Hi Christie, thanks for the thoughtful comment! I read through a couple of times and in an attempt to respond to your entire comment I want to break out my response into the 4 areas I believe you addressed, if I may.
#1 Algorithms and Narratives
When I started using FB and twitter my feeds were chronologically oriented. I used to love going through all of the stuff that had been said the day prior and catching up to whatever time I had been checking either site. This to me made social media fun. Even if some of the posts weren’t super engaging, it was still what people you wanted to follow were saying. I have since almost entirely disengaged from FB and twitter (neither are on my phone, will check occasionally on my laptop). The main reason I uninstalled is because of these algorithms. The algorithm is set up to keep you on the site, they do this by keying in on human biology and psychology. They try to feed you posts that give you a quick hit of pleasure to keep you scrolling, really it's meant to be addictive. I do not think it is healthy to have my mind run through this gambit daily. This sums up my personal view on the algorithms (seems like we are on the same page). This is of course done in the name of profit, we cannot forget FB and Twitter are private companies (yes publicly traded) and have a duty to their shareholders to make a lot of money.
Let’s talk about the narratives. When conservatives say that these social media giants are pushing their liberal agenda it is, in fact, an accusation of deliberate bias towards liberal vs conservative content. I think it is prudent to take a step back and think about the claim. The claim rests on the evidence that liberal leaning content gets more exposure than conservative. Now, does it follow logically that this must be done deliberately? Is it possibly the case, that because of the demographics of the users (and all of the data FB and Twitter have) the liberal leaning content tends to engage their user-base more? And that through their algorithms they have unintentionally become biased in an attempt to be more profitable? I believe this is worth considering.
Generally I try to give the benefit of the doubt, assume the best unless I can prove the worst. Obviously this doesn’t always happen, I’m human after all. However, unless conservatives can rule out the possibility of unintentional bias, I don’t think there’s any actionable steps Congress can take on this front. Guaranteeing equality of outcome, where social media firms have to give equal exposure to liberal and conservative content, seems to me an overreach. Twitter and Facebook would need to restructure their algorithms completely, a bit hit to what they are doing from a profit perspective.
Now let’s say they are intentionally suppressing conservative content, not from a profit/loss perspective but from a purely ideological basis. This seems to me to be undesirable in our society and reform is justified. How to write the law or to enforce it I’m not sure, but a change would be justified.
#2 Certainty of social media corporations
morphing into traditional media corporations
You bring up a good question when you ask if the outcome I described is the only necessary outcome. No, it's not. In fact, most members of the GOP that have spoken out on this are not in favor of complete repeal of 230 without a replacement. In retrospect I should have addressed this in my article. I was attempting to address the solution voiced by one person in the GOP, President Trump, but I should have been more clear about that. I do still think that in the case of complete repeal, with no regulatory relief for these social media firms, they would need to morph into a traditional media corporation to stay afloat. Our representatives would be wise to avoid that scenario if they intend to replace Section 230.
#3 Giant status of social media
Today’s social media firms are indeed giants. This is due to the network effect. Where once you get enough people on your platform, it becomes the place to be. It's important to remember that before they became giants these platforms were all in competition with other platforms. Facebook and Twitter won. They provided a better product and got rewarded through the network effect to have massive user-bases. Now that they are established there is definitely a larger barrier to entry into the market. It is hard to pull people from their familiar platforms with all of their friends on to a new one.
But, it can happen. Myspace precluded FB, it is no longer relevant. It can be easy to think in the short term that there isn’t room for new platforms, but given 10 years really I think anything can happen. In 2010 Twitter averaged around 30 million users per month, now it’s 300 million a month (Statista). Facebook grew from 400 million a month to 2.5 billion a month over 10 years (Statista). There’s no reason another platform can’t experience that kind of growth over 10 years.
#4 Today’s state of Journalism
I found what you said about today’s journalists to accurately describe my experience as well. I believe what underlies this is the amount of competition these companies face today. It used to be that the ‘truth’ showed up at your doorstep in the form of a newspaper. There was competition between papers, but really not much sensationalization was necessary to get people to read your paper. The following is my personal opinion. Current events probably ranked relatively highly in people’s entertainment content back before the internet. Now we have an abundance of entertainment content, it’s almost inconceivable how much there is. Where does a profit-driven news company find themselves in today’s market? They need to compete on an engagement level.
Narratives are more engaging than facts. Stories are more comforting than being left to make our own conclusions based on objective reporting.People enjoy being told what they should think. This is a problem, no doubt. I have thought about this issue and I have no idea where to go from here. It seems that the stakes of the game have changed radically and traditional news corporations can’t keep their journalistic integrity if they want to stay profitable. The problem is relatively clear, the solution is not. Would love to hear your thoughts on what we could do about this.
