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Hans KleinHans Klein, associate professor in the School of Public Policy, was quoted in the article "Sick of Facebook ‘censorship,’ Georgia conservatives flocking to Parler after election," published Nov. 16, 2020 in the Macon Telegraph.
The article explores how some users of Facebook have become frustrated by the platform's guildelines and posting policies and have transitioned to Parler, a platform with more lenient moderation that promotes a greater commitment to "free speech." Klein, who has studied Internet policy and how it shapes communication patterns, spoke to the fundamental intractability of the problem faced by social media platforms.
Excerpt:
Hans Klein, associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said that mainstream social media platforms’ efforts to fact check and limit the spread of false information seemed destined to enrage at least some of their users. For example, people on the left have criticized social media platforms like Facebook for not going far enough to control right-wing conspiracy theories.
“Facebook is now tangled up in an impossible task, to filter out ‘bad speech’ or ‘false speech,’” Klein said. “If you don’t censor enough they’re pissed off, and if you do censor they’re pissed off and everybody’s angry. I think it’s actually an insoluble problem. You can’t get it right.”
