this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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Technology

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­Most Americans favor restrictions on false information, violent content online (www.pewresearch.org)
submitted 1 year ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
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65% of Americans support tech companies moderating false information online and 55% support the U.S. government taking these steps. These shares have increased since 2018. Americans are even more supportive of tech companies (71%) and the U.S. government (60%) restricting extremely violent content online.

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[–] Steeve@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

aren't those tech companies the one who kept boosting false information on the first place to get ad revenue?

Not really, or at least not intentionally. They push content for engagement, and that's engaging content. It works the same for vote based systems like Reddit and Lemmy too, people upvote ragebait and misinformation all the time. We like to blame "the algorithm" because as a mysterious evil black box, but it's really just human nature.

I don't see how breaking them up would stop misinformation, because no tech company (or government frankly) actually wants to be the one to decide what's misinformation. Facebook and Google have actually lobbied for local governments to start regulating social media content, but nobody will touch it, because as soon as you start regulating content you'll have everyone screaming about "muh free speech" immediately.