The perils of for-profit “communities”

In the news:

“Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook can play a role that churches and Little League once filled“:

Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook groups to play an important role that community groups like churches and Little League teams used to perform: Bringing communities together. . . .

Zuckerberg laid out his lofty ambition in a Chicago speech last week that suggested Americans are in need of something to unify their lives.

“It’s so striking that for decades, membership in all kinds of groups has declined as much as one-quarter,” he said during a rally for Facebook users who’ve built large community-support groups on the site. “That’s a lot of of people who now need to find a sense of purpose and support somewhere else.”

He added, “People who go to church are more likely to volunteer and give to charity — not just because they’re religious, but because they’re part of a community.”

Zuckerberg thinks Facebook can help, using its networking power to organize people.

Meanwhile, at the National Review, “Twitter Attempts to Silence Pro-Life Group“:

Twitter has just told pro-life group Live Action that, in order to advertise on the site, it must delete all tweets that Twitter’s management deems “offensive.” The site hasn’t outright censored any of Live Action’s tweets, but it has refused to permit the group to promote its content until it purges all of its “inflammatory” material.

Included under this vast, subjective umbrella are all tweets calling for the federal government to remove Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding, all tweets reporting on Live Action’s undercover investigations into Planned Parenthood’s clinics, and any ultrasound images of unborn children.

The Live Action site itself has examples of tweets that Twitter deems “inflammatory,” side-by-side with “acceptable” Planned Parenthood tweets.  Here’s one:

And according to Live Action,

Twitter’s mysterious “policy committee” determines what content is offensive according to rules and standards it alone defines, with little explanation and no process for appeal. In fact, Live Action was told that a meeting with this team would not be possible.

So, as much as I use Twitter a great deal, to find things to read and to (attempt to) promote what I’ve written, it does worry me that, in the end, this is a corporation which has already shut down accounts and can do so at any time.  Nothing, except fear of lost profits, could stop it from deciding it learned a lesson in 2016, and actively preventing Republican candidates from using Twitter as a platform.

And Facebook isn’t immune.  A couple months ago there were reports that certain atheist ex-Muslim pages were (temporarily?) removed at the behest of Muslim activists claiming that the pages were anti-Muslim.  Further back, there were fears that Facebook was deliberately tilting its “trending news” items to stories reporting from a liberal point of view.  And even if management doesn’t intend to use the site to interfere in politics, it is nonetheless unsettling that it has the power to do so at any time.

And, again, Facebook is a great tool, especially for us introverts who don’t easily fit in with the moms at school, providing at least a facsimile of a community even without talking to people face to face.  But Zuckerberg’s plan — to use Facebook to replace lost community groups, rather than attempting to rebuild those community groups — is worrisome.