Today I saw yet another example of how badly different sides of an issue are at solving problems. This regrettable display of non-Yankee ingenuity revolved around the Facebook v. Trump-ban issue. The failures over addressing this issue competently abound in numerous areas. Oddly the decision to ban Trump wasn't in and of itself a mistake, but it was all the other errors, missteps, and fumbles that proceeded it, were salient in how it came to happen, and in what has transpired since. Based upon past performance (unlike the financial world) future performance is highly likely to follow the same trajectory of abysmal incompetence by perhaps every constituency involved.
Facebook (and other social media platforms) hold their own share of ownership in the failures that have occurred because of their own inability or disinterest in solving the very visible and long acknowledge problems that they and their platforms have not just allowed but enable. The greatest portion of their guilt comes from not solving their many system problems with solutions that are actually remarkably easy to achieve. The Trump problem is a particularly good example of where the problem(s) that warranted his being banned also offered access to what should have been obvious solutions. Solutions not just for Trump's abuses but for the damage he did to their business and the risks he promoted to America's democracy.
Facebook needs to step up and either solve these trivial problems, or seek help from competent critical thinkers, systems analysts, and problem-solvers who show them the many paths to effective solutions.
Facebook isn't alone of course, and I don't mean the other social-media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, ....; but entities/groups that are also responsible. There is Congress, which is a double-edged tool, that neither acted up until now nor will likely act intelligently going forward. They created Section 230 which was a contributing factor to enabling most of the problems that have contaminated so much of social-media. Not everything in Section 230 is bad or problematic, but it is both incomplete and has never been adapted to deal with reality.
Now, don't look to Congress to fix these problems. Congress is much more likely to screw things up even more just due their not knowing how to competently understand the problems that need to be solved and being motivated to seek solutions which serve their agendas rather than providing the framework of requirements which would allow social-media companies to operate as private businesses while not violating our American values and principles. Again, not a difficult task to accomplish except for the fact that they are not well-suited for the task. They are merely politicians after all; and thus lack most of the requisite skills needed to do a moderately acceptable job.
We should not leave out the news media. They also contribute to the problems that we have. The media presents the Trump issue in a very narrow context which oversimplifies the issue. When they deal with the ills that the current state of social-media systems have enabled and sponsored, the news media seems unable to provide any perspective of the problems that don't just reflect what the companies what to present, or what the politicians are using to air their views, or what 'experts' will explain as the reasons for these problems existing without noting that there are good and readily achievable solutions.
There are other groups and entities that contribute to the growing cancer of abuses that are spread through the social-media vector. But all these groups including those above provide the very information which makes solving the problems so simple. With all this information the failure must be that no one is paying attention to the most critical task required. You have to do the problem-solving work to seek and find the solutions that will provide the answer to this Gordian Knot of fake-news, misinformation, threats & hate attacks, disinformation campaign, election interference by foreign & domestic interests, fraud, and of course terrorism by foreign & domestic entities.
So, why not just solve the Trump issue and most of the others by simply providing some simple enhancements to the technology and services that Facebook, Twitter, and all the other platforms could do? Why not do what would be better for the nation, the globe, the public, the shareholders, the companies themselves, and the industry? Why not? Is it that embarrassing reality that somehow they can't solve the riddle? They can't cut the knot?
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