Big Tech’s grip on social media is a growing problem

5 comments

1. “After blocking links by a nonprofit newspaper and an independent journalist who published a report that criticized Facebook and accused it of suppressing posts related to climate change.

   Meta denied that it was censoring content and blamed an unspecified “security issue.”

   Every single link — about 6,000 stories — that the Kansas Reflector had ever posted to Facebook disappeared from the platform on Thursday. For seven hours, anyone trying to post a Reflector link was met with a warning that the the site posed a security risk.

   o test theory that that the Reflector’s domain had some kind of security issue, a Brooklyn-based journalist, Marisa Kabas, asked for permission to republish the text of that column on her own website.

   But sure enough, when Kabas posted her own link to the column on Threads, Meta flagged it as malicious content and took it down. Then Meta nuked everything her website had ever published on its platforms, a block that lasted at least two hours, Kabas told CNN.

   Meta didn’t respond CNN’s request for more information about the security issue. The editor-in-chief of the Kansas Reflector, Sherman Smith, wrote on Friday that Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone “wouldn’t elaborate on how the mistake happened and said there would be no further explanation.”

   “Anyone involved this past week now understands that putting our civic conversation into the hands of a single for-profit business
   generates profound risks for society as a whole,” wrote Clay Wirestone, the Reflector’s opinion editor.”

   But what we do know is that the company’s control over what we see online can have profound effects on the real world. When Meta decides to dramatically reduce referral traffic to media outlets, as it did last year, there’s little anyone outside of Meta can do to push back.”

2. We as a society rely too much on Facebook/Meta for news (from what I understand, they’ve helped put independent news sources out of business). They have us hooked, and they know it, and now they can control what we read, see, and learn.

   I quit Fb years ago.

3. To a lot of people, it’s THE problem of our generation, and likely the next few.

4. Gov grip on social media is a problem

5. Old big media companies that used to control the narrative are now complaining that newer big tech companies took the control over the narrative from them.