Every time this subject comes up, someone inevitably says something like "Facebook is a private corporation, the first amendment only applies to the government, and if you want to use Facebook you have to play by their rules. No one is owed a platform."
Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies. They are the only services in their class to take seriously if you're looking to gain a following. If they didn't exist, alternative services would spring up. But alternative services know they can't compete with FB/YouTube/Twitter, so none exist. When people say "if you don't like FB's rules, use another service" it ignores that Facebook is the reason there isn't another service and thus has some responsibility to uphold values we've collectively decided as a society are important.
The issue is not whether Facebook is breaking the law but whether philosophically the market leader in a category should get to decide who can use their product when their product category is fundamental to modern life. Saying "no one is owed a platform" brings us no closer to an answer.
> Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies
Monopolies of what, exactly? I admit to sometimes looking at entertaining videos on youtube. About an hour or maximum two hours a week worth. I'm not sure what you're suggesting that facebook and twitter are monopolizing. I haven't used the former in years and the latter just about ever -- aside from maybe five tweets over the course of twitter's existence.
Monopolies of online discourse? Attention? Entertainment? Clearly we're not using any of those platforms now.
Monopoly on platform reach. The reach of facebook, or the reach of youtube, twitter etc, is so high, that if you want to disseminate a message, those _must_ be the platforms you use. It's as if they own the radio spectrum, and you have to acquiesce to what they demand to use said spectrum.
Of course, i am free to use smoke signals to send my message, but who will receive it?
> If you can use facebook, youtube or twitter to reach lots of people, how could any one of them be a monopoly on reach?
Even though they are competing for attention, they each use different mediums. As an analogy, it's like only having one radio station, one TV station, and one magazine. There needs to be dozens of each for there to be a true marketplace of ideas.
This isn't what the previous poster said - reach is something you can get on any of these platforms (and more), yet that was pointed out as what each has a monopoly on.
Can you define a market each of them has a monopoly over? There are many popular video apps and many popular social media apps. Exactly what does each of them have a monopoly on? A network effect is not a monopoly. Being the exclusive provider of convenience for some specific group of people is not a monopoly.
For example, in some religious town, it's possible that the only way to reach a certain group of people on a Sunday afternoon is to go to the church. This does not mean the church has a monopoly on reach. Likewise, it's possible that where you live, the only place you can get a meal at 2AM is Aunt Ann's Diner. This doesn't make them a monopoly. Nor is the only sushi restaurant in town a monopoly. We live in a world of differentiation - every service provider that has a reason to exist provides something that others don't. This doesn't make everyone a monopoly.
Also, on none of these platforms is it trivial to build a large audience. And it's certainly possible to build a large audience through other means. For any given platform to have a monopoly on reach, people must be spending so little time outside of this platform that it's impossible to reach them otherwise. That's not a world any of us lives in. Even Youtube accounts for a very small fraction of time spent on watching videos and Facebook and Twitter are two of a large number of popular social networks. Snapchat, WeChat, iMessage, Weibo, TikTok, QQ, VK, Reddit, LinkedIn and Line to name a few.
There are many many video content hosting sites, there are countless twitter clones, and there are a crazy amount of sites doing things like Facebook with profiles and such. Because people are choosing to use mainly those doesn’t stop anyone from using others. This isn’t like a utility or phone company where people literally had no alternatives. No one is stopping any of us from connecting to Mastodon for example and even better, no one is stopping us from setting up our own Mastodon servers and connecting that very server up to the wider Mastodon network... There is no Monopoly here.
Because more people choose to eat McDonalds burgers than the local dive bar burgers, does this mean McDonalds has a monopoly on burgers?
My local dive bar can serve me burgers whether it has a customer base of 1.000 or 1.000.000. A social network, however, cannot function without hundreds of millions of users. Otherwise it's an anti-social network.
As a result I can post my video to DailyMotion instead of YouTube but how am I going to build a following without engaging with Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter?
These networks require mass user engagement to be effective which precludes a myriad of competition. I don't think breaking these companies up as Elizabeth Warren suggested is the correct solution because it fundamentally handicaps their ability to function. But I think there does need to be regulation around how they do business which sadly does not exist.
> There are many many video content hosting sites, there are countless twitter clones, and there are a crazy amount of sites doing things like Facebook with profiles and such.
I think the point is yes there are alternatives however given the size/reach of FB, YT, and twitter even those alternatives really aren't competing with them. They own the market share for what do and even many of those alternatives (ie mastodon) post on twitter or FB news or service updates. I'd say the alternatives don't even make up 5% use over FB, YT, or twitter.
Is it a monopoly in the normal sense of the word probably not, but the issue remains that alternatives are niche and truly don't directly compete. I think though as things like people being banned, creators being demonetized or the numerous other things that have happened in the last year to show users of these platforms the problems; we might see these alternatives pick up ground as these people with followings and clout get kicked off or decide to find alternatives. They get too big for their own good and in the process they will end up fragmenting their communities causing some to take alternatives serious.
The claim is that Fb is most definitely not a monopoly on access to political speech. People are not stuck in an information vacuum the moment Facebook bans their favorite content. People who want to access Alex Jones can still do so easily.
What Facebook IS a monopoly of is getting your content to go viral. I argue this service is not speech. Which is why I oppose web hosts and cloudflare censoring content, but support social networks banning users. When web hosts do it, users who WANT that content can't get it anymore. When social networks ban people, they merely can't find new eyeballs that never specifically requested that content.
>The reach of facebook, or the reach of youtube, twitter etc, is so high, that if you want to disseminate a message, those _must_ be the platforms you use.
This isn't true though. Alex Jones can disseminate his message through countless other websites, which have their own users. This is really just advocating for equal exposure of opinions, which isn't a free speech issue.
it's not equal exposure at all, it's equal opportunity for exposure.
i can post a comment on FB and get 0 likes, that doesn't give me equal exposure to the latest nike video on their page.
denying opportunity for exposure is giving that platform the ultimate authority on what shouldn't be able to be exposed in society, if society is reliant on that platform.
i don't want alex jones to have exposure, but i don't want an exec deciding what's next on the chopping block. a page suggesting publicly available employee salaries? they shouldn't have that power
Society in the United States is in no way reliant on that platform. If it were, then we would be in agreement.
If we're talking about internet providers, that's a different issue, since they are a user's conduit to the entire web. Those absolutely should not be able to choose which accounts to favor.
There are plenty of places on the internet more lenient than the biggest websites. Check out voat and see what happens when people banned from other platforms go to the same place. It isn't pretty but at least they aren't a blight on other groups.
So if I wanted to play basketball professionally in the US then the NBA should be obligated to hire me because no other basketball platform has the reach they do?
I'm not fully thought out on this, but I think a decent starting analogy would be to a public square or space in a city. These companies hold a monopoly on the online equivalent of that because of the way network effects work.
USENET was the equivalent of a public square on the Internet. It was overwhelmed by spam.
These networks have been curated from the get-go, for no reason other than to control spam. Then, to keep people hooked, they emphasized virality and controversy. These aspects make them quite unlike a town square.
> USENET was the equivalent of a public square on the Internet. It was overwhelmed by spam.
Our situation is even better than this, the entire internet is our town square, anyone can spin our own metaphorical soap box online and say whatever we want, and the entire worlds internet connected public can hear us if they choose to do so.
In someway these social networks amplify voices by their sharing and recommending and suggesting based on what users do, a normal city square doesn't amplify your voice.
So this is different from walking past a demonstration or assembly in the city, it is more of an Inception movie-like warping of the entire city to bring everyone closer to these peoples voices.
> these social networks amplify voices by their sharing and recommending and suggesting based on what users do, a normal city square doesn't amplify your voice.
Actually, a city square does exactly that, amplify your voice to all those that pass. The difference is that there are many city squares to stand in, whereas there are only a handful of social media companies. The problem here is Facebook's monopoly power, not the medium of communication.
> The difference is that there are many city squares to stand in, whereas there are only a handful of social media companies
I’m just not sure this holds up to any kind of scrutiny. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of forums online where people can speak.
It’s a problematic analogy anyway, Facebook is not a public space, if we’re going insist on applying a real world physical analogue, they would be much closer to a city’s incredibly popular nightclub with a stage, which of course would never be required to give extremists or provocateurs free-reign of their equipment or stage. But even this analogy has problems.
I think the real argument is whether or not a company is free to associate its brand with whatever it likes.
I. Where the monopolist lies not the exclusive power of production but only certain exclusive facilities as a producer, and can increase, with imdimimished or even increased facility, the amount of his produce....
II. A second kind of monopoly is in the opposite extreme. It exists where price is checked neither by the hopes nor by the fears of the producer, where no competition is dreaded, and no increased supply can be effected. The owners of some vinyards have such a monopoly....
III. A third and more frequent kind of monopoly lies between these two extremes, and is neither so strict as the last, nor so comparatively open as the first. This comprises those cases in which the monopolist is the only producer, but, by the application of additional labow and abstinence, can indefinitely increase his production. The book trade affords an illustration....
IV. The fourth and last class of monopolies exists where production must be assisted by natural agents, limited in number, and varying in power, and repaying with less and less relative assistance every increase in the amount of the labour and abstinence bestowed on them.
-- Nassau William Senior, An Outline Of The Science Of Political Economy, (1836, 1872) pp. 103-106.
Let's take your argument that these corporations are monopoly as truth for a moment, there are still rules.
In the USA, just because we have the first amendment doesn't mean you're not responsible for your words. Fighting words is a thing (it's actually a term), verbal harassment is a thing, etc...
Alex Jones from InfoWar sic his followers to harass the Sandy Hook victims' parents. He was free to say what he wants and then he got ban for inciting unsavory actions.
To be real fair here, I'm pretty dang sure in Facebook's ToS, they have something like no porn allow. Nobody blink an eye on that because that make sense and it's probably some where in the ToS (terms of service). Yet here we got a guy that's advocating his listeners to harass people and a vocal minority of Americans are all up in arm about it. He most likely violated some rules in the ToS.
>Alex Jones from InfoWar sic his followers to harass the Sandy Hook victims' parents.
Thats a skewed depiction of what happened. What happened was the biggest conspiracy theorist on the internet ran a few articles about the hottest conspiracies on the internet (crisis actors, etc) just asking questions. Alex Jones notably believes just about everything is a conspiracy. This naturally led to people deciding to "find the truth theirselves".
Alex Jones really hurt those families but I don't believe he had intent. I think he just didn't quite realise what the consequences of his actions would be.
Ironically the people criticizing Jones for spreading this conspiracy have popularized the conspiracy more than Jones himself. while critizing Jones for spreading this conspiracy. Media coverage is thought to be one of the primary drivers of schhol shootings.
I just don't see a great deal of consistency in the excommunication of Jones. Which isn't to say he shouldn't be banned. He's the epitome of fake news. Yet I notice how facebook itself gets away with providing a service that helps mass murder go Viral. Jones at least doesn't have blood on his hands like Facebook does.
Harassment is illegal as is conspiracy to commit harassment. Since we all view harassment to be illegal, a case where there is evidence that a person "sic their followers" to commit harassment should be sent to the legal system, or if that fails we should make a law so that future cases will be addressed through the legal system.
I think the reason we don't is simply because we want to allow speech that result in "bad" people getting harassed but not "good" people, and since different political sides define good and bad differently, what we get is platforms making the decision for us. Personally I would prefer a law instead.
that was ages ago. he has apologised for questioning sandy hook and talked about it many times, including the recent joe rogan talk. can people not make mistakes? once we're wrong, are we always wrong?
> he has apologised for questioning sandy hook and talked about it many times ... can people not make mistakes?
Of course people make mistakes, and as adults, they should know that there are consequences to making mistakes. A stock trader that bets on the wrong stock has to deal with the consequences of losing money. A murderer who shows remorse must still serve their sentence.
