Platforms Are Not Publishers

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/08/the-messy-democratizing-beauty-of-the-internet/567194/?single_page=true

by raleighm • 8 years ago

18 44 8 years ago

theatlantic.com

criddell4• 8 years ago

I've never understood why people try to classify Google, Facebook, and Twitter as publishers xor platforms. It seems to me that they do both in varying degrees (especially Google).

CM30• 8 years ago

To be honest, these platforms are whatever one is more convenient for them at the time. Is someone doing something controversial/unpopular on their platform/attacking them? Then they're a 'publisher' with the right to dictate what's allowed. Are they getting sued/complained about for illegal content/not moderating their site? Then suddenly they're a 'platform', who only has to handle issues when forced to.

That's the truth about all online services; they change what they class themselves as whenever the alternative is too 'inconvenient' for them.

berbec• 8 years ago

Their platforms in that they bring news, information etc to you. Their publishers in that the serve the same function as the NY Times etc - distilling information to relevent/interesting things.

vetinari4• 8 years ago

Publishers have editorial control, platforms do not.

That's why you can be one or the other, but not both.

criddell4• 8 years ago

But Google, for example, produces original content on YouTube and YouTube is also a platform for other people doing the same. They are both.

charlesism5• 8 years ago

    > The internet connects more than 3 billion people 
    > and enables a grand diversity among them to speak,
    > if not yet to be heard. “Republics,” said the late
    > Columbia University professor James Carey, “require
    > conversation, often cacophonous conversation, for 
    > they should be noisy places.” That sound you hear,
    > which sometimes grates, is the racket of society
    > negotiating its norms and standards, its future.
    > It is the messy sound of democracy.

Nope, you have trolls and extremist groups gleefully spraying toxic garbage over everything, until decent, mature people abandon the site. Sane people don't post on Youtube. Some sane people post on Twitter, etc... but they eventually give up. If graffiti on a toilet stall is the standard for online "democracy," we'll never solve any problems, and only the worst people among us will actually benefit from freedom of expression.

Any site today that doesn't have iron-clad moderation (like this one!) devolves into an inhumane freak show.

aokiji6• 8 years ago

(disclaimer: this is not an ad-hominem)

charlesism, you are blatantly promoting an agenda of censorship. One should not behave well due to the threat of punishment but by virtue of virtue.

You appear to stand against everything of value in the West. There are corporations and special interest groups trying to influence the narrative in reddit and even here in order to further reduce online freedoms and to establish the official list of forbidden thoughts.

Furthermore, The Atlantic has a long number of articles promoting globalism and the destruction of nation-states. A true free market of ideas requires anonymity. Who is going to help you when rampant corruption emerges in organizations such as the United Nations (a known harbor for individuals involved in child traffic scandals)? Remember the gamergate fiasco?

People all over the world are angry, and it is not their fault entirely - overpopulation and resource depletion need to be dealt with. But why doesn't anyone seem care about raising the bar on education, not just in terms of skill sets but also morality and long-term thinking?

charlesism5• 8 years ago

   > you are blatantly promoting an agenda of censorship.

Private censorship? You bet!

   > You appear to stand against everything of value in the West

Come back to earth, please.

   > The Atlantic has a long number of articles promoting globalism
   > and the destruction of nation-states.

Good, I support that.

   > People all over the world are angry, and it is not their fault entirely

I've lived long enough to see how all this came to pass. People are angry at the wrong people and the wrong things.

pavlov• 8 years ago

I’m curious: how do you reconcile your support of nation states on one hand and a “free market of ideas” on the other? Nation states are built on a foundation of one idea — ethnicity derived from geography, language and racial perceptions — towering over all other ideas as an unquestionable absolute that affords sovereignty to those deemed worthy of membership.

The greatest feature of the United States of America is that it was never a nation state.

NeedMoreTea2• 8 years ago

Nothing whatsoever to do with censorship. He's suggesting moderation. There is a very significant difference.

The internet and Usenet did OK without moderation until Eternal September and the invention of SPAM, when internet culture started to die. RIP. Before that a new arrival was expected to figure out netiquette, and everyone else would behave accordingly.

Ever since then there has been an fairly steady slide. The arrival of astroturfing corporate and special interest groups, trolls, and platforms that assist the amplification of effect by actively seeking to avoid any moderation has just intensified things. Those places without moderation deviate to lowest common denominator with astounding speed. We've seen it time and time again, and as a result many sites have closed down their discussion areas entirely. See reddit subs with and without active heavy moderation. Moderating does not rule out anonymity, nor should it.

Without moderation commercial interests, political groups and trolls will ultimately ruin all locations that attempt to allow reasonable discussion as it is not in those group's interests to see a virtue in being virtuous.

The few places left where you can have reasonable discussions, including on controversial topics, are those that moderate hard. They don't censor.

banku_brougham• 8 years ago

this site is the only one i use where i can expect consistently thoughtful and useful debate. so by my experience, i must generally agree with you.

wu-ikkyu3• 8 years ago

Any site today that doesn't have iron-clad moderation (like this one!) devolves into an inhumane freak show.

