Musk’s approach to free speech is typical of how this issue is often framed: in terms of content moderation, censorship and matters of deciding what speech can enter and stay on the platform.
But our research reveals this focus misses how platforms systematically interfere with free speech on the audience’s side, rather than the speaker’s side.
Outside the social media debate, free speech is commonly understood as the “free trade of ideas”. Speech is about discourse, not merely the right to speak. Algorithmic interference in who gets to hear which speech serves to directly undermine this free and fair exchange of ideas.
I use
Quora every day. The posts are often top notch, written from true experts in their fields. Seriously, the content is often better than their Wikipedia equivalents (and I know, Hutch, that you don't trust Wikipedia, and it's true that the quality varies, but that's also true for the Encyclopedia Britannica).
Now the point is:
a) top quality, yeah
b) but only if you want to see it.
Quora's business model is really simple, and it's brilliant:
They show you what you like.They keep you in your bubble.
If you have clicked three times on a post that sustains the IPCC line, you will see only IPCC-positive posts in the future.
Well, I clicked three times on posts that
criticised the IPCC line, now Quora continues to show me the ultimate crap from climate change deniers. Brilliant posts, well researched and professionally written (coal and petrol industries pay well...), but easy to de-construct if you
know your stuff, i.e. if you have studied and worked as a researcher a dozen years in the field and have published a number of peer-reviewed scientific articles. If you
don't know your stuff, you have no chance, you'll get brainwashed, and you will believe that the IPCC's only objective is to reintroduce slavery. Dunning-Krüger at its best
Censorship is bad, censorship is woke, censorship is cancel culture. We must go on the streets to fight censorship.
Freedom
now, says Ann Widdecombe