Similarly, a conspiracy theory peddler who popularizes false accusations needs to own up to the harm they caused. Alex Jones has harmed a lot of people in very serious ways.
I'm not entirely sure if people have made mistake where they stated the the death of children were just a plot to take away guns, that those where child actors and then before I continue I would like to briefly talk about my InforWar products. Buy this rape whistle to support InfoWar. Oh where was I? Right, making money off of the dead kids.
And you're saying this as if this is the only outrageous incidents he have done.
I want you to say it with your real name instead of a pseudo name.
Like how I'm stating my belief on this subject with my real name. Because I'm sure as hell you wouldn't be defending Alex Jones' actions.
> I want you to say it with your real name instead of a pseudo name.
> Like how I'm stating my belief on this subject with my real name. Because I'm sure as hell you wouldn't be defending Alex Jones' actions.
Of course they wouldn't, but I don't see why this is a point you would like to make. They would face the potential for real-life backlash if any of many mobs prowling the internet noticed their comment. You can post safely because you're voicing a majority-held opinion.
I'm not seeing the link between "there are people actively seeking to ruin the lives of those holding thoughts like yours" and "what you're saying is incorrect". The mob is always right?
I like to think the link is that if people truly think that their discussion and what they've presented than they have nothing to fear. Nor are they willing to sacrifice their integrity for it.
The best possible way of doing this would be if the person is basing this argument from the basis of good intention and good will and that they know the subject is of good. But if you can't do that perhaps deep down in side you know there is something wrong with your position. If you still believe in it you ought to have a solid argument.
Not this every people make mistakes as if all mistakes are the same argument. A distracted mother caused a car accident that kill someone. A drunken driver killed someone in a car accident. Both are mistakes but they're not equal, if they were then one of them wouldn't be likely to have a harsher punishment.
Having a real name forces at person to be honest, civil and actually put real effort into the discussion.
I like to think the people who hides behind these fake names are more like those Klanmen hiding behind those white hooded costumes. I'm not alluding to racism but it is either because deep down inside they know they're wrong or they're not brave enough to stand on their own feet or unwilling to put effort into making a solid argument.
> But if you can't do that perhaps deep down in side you know there is something wrong with your position. If you still believe in it you ought to have a solid argument.
Or you believe you have a solid argument, but realize it's an unpopular one, and have seen others with unpopular arguments be harassed and fired for them. (How ironic that you raise this argument in a thread literally about people suffering for their unpopular arguments!)
> Having a real name forces at person to be honest
People can only be truly honest when anonymous, and assured safety from consequences.
> I want you to say it with your real name instead of a pseudo name. Like how I'm stating my belief on this subject with my real name.
You seem to think that it is courageous to echo the dominant opinion that a majority of talking heads and blue checkmarks on Twitter agree with...try doing something radical like criticizing the U.S. war machine, or Israel, or endless neoliberal regime change and see how that works out for you...you'll find out you can criticize these things using your real name, but they'll be concrete consequences
My criticism is that the real reason why these people aren't going to use their real name is because their opinion is rooted in hatred. That's why it's unpopular.
Other thread have pointed out unpopular opinions will have get mob that's why they hide.
Well let see three unpopular opinions.
1. The earth is flat.
2. A religious person going to a university with signs saying, "Gays are going to hell."
3. Bunch of people with Tiki torches chanting, "Jews will not replace us."
Which one do you think will get a mob? All 3 of them.
Which one is more likely to get into confrontations? The 3rd one and it's because it's coming from hate. It's the degree of hatred in the unpopular opinion that will get a rowdy mob.
What exactly do these people that take these hateful stances expect?
> try doing something radical like criticizing the U.S. war machine, or Israel, or endless neoliberal regime change and see how that works out for you...
I have no idea what you're definition of these subjects are.
But okay I'll go for it.
I don't support USA being involve with the current conflict in Yemen. I know I'm a begger that's choosing, but I've recently have tried my best to not apply to companies that are directly involved in war.
Israel occupation of the West Bank is wrong. UN have recognized it and it hinder the process of peace between Israel and Palestine.
I have no idea what this neoliberal regime is. But it seems like you're trying to get me to spit out some radical unpopular opinion.
If these things I've stated aren't unpopular to you. Then perhaps the reason unpopular opinions being unpopular is because, well, the majority of the people don't support it or hold radical views.
You think you're somehow in the right just because you use your real name on the Internet?
You must be pretty young because here's what I know: It doesn't matter how your politics swing, eventually the other side comes to power and seeks to punish it's opposite. So your candor, while refreshing, won't protect you. The only protection is anonymity, as much as you can get.
We live in an unprecedented era of technology destroying the very fabric of civilization. I don't know that we're going to survive this. We aren't going to survive it with any semblance of "freedom" in the Western legal sense of the word where law rules, where oligarchs don't get away with crimes while the "little people" suffer, and where there is room for individuals apart from the state. From my perspective, technology is quickly enabling despotism and it is happening faster in some places than others.
The worst part is, you won't know that you were judged by something you said online ten years ago when you were a goofball college student. You won't know because they won't tell you that. They just won't hire you for the job or whatever the situation happens to be.
Right now, the left is trying to blackball conservatives in the US mainly because their arguments are weak and they know the things they want to do are dastardly if they can get away with them. Like all communist revolutions, the perpetrators will stoop to murder and mayhem if they can get away with it. They have already left reasonableness and open debate far in the past and now they are seeking to consolidate power by force as necessary. This is all being done with the cooperation of big tech--Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple. These companies have all been taken over by the far left, it seems. No clue how that all happened because last I looked, SV was a bunch of anarcho-capitalists trying to upset the status quo of the world. Next time I turn around, there's a bunch of typical commies in there cozying up to China! That can't end well.
I'm no fan of Alex Jones, btw. Alex Jones is controlled opposition. He is exists to get people to "look over here" to the safe distraction while the real evil plays out somewhere else.
Alex Jones knows he's wrong from the start and does it anyway until he gets to a point where he has to either apologize or make excuses. "Can people not make mistakes?" is such a horseshit question when you're talking about Alex Jones or any of his ilk.
Read about how the Spanish American War got started and what role the media played in it.
Read about Puerto Rico.
None of this is new. What is new is how far the media elite have tried to take it this time. They dropped all semblance of objectivity out of fear that Trump would become some kind of despot. Or was the real fear that unconscionable crimes would be exposed? What would the people do if they found out their elites enjoyed having sex with children, for example?
It is diagnostic, however. The point is that the mass media is a player in the game, not the "4th Estate" or whatever high-minded bs they say they are. There is zero objectivity.
how do you know he questioned sandy hook deliberately? he questions a lot. and he has the right. we have the right to question. and we have the right to be wrong. you sound like a dictator - "he doesn't deserve a second chance!". he's his own boss, you're not his.
There is always plenty to question. Motives being one, response being another, heck even timing. I can think of plenty of things you can question when situations like this happen. Doesn't mean they get answered or aren't the most obvious answer.
> In the USA, just because we have the first amendment doesn't mean you're not responsible for your words.
Translating into English: "your words incur a great debt that you will pay dearly for." Being responsible for the consequences is just a euphemism for debt collection.
Monopolies do not get to just call themselves a private concern, able to do what they want. We only tolerate monopolies with suitable regulation. For example, we do not allow water, electricity, or other things provided by monopolies to be cut by a company when the company disagrees with the customer's political or other views.
In addition, the US federal government only exists to protect the innumerable rights of US citizens. Some of these rights are enumerated in the constitution. It is therefore well within the scope of the federal government to protect citizens against bully companies like Facebook who are infringing on these rights.
it's the other way around. Facebook has always been a private concern. At some point it became an effective monopoly. That doesn't stop it from continuing to be a private concern. The process of going from private concern to public concern is called "nationalisation"; the government forcibly buys out the shareholders of Facebook and runs it as a public asset.
The shareholders of Facebook are entitled to run their company as they see fit. Because they own it. Like you can paint the walls of your house whatever colour you like, and if visitors don't like it, then that's their problem.
If we think that Facebook has grown too powerful and intrusive into society to be governed by its shareholders, then nationalisation is completely the correct way to go.
Of course, which nation gets to buy Facebook is another concern... given its global reach, is it really appropriate for the US government to own it? Should the UN "globalise" it instead of the US "nationalising" it?
> The shareholders of Facebook are entitled to run their company as they see fit. Because they own it.
That isn't entirely true when we are talking about "customer discrimination"...we'd be having a completely different conversation if Facebook came out and said "we're going to ban Filipinos" or "we're banning those who express anti-war sentiments"...it's a lot easier when the people being persecuted are right-wing nationalists, anti-Israel, or conspiracy nuts...
Semantically it's not a question of "who can use their product" it's a question of in what fashion are users permitted to use their product, what behaviors are/n't allowed on that platform. Facebook didn't institute or enforce a "no Louis Farrakhans" policy. They set boundaries on what kind of behavior is or isn't acceptable for continued membership and participation on their platform, e.g. no anti-semitism.
Even a free-speech shithole like 4chan has a distinct moderation policy for each individual board. There have to be rules for a social/discussion platform to serve an intended purpose, otherwise the platform becomes repurposed by its users or ceases to have any purpose to anyone. If Facebook can't dictate its policies they can't dictate what shape the platform takes.
But the fact that it has dictated its own form is why it's Facebook. That is to say, perhaps Facebook couldn't be the platform on which people wanted to post anti-semitic content, if it didn't actively purge such content from its platform. If Facebook can't dictate what kinds of content are healthy for their platform then there could very well not be a Facebook at all.
> The issue is not whether Facebook is breaking the law but whether philosophically the market leader in a category should get to decide who can use their product when their product category is fundamental to modern life. Saying "no one is owed a platform" brings us no closer to an answer.
By acceding to public pressure, doesn't that demonstrate that these "market leaders" don't actually get to decide what content they host? FB/YT/Twitter/Reddit have consistently dragged their feet on removing extremist content. I think the last couple years have been proof that a laissez-faire model of governing the online public sphere has been a spectacular failure.
> ...to public pressure, doesn’t that demonstrate that these “market leaders” don’t actually get to decide what content they host?
This is a strange way to frame what businesses do every single day. If a business believes a certain product is unethical or that the product wont sell very well, they choose not to peddle that product. This is a determination just about every business deals with on a regular basis.
I don't care if Facebook is a monopoly -- they are an advertising business and their incentives are fundamentally misaligned to serve as a public institution. Even if they weren't a monopoly, if they were the darling of the world in terms of PR, they're still the wrong organization to serve public needs.
If people think we should have digital public spaces, then we should be paying for it as a public. We have parks and plazas where people can congregate, so why not government funded servers for hosting chat?
Until the their payment processors refuse to do business with them due to political pressure. I guess they could accept money orders or cryptocurrency, but services are centralized to the point that "just create your own website" isn't a simple solution any more.
Even though I don’t care either way about these people, it does bother me that ISPs could take away their access. If I had controversial views where I couldn’t find anyone to host my site, I could set up a few servers in my home. Someone somewhere would give me basic DNS. I guess they could still make money via personal appearances? Farrakhan at least has shown he knows how to get his word out without the Internet.
Or their domain registrar drops them. And their hosting company. And their ISP doesn't allow them to self host. And then they're effectively blackballed from the internet.
I might be playing the devil's advocate a little bit now, but If what these people are saying is truly that toxic that they can be excluded from facebook, twitter, podcast directories, etc. If they really do incite violence and harrasment and spread misinformation.
What's stopping them from ending up like the daily stormer, being "deplatformed" from cloudflare, or ending up like the pirate bay, being blocked by a lot of ISPs world wide?
