I know this is about people paying for posts with money, but if one zooms out a bit to think about this -- any user of a platform like Twitter is paying/spending time (aka paying in their time and attention). IMO, trying to police and stop people from spreading their ideas online (political or otherwise) is a fools errand, and the antithesis of how social networks function.
I'm starting to see Twitter and Facebook more like the newspapers, and really, more like the delivery service. Perhaps I could print anything in a newspaper, which I can't, but even if I could, someone would have to deliver that newspaper to the doorsteps of people for them to read it or they would have to go try to find a copy in the store. These platforms already have delivery routes determined through algorithms, already choosing who receives which newspapers.
What role do you think these networks should play in distributing these posts to our door?
Well that is a similar line of reasoning that has been applied to ISPs that deliver internet itself, and I think music publishers took that line when suing ISPs for facilitating piracy. I think all forums and UGC platforms deal with this in their own way. (like Reddit, they mostly let each subreddit have their own mods that decide what content and topics they want to allow.) In Twitter's case, I am skeptical of the end game with their current approach, where the loudest in the room tends to stand out.
