First the Good. Twitter added Voice… a way to record audio and post to your twitter feed. Right now, it records 140 seconds of audio. The interface is simple and elegant – easy, cheesy. This could take me from someone who has view Twitter as “meh” since it launched to a real fan. We will see.

The Bad. It appears that Twitter’s controlling what you can say, read and see on their service is coming under attack again. This time it is a big deal. They have been censoring conservative voices for years and are being called to testify to Congress on their shenanigans.

This is an issue that has always interested me because of the liability protection afforded to social media companies. As a small website owner (Lone Star Gridiron) I was continually told that IF i edited anything that someone said in comments, I was liable for EVERYTHING said in the comments. Because of that, I turned off commenting years ago.

Social media companies like Twitter and Facebook however, have much more money and were able to push through legislation that afforded them the ability to have it both ways – edit what they like and not be held responsible for anything. I think their day of scamming the system will be coming to an end.

The correct answer? It is leaving everything wide open and giving the users the ability to edit what they see. I don’t want twitter or facebook deciding what I see. I want to be able to see everything. Leaving everything open and giving the company protection against liability is the best solution.

The downside? Well, all these platforms will be filled with a lot of crud. With all that crap showing up in the feeds, we will tune them all out – and thus their influence.