I wrote about Facebook’s QAnon purge, the political ad ban & militia pages and how it’s recent actions are a tacit admission that what is good for Facebook is, on the whole, destabilizing for society. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/opinion/facebook-gretchen-whitmer.html

I’m conflicted writing about FB like this now. feel like I’ve turned into a predictable crank finding new ways to say the same thing. But felt important to me to note that FB’s choices to stop destabilization in US are essentially just attempts to make the platform less effective

if you look at the Whitmer kidnapping plotters (as @oneunderscore__ & @BrandyZadrozny reported) you’ll see that facebook is just one node in this big system. So they don’t deserve all the blame or focus. But their attempts at reform really showcase the actual problem: FB’s design

I keep butting up against this idea that to really fix the problems these platforms cause, we can’t rely on moderation tweaks but need to change the architecture (banning ads for a time period would suggest insiders feel this way about parts of the product)

anyhow, i’m going to try and focus more going forward on finding some debate around this issue. what does structural reform mean? can it happen? but this felt like an important moment to make these observations