Follow my thinking here:

1 - If you act as a gatekeeper for information you have some greater or lesser responsibility for the quality of the conversation or information.

2 - Platforms have generally tried to be hands-off due to the cost.

3 - Platforms have also generally resisted opening up their data for study so technical or policy recommendations could be offered.

4 - This has in part led to harm to many people & communities due to disinformation, harrassment and a crowding out of some voices.

5 - But allowing interference in the democratic process is abstract and difficult to assess v.s. active disinformation about an active pandemic.

6 - Platforms can either get serious about policing themselves, or they can get serious about opening up to study and change.

7 - Transparency and collaboration for the ‘public good’ would be preferable given the massive benefits a functional social network provides.

8 - They will continue to prefer profits and window dressing v.s. transparency. And so their solutions will be costly and ineffective.

9 - Free Speech v.s. Not is a false dichotomy. It is Amplify Everything for Profit v.s. Add Friction to Make Disinformation More Expensive to Spread.

10 - You can’t ever stop bad actors from pushing garbage but you can build a system that does not actively profit from it.