>Alex Jones being the preeminent example here; my otherwise levelheaded friend bought an AK because of him to prepare for the upcoming class warfare
Your friend bought an AK because people like Alex Jones are being deplatformed and there are people openly calling for violence (eg antifa). Your friend is afraid of a civil war. It takes two to fight.
>I think Facebook has probably extrapolated the siloing effect that social media has on groups forward a few years and come to the conclusion that certain groups (namely the far and alt right) base much of their ideology on not only hate, but conspiracies and misinformation.
What you need to understand is that these companies seem to have an anti-conservative bias. Notice how when antifa attacks people it seems to not be much of a problem. There are antifa chapters that openly sell merchandise. Yet we see people in antifa cause millions in property damages, attack people with bike locks and other forms of violence. Antifa has a long history of violence in Europe. What you need to understand is that many of these companies are partisan or at least tend towards partisan actions. Do you think people demanding the abolishment of capitalism and the intuition of communism are somehow the good guys?
Yeah, ideally, the perfect arbiter would be able to make objective decisions as to whether or not a certain individual/group violates the TOS of the platform and acts accordingly. But whether or not someone (or something, in the case of machine intelligence) can be truly objective is a subject of debate. So we have this imperfect system where some get away with murder and others are banned for as much as a peep.
I will cede that the anti-conservative bias is egregious. On the left, well, Kathy Griffin for one has invoked more than her fair share of controversy which, in my view, have been fair grounds for removal; and there are figures on the right who have been banned for far less inflammatory rhetoric than that of which she spews. It's not clear to me what the solution here is; but stricter regulation seems like it may be appropriate. These are the questions of the time for good reason.
Your friend bought an AK because people like Alex Jones are being deplatformed and there are people openly calling for violence (eg antifa). Your friend is afraid of a civil war. It takes two to fight.
>I think Facebook has probably extrapolated the siloing effect that social media has on groups forward a few years and come to the conclusion that certain groups (namely the far and alt right) base much of their ideology on not only hate, but conspiracies and misinformation.
What you need to understand is that these companies seem to have an anti-conservative bias. Notice how when antifa attacks people it seems to not be much of a problem. There are antifa chapters that openly sell merchandise. Yet we see people in antifa cause millions in property damages, attack people with bike locks and other forms of violence. Antifa has a long history of violence in Europe. What you need to understand is that many of these companies are partisan or at least tend towards partisan actions. Do you think people demanding the abolishment of capitalism and the intuition of communism are somehow the good guys?