#but i'm mostly watching something like 'top 10 urban legends that'll scare ur socks off' and not political content

[reasoncourt]

i feel like the bigger problem is with the algorithms and not the people. esp with china being behind tiktok and their views on censorship/social credit, even if the company’s tried to move away from its home country. a couple studies have come out about the suppression of certain videos, especially political ones, and i think our focus should be on biased coding and tech-sanctioned censorship rather than the people who work to provide info around the algorithms. i’d like to hear your thoughts, though - you have really nuanced takes usually!

i'm not really well versed in a lot of the finer details of this stuff so take everything i say with a grain of salt. there's a lot of stuff i don't know but anyone can feel free to correct me if i'm missing something.

first, really broadly, i think a lot of people - on the left and right - greatly misunderstand the concept of free speech. i see people throw around the idea that you can't shout fire in a crowded theatre as a way of proving that there are limits to free speech. and that's true. but also shouting fire in a crowded theatre is not allowed for different reasons than - say - denying the holocaust is not allowed (in some countries). both are limits on speech but the limits have different bases. the former creates panic and the latter is a kind of hate speech. they aren't like limits so the justification of one says almost nothing about the other. so, just, fundamentally, i think discussion of free speech - algorithms aside - is lacking online.

that might read like a massive tangent but i think any criticism of algorithms really hinges on what we think are acceptable limitations on our speech versus what we think is 'censorship'. i.e. why we think certain speech is justifiably outside of the scope of free speech protections and other speech is not.

it also hinges on what we think counts as suppression of speech and who we think should be monitoring speech (if it should be tech companies or the government or something else). if the algorithm doesn't promote it, is that suppression? or is it only if the video is hidden from searches? and if we think e.g. the government should have influence over what speech tech companies suppress or promote then we have to ask: are we comfortable with that degree of influence irrespective of who's in power?

also, for the most part, i've heard creators are guessing which words they are and aren't allowed to say. and we might think that's fixed by more transparency but then consider the implications of social media companies being transparent about algorithms. if they tell us which words are flagged then they give harmful content a way around the system.

that being said, there should absolutely be better ways to appeal when your content is banned because, you're right, political content shouldn't be censored and it is wrongly censored a lot of the time.

but we also have to consider whether we want algorithms to be more liberal and let more harmful content through or more strict and prevent more informative/useful content from being seen.

i honestly don't know enough about algorithms or programming or whatever to actually comment on how complicated it is to strike a balance here. but yeah idk those are just my thoughts about some of the moving parts involved.

i would comment more about censorship in certain countries but i don't know the specifics of how much influence they have on specific social media companies so i'd be talking out of my ass a bit.