Yeah, I don't know that I made it clear in my original post; I do not like having to depend on our benevolent overlords like Google and Twitter and Facebook to determine what I can handle. I think they have way too much power, I'm not opposed to breaking them up into smaller entities, and I don't think it's a dumb idea to push or require companies to use open protocols.
I like Mastodon, but part of me worries that the reason that Nazis haven't ruined it is largely because a lot of them don't know about it yet. That said, if we used a decentralized protocol like Mastodon, then theoretically individual servers could moderate their posts however they'd like, and if you don't like it you could hop over to another server.
I think we mostly agree. Specifically, we both seem to think it would be interesting and possibly ideal to require social media giants to implement an open protocol, but failing that I'm not sure whether we agree that regulating them like utilities (with the associated quality implications) is better than the status quo?
I think that a lot of awfulness that causes measurable harm [1] can easily spread through social networks and I think that YouTube or Twitter should be allowed to delete or block it if they think it's harmful. I'm fully ok with the people promoting this stuff make their own website, or move to a website that's more accommodating to their harmful beliefs.
Obviously YouTube and Twitter can be a bit overzealous with who they ban, I think there's been some overcorrection for the fairly "laissez-faire" mentality that they had towards neo Nazis from ~2014-2017, and I've seen plenty of people get banned from these platforms for bad reasons as a result.
But I feel like we're arguing two different points; I think the issue isn't that the companies are allowed to ban whomever they'd like, I think the issue is that these companies shouldn't be so big as to where a ban from theme is so devastating.
As it stands, I'll fully admit that my default response of "you're free to build your own platform" is a bit silly; building something that has the potential to distribute a message as well as Twitter or YouTube would be almost impossible for anyone without a lot of funding behind them to do. ActivityPub-esque systems have a nice potential to change this, and as stated, I'd be on-board with making these companies use open protocols so as to increase competition.
[1] fake COVID Cures, "alternative" medicine like drinking bleach or injecting yourself with ozone, HIV denialism, etc...
I like Mastodon, but part of me worries that the reason that Nazis haven't ruined it is largely because a lot of them don't know about it yet. That said, if we used a decentralized protocol like Mastodon, then theoretically individual servers could moderate their posts however they'd like, and if you don't like it you could hop over to another server.