It seems having a relatively small user base with specialized knowledge on selective topics on a site designed for balanced discussion (i.e. not twitter) is far more important to quality of discussion than moderators.

Trying to discuss important things over Twitter and Youtube comments seems like trying to have a logical conversation in a riot/mob -- there's too much noise, too many people, and it was never designed for that in the first place.

aminotaa• 8 years ago

You are making a 2500 year-old argument against democracy. Democracy serves the interests of the needy. That's the whole catch with the democracy.

If you don't want democracy, your options are monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy or tyranny. There are two sides to every coin.

watwut• 8 years ago

Needy and toxic trolls are not identic groups.

He did accurately described dynamic on youtube and some forums I used to read too. As in, that is literally how it played out.

Just because someone 2500 years ago said something that could be framed as something sort of similar does not make his argument false. Besides, ancient societies did a lot of social controll too.

dwaltrip• 8 years ago

Sane people don't post on Youtube

This is false... There is tons of high quality content on YouTube. PBS digital studios, for example, has several fantastic channels. The comments on those videos are generally pretty good as well.

That's not too say that much of YouTube isn't just utter crap or even sometimes harmful. But there is good content if you look in the right places and get the algorithms churning down the right paths.

DmenshunlAnlsis• 8 years ago

I could be wrong, but I took him to mean “post comments” and not “submit content” although I could be wrong. Obviously some great content exists on YouTube, but it’s been a given for years that the comments are incredibly awful and essentially unusable.

yifanl• 8 years ago

If you're making a profit off of the content you're hosting, then as far as I'm concerned, you should be held responsible for that content.

shiburizu• 8 years ago

I don't think you get to make the "internet is a public square" argument while also advocating for banning opinions from the same. I can stand in Times Square saying Romaine Lettuce is the best lettuce of all time and people might think I'm stupid (or might not) but I get to say that all I want provided I'm not being a nuisance. Disclaimer: this is NOT a defense for incitement to violence.

Let's roll with the physical-digital analogy for a second here: When I go to the convenience store to buy a muffin in the morning, right next to the register the clerk usually has the daily paper sitting on the countertop and I can buy a copy if I think the headline it's worth reading. Or perhaps I can hear the news playing overhead on some TV in a store as I walk around looking for items. Social media currently works like if my muffin was sitting between a copy of the Times and a coupon catalog when I went to the store to go look for it. I am able to look at what I want in pieces when I go to the store, and the cluttered mess of content in the timeline is a conscious choice to keep people looking at ads and reading sensational headlines.

But here's where I keep doubting myself from playing the defense of absolute free speech in this situation: I read an article here on HN recently and commented that these situations always seem to play out through media orgs. Infowars, CNN, even The Atlantic are all companies vying to get some of that sweet sweet user interaction through gaming the platforms. They are frequently condensing their content into auto-playing videos on user timelines, publishing sensational titles in the post text linking to their articles, etc. I can hardly name instances where this was about a user with no media presence. It's almost like media orgs leverage their huge presence to push their own survival.

snowwrestler• 8 years ago

I agree with the headline, but the hard part is defining what a platform is. I don't think we should just accept anyone who raises their hand and says "hey I'm a platform, guys!"

Maybe one distinguishing feature of a platform vs a publisher is curation. Verizon does not choose which phone calls I get--it routes them all. My DNS provider does not choose which requests to resolve; it resolves them all. Heck, the interstate highway carries any vehicle that meets standard specs for safety. Those are platforms.

If Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc simply and directly routed content without curation, they would have a stronger claim on being a platform. Instead, they use filtered timelines and "suggested content" to make decisions about what people see. That's more akin to what the Washington Post does, than Verizon.

Social media platforms will claim they use algorithms instead of human judgment to route content, so it's unbiased. Does anybody still buy that?? The many ways in which "smart" algorithms can be biased have been well covered. If nothing else, they are biased in favor of content that generates the fiercest emotions, in the name of "engagement."

And why do they do that?

I would suggest another distinguishing feature of a platform vs a publisher is the business model. Platforms are fee-for-service. You pay your ISP a fee, and it delivers the service. You pay a gas tax, and the government provides your roads.

Publishers have an advertising business model. This creates an incentive for them to manipulate you in ways that increase advertising. Your ISP does not care if you use their service... in fact, they get better profit margins if you don't! But Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube do care, and they take active steps (see: curation) to manipulate you into doing so.

dragonwriter• 8 years ago

To call these platforms publishers—as The Atlantic’s Adrienne LaFrance recently did—is to presume that their task is merely to produce content.

No, publishers don't, as an essential feature, produce (in an original sense) content, they distribute it (which involves reproducing it, but that's different than producing it.) Some publishers do also control content creation, though many primarily it entirely acquire content from third-party creators.

The entire article and it's rejection of the idea that internet platforms are publishers rests on this bizarre error (it's not bizarre as a misunderstanding in the public, but it is bizarre how it can get published in a professionally edited media outlet, where presumably before publication at least one person basically aware of what publishers are had to have read and signed off on it.)

Platforms Are Not Publishers

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