Or maybe they just deserve it if they can garner enough attention and infamy to get themselves blocked from a hosting company.
> ..when their product category is fundamental to modern life.
FB/YT/Twitter are not fundamental to modern life.
They aren't even fundamental to gaining an audience. Lots of businesses[1] manage to turn handsome profits without advertising on those platforms.
[1] And that's what infowars/milo are -- businesses looking for make a profit by producing social commentary and then selling ad space / books / videos / merch for more than it costs to produce the commentary.
>FB/YT/Twitter are not fundamental to modern life.
Neither are cakes. But people on left celebrating Facebook for doing what they want on their platform - seem quite similar to the people on the left also trying to get a baker forced to make a cake.
You can have it both ways. Positions can be motivated either by process out outcome. A process position is "businesses should/should not be able to deny service to people based on <whatever dispute>". An outcome position is "We should protect gay couples and not white supremacists". You might not agree with the particular position, you might prefer developing supposedly content-neutral process positions, but many people think that the design of rules and systems is merely a means to getting to what they view as correct ends.
Your position is a bit like saying "Some people claim they're OK with the US/UK having nuclear weapons, but not North Korea. Can't have it both ways." or "Some people want charities to be tax exempt but not businesses. Can't have it both ways." or "Some people want gun control for civilians but not for the military. Can't have it both ways." Yes, many policies apply differently to different people for different reasons! That's a good thing.
Good arguments can be made that both charities and businesses should be tax exempt. As a sovereign nation, NK should be allowed nuclear weapons if China has them. And the US shouldn't have a standing army, at least if we're being governed by the rules of or founders.
All your examples ultimately boil down to force and have little to do with what ought to be.
> But the people celebrating Facebook for doing what they want on their platform - were also trying to get a baker forced to make a cake.
Do you have any data on this question? Or is this just a blind assumption that "people who disagree with me on X probably also disagree with me about Y"?
You can pre-register with content-id and then aggressively dmca. I'm not saying it's fun or easy just that there are totally songs and artists that are completely scrubbed from youtube.
So, I, as a content creator, have to give my information to YouTube, whom I actively avoided in the first place, as well as spend an active part of my day policing rather than creating in order to prevent YouTube from monetizing my content?
And no part of this statement strikes you as a problem?
At least there's an option. Sure there's a problem but at least there's some level of ability to rectify. PDfs of my work show up on pirate sites who make money from ads all the time and I have little to no ability whatsoever to correct that.
That's just doing business in the current economy. You either have to ignore it or actively deal with it. Neither option will totally eliminate it.
the important thing everyone misses is that these platforms claim protection from liability on what is post because they claim they dont control what users post. So they user the 1st amendment and claim to just be a platform for everyone to speak but then they choose who gets to speak. If the new york times posts a libelous article written by a freelancer they still get sued because they choose to run the article. How is it different with facebook if they are choosing who can be members?
When newspapers and nightly news were the main purveyors of news content should they have been forced to allow anyone with an opinion to air it publicly? I don't think so and I'm not sure I see much difference here. Those who weren't part of the establishment that wanted their voices heard made their own papers and shows, those banned from facebook/twitter/youtube can do the same.
No, they should not have forced to allow all comers to air an opinion (not that that would necessarily have been a bad thing), but the situation you've given is one of a time with healthy competition between a plurality of media outlets. If any one of them a) was a monopoly in its sector, and b) was also providing a platform initially to anyone that wanted one, then I would agree with the comparison.
Considering the Patreon fuss and now Mastercard's "human rights committee", it's not only "build your own website", it's rapidly moving towards "build your own bank". It's not realistic.
My sentiments about this issue are mixed. I don't really like ISIS using our networks and our services for their propaganda. Should those who promote the sexual exploitation of children be given a free pass, too?
What concerns me isn't censorship, it's that LEGITIMATE speech is being censored. I'm not sure where Alex Jones falls on that spectrum, but labeling him as a hate monger is just an easy way to quell that speech and make it unavailable. I don't see that man as a neo-Nazi, although I don't think neo-Nazis are any big threat versus neo-communists or whatever the actually violent groups who have large numbers of followers are out there. One thing is certain, far right violence is not a problem in the US, despite what the media wants us to think. The truly violent mob behavior is on the left and it has the approval of the media and many large city councils and mayors. How else could ANTIFA have such free rein across the Western US?
Traditional monopolies "control supply of a good or service, and where the entry of new producers is prevented or highly restricted."
In this case, the supply of a good or service (social networking, webpage indexing and searching) are not controlled by Facebook and Google because they aren't finite resources. Anyone can index the web and anyone can build a social network and Google/Facebook aren't going to crush you with lawsuits or some other nefarious tactic to maintain their position (AFAIK).
Entry of new producers of these services is not prevented or highly restricted. New social networks and search engines pop up all the time.
What Facebook and Google have is massive, large scale user loyalty. Despite alternatives existing (Bing, Mastadon, DuckDuckGo, Myspace, etc.), users are voluntarily choosing to use Google and Facebook. This is not a monopoly.
I think we may need a new term for this situation.
I have little sympathy for free-market-leaning personalities who feel the sting of market forces with regard to censorship. They essentially want these platforms to be regulated like utilities, all while they simultaneously disparage utilities.
A lot of people who support the notion of free markets also support there being some regulation, especially for things like monopolies (which end up distorting markets until they resemble unfree ones). It’s a spectrum, not black and white.
Just to make sure we're on the same page, by "free-market-leaning" I mean opposing government regulations in markets. Advocating for some regulation is generally not considered supportive of a free market; on the contrary, that's just supportive of a market.
That’s what I thought you meant, and I think that’s a mischaracterisation of the group in question and of those more generally who say they’re advocates of free markets. Are any of them not against slavery on the basis it’s unfree? (based on your definition)
Small or limited government is usually the given position, vague as that may be, not zero government.
It's not a mischaracterization. Free market proponents believe that markets will reach an equilibrium on their own if left alone, and they believe that monopolies are caused by regulation (regulatory capture). This line of thinking is often (but not always) rooted in the Austrian school of economics.
If someone is telling you that they support free markets and they also support government regulation, they don't understand what they're saying.
Then you're arguing against your original point because they don't support free markets, they just think they do.
For example, Paul Joseph Watson in this tweet[1] says he's for free markets, limited government, and against monopolies. I'm pretty sure a quick search will show similar results for the others.
>Then you're arguing against your original point because they don't support free markets, they just think they do.
That doesn't contradict my original point.
>says he's for free markets, limited government, and against monopolies.
Yes, free market advocates are against monopolies, but believe that they're caused by government regulation. Moreover, when libertarians and free market advocates support limited government, they typically mean a government which only provides a few very basic services, such as military, police, etc. It has nothing to do with regulation.
You are free to define yourself however you wish. You can call yourself a pro-free-market, anarcho-capitalist who believes in regulation and a strong communist government. You can mix up and confuse definitions all you want. That has no bearing on the validity of my point. Alex Jones is someone who rails against government interference in markets, and he is the type whom I'm referring to. Now people complain that he's being treated unjustly, when it's really just market forces that have dictated his fate. That is a specific example of what I'm saying.
If you're offended by my standard usage of the term "free market", then you can change my statement to "People who oppose government intervention..." I'm not interested in what you think the term "free market" means, because it's entirely irrelevant to my point.
Monopoly? Let's see how these platforms will hold up against all the distributed platforms like DTube, DLive, Mastodon, etc.
The tighter the rules get for these traditional platforms, the more push there is towards distributed platforms.
Do you want to earn your livelihood from a platform that can kick you out at any time with any rule they want?
The new EU rules of Article 13 will make the push even stronger. Because it's not only up to the platforms anymore. You want to serve EU citizens? You need to make damn sure to put in filters that lean towards false-negatives.
In the recent case Packingham v. North Carolina the Supreme Court, in an unanimous decision, decided social media to be the new public square. See this article for why banning people from social media will be impossible in the near future.
The people getting banned are famous, this is exactly the moment when another platform can allow those people their speech and make a dent in facebook's monopoly.
> Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies.
They're not monopolies, they're just expedient ways to reach larger audiences. There's a difference.
A lot of clones do exist. They would just leave it the content creator to bring their audience.
If anything, there's now a danger that the platforms that cater to the fringe now start to gain traction, as some of these figures do bring with them a sizable audience of their own.
"Free software" people build whole operating systems, but Facebook owes you access to what they built because they're good at it?
I don't NEED Facebook for modern life, neither do you. There's PLENTY of competition for online social networks. Go use one of those. Or go outside, FFS.
Let's not forget that the SCOTUS has ruled Twitter is an official communications platform of the White House. Therefore Trump is not able to block people. It's a weird legal ruling, and it's hard to imagine this doesn't have implications for the rest of us. Can Twitter block you from participating in official White House communications?
I think the difference is that you can still read Trump's tweets if you're banned from Twitter, but you cannot read Trump's tweets if you're blocked by Trump on Twitter.
What is the difference between viewing Trump's tweets while logged out because Trump blocked you, and viewing Trump's tweets while logged out because Twitter banned you?
The press room in the Whitehouse is an official communications platform of the White House. With that ruling as precedent, can I barge in there? I can even behave better than Jim Acosta.
> Every time this subject comes up, someone inevitably says something like "Facebook is a private corporation, the first amendment only applies to the government..." ... Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies.
For this reason, I see Facebook's blocking of specific voices as a potentially positive trend. There used to be a credible hypothesis that social media platforms could be neutral, many hoped this would be the case. However, it's now becoming clear that the hypothesis is wrong.
Social media platforms are not neutral, nor should they be. If Fox News can cater to pro-Trump voices, and NY Times can cater to pro-democrat voices, Facebook and other social media companies should also be allowed to regulate the content on their platform.
The fact that Facebook is now taking an editorial stand, and rejects the premise of being the platform for everyone, will allow other companies to fill the remaining space. I look forward to the day when Facebook chooses to focus on sharing family photos and inconsequential personal minutiae, and delegates all politics and news to other services.
Are you seriously advocating for the murder of people who are "headaches"? Most people in the right are headaches too, do they deserve deplatforming? Whistleblowers?
I don't know about Paul Joseph but I believe Milo has had cases of publicly naming, threatening to name, doxxing, and mocking trans women that study on the campuses that he's spoken at. I belive this is dangerous behavior due to statistic that trans people are especially vulnerable for being murdered compared to the rest of the American population.
Indeed, Milo is not too different from Info Wars. These people use the classic tactic of saying something insanely outlandish, and when they are called out on it, they just use the "I was obviously sarcastic" card.
Even if they are just joking, their followers most definitely take their message at face value, and that's exactly why they are dangerous.
> These people use the classic tactic of saying something insanely outlandish, and when they are called out on it, they just use the "I was obviously sarcastic" card.
The former can be just as disingenuous as the latter. Jon Stewart wielded immense political influence amongst the under-30 crowd, but whenever seriously challenged, hid behind the defense of comedy.
Yiannopoulos consistently billed himself as a provocateur, little different from a Coulter or Maher.
People have been blending news, entertainment, and polemic together for centuries and it's not going to stop because some people want to codify rules of Serious Journalism and impose them universally across the Internet.
SNL is a comedy sketch. You go in with the expectation of satire and sarcasm. Milo and InfoWars most definitely don't act like they are joking, they purposefully tread the line, and use the "joke" excuse for when they happen to cross it.
Pretty easy to find multiple incidents of him saying threatening things, or inciting his unhinged fan base to do horrible things to people, and ducking under "I was joking", or "free speech". These trolls know exactly what they are type of harm they are causing when they walk the line of harassment.
I'm of the opinion trolls like him should be given zero media attention. Anecdotally after his twitter ban I rarely saw him in the headlines like a few years ago.
I am hoping media editors are starting to see when they are getting played for headlines.
> Milo Yiannopoulos publicly posted the photos and identifying information of ASUC Senator Juniperangelica Cordova-Goff and campus doctoral student Adam Jadhav on Wednesday, spurring harassment from his supporters.
> Milo Yiannopoulos said he was joking when he sent a text message to reporters, "I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight."
> The remark made the gay right-wing provocateur a trending topic on social media, following the Thursday shooting of the newsroom of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md.
> In addition to internet doxxing, Weatherford says, his sense of physical safety on campus has been severely compromised:
> They have spammed my UW email account with listserve confirmations; they know where my office is in addition to my office hours; and I have started to receive packages to my departmental mailbox, some of which hinted to include Pepe the frog figurines (an image often sent to victims of online harassment). [...] There is even a post that is attempting to find the bus that I ride in order to further harass me. And, I later learned that night that they know my biological mother’s personal information.
If a group is marginally more likely to suffer violence, anyone mocking them should be denied access to widely used communications platforms? Doesn’t really make sense, does it?
Trans people are not marginally more likely to suffer violence. They're significantly more likely to suffer violence, on the rate of several times more than the general population.
In the USA this doesnt seem to be true. I just looked up the stats. 23 and 27 murders of trans individuals in US over past 2 years. Avg US homicide rate is 5 deaths per 100,000 per year. There are roughly 1.5 million trans individuals so you'd expect 75 or so. However margin of error and confounding variables are massive so my point is just that it seems roughly normal, not that it's safer to be trans. This despite 15% of female transgenders having worked at some time in the sex industry, more involvement with drugs, etc.
If you want some crazy (depressing) stats, look up trans suicide rates. Although I would speculate that only like 1 in 40 attempts succeeds.
I know this is late but from what I recall trans women are approximately 4.3x more likely to be murdered(Trans people of color coalition and human rights campaign), and 1 out of 2 trans people have experienced violence (I forget where I've seen this).
As a counterpoint, ten trans people were murdered in the UK in the last ten years. About one per year in a population of of 66 million. A high estimate of the number of trans people in the UK is around 500,000. On average, there is a one in one hundred thousand chance of being murdered in the UK each year.
Given those figures, trans people are considerably less likely to be murdered than non-trans people. Even if we take the lowest estimate of the number of trans people I've seen — around 200,000 — non-trans people are still twice as likely to be murdered as trans people.
I tried to find statistics for this claim by looking at homicide risk but was unable to find anything supporting it. Possibly this is true in non-western countries. For example here is a look at the data that claims tran people are less at risk in the UK. https://www.google.com/amp/s/fairplayforwomen.com/trans-murd...
I suspect there are lots of confounders if you wanted to isolate the risk that trans brings. For example apparently trans people have a higher rate of sex work which would increase the risk. On the other hand I wouldn't be surprised if trans were coming from higher socio-economic groups on average which would lower the risk.
I know this is late but from what I recall trans women are approximately 4.3x more likely to be murdered(Trans people of color coalition and human rights campaign), and 1 out of 2 trans people have experienced violence (I forget where I've seen this).
And banning Milo from Facebook is going to somehow improve that situation is it? Milo the loud mouthed cretin’s tame insults are responsible for the incidence of violence against trans women?
Zack Beauchamp? really? I have no schtick in this debate but damn!! Using Vox´s Zack Beauchamp´s journalistic compass as a judge on what "works" is like if a dude linked you to flatearth.com to prove that circles are actually squares...
The bar Facebook has set is not that they will improve the situation of all trans women everywhere. The bar set is that Facebook will removing people known for dangerous speech. The question is "has Milo committed dangerous speech?". I answered "yes, I believe so, I recall incidents that can be interpreted as such".
Also, I did see what you wrote before you edited it out. That was an unfortunate, accusatory comment in bad faith and I'm glad you removed it.
That's not what the above poster said, and you know it. You say "marginally", "anyone", "mocking". But the people in question aren't anyone, and they aren't just mocking.
There are specific cases of them calling on their fans to harass private citizens. Anyone with some semblance of awareness of US law knows free speech is not without limits. No one is entitled to online speech, believe it or not.
I suppose you’re aware that it’s not unknown for members of the trans community to “call on their fans to harass private citizens”. Would you like them banned too? In fact, Milo has been the victim of many such calls for harassment.
To be clear, I had personal interactions with Milo many years ago when he ran a technology magazine in the UK. I’ve never met a more unpleasant individual and I would be happy to never hear from him again, but progressives working hand-in-hand with corporations to ban obnoxious individuals is a slope I don’t want us to start sliding down.
> for members of the trans community to “call on their fans to harass private citizens”
And you're free to raise that issue on its own merit when it happens. You're also welcome to report it to the social network it's posted on for moderation/banning. This does not change anything about banning Milo.
Yes, I did. I'm familiar with Milo situation, but not with situations you have in mind. I'm happy with Facebook banning anyone breaking their policies. I do not agree with many of their policies. In general, I'd expect the answer would be "yes" - but without knowing specific cases and what you mean by "harassment", I can't answer.
So for you this is an issue of property rights? Facebook owns the platform and so they can ban whomever they like for breaching their policies, which they should be free to choose without interference?
> There are specific cases of them calling on their fans to harass private citizens. Anyone with some semblance of awareness of US law knows free speech is not without limits. No one is entitled to online speech, believe it or not.
So will CNN, MSNBC, and the Washington Post be banned from facebook for setting hundreds of doxxers and activists on a high school kid who smiled in a red hat?
Man, the lack of introspection in this thread is astounding.
No not at all. I think they should be banned along with CNN and MSNBC. I don't see why when I suggested banning those two news outlets you immediately assumed it was nuts and the argument was to urban Alex Jones.
Not irrelevant. The OP said that "no one is entitled to online speech". That's an unqualified statement which my link disproves. If they had instead qualified it as, "no one has a right to speech on Facebook", that's a different claim (arguably also false depending on the circumstances).
Once again, the statement was unqualified, "no one has the right to..." And once again, my link literally proves this statement to be false, because as you just admitted, at least some people do have that right.
But you seem to think "freedom of expression" == "freedom to say what you like", and that's clearly wrong because Europe has rights to freedom of expression (article 10) but you can't say what you like in Europe.
I'd suggest that you take the time to understand the links you post.
That is just an appeal to authority. Once upon a time, that same kind of authority said certain races were sub-human and had few or no rights. The question of whether or not it is a right is completely separate from the current trend of those in power.
Why not both? They're dangerous in different ways, but just because Facebook has its set of issues doesn't mean those people should have a platform to spread their non-sense to the masses.
I suppose we can assume you don't class yourself as one of the masses, those poor benighted souls who have to be protected from 'non-sense' as defined by you?
Can you explain to me how Milo is dangerous? I can see the case for Alex Jones, who spreads the kind of misinformation that leads certain individuals to "take action".
Speaking at universities with his clearly anti-trans message while projecting the photos and identities of trans students at those universities during his speeches is clearly dangerous.
I had to look up the context for this and as expected it's not quite the way you make it sound.
You use the word "trans students" in the plural, but it was only a single student. The photo shown was a screen grab from an interview that this person themself chose to give to local television, in which their name and university association is displayed. It's not like Milo "outed" anyone here.
At the surface he mind seem harmless, but he uses very similar tactics to Alex Jones behind the scenes. He will often make insane statements, and once he's called out on it, he pulls the "I was obviously joking, were you stupid enough to think I actually meant that" card. The issue is that his followers most definitely take him seriously, and that's exactly how he's dangerous.
How about giving chapter and verse when you want to criticise people instead of making these woolly assertions as in 'he will make insane statements'? Example? I'm neither arguing for or againt Milo, merely irritated by this cheap rhetorical trick of making ex-cathedra announcements as if everyone agrees they're truisms. They are not, at least not in a group of folk with diverse opinions.
That's exactly the problem. Facebook was intended to be a platform for fun, childish online interaction but soon media outlets hijacked it, and now it is a source of new for most of my friends.
And in Russia they ban instead this or that free speech advocate. And in China it is some other group of people that cannot speak. And in India, and in Brasil, Iran, Pakistan, UK, etc. There are always offensive people or sensitive subjects.
The only question is Facebook going to ban each group of people per country basis or globally. If globally, we are going to have a very limited, gray area of speech in Facebook.
So do share: most of the Internet is owned by corporations. Which part of that should be free speech protected? Should Google DNS be able to pick and choose? How about routing certain IPs? Why not? IPs are sold and corporations own those just fine and DNS is an open system, just set up your own and don't act entitled!
The cognitive dissonance plaguing most people in this matter is absolutely astonishing.
Of course it is, but it’s not THE Internet and we don’t want it to be. It’s also a commercial emtity while the Internet May be considered more of a public good.
In many parts of the world it definitely is THE internet. Nearly every business on my street uses Facebook as their webpage. It's incredibly rare to see local businesses here with their own proper site.
I see, you make the distinction based on public vs. private. The weird thing is, isn't this just giving private companies the ability to have a more lax set of standards then one we would place on a public good? This seems to just incentives public->private good conversion more, for they don't have to play by the public good playbook.
Jehovah Witnesses don't celebrate birthdays or any other holiday. To them it's wrong to single out any specific day among the majesty of all the days that God created.
Hilarious. With the exception of Farrakhan, Facebook (and youtube, twitter, etc) is largely responsible for these people having such large platforms in the first place. But of course now they'll unilaterally censor them to widespread acclaim, deflecting criticism from the left for their participation and profiting off such demagogues, and whipping the right into a further frenzy about censorship and giving credence to these people's claims that they're censored "for truth".
Everyone wins except the common man, who now must deal with the chilling effects of media and communication monopolies having the power of judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to speech. No need to censor people you don't like if you just capriciously censor people without warning or due process... people will censor themselves for you after that.
Remember the problem isn't that these people had platforms, the problem is those platforms accepted money to promote and advertise these people. I'm sure facebook loved having these people churning around their recommendation engines, they probably drove engagement like crazy. But now the backlash isn't worth the profit, so we all have to pay the consequences.
Remember that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and "deplatforming" these people might make them as personalities go away, but their ideas and propaganda will surely fester and grow in the darker corners of the internet. Milo is a joke even among the alt-right now, but his vitriol and invective continue to grow in popularity.
Sunlight has repeatedly shown to be counterproductive. Some people use any kind of platform they can get, any sort of media attention, to spread their views. They don't care that they get ridiculed, because their followers just see that as further proof of media conspiracies and bias. It just confirms and reinforces their prejudices.
Deplatforming works. Free speech does not mean you have a right to use any platform you choose, nor does it shield you from the consequences of your speech.
The deeper and darker the corners where they hide and the harder it is to stumble across by accident, the harder it is for them to spread their viewpoints.
See Voat and Gab for relevant examples. Only the really hardcore believers went there when Reddit and Twitter said "that's it, get off our platforms".
I am sure there will be many people cheering. However people don't seem to realise that just because it isn't you getting censored now, it may well be you in the future.
What is deemed acceptable and what isn't deemed acceptable are quite transient. It wasn't long ago it was unacceptable/illegal to be a homosexual, but now it is at least (in the Western world) readily accepted. I wonder if facebook was around in the 1950s would they be banning prominent homosexuals?
It may be me in the future. In fact, it's already happened to me before! I've been banned from a few forums and IRC channels in my day. The people there didn't like what I had to say. Am I angry? No. Because I've also run my own forums, and relied on the ability to ban and moderate comments in order to maintain a useful discussion.
But wait, Facebook isn't the same a forum, right? Well, it is, it's just bigger. Way bigger. The problem is how big it is. And how, in some countries, it's the only game in town (Facebook Basics).
It may seem like Facebook is overly moderated, but given it's size, it's really the opposite. It's a big free for all where hatred, deliberate misinformation, and calls to violence happen all the time. (Example: Myanmar). If you post that stuff on HN, it will quickly get taken down. But Facebook is slow to moderate anything, their moderation system is opaque, and thus hate speech is allowed to fester.
But not just fester. Facebook actually amplifies it. They see the engagement it gets and push it out to more people. So Facebook is not only negligent in their moderation, they are actively promoting toxic behavior. So long for Facebook being a "neutral platform."
Acting like the bans are the problem is the wrong idea. Moderation is important to any internet community, including this one. But when you get banned from a place, it shouldn't amount to not having a voice at all. Facebook is destroying the public square by maintaining a monopoly on internet communication. We should work to break them up, regulate them, or encourage people to leave the site.
I think many people do realise it, and feel like it's a worthwhile risk. The cost of avoiding a hypothetical future in which I'm censored is accepting the real damage they're doing in the here and now. And also, I may end up censored anyway for other reasons. Tolerating Milo et al. isn't really a bulwark protecting me.
Others have gotten into this with you about the specific damage, and my point was less "yay, censor them!" than the argument that not deplatforming them somehow protects me. It doesn't, even hypothetically.
Arguably censoring them does expose you to something worse: it establishes a bureaucracy and social norms that are perfectly fine with crushing unpopular and diverse opinions. It's a simple tyranny of the majority.
Sure, you consider this speech abhorrent, but switch the scenario around and consider how enforcing these types of norms stalled real social progress in the past: gay rights, women's rights, rights for visible minorities. You're dreaming if you don't think these new norms won't be applied against you.
So I disagree, not deplatforming does protect you.
We already have the bureaucracy and social norms and the tyranny of the majority. We don't now, and never have, existed in a pure state of nature with respect to freedom of expression.
What this banning does is move the border between acceptable and unacceptable. You're arguing it's a slippery slope, that the moving border will eventually steamroll right over me and I'll regret not stopping it earlier.
"Slippery slope" is a fallacy. Legalizing gay marriage doesn't mean we'll legalize polygamy. Alcohol was made illegal and then legalized again. It's not a ratchet. We make collective decisions and live with them, and maybe change our minds later.
And among the factors stalling social progress on issues like gay rights and women's rights, I don't believe censorship was the biggest or even a significant factor, compared to all the others.
> We don't now, and never have, existed in a pure state of nature with respect to freedom of expression.
Agreed. But we've largely only supported censoring speech that's incitement to violence, because anything beyond that seems to result in untenable legal duties.
Furthermore, one main point of protecting free speech rights is to protect the minority against the majority. Classifying that minority as ethically abhorrent is irrelevant. While democracy is a tyranny of the majority, we recognize fundamental, inalienable rights to check that tyranny.
> You're arguing it's a slippery slope, that the moving border will eventually steamroll right over me and I'll regret not stopping it earlier.
That's one argument but not nearly the only one. Another is that there currently exists no rigourous criteria by which to classify the speech that people are looking to censor, so a) every case will be decided inconsistently by people who have no training in adjudicating what should be a philosophical or legal matter, and b) it will sweep up a lot of innocent people and stifle important political debate (which has already happened).
> "Slippery slope" is a fallacy. Legalizing gay marriage doesn't mean we'll legalize polygamy
Except there are non-fallacious slippery slopes. Gay marriage and polygamy have no factual basis in common, so there is no slope down which we can slip. That's why invoking the slippery slope is a fallacy in this case.
Now consider instead legalizing bestiality specifically with, say, dogs. Why only dogs? There is no non-fallacious, factual basis for why bestiality with horses should not also be legal if you're going to allow dogs. This is a non-fallacious slippery slope.
So you're asserting that the arguments I've presented are fallacious without actually pointing out the absence of a factual basis. As for asserting my factual basis, I can point out how Twitter and Facebook have already banned controversial politicians, thus effectively meddling in elections. I can also point to recent Supreme Court precedent that established that social media is a public square, and thus that First Amendment protections apply against. I can also point out how that actual studies on online radicalization failed to find any basis for the idea that online echo chambers and hate speech alone actually led to radicalization and violence, so the entire premise for the push to censor this speech is itself fallacious.
So then what are we left with? What justification is there to censor these people? We're left only with mob rule and capitalist motives in appeasing advertisers. These are emphatically not compelling reasons to establish these new and dangerous norms.
> It's not a ratchet. We make collective decisions and live with them, and maybe change our minds later.
Or we could apply a bit of foresight and understanding of history and avoid the problems altogether. The fact that censorship of this sort can and has influenced elections means that we quite literally may not be able to change our minds later.
The far right are only pro-free speech for as long as it benefits them. Historically, whenever they or similar authoritarians have taken power, basic right such as free speech and the right to assemble are the very first things to be restricted.
They are hypocrites in the extreme. They only want free speech for themselves, and no one else.
Far right is a dog whistle. It doesn’t really mean anything. E.g criticise the immigration policy, you will be labelled far right by some of the rags that are still somehow trading.
As for whether free speech benefits those in the far right. Sure maybe it does but it also benefits everybody.
Attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot in recent times. This is related to the rise of social media. The advent of social media had made it too easy to spread hate online. It started off innocently enough, with cat videos uploaded to youtube, but soon extremists were taking advantage of social media for radicalization purposes, and others even live-streaming mass murders. This has caused an upheaval in attitudes towards free speech. There needs to be limits. People started imposing limits to free speech. For example, consider that UC Berkeley, renowned for giving birth to the Free Speech Movement, is now making news for banning controversial/harmful speech, such as that by Ann Coulter. The people (as opposed to governments) have decided that some censorship is in order. This is a natural evolution of societal norms. This particular evolution was causated by the excesses seen in social media. It is befitting to see that a social media company, Facebook, is now in the news for censoring harmful speech. This type of censorship, as opposed to absolute free speech, will be the new normal.
I am very much in favor of Free Speech myself. But I think the annoying thing people forget is that it's the job of society to determine what is okay and what isn't. The government isn't supposed to decide our morals, we tell the government what those should be.
Society is deciding that this is not stuff we want. Society is rejecting these ideas, and Facebook or Cloudflare when they dropped the Daily Stormer, etc, are deciding that this isn't what they want as part of their society.
If a bulk of society does want these ideas, these people will move to a new platform that supports them, and people will use them and make the ideas mainstream.
Stop complaining that society is rejecting ideas they don't like. It's literally how it works.
I personally think Facebook can do whatever the please with their website. However, if they remove the users they don't like then that implies they approve of the users that remain.
Facebook is deciding because society is pressuring them to decide.
Facebook doesn't care about shit, but their bottom line. They have proven that time and time again. This should highlight the social pressures, because they are not legally responsible as far as anyone can tell. Thus, society is deciding.
I agree. People tend to forget that their "rights" end where another person's rights begin. Every right comes with responsibilities. While freedom of speech is important, the right to live peacefully free from hateful invective is probably even more fundamental.
I'm very familiar with all of these banned people and institutions, and I'm not at all convinced they're "dangerous". I'm not sure what the benefits are, and I'm much more concerned that their exact misdeeds never seem clearly articulate, even by people who seem extremely interested in having them silenced.
It’s only unfortunate that it took social networks this long to ban their toxic behavior and talk. These people did a lot of damage. A lot. All in the name of free speech. And to those saying, just because Facebook can, doesn’t mean they should. These people had the same freedom. Just because they can, they shouldn’t. But they chose hatred. And here we are. You reap what you sow.
Some people like to have an unlimited variety of opinions available, and others like to live in an echo chamber. Facebook is very good at creating echo chambers.
And like I said in another post, if you want to be heard, you can’t take the lazy way out and hope SEO works for you. If rappers can figure out how to do guerilla marketing, I’m sure they can too.
You’re telling me that they can’t find “1000 true fans” as a base?
Farakhan in particular had a large following before the Internet was a thing.
Alex Jones popularized a propagated the myth of "Crisis Actors" and that Sandy Hook was a hoax. Trolls on the internet telling parents that their children aren't really dead, that they should exhume their bodies to prove that they really died, that they are being paid by the shadow government, that their grief looked too fake - all of this is real harm. We can talk about the doxing and the stalking and the harassment, but inflicting pain and suffering on people in a terrible situation is real harm too.
When you have a platform and you use it to abuse people, real damage is done.
> Trolls on the internet telling parents that their children aren't really dead, that they should exhume their bodies to prove that they really died, that they are being paid by the shadow government, that their grief looked too fake - all of this is real harm.
Did Alex Jones specifically incite his fans or these trolls to do this? If so, then he's legally culpable. If not, then why place the blame on him? The legal system has a fairly robust and time-tested system for assigning blame.
The problem with assigning blame in "indirect influence" arguments such as yours, is that it can be used to blame almost anyone for almost anything. How indirect or how small does this influence need to be before you conclude that a person is not culpable for someone else's actions?
If you can't delineate some specific set of clear and reasonable conditions, then it will simply be abused to censor any unpopular views, including progressive agendas.
> Did Alex Jones specifically incite his fans or these trolls to do this? If so, then he's legally culpable
Yes, and he's currently facing (multiple) lawsuits because of it. His defense appears to be that it was temporary hysteria. We'll see how that plays out.
Still doesn't resolve the question of deplatforming and banning though. There's still considerable inconsistency at play here, with people like Dorsey saying social media is a human right, and then exiling people with no transparent "due process" or recourse for making amends. As deplorably as we treat our criminals, they eventually serve their term and regain (most) of their freedoms (and arguably, should regain them all).
Sorry, I don’t understand. Currently, social media networks act independently of law enforcement. Someone can run afoul of the law while not getting banned from a service, and vice versa. Alex Jones has been banned because companies saw him violating their TOS — this is related but independent of the ongoing civil lawsuit he faces.
You’re suggesting that online services have no sanctions whatsoever, because you have faith that the justice system will be enough of a deterrent? That should be obviously absurd when you consider that a social network’s audience spans multiple countries’ justice systems.
> You’re suggesting that online services have no sanctions whatsoever, because you have faith that the justice system will be enough of a deterrent?
I'm questioning the premise that "speech deterrence is needed at all, or that it's a good idea even in principle.
If you're not inciting violence, which is violence and so against the law, then what justification is there for censoring speech? These companies that provide free services are censoring for optics, with a purely profit-motive to placate advertisers. This motive will not discriminate solely against hate speech, but anything even remotely controversial will eventually be censored, and these services will become the same bland pablum we've had on cable TV for decades, reducing the rich and diverse tapestry of online content we've enjoyed for decades.
Furthermore, considering how influential social media is, by encouraging this type of censorship, we are creating new social norms whereby large corporations are now essentially permitted to overtly meddle in our elections. Where's the oversight for this? Already considerable evidence exists that conservative viewpoints are censored more widely.
The motive on the part of activists pushing this is that the internet is "spreading hate", that it's led to an increase in radicalization and violence, etc. Except there's precious little evidence this is the case.
Studies actually done on radicalization [1] show the internet increases opportunities for radicalization simply because you're exposed to so many diverse viewpoints, and it creates an echo chamber effect because you then follow only the sources that reinforce your bias, but they do not find evidence for accelerating the process of radicalization, for radicalization without physical contact, and for self-radicalization.
The narrative spun is that right-wing terrorism is increasing in the US [2], therefore the echo chambers from these internet sites is at least partly responsible. Except that doesn't explain why the US's rates are rising while the rest of the world's rates are falling. This speaks to local circumstances driving the increase in violence.
All in all, there seems to be considerable danger to encouraging these corporations to make up their own rules and censor without oversight, and there are few upsides that I can see. It might make some people feel like they've "done something", but there's precious little evidence that these measures are effective or even necessary.
>Did Alex Jones specifically incite his fans or these trolls to do this? If so, then he's legally culpable.
Legally culpable for what?
>If you can't delineate some specific set of clear and reasonable conditions, then it will simply be abused to censor any unpopular views, including progressive agendas.
At least some people can see past their own noses! The people celebrating this news are firmly in the "well surely this could never be turned around and used against ME!" camp.
>In September 2014, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who runs the website InfoWars, which had previously claimed that the murders were a "false flag" attack perpetrated by the government, made a new conspiracy claim that "no one died" at Sandy Hook Elementary School because the Uniform Crime Reports showed no murders in Newtown for 2012, and that the victims were "child actors.
Gene Rosen, a Newtown resident who was reported to have sheltered six Sandy Hook students and a bus driver in his home during the shooting, has been subject to harassment online alleging he was complicit in a government coverup,[58] among other things.[59] Some journalists have cited such incidents as part of a "Sandy Hook Truther Movement" analogous to the 9/11 Truth movement.[47][60][49] A writer for the Calgary Herald reported that the movement self-identifies as "Operation Terror."[55]
In May 2014, Andrew David Truelove stole a memorial sign from playgrounds dedicated to victims Grace McDonnell and Chase Kowalski.[61] He then went on to call the parents of Grace McDonnell, proclaiming that he stole the sign and that he believed their deaths were a "hoax".[62] He was arrested on May 30, and the signs were found in his home.[63] Truelove was convicted of the theft and sentenced to one year in prison.[64]
Robbie Parker, the father of victim Emilie Parker – after doing a CNN interview on the day after the shooting – became the target of conspiracy theorists, who claimed the interview was staged.[65] Parker has been attacked by theorists who believe he is a "crisis actor" and was "getting into character" before going on CNN to grieve over the loss of his child.[65]
In April 2016, Matthew Mills, a man from Brooklyn, accepted a plea agreement with prosecutors on one count of interfering with police arising from an incident in November 2015, when Mills angrily approached the sister of murdered teacher Victoria Soto—who is regarded as a heroine for her attempt to protect her students from the shooter in the Sandy Hook attack—shoved a photograph in her face, "and began angrily charging that not only did the Sandy Hook tragedy not take place, but that Victoria Soto never existed."[66][67] Mills entered an Alford plea and was thus found guilty; he was given a suspended sentence of one year in jail and two years' probation.[66]
In December 2016, Lucy Richards, a woman from Tampa, was charged with four counts of transmitting threats in interstate commerce for sending death threats to Lenny Pozner, whose son Noah was the youngest of 20 children murdered.[68][69] Pozner has been particularly targeted by Internet trolls and conspiracy theorists because he has vocally fought back against them.[70] Richards had been expected to plead guilty to one count of transmitting threats, with both the prosecution and defense to recommend a sentence of probation and house arrest. However, in March 2017, Richards—who was free on bond—failed to show up to court for a change-of-plea hearing and sentencing. An arrest warrant was issued, Richards' bond was revoked, and she was soon apprehended.[71] On June 7, 2017, Richards was sentenced to five months' imprisonment.[72]
Thanks for the detailed review. It sounds like the people who actually committed harassment and issued threats are being charged, as it should be.
Alex Jones is himself probably a little unhinged, but why does the responsibility for what other unhinged people do fall on him? Did he specifically incite this harassment or violence? He's already being sued for his alleged part in this, so the law will decide his culpability.
But I still fail to see what this has to do with whether or not people with controversial views should have a right to use services like Facebook or Twitter, like any other citizen. I've expanded on the problems with these new norms here if you're interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19819584
I honestly feel this is a bit of a disingenuous thing to ask, considering the article in question actually discusses the kind of emotional harm that this kind of behavior has caused to a large number of people.
For example, Alex Jones didn't actually cause that harm did he? If he didn't actively incite his fans to harass those families, is he responsible for their harassment? He's being sued so I suppose we'll see where the liability lies, but a lawsuit is exactly the proper response here. Why should his speech also be censored?
People seem really fond of jumping over a lot of steps to blame people for their indirect influence apparently without realizing how accepting this sort of argument makes us all culpable of fairly heinous crimes.
Thanks. I can’t stand those typical placating responses by normal people and those “isn’t it dangerous when a company can have company policies” types are so annoying.
Flamewar? Only in some self serving interpretation. These same rules disagree with you on your comment.
Free speech is a right, I'd argue a human right. Inalienable, guaranteed, innate and hugely important. Yes, you can live without it.
But so you can live without the right of free movement, without equality before the law, without freedom, without right to being alive, and this is actually how most of our history was. These rights are a rather recent innovation.
But should you? Should we? Eroding human rights only leads to dystopia. Human rights are an innovation of civilisation, of progress.
Do explain how it's falling flat? It's exactly a point against what OP argues, that trading (human) rights for "security" (theatre) is a good trade, which it absolutely is not.
It fell flat because your comparison was wildly exaggerated. The two rights are not equivalent, they're not even treated equivalently anywhere in the world. You also blew the arguments out of proportion which is likely why your comment got flagged.
Furthermore while you may call this security theater, the spread of propaganda is actually dangerous. Being able to fight it is as important as being able to give people free speech.
Remember the Golden rule: your human rights stop where others' begin. Hate speech and propaganda aren't free, they infringe on some people's right to safety. It's only a bad trade if your want to spread said propaganda is more important to you than your right to be safe from it.
Free speech is a right, I'd argue a human right. Inalienable, guaranteed, innate and hugely important. Yes, you can live without it.
But so you can live without the right of free movement, without equality before the law, without freedom, without right to being alive, and this is actually how most of our history was. These rights are a rather recent innovation.
But should you? Should we? Eroding human rights only leads to dystopia. Human rights are an innovation of civilisation, of progress.
But rights don't live in a vacuum. The US has established that fighting words aren't free speech. Everywhere around we've recognized that speech has limits, and unlimited speech can be harassment, an invitation to destroy and much more.
Speech isn't just a debate between intellectuals sitting in a lounge arguing about things in a wholly experimental matter.
And saying that it is inalienable or innate without considering its true limits is merely a thought-terminating cliche that doesn't delve into the deeper considerations.
And as mentioned above, free speech is just one right among many, sometimes in direct conflict with others. Thus, the resolution and primacy of rights is something left to courts, philosophers, and representatives.
Germany has decided that your right to speech isn't higher than spreading hateful ideologies. The limit as to what constitutes a hateful ideology isn't firmly grounded, but so far courts there have acted in a consistent and pragmatic matter. I'd argue that the speech of people whose idea of speech is promoting the end of a race isn't really something we care about, and I can certainly construct a moral framework where their speech is fairly irrelevant and I don't think most of us are going to lose sleep over it.
What you are saying is wrong on so many levels. Be grateful that I'm not just replying with a 'scre w you' or 'put something in your mouth', cos that's what you deserve.
There are people who have different viewpoints (even very conservative ones) from the mainstream and they don’t get banned. What’s their secret? A mystery, to be sure.
>In some instances, when Facebook bans an individual or organization, it also restricts others from expressing praise or support for them on its platforms
Will it restrict people from saying these things in WhatsApp?
If they already have the infrastructure for wholesale censorship like this, perhaps a China re-launch is right around the corner. They might be able to give WeChat a run for their RMB.
That sounds closer to anti-spam than target censorship. WeChat (and even the messaging feature in DiDi!) have keyword filters that block messages with certain words.
That sounds like the direction Facebook is headed with this banning of people and talking about them.
Farrakhan is a prominent leftist. He was at Aretha Franklin's funeral, seated next to Bill Clinton. The leaders of the Women's March are big fans of his.
For some context in case anyone is curious, here is a photo of part of the front row at Aretha Franklin's funeral, featuring (in order) Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Bill Clinton: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/aretha-franklin-funeral-ser...
I think this is one of the more interesting and important debates of our time. As so much moves online, we realize that our speech belongs to these huge companies.
On one hand, it's great to see these toxic people kicked off, because deplatforming them works wonders in terms of stopping them from spreading their hate.
I think most of us have some doubts as to how it might play out in the future, though, and there are of course questions about how healthy it is for such huge corporations to have that much sway in the first place.
There are all kinds of other shenanigans going on with many of these companies too:
This is what we get for letting these shady social media companies get into the center of our discourse. Just remember even if you dislike people who are banned, it could be your people next.
Social media should reflect the first amendment. Let's get with the times here...
Well done Facebook PR. You've successfully spun this to be about 'toxic' individuals, when the fact remains that it's the architecture of your platform that is tearing away at our social fabric.
How much longer will these money-printing giants remain unaccountable, unregulated, and a publlic health risk?
Ignoring for now the larger debate over censorship, Facebook's implementation of this ban is suspect. All of these accounts have been alleged to be in violation for months, if not years, and some already had been partially banned (Alex Jones was banned from FB but not IG). Why now? Were there new violations? And/or is it a new policy change that affects how FB will be banning accounts moving forward? Is FB going to do bans for a specific user across all platforms, instead of a platform-by-platform basis?
Facebook is not a public square. I love public spaces. Shouldn’t we pay for one? I don’t care if Facebook has a darling reputation; ought it run our public and private meeting spaces?
I view government funded web presence as a digital public space, it’s just not a meeting space. To me the difference in funding determines who has power.
“In some instances, when Facebook bans an individual or organization, it also restricts others from expressing praise or support for them on its platforms, the spokesperson said, adding that the company continues to view such action as the correct approach.”
Farrakhan? He's been around forever. He's 85. He's the guy who set up the Million Man March in 1995. Compared to other 1960s black activists, he's not that extreme. Also, no way is he "far right". Far left, maybe.
Yea, Farrakhan belongs on the censored list. He's absolutely a racist and show be disavowed by everyone everywhere.
In Jones's gay frog case... there are chemicals that turn frogs gay - that's the strangest thing about his critics... using that to point out how much of a lunatic he is, but... Atrazine [0]
IDK... Maybe I'm just bad at hating conservatives... but if I was trying to mock a personality for being crazy, I'd choose something a little less plausible.
I used to be against this sort of thing, but now I think the faster Facebook, Twitter, and Google make themselves irrelevant for public discourse, the better. Their ad-based business model is just incompatible with free speech, and the more obvious that fact is to everyone, the better.
I still think it's bad when non-branded content carriers like web hosts, CDNs, payment processors and banks ban clients based on ideology though.
If Facebook and Google are private companies and they can ban whomever they want, why can't they have a policy to not hire each other's employees? FYI, i don't like any of those stances.
I suggest a machine should be taught how to identify conversations about the merit of "deplatforming", and then use the ML to autoban those conversations in order to teach a valuable lesson in civics
There are some optical issues with a company that has widely recognized shortcomings in hiring African Americans banning the person who organized the Million Man March. (This is not an endorsement of Mr. Fartakhan’s politics. But man, that’s a hell of a sensitive subject for Facebook to wade into.)
I don't even know who these people are, but I do think that this is censorship, specially if it's true (as the article quotes about Loomer) that they've never actually advocated harm or the like.
It's always funny when these threads come up and people who ostensibly hold the progressive viewpoint that corporations have an inordinate amount of power and influence suddenly pull out their Ayn Rand books and Gadsden flags and argue that corporations should be able to do anything they want because they are a private entity.
It's also funny that people who ostensibly hold the conservative viewpoint that the government should not regulate corporations at all suddenly want the government to force companies and individuals to give away their property rights and host hateful speech.
I dunno. I can certainly believe both, corporations do have an inordinate amount of power. But I also believe we should not take away any corporation's free speech rights either.
Hmm, all Facebook is going to achieve is that they lose any influence on supporters/viewers of those they kicked out, instead of algorithmicaly managing them by some dark patterns. It's now trivial to set up an ActivityPub service on an own server that replaces 70% of FB/Instagram/YouTube functionality and that gap in useful services will be shrinking. So they will have a short-term win and long-term an ever larger group without any influence over as the window of acceptable discourse will be shifting further in its current trajectory, pushing more of previously accepted opinions over the edge, kicking out more users in the process.
I have a very hard time getting worked up over deplatforming. Social media companies are private, if they want to ban odeous asshats that is their right. Those who dislike it can go to Gab.
I'm not a fan of either of these people, but how exactly are Milo Yiannopolous and Paul Joseph Watson "dangerous"? Maybe it's not good material for people to be watching, but to call them "dangerous" comes off like the religious right of yore claiming that video games depicting violence are dangerous and need to be censored.
I wouldn't normally step in to defend these people, but this article by CNN is a prime example of why people don't trust the media. Note the use of the word "fringe" in reference to people like Paul Joseph Watson, despite the number of views and subscribers(1.6 million) he has on YouTube alone. The word "fringe" used to mean something a lot more, well... fringe, but it's obvious that CNN and other outlets believe that they are official while everyone not sanctioned by Big Advertising is fringe.
Facebook used to be popular because it was, at one point, fun. If they're going to remove all the voices they think are "dangerous", what they're left with won't be fun or interesting. Just lukewarm, milquetoast, or worse... lopsided.
Sadly, I suspect that Facebook's stock will continue to climb despite how restrictive it is, how uninteresting it is, and how many people are leaving it.
EDIT: I do appreciate those who haven't taken my comment as a denial of wrongdoing by subjects I mentioned. My question was honest and I still stand by my comment on CNN.
For Mueller, Sandy Hook, and Pizzagate, Alex Jones speculated and reported on these existing conspiracy theories. He did not invent them. He apologized for Pizzagate and Sandy Hook, and blames his rants on psychosis.
> For Mueller, Sandy Hook, and Pizzagate, Alex Jones speculated and reported on these existing conspiracy theories. He did not invent them.
Lewis v. Jones deposition[1] @ 6:15-9:10 you'll find a clip of Jones on the day of the Sandy Hook shooting saying it was staged. If Jones didn't "invent" the ridiculous theory then whoever did got word of it to Alex Jones at record speed.
You think Alex Jones is a 100% sane? And no need to guess, all those conspiracy theories discussed on his show had already been talked about by others. The product line is a strawman.
People use the bucket "fringe" to marginalize and ridicule people. To say how they are wrong and that the majority has the right answer.
Did you know they are putting chemicals in the water that change the sex of frogs? Did you know that the government has weather weapons? The article supporting the claims talks of disturbing and ridiculous conspiracy theories, while these theories are factual.
Even the pizzagate emails deserve scrutiny. How is this in any way normal?
>> We plan to heat the pool, so a swim is a possibility. Bonnie will be Uber Service to transport Ruby, Emerson, and Maeve Luzzatto (11, 9, and almost 7) so you’ll have some further entertainment, and they will be in that pool for sure.
The chemicals in the water changing the sex of frogs (and fish) are herbicides, pesticides, and the output of chemical processes like paper processing. The people putting them there are doing so because it's considerably cheaper than not putting them there. This is not news; it's been known for decades.
While the first two points are obviously blatantly false, soy does contain high levels of phytoestrogen which there are some studies indicating it may cause your body to perceive increased estrogen levels.
Sure but the body can't actually use phytoestrogen the same way so it's harmless. If you want to now what's making men docile and feminine look towards pollution of the air and water supplies.
> He also incites hate against muslims, which I'd say, makes him pretty dangerous.
I'm sure you could easily say that, but whether you can justify that is the real question. Because if we're just going to censor people based on groundless rhetoric simply because we don't like what they're saying or thinking, well there are quite a few dystopian ends that follow that line of thought.
One of his YouTube contemporaries pointed out that his "supplements" he sold contained nothing but soy derivatives, and instead of acknowledging it, decided to dress in drag and scream at a camera for several minutes.
And yet the opposing simplistic narrative of "Terrorists hate our freedom" has caused orders of magnitude more harm. Hundreds of thousands of lives lost! But since that is the power-structure-approved message, it was/is heartily repeated (along side yellow cake, aluminum tubes, etc).
If someone can't grasp the bigger ideas of multiple independent actors each with their own divergent motivations, suicide attackers acting out of desperation for long term grievances, etc, I'd rather them end up at "inside job" instead of the officially sanctioned propaganda that ended up mobilizing so much death.
How many deaths would have happened if everyone in group “inside job” switched opinions with everyone in group “they hate our freedoms”? It’s not often good for mortality rates if the people turn against their government, even when they are right to do so.
I agree that violent revolution would cause many deaths. But these viewpoints are not going to atomically swap places, but rather gradually diminish support.
Conspiracy theories are direct responses to the official narrative being crafted as a gradient of opinion-facts that frame a political conclusion as if it's irrefutable. When rationality is abused to marginalize a viewpoint, that viewpoint shirks rationality.
Suppressing counter-sanctioned viewpoints ultimately just causes that divergence to continue growing, setting it up to pop even more drastically. If the goal is to prevent fire, the best approach is to not have fuel sitting around. If you truly want to prevent violent collapse, then work to oppose the corrupt controlling agenda that's being pushed "rationally", rather than low-effort shouting down of wacky opposition.
PS note that's all from a solely USian internal perspective. It's not really any consolation to eg the dead Iraqis that the US avoided a domestic revolution by killing them instead.
> The illuminati is controlling your mind with chemitrails
Do you have any source at all for this?
He seemed to be beyond 'chemtrails' from what I had seen of him, and indeed he has a video stating:
> Another viral YouTube video purporting to show a pilot forgetting to turn off chemtrails as a plane comes in to land is another example of how baseless conspiracy theories distract from genuine issues and cover-ups.
What are you saying that this unilateral and overly simplistic declaration of his views used to advocate for his censorship may also be inaccurate? Who could have ever predicted that was a possibility?? Oh well too late, I guess we should let that be a lesson to us all not to even try to buck mainstream narratives.
Paul Watson does not incite hatred or violence against Muslims (can't source a negative, so you please source your affirmative). He even criticized Trump for retweeting anti-Muslim rhetoric https://www.businessinsider.com/infowars-paul-joseph-watson-.... He is very critical of radical Islam, but that is hardly a fringe position in the West.
One of those there is not like the other. Just because we hear repeatedly that the 9/11 story is fully understood doesn't make it true. There is absolutely nothing far fetched about the idea of a conspiracy around 9/11, whether the the evidence is there or not. The motives are there and there is plenty of evidence of lying and false flags throughout history, including recently in the US. Please read on Operation Northwoods and the Gulf of Tonkin incident. This sort of thing involves human politics and is simply not in the same class as reptilian overlords.
I don't know what "inside job" means to everyone here, but it's pretty clear that elements of the Bush administration had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
That's not fair of you to say I am being disingenuous. Please think before jumping to conclusions.
I really don't want to get into nitty gritty debate over people like PJW, but most of what you bring up plays into my point.
What's your threshold for considering an idea to be dangerous? It could be argued that there are ideas that can cause harmful effects on society, but people also have a right to be stupid. I don't see how believing in the illuminati, chemtrails, soy causing feminization, or that 9/11 was an inside Job are dangerous in the same objective sense that promoting racial violence is.
If you have a problem with people believing bogus things, then think about considering issues around education to be a priority, as people who grow up in societies that don't value critical thinking, science, skepticism, etc., are probably prone to believing dumb things. People won't stop talking about chemtrails because platforms consider it dangerous, and restricting speech around "fringe" topics only validates people's beliefs that the authorities are hiding the truth.
I don't know enough about what PJW has said about Muslims. Can you elaborate?
> That's not fair of you to say I am being disingenuous.
It is. You have heard of PJW. Enough to defend him here. So presumably you're aware of his views, which is what he's known for.
> I really don't want to get into nitty gritty debate over people like PJW
But that's what you've done.
> I don't see how believing in the illuminati, chemtrails, soy causing feminization, or that 9/11 was an inside Job are dangerous in the same objective sense that promoting racial violence is.
He stops short of promoting outright violence precisely because he knows that will get him kicked off of places. What he has done is portray muslims as boogeymen, saying that they are all rapists, that they turn cities into ghettos, and that the west needs "islam control." If you don't think that's dangerous, look into the anti-semitic conspiracy theories that spread throughout europe before the holocaust. Very similar language.
>I can't possibly watch all of his videos, and I'm not even subscribed to him.
His association with conspiracy theories is the main thing he's known for. In order to claim that his views are not dangerous, you have to had heard of him. And if you've heard of him, very likely it was because of the fringe views he has.
> All I did was ask a question, and you're accusing me of bad intent.
Perhaps I'm wrong, and I apologize. The internet is swarming with people who argue in bad faith to promote an agenda. They feign ignorance of things, hold contradictory positions, and derail discussions all while claiming to be perfectly innocent. I mistook you for one of the trolls. And that's exactly what the trolls want.
> And if you've heard of him, very likely it was because of the fringe views he has.
I couldn't really tell you why I've been exposed to Paul Joseph Watson. Maybe it's because I watch Joe Rogan and Tim Poole's shows.
> Perhaps I'm wrong, and I apologize. The internet is swarming with people who argue in bad faith to promote an agenda. They feign ignorance of things, hold contradictory positions, and derail discussions all while claiming to be perfectly innocent. I mistook you for one of the trolls. And that's exactly what the trolls want.
No hard feelings, and I apologize for any ignorance I may have on the issue. It's understandable, and I know what you mean about those sorts of trolling tactics. I'd rather people sometimes mistake others for trolls than fall for trolls all the time.
> Facebook used to be popular because it was, at one point, fun. If they're going to remove all the voices they think are "dangerous", what they're left with won't be fun or interesting. Just lukewarm, milquetoast, or worse... lopsided.
Honestly, I hope that Facebook becomes more restrictive and more censorship-oriented. That would make alternative platforms more viable and increase diversity in online media. I'm also 100% opposed to the idea that private companies should be permitted to or expected to function as the town square. That, more than censorship, is the real threat to freedom of speech and freedom of thought. Facebook, twitter, and youtube, by the nature of their ranking algorithms and the structure of the service, have a huge influence on what and how ideas spread without explicitly pushing or censoring content.
I think private platforms could act as the town square as long as we demand that platforms beyond a certain size can't just censor whatever they like. Make protections in section 230 of the communications decency act dependent on providing a platform for free speech if the platform is large.
> The word "fringe" used to mean something a lot more, well... fringe
Did it? How many people do you think were interested in old school conspiracy theories like Area 51 [1] or the protocols of the elders of zion [2]? Henry ford printed half a million copies of the latter!
>how exactly are Milo Yiannopolous and Paul Joseph Watson "dangerous"?
I think "dangerous" is probably not quite the right word. They're dangerous in the same way that, say, anti-vax views are dangerous [3]. The views themselves won't hurt you or hurt me. They're 'just' opinions. However, at some point, allowing those views on your platform make you complicit in promoting pandemics. You're not directly responsible exactly, but you're involved somehow.
Where the "line" is and how we talk about it isn't clear, but I think there is a line somewhere and I feel pretty comfortable that the people Facebook banned are probably on the other side of it.
Edit: I should note, lest anyone think this is all "in the past," that people still claim that "the protocols" is an authentically jewish document that describes real Jewish people.
>How many people do you think were interested in old school conspiracy theories like Area 51 [1] or the protocols of the elders of zion [2]? Henry ford printed half a million copies of the latter!
I think most of the people were interested in it for entertainment, just like people are interested in horoscopes for entertainment. Or would you argue that all these newspapers that had horoscopes in them pushed fringe conspiracy theories on the level of flat earth?
>They're dangerous in the same way that, say, anti-vax views are dangerous [3].
You have to show some evidence for a wild claim like that, because you're insinuating that Paul Joseph Watson and Milo are getting people killed.
>Where the "line" is and how we talk about it isn't clear, but I think there is a line somewhere and I feel pretty comfortable that the people Facebook banned are probably on the other side of it.
Until it inevitably comes back to bite you or something you like.
Horoscropes don't have a victim. Stuff like elders of zion portrays jewish people as villains, to real and tangible consequences (did you know anti-semitic hate crimes are up around 300% of the last two years?).
they don't? it's a multi-million dollar industry that sells non-information to people; some of these people so stupid that they ingest it as factual gospel and use it to run their lives.
I'm not against it, but it doesn't take a lot of mental gymnastics to see the harmful aspects of horoscopes. The victimization of Andy Kaufman and Steve Jobs using psychic quackery, although different than a horoscope, comes to mind right away -- it's just not that safe an idea to sell confidence in quackery.
I think the difference is, if a horoscope writer started giving truly dangerous advice, like, "Today's a good day to get bitten by a snake," they would be be considered more dangerous to those who believe in them.
What about Madeleine Albright spreading the idea the killing hundreds of thousands of children is `a price worth paying' on every media platform in the US?
What about the relentless promotion of capitalism and growth which is ultimately going to see us all as victims?
I detest the right-wing in all its forms, including its Democrat and Republican wings but I cannot see any ultimately positive outcome in banning their views.
(Yes, private corporations have a right to do as they like etc, etc , etc)
*I know that "me too" comments are discouraged here, but when I see someone so downvoted I'd like to show my support, even though it doesn't really offer anything.
That's Gab's approach. Allow everything that is legal, and crack down on what is illegal. Unfortunately, Gab being perceived as a haven for the alt-right is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The incessant media coverage against it and platform bans (Google and Apple banned their app, Chrome and Firefox banned their browser extension) are designed to scare normal people off from using it (and makes it even more notorious and alluring in the eyes of racists).
If the wider population actually started using Gab and Minds without hesitation like they use Facebook and Twitter, the extremists would be immediately drowned out and only constitute a tiny fraction of 1%, the same as in reality, and their threads would be filled with counter-arguments rather than reaffirmations.
> the extremists would be immediately drowned out and only constitute a tiny fraction of 1%, the same as in reality, and their threads would be filled with counter-arguments rather than reaffirmations.
no they would still be by far the loudest and stupidest, while all the mentally stable people realize that there's no point in arguing with the deranged and find better things to do.
How is saying "I can't wait for X" the same as asking for X? The statement means that something is going to happen. It isn't a threat nor a request.
If I say "I can't wait for the pendulum to swing the other way" it doesn't mean I'm going to affect the pendulum in any way. So I don't see how that statement makes him dangerous.
I think this is good pointing to specific examples and incidents.
What worries me is that these bans are so vague. If you say someone is dangerous or needs to be removed from a platform, you really should back that up with the why. Getting very specific as to the reasons people are dangerous.
If we don't do this you're going to get conspiracy theorists looking at bans as some big plot against their ideology.
I like Tim Pool's take on this. There is a clear anti conservative bias in the rules these platforms enforce, that's fine just acknowledge it.
I definitely understand your perspective and such mirrored mine for a long time. I will also be the first to concede that if the first amendment doesn't protect this kind of speech, then really, what does it protect?
With that said, we have to understand that large swaths of the American population get almost all of their "news" from the figures they follow on Facebook and it ends up codifying the belief systems by which they live their lives and make decisions. So when you say:
> You have to show some evidence for a wild claim like that, because you're insinuating that Paul Joseph Watson and Milo are getting people killed.
Well, I don't really understand how you can claim that anti-vaxxing views are not dangerous. We enter social contracts with each other when we enter into public spaces and we should have the right to ensure that others won't intentionally get us sick. I'm not sure whether or not the aforementioned characters have a specific stance on anti-vaxxing, but they definitely are responsible for spreading other types of equally dangerous ideology to millions in ways which have hurt and killed many (Alex Jones being the preeminent example here; my otherwise levelheaded friend bought an AK because of him to prepare for the upcoming class warfare). And this is in Seattle. Just imagine the kind of behavior you can expect to see inland when these kinds of nutty beliefs are bolstered by their local social popularity.
We have to understand that other members of our populace don't have the facilities to be able to separate fact from fiction and these people specifically are the most vulnerable to adopting beliefs that weaken the social fabric of our society, making our country more hateful and divisive. Again, I think free speech is important, but speech that is intentionally misleading and that sews hatred and violent tendencies needs to be examined closely.
I think Facebook has probably extrapolated the siloing effect that social media has on groups forward a few years and come to the conclusion that certain groups (namely the far and alt right) base much of their ideology on not only hate, but conspiracies and misinformation. This will eventually come to a headwind in which domestic national security in our country begins to look more like the middle east and that is something that we should try to avoid.
>Alex Jones being the preeminent example here; my otherwise levelheaded friend bought an AK because of him to prepare for the upcoming class warfare
Your friend bought an AK because people like Alex Jones are being deplatformed and there are people openly calling for violence (eg antifa). Your friend is afraid of a civil war. It takes two to fight.
>I think Facebook has probably extrapolated the siloing effect that social media has on groups forward a few years and come to the conclusion that certain groups (namely the far and alt right) base much of their ideology on not only hate, but conspiracies and misinformation.
What you need to understand is that these companies seem to have an anti-conservative bias. Notice how when antifa attacks people it seems to not be much of a problem. There are antifa chapters that openly sell merchandise. Yet we see people in antifa cause millions in property damages, attack people with bike locks and other forms of violence. Antifa has a long history of violence in Europe. What you need to understand is that many of these companies are partisan or at least tend towards partisan actions. Do you think people demanding the abolishment of capitalism and the intuition of communism are somehow the good guys?
Yeah, ideally, the perfect arbiter would be able to make objective decisions as to whether or not a certain individual/group violates the TOS of the platform and acts accordingly. But whether or not someone (or something, in the case of machine intelligence) can be truly objective is a subject of debate. So we have this imperfect system where some get away with murder and others are banned for as much as a peep.
I will cede that the anti-conservative bias is egregious. On the left, well, Kathy Griffin for one has invoked more than her fair share of controversy which, in my view, have been fair grounds for removal; and there are figures on the right who have been banned for far less inflammatory rhetoric than that of which she spews. It's not clear to me what the solution here is; but stricter regulation seems like it may be appropriate. These are the questions of the time for good reason.
If it doesn’t, what are we all doing here? What is the First Amendment even supposed to protect? Meaningless entertainment?
Yet if it has power, it must be possible for it to be both good and bad, or otherwise we could improve humanity by just posting randomly generated text.
So the distinction between meaningless “speech” and somehow possibly malign “acts” is somewhat arbitrary.
>> >They're dangerous in the same way that, say, anti-vax views are dangerous [3].
> You have to show some evidence for a wild claim like that, because you're insinuating that Paul Joseph Watson and Milo are getting people killed.
I have no clue who these people are, but since I happen to have a young child I actually put some effort into figuring out the pros and cons of vaccination. Turns out that the people who don't vaccinate (for whatever reason be it religious or autism or whatever -- this is irrelevant) have outbreaks/pandemics of the diseases. It also turns out that the people who do vaccinate serve as protective shield for those who don't. Essentially, the people who don't vaccinate are like freeriders, leeches. They get the benefits from vaccination (less outbreak/pandemic) without the effort (getting vaccinated). The evidence is pretty simple actually.
Quoting from [1]: "An aspect of Bible Belt society that has drawn the attention of the Dutch general public in recent years (when concerns of a measles epidemic emerged) is the suspicion of parents towards state-run vaccination programmes."
both of them pretty clearly are on our radar for their political speech (feminism is cancer, “free speech”, soros conspiracies, etc). Given what we know about social media and violence, entertainment value should be a secondary concern.
"Given what we know about social media and violence"
you mean how social media is akin to a pressure relief valve, and how actual violence has gone down since it took off? And how this is probably about clicks and stirring the pot than actual violence, and how this is just going to completely backfire? Shall we burn some books too?
You're taking an overall reduction in violent crime in the US to mean that hate crimes have also decreased.
The opposite is the case, and it is absolutely because extremist/fringe material has become increasingly and vastly more easily available.
50 dead in Christchurch, scores of Rohyinga in Myanmar, 11 dead in a Pittsburgh Mosque are all victims from what you call a 'pressure relief valve.'
"An FBI report released in November 2018 detailing hate crimes across more than 3,000 police agencies showed a more than 17% uptick in 2017, fueled by increases in attacks against religious and racial minorities. The count documented 7,175 hate crimes in 2017. The tally was 1,054 higher than the year before. It included a 37% increase in anti-Jewish crimes, a 24% increase in attacks on Latinos and a nearly 16% rise in crimes against African Americans."[1]
The likes of Milo are a pressure release valve? In that case, maybe they should be given a medal, since they're helping to prevent violence. Somehow I find that notion to be less than credible.
Milo, Coulter, Savage, and their ilk are extremist trolls, and I have no problem with them being banned from Facebook, just like trolls are regularly banned from HN. It makes for a more civil and less hostile community. The alternative is to let the site devolve in to endless flamewars with people who have no other intention than to get attention and stoke hatred.
This isn't a Freedom of Speech issue, because the First Amendment only prohibits the US government from censoring speech, while this is a case of a private entity refusing to let its platform be used to spew hatred. The First Amendment does not entitle one to have the use of any social media platform you like.
Incidentally, people who have a problem with this should advocate for greater decentralization of communications platforms, which his something that I am in favor of myself. Facebook and other Internet giants have too much power, and we should all oppose that and encourage other means of communication that don't depend on being in the good graces of any one company or even small handful of companies.
In the meantime, people like Milo should crawl back to Stormfront or Breitbart, where I'm sure they'll find no shortage of adulation.
was thinking more along the lines of this study, which shows that "right-wing anti-refugee sentiment on Facebook predicts violent crimes against refugees in municipalities with higher social media usage."
that study is a case study in selection bias by someone with a political agenda.
You can't just look at actions by one somewhat arbitrary group against another, and not look at the actions of anyone else, unless you are expressly trying to be misleading.
You can see that the other "group" here, whos actions are deliberately being ignored by the author and everyone else with an agenda, have brought a lot of violence of their own to the table. Or at least have enough conflicting data points to not pretend to "know" something about facebook and framed studies.
"The group represented roughly 2 percent of the German population by end of 2017,[10] but was suspected of committing 8.5 percent of crimes (violations off the German alien law are not included). The numbers suggest that the differences could at least to some extent have to do with the fact that the refugees are younger and more often male than the average German. The statistics show that the asylum-group is highly overrepresented for some types of crime. They account for 14.3 percent of all suspects in crimes against life (which include murder, manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter), 12.2 percent of sexual offences, 11.4 percent of thefts and 9.7 percent of body injuries The report also shows differences between the origin of migrants. Syrians are underrepresented as suspects, whereas citizens from most African countries, especially northern Africans are strongly overerrepresented. Afghans and Pakistanis are particularly overerrepresented in sexual offenses.[7][10]"
> They're dangerous in the same way that, say, anti-vax views are dangerous [3]. The views themselves won't hurt you or hurt me. They're 'just' opinions. However, at some point, allowing those views on your platform make you complicit in promoting pandemics.
Are they? We have plenty of rigourous evidence supporting the dangers of anti-vaxx, but I've seen little data on Yiannopolous or Watson or even Alex Jones causing anything like a comparable social pandemic. Unless you can provide this evidence, your analogy fails.
I don't think I could connect Jones or Yiannopolous specifically to anything, just as I couldn't connect