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A different question asked recently got me thinking about this one. Do tech giants (Facebook, etc.) have too much influence over public policy and government? On the other hand, should governments be regulating social media algorithms given how much influence they have over public perception of current events and such?

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Member Avatar for Reverend Jim

Wow! Is this a can of worms or what? We sort of had this discussion before (regulation) in trying to decide how much responsibility a platform has when publishing content from users. Do Facebook, etc. have the same responsibility to filter content as would the letters page in a newspaper?

I suppose my answer depends on which party is doing the regulating. For example, the current administration's idea of free speech is "anything that is not critical of the current admin, even if it is true".

Deciding if and how to regulate content is difficult enough. I have no ides how you would even begin to regulate algorithms, especially when all platforms would likely claim their algorithms are proprietary. But we've already seen that Facebook is unwilling to remove content that is demonstrably false, with results from November 2024 so I'd have to agree that the tech giants have way too much influence.

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