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Not realistic any time soon.

We absolute _must_ have news, platforms, and all the rest that is not simply controlled by those we know for certain do not have our best interests at heart. This is 100% true. No matter if congress passes some law or something that forces technical neutrality, you still can't trust oligarchs.

You’re overthinking this. Nationalise all social media companies.

The fact that this is simply not a viable course—Dem politicians feel compelled to remain on X the Nazi bar for fuck’s sake—is precisely why what there is a public interest in what these privat companies do

Protocols are networks / like a phone company. "Platforms" like Facebook are vertically integrated publishers sittjng on a network that use moderation and algorithms to exert editorial control and that only want to be regulated on half of their business. They should be regulated as such

I've been screaming this from the rooftops for years!

This is a baby brained comparison that I think you must realize is nowhere near the same thing

bsky.app/profile/bill...

Perhaps, but this is the 3rd NoKings - I suspect that the others would also have significant posting - why this time?

That’s not working

The entire premise of the protections from liability that these platforms have enjoyed is that they are *not* media, which is to say not publishers as such, and thus are *not* making "editorial decisions." Look into the law and the precedents on this. You can't have it both ways.

I’m not talking about the stuff that is from MAGA or Trump, but Genuine neo Nazi stuff.

I’m not saying to sanction it. I agree with you about first amendment protection. But don’t you think that people’s first amendment rights are being violated in a sense that they are posting things and it is being rejected on flimsy grounds. We all know that you have far right stuff on there.

ITS NOT A MEDIA PLATFORM ITS AGITPROP FOR FUCKS SAKE

It's not punishment to have to testify about how your system works. If indeed it was an automated tripwire, it's important to educate the public and Congress about that.

If it was an accident, we deserve to know how it happened, under oath. If it was a decision, we need to know. The power of Congressional oversight is that we can find out one way or the other.

bsky.app/profile/jenn...

I guess the censoring of liberal voices is just what happens when right wing billionaires exercise their 1A rights now?

The fact it took ALL DAY to reinstate is baloney! Honestly you Yanks deserve what you get when you are this totally clueless

How can you even think to give Team Zuck or any of these tech robber barons the benefit of the doubt. Was it automated in Brazil? C’mon Mike.

Funny thing is I expect it would take similar amount of time to resolve a tripwire event impacting a MAGA account. I don’t think the effort to resolve NoKings Insta account access was intended to be slow. It is what it was. I expect MAGA would react far more conspiratorially than NoKings.

You're pushing a false narrative. It's more like if my phone company decided to brick my phone because of my politics.

We have to punish and crush tech oligarchs because if we don’t we’ll never have any kind of decent society

It does if it gets better results.

You are correct they'd have more control, but youre ignoring the literal entire purpose of the no kings organization which is to reach as many people as possible. Is that served by being a small platform with severely limited reach? And if not, how is your proposed solution any solution at all??

If you are not prepared to do the work to increase your reach but then depend on a platform that gives you reach. Don’t cry foul when they pull the rug underneath you. Owning your reach always outweighs outsourcing it to a third-party.

I disagree.

Nah let’s just make their platforms ghost towns & take away their power. Literally nothing stops us from doing that but ourselves.

They have never hid behind "neutrality." They have always said they have editorial rights. And they do.

The fact Meta worked with Cambridge Analytica several times plus after CA’s name change to rig various elections beginning 2015/2016 has been enough of a reason to boycott Zuckerberg & ALL of his companies. That’s not even counting his shit with Netanyahu. Fuck Zuckerberg.

"It's just a tripwire" nah this is a massive company with better ops than that. They have to be accountable for the choices they make.

Yes; network effects and natural monopolies are real and significant. Insta is functionally a monopoly and antitrust action to prevent its owners from using their 1A rights *to silence the users they disfavour* is appropriate and legitimate .

This disconnect is because people want to continue using the fascist platforms owned by fascists without any of the negative side effects of participating voluntarily in fascism Sorry, but that's not how this works If you're on FB/Instagram/Tiktok/X then you are at the whims of the fascists

Really bad take. Platforms should not be editorializing beyond safety period.

The problem is, those platforms need to be popular. I like Bluesky and gave up Twitter long ago. But the conversation here feels very walled off. If a big cultural event is happening, it makes me miss the days of old Twitter. Bsky is good for political news/being self righteous and condescending.

Yes, more of today‘s monopolies are natural monopolies due to network effects, but that doesn’t preclude government oversight in nations not sabotaged by the 1A.

How about a law that makes the act of holding any data about an individual without their active consent a crime. Seems better than the endless escalation between the data brokers/spyware device companies/techbro shitcorps trying to steal your data... & the public trying to protect it.

I just found three Mike Masnicks on W Social and followed them all

Haven’t had Meta/FB/Insta for about 18 months now, after Zuckerberg announced he was going to support Trump on “immigration crackdown” (which was always a euphemism for the ICE human rights abuses we’ve been reading about since early 2025).

And I 100% agree that it is a strategic mistake to build your resistance on platforms owned by the people trying to crush you.

There were mass protests before social media

Mastodon.

Thanks Mike! Always appreciate you clear-eyed analysis.

Just like climate change, government can’t and shouldn’t try to wave a magic wand to solve these things, but they should be deeply involved, and fundamentally democratic in the way they do so. You are confusing an authoritarian government with a democratic one.

Nobody on a platform run by third parties really controls their own account. You can often make people you don't like disappear, but if you like someone and the platform doesn't, tough shit, they're gone, ain't nothing you can do about that. Pretending this one way action is "control" is quite smthg

lol. Wait… you think Zuck is *afraid* of Trump? Hahahahaha. Holy shit.

“Be like MAGA” isn’t the flex you think it is. Also… pretending Zuck isn’t already aligned with the goals of the GOP is dumb.

I need an edit button. The issue actually occurred on Jan 21.

Do you need to see their messages to us? Or the VP of Communications BS excuse? Cause we got that.

Why did No Kings have this response:

Time to take some billionaires trash to the curb. Enough with the fuckery

This is bullshit! You are suggesting a purely technical solution to a complex problem. That never works. Do you remember when social media was supposed to guarantee free speech? How did that work out?

Fuck Zuck time to walk away