesn't want other to see.

Technically one could sort of also argue that it's not against free speech because first of all it's a private company that can do pretty much whatever it wants (to an extent I suppose), and secondly because the messages aren't usually specifically deleted. But I do see it as being highly suspicious to say the least.

In any case, the only proper course of action is to dump Twitter, since it's literally the nazi bar now. It's also good to be suspicious of Meta because it has a history of being quite horrible. And also be wary of Bluesky, since something is very much off in that one and it won't be good in a few years, mark my words.

vekkq

@jon Yes, if it is always on or opt-out.

Erwin

@jon I wouldnt say its against free speech. You are still free there to say and follow whoever you want.
Even tho I agree that algorithm is often annoying, because it tries to force us stay there due to our issues and fomo, I wouldnt say that de-amplifiing is the same as silencing.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@Erwin_Schroedinger , I guess there is often a combination. Certain voices, typically misinformation and hate speech, is amplified. That is clearly the case on Twitter and Facebook. Other voices are more or less silenced as there is only that much room.

I would like to see the people I follow. I am fine with some ads as well, but other than that, I want to see who I follow. That is what we get here on Mastodon (except the ads).

Samuel Santaella

@jon Bluesky seems to be the best of both worlds.

The default feed is "following", which is chronological order. No algorithm.

But then you get to *choose* which additional feeds you want from an entire ecosystem of feeds.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@samuelsantaella , I am not familiar with Bluesky, but I prefer solutions based on open standards.

Samuel Santaella

@jon Much like Mastodon and others are built on top of the ActivityPub protocol, Bluesky is built on top of the AT Protocol.

The latter is much newer than the former, I should add. https://atproto.com/guides/overview

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@samuelsantaella , it is not an open standard.

Erwin

@jon again. I agree with everything you say. But unless you can't find your friends there, even tho they post they, it's not silencing.
Well because of the all amplification issues it is enough for me to be annoyed by Twitter just when I try it once in 3 months.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@Erwin_Schroedinger , you do not see your friends because of all the crap that is amplified. Your friends also do not see your posts because of all what is amplified and because your post is not hate speech and thus not amplified. It may even be silenced if you write about something the site owner does not like, such as you liking the Fediverse. My posts on Twitter, saying I am here do get very few views, for example.