Social media: The good censors

Social media platforms cannot play watchdogs while refusing responsibility for the content they choose to put out

Counter-protesters in San Francisco preventing the police from dispersing their march following a free speech rally last Saturday against Twitter organised by conservative activists. According to media reports, the rally was meant to protest against
Counter-protesters in San Francisco preventing the police from dispersing their march following a free speech rally last Saturday against Twitter organised by conservative activists. According to media reports, the rally was meant to protest against alleged censorship of conservative content on Twitter. Counter-protesters clashed with the conservative activists, causing the cancellation of the rally. PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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When talking among themselves, Silicon Valley big shots sometimes say weird things. In an internal presentation in March 2018, Google executives were asked to imagine their company acting as a "good censor", in order to limit the impact of users "behaving badly".

In a 2016 internal video, Google's head of design Nick Foster envisioned a "goal-driven ledger" of all users' data, endowed with its own "volition or purpose", which would nudge us to take decisions (say, about shopping or travel) that would "reflect Google's values as an organisation". If that doesn't strike you as weird - like dialogue from some dystopian science fiction novel - then you need to read more dystopian science fiction.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on October 20, 2020, with the headline Social media: The good censors. Subscribe