A report shows author Michael Shellenberger expressed major concerns about Meta’s new Threads app and how it is tackling disinformation on the site when appearing on America’s Newsroom.
Shellenberger gave two examples of new users of Threads who were given warning labels, reading that the user had frequently posted misleading data that was examined by impartial fact-checkers or was against the Community Guidelines. And additionally noted how many conservatives are speaking out against the suppression.
That is the point of the First Amendment. Even those with whom we strongly disagree are guaranteed a voice. You may counter that Meta, Facebook, and Instagram are all privately held businesses, and under Section 230, the government grants them immunity from ordinary civil lawsuits. But an open and free platform is required to qualify under Section 230. Mark Zuckerberg made that promise, but he isn’t making good on it.
According to Shellenberger’s report on his Substack account “Public,” as a prerequisite to providing the social media monopoly with Section 230 liability protections, Congress must either split up Facebook or enforce openness.
According to Zuckerberg, there has to be an app where 1 billion individuals can have public dialogues. However, only hours after its debut, Threads was already covertly filtering users without providing them with an appeals process.
Since Elon Musk purchased the company, Twitter has filtered in response to demands from governments like India’s and Turkey’s, as well as those of economic rivals like Substack. Hardly any opposing political or ideological views were censored.
Though we should give Meta a chance to make amends, Zuckerberg has previously shown via Facebook litigation that the firm shows its “fact checks” to be “opinions,” not hard evidence.
Reports show that Twitter has said that Meta hired hundreds of former workers who have knowledge of Twitter’s proprietary information.
According to attorney Alex Spiro, former Twitter workers were tasked with creating Meta’s imitation of Twitter called ‘Threads’ to steal Twitter’s ideas.
Jack Dorsey, a former CEO of Twitter, has pointed out that Threads is already data-collecting on its users.
