> Conservatives Still Struggling With Basic Concepts Of Social Media

The New York Times:

The law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is a direct response to Facebook’s and Twitter’s bans of former President Donald J. Trump in January. In addition to the fines for barring candidates, it makes it illegal to prevent some news outlets from posting to their platforms in response to the contents of their stories.

Let’s be clear and up front about this: this is exactly what this is about.

Mr. DeSantis said signing the bill, which is likely to face a constitutional challenge, meant that Floridians would be “guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites.” “If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable,” he said in a statement. The bill is part of a broader push among conservative state legislatures to crack down on the ability of tech companies to manage posts on their platforms. The political efforts took off after Mr. Trump was barred after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Lawmakers around the country have echoed Mr. Trump’s accusations that the companies are biased against conservative personalities and publications, even though those accounts often thrive online.

These guys don’t understand how these platforms work and that it’s no longer as simple as a follower count. There’s algorithms in place that measure engagement and determine how populare (or not) a post is. Sure, millions of people may follow their accounts but if the content isn’t shared then engagement is considered low and it simply doesn’t get exposure. Even prominent YouTubers have trouble with monetization due to algorithm shifts. Guys like DeSantis also don’t seem to realize that what they’re promoting largely isn’t popular either. It may be with certain groups of people, large swaths of the country even, but not the demographic using these platforms regularly. The people who legitimately follow them aside, the rest are either some kind of journalist, activist, or, most likely, just there for the LOLz. So it’s not that they’re being silenced per se, its just that people really just don’t like them. Companies like Facebook et al dont want to throw people off. They want the traffic and engagement people like Trump bring.

Just like you can’t make a bomb threat online without your account being taken down it’s probably not a good idea to threaten to overthrow the government either.

I’d also argue that most sane people, of any demographic, just don’t want to overthrow the government regardless of how they feel about it.

The law says the platforms cannot take down or otherwise prioritize content from a “journalistic enterprise” that reaches a certain size. Conservatives were outraged last year when Facebook and Twitter limited the reach of a New York Post article about the contents of a laptop it said belonged to Hunter Biden, the younger son of President Biden.

The New York Post is certainly an enterprise. Journalistic? Ehh not so much.

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