And the cycle repeats. It starts with the obvious malware or hollywood movie takedown, but the actual policy is anything which goes against an opaque and subjective acceptable use policy, which means the entire world's files now need to conform to discourse within the narrowly defined Overton window controlled by a tiny group of likeminded people.
Fast forward a few years, and we can all predict which content will be "hate speech" and which almost identical content will be allowed. Detection of copyright protected content will be automated, but appeals for fair use will be manual, slow and difficult. Double standards will abound where the liberal ideals of the company run up against corporate interests, favored politicians or powerful governments.
And of course- someone will make a competing service which doesn't police content, and that service will in turn become a cesspool as all the worst offenders will be massively over represented there compared to merely the good netizens concerned about protecting a free internet.
Maybe a massive move to decentralization is the only thing that can save us. 100 different services with 100 different policies on which content is allowed seems far better than the direction we're headed. I'd rather at least have the easy choice and understanding of which ideology and set of interests I'm being filtered through.
Fast forward a few years, and we can all predict which content will be "hate speech" and which almost identical content will be allowed. Detection of copyright protected content will be automated, but appeals for fair use will be manual, slow and difficult. Double standards will abound where the liberal ideals of the company run up against corporate interests, favored politicians or powerful governments.
And of course- someone will make a competing service which doesn't police content, and that service will in turn become a cesspool as all the worst offenders will be massively over represented there compared to merely the good netizens concerned about protecting a free internet.
Maybe a massive move to decentralization is the only thing that can save us. 100 different services with 100 different policies on which content is allowed seems far better than the direction we're headed. I'd rather at least have the easy choice and understanding of which ideology and set of interests I'm being filtered through.