Facebook and Twitter haven’t implemented robust and shareable filters for their respective content streams for fear of disturbing their ad revenue streams.* The power to filter feared as the power to exclude ads.
Other possible explanations include: Drone employment, old/new friends hired to discuss censoring content; Hubris, wanting to decide what is “best” for others to see and read; NIH (not invented here), which explains silence concerning my proposals for shareable content filters; others?
* Lest I be accused of spreading “fake news,” my explanation for the lack of robust and shareable filters on content on Facebook and Twitter is based solely on my analysis of their behavior and not any inside leaks, etc.
I have a solution for fearing filters as interfering with ad revenue.
All Facebook posts and Twitter tweets, will be delivered with an additional Boolean field, ad, which defaults to true (empty field), meaning the content can be filtered. (following Clojure) When the field is false, that content cannot be filtered.
Filters being registered and shared via Facebook and Twitter, testing those filters for proper operation (and not applying them if they filter ad content) is purely an algorithmic process.
Users pay to post ad content, a step where the false flag can be entered, resulting in no more ad freeloaders being free from filters.
What’s my interest? I’m interested in the creation of commercial filters for aggregation, exclusion and creating a value-add product based on information streams. Moreover, ending futile and bigoted attempts at censorship seems like a worthwhile goal to me.
The revenue potential for filters is nearly unlimited.
The number of people who hate rivals the number who want to filter the content seen by others. An unrestrained Facebook/Twitter will attract more hate and “fake news,” which in turn will drive a great need for filters.
Not a virtuous cycle but certainly a profitable one. Think of hate and the desire to censor as renewable resources powering that cycle.
PS: I’m not an advocate for hate and censorship but they are both quite common. Marketing is based on consumers as you find them, not as you wish they were.