Social Media Lacking

I think Google was smart not to involve themselves in the Senate Intelligence Committee Hearings, supposedly on what to do about Russian interference in elections.  It did touch on that a little.

This was not a partisan affair like the roasting of the Supreme Court nominee.  Congress is obviously not able to come to grips with how to deal with the social media's use of personal information, nor their role in detecting and removing fake accounts.  Both Facebook and Twitter promised to do better and said they were doing better on both counts.   But, I left these long question and answer sessions feeling like they did not answer the questions that were asked.  They had scripted responses that referenced their policies on the use of the media by customers, and they did sound coordinated.

Twitter's CEO, Jack Dorsey, was the most straight-forward about it.  He was asked if he knew the difference between Russia, China and the US in enforcement of his policies, and he gave the impression he didn't know what the question was about.  To Twitter and Facebook, there is no difference.  If you violate the policy, you can be ejected off the platform.  Where you live does not matter, and the content of your comments does not violate the basic policies of pornography,  hate speech (nobody asked for a definition of that), or encouraging destructive acts.  I have to agree with their replies to a certain extent, because nobody can find context in speech.  Symbolism, cultural references, and the like are very hard to interpret and just like the Chinese who get around censorship with the same tactics, people in the US can do the same thing.  Social media can't find these things on their own, and really don't want government help in doing it either, though they often said they did.

We should remember that China doesn't have these media per se.  They have stolen the software and business models of both and publish their own, making their own social media from it.  Russia is trying to do the same thing, with China's help.  They avoid the problem by controlling the vehicle that is used to convey those messages.  The US has yet to come to grips with that, and in the end, will not deal with it in the same way.  So, there is a difference between Russia, China and the US.  Both of them are ahead of us in dealing with the issues, even though we may not agree with how they are doing it.  There is also another difference, the US has yet to do much, so both countries will exploit that with their intelligence services.  They will continue to do it until we stop them, or make it painful enough to continue that they stop on their own.  The 2020 election will be on us before plans are worked out.