What is Platform Risk & The Underlying Problem It Presents To Free Speech
The risk a platform has to your business is serous
What Happened?
Recently my Twitter account @Blind__Luck was locked for “review” because I changed my profile picture while my account was under review (took over 3 weeks) I let my Twitter Blue subscription expire. (why pay for it if I can’t even update my portfolio).
I was hoping that by letting my Twitter Blue subscription expire my account would be removed from the “review” que and I could make changes like normal… 3 weeks later (6 weeks total) my account is still lost in Twitter limbo somewhere, despite opening a case for help with Twitter (which was automatically closed after a week).
This has given me an opportunity to think about platform risk and what it means for us all moving forward.
What Is Platform Risk?
Platform risk is the risk that a decision a platform you host content on has an unexpected impact on your account.
Types Of Risks
Change in content policy
A classic example of this is when YouTube demonetized (and was no longer monetarily. incentivized to promote) content with guns in them. Now the intent I’m sure was to reduce political exposure to a growing group of vocal minorities with unbalanced views.
Unfortunately this change in policy impacted many YouTubers who were doing great work ranging from product reviews, videos on gun safety, hunting, discussion collectable fire arms and antiques, military history, and much more.
While the intent behind this change was likely not a bad one it did ultimately wipe out the work of people who had spent years of work and 10’s of thousands of dollars into developing quality entertaining content that people legitimately wanted to see.
Account flagged for suspected Spam / Bot activity
Another issue is the increasing problem of AI generated Spam and Bot accounts who sole purpose is to spam and harass users on a given platform. In response the platforms are very aggressive in banning, or locking any account suspected of being spammy or a bot. unfortantly these platforms are overwhelmed and if you are mistakenly identified as a problem account they really don’t have the time or resources to look into your case along the millions of fake complaints filed by the almighty bot army. After all who is paying for their time? The service is free or in the case of Twitter Blue $8/ month. That’s not much manpower to work with.
Change in direction for the platform
Sometimes your account is just caught in the tides of a changing online world. This year TikTok is the hottest thing ever, next year it’s banned, bought by a ne firm who has different goals or the “Topic Of The Day” that you niche was is all of a sudden not that relevant any more.
Pay Wall
I bring up Pay Walls because that’s sort of whats happening to Twitter. In response to the Bots they have implemented the paid $8/ month Twitter Blue which will force you to “pay to play” this ultimately does 2 things
Cost money to have a voice on the platform
Shrinks the audience you can reach as nonpaying users stop engaging or leave the platform all together
Free Speech & Censorship Issues
“Free Speech” enters the chat
“They can’t do this! I have a right to be heard! How dare they silence me, that’s a violation of my first amendment right!”
Well technically speaking they (the social media platforms) haven’t violated the 1st amendment here by banning you or not showing your content. They’ve simply removed your megaphone and said our audience may not want to hear what you have to say. It’s similar to asking you to leave their house. You’re still free to say whatever you want, and people are still allowed to listen to you somewhere else if they choose. The platform has just decided they don’t’ want to host you anymore, similar to when you ask your drunk uncle to leave the party. Remember freedom of speech doesn’t give you the right to force someone to listen/ agree with you. Just the right to voice your opinion.
Social media platforms have a tough job between offering a platform where users can voice their own opinions and at the same time ensuring some quality control to prevent their users from being harassed. After all is their platform any good if all you see when you log in is porn, hate speech, and spam?
These are murky waters where is the line between quality control to ensure users aren’t harassed by users/ bots they don’t want to engage with, and restricting narratives because it’s easier than trying to figure out what’s a legitimate opinion and what’s abuse of the platforms systems.
What You Can Do About It
This is a tough question, and one I’ve been struggling with for a while now. It’s a big reason I started this website. Technically there is platform risk everywhere online. While you can spread yourself out over multiple platforms, create your own website and build a direct email list.
Social media platforms have rules and guidelines you need to follow (Which can change at any time) but even if you host a website independent of these rules and guidelines which may limit what you can say. You are still depending on web hosting services to keep your website running (Remember when AWS stopped hosting Parlor?). Search engines to show users your website when they look for your content. Just look at the groups of frustrated website owners after every google core update kills traffic for some websites while helping others.
After all does it really matter if you own a website if nobody can find it?
Kind of like in the matrix, “What good is a phone call if you can not speak?
At What Point Does The Internet Become Unsusable?
This is the most scary part to me, at some point 1 of 2 things happens
The internet becomes so bloated with useless content because nobody is able to effectively implement quality control standards without restricting free and creative speech.
Or the filtering process becomes must more aggressive and the available narratives are limited to parties willing to pay to have their voice heard (similar to TV and news print)
Unfortunately as the internet matures I think we are heading to option #2. Especially with AI tools becoming more prevalent. For example if you ask your Google or Siri assistant for information on a given topic, you will get a simple concise answer based on what it views as the most credible source of information. Regardless if it aligns with your values or if the issue is complex.
For example “hey Siri what is the best laptop?” well of course the New M2 MacBook Pro!
That’s it for this article guys! I don’t have the answers but I do think we should all be aware of the changing digital landscape.
-Cheers!
Make sure you Join our Community you know, just in case I’m not on social media sometime soon :)
