Kara Swisher: “I Thought the Web Would Stop Hate, Not Spread It”

Kara Swisher calls tech firms to task for their complicity in online hate speech:

Let me say it again: Social media platforms — and Facebook and Twitter are as guilty of this as Gab is — are designed so that the awful travels twice as fast as the good. And they are operating with sloppy disregard of the consequences of that awful speech, leading to disasters that they then have to clean up after.

And they are doing a very bad job of that, too, because they are unwilling to pay the price to make needed fixes. Why? because draining the cesspool would mean losing users, and that would hurt the bottom line.

A friendly reminder: for as “woke” as they claim to be, technology firms like Facebook and Twitter do not care about you. They don’t care about making your life better nor do they care about improving the world — not in any real, tangible sense. For all of their talk about freedom, justice, equality, and other such virtues, their coffers will always remain their ultimate concern.

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