Last week, I praised Meta’s move from censoring information to using Community Notes to provide transparent, crowdsourced accountability. This swift reversal is encouraging, but its speed and decisiveness warn of the dangers of centralized social media like Facebook, X and even Bluesky.
Meta’s decision to roll back its Big Brother approach to censoring speech will help the battle against misinformation far more than its more Orwellian efforts ever could. Counterintuitively as it may seem, this is the way to cultivate a culture of truth.
Does this make me sound old? I don’t really care. The U.S. TikTok ban is spot on and the Brazilian X ban is not. No “back in my day” speech required.
Tim and Jason talk more baseball, why everyone who uses social media should care about “the Fediverse” (especially in light of X’s move toward X-rated content), Taylor Swift’s latest album and the Rich Young Ruler from Luke 18:18-25.
If you’ve read my columns over the last few years, you know I’ve been far less pessimistic about Elon Musk’s Twitter (err, “X”) than many, even when he’s made inexplicable decisions. Officially supporting pornographic publishing on X, though, is a line crossed and a good time to consider the best alternative.