Can web’s dark recesses save the social media?

Facebook Inc has long defended its lackadaisical approach to misinformation by saying that if it imposed stricter conditions, such content would proliferate elsewhere anyway. Far better to monitor conversation itself … or something.
But pushing false information and incitement to violence to the darker recesses of the web would be better.
Facebook’s line of reasoning has long seemed disingenuous, not least because of how many people turn to the social media giant. It has 2.5 billion monthly users across its platforms, which include Instagram and WhatsApp.
Alongside Alphabet Inc’s YouTube, these properties represent the greatest agglomeration of eyeballs that the world has ever known. Where else can misinformation find such a massive audience?
Facebook’s banning of Donald Trump, alongside a similar decision by Twitter Inc, means it might be now found out. The first alternative for many was Parler, a social media app that boasts of being a bastion of free speech and is backed by the billionaire Mercer family.
But such free speech came at a cost: Its failure to moderate content organising the violence at the
Capitol last week prompted Amazon.com Inc to suspend Parler’s use of its web-hosting services, while Apple Inc and Google removed its app from their mobile stores. Trump has since said he may build his own social network as Parler scrambles to get back on its feet.
Whatever happens to Parler, forcing the most outlandish strands of political discourse off the mainstream platforms would be a good thing.
To boost user engagement,
social media companies tend to reward provocative content with greater exposure while also deploying algorithms that personalise user feeds. That produces engines that incubate and accentuate radicalisation, which can have the effect of turning moderates into radicals.
Facebook is now taking down all mentions of “stop the steal,” the slogan used by US election conspiracy theorists, while Twitter has banned more than 70,000 QAnon accounts.
If QAnon, electoral fraud conspiracists and flat-earthers are encouraged to move elsewhere — to Parler, for instance, or Gab, a site reportedly frequented by white supremacists — then it might reduce the number of people sucked out of the mainstream and into their conspiratorial vortexes.
Pushing more extreme political discourse out of the mainstream would formalise the content bubbles that essentially already exist. It would be a far cry from the 1990s cyber-utopian vision of the internet as a village green or an agora for the free and open exchange of ideas. But it would be for the best.
—Bloomberg