For their part, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and others have little interest in being information gatekeepers. When incidents of hate speech bubble to the surface, for example, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg often trots out the right to free speech enshrined in the U.S. First Amendment (although since this only applies to the actions of government its not clear how this is relevant to a private company).

YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and others have little interest in being information gatekeepers

But it would be better to describe the speech on these huge platforms as algorithmically mediated speech. Google, Facebook and others make money by selling product. The product is us and the customer is advertisers. As Jaron Lanier told PBS in 2018, (t)he economic problem is very simply that weve designed a society where if you and I talk over social media, the only way that can happen is if its for the benefit of a third party whos paying for it. And their only possible benefit is getting us to change our behaviour.

But so what? Facebook and Google are private companies. They dont pretend to be honest brokers of information. What really worries Facebook is what will happen to its business model after changes in Apples mobile operating system that will ask users for specific permission to be tracked, an option they evidently believe most people will decline.

But events in the past years have demonstrated that disinformation and conspiracy theories have real-world consequences. After the carnage at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 it became clear that there are evidently thousands (or maybe tens or hundreds of thousands) of people who genuinely believe the U.S. election was stolen, despite the lack of evidence to support this claim, as noted by many rather conservative-minded officials and judges. And over the past months, Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere have also seen protests against mandatory mask-wearing rules, many of which have been organized on Facebook. A recent investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed that there are still hundreds of Facebook pages, followed by 45 million people, that are using Facebooks tools to raise money while spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Tackling Big Tech: The real-world consequences of social media's assault on good journalism - National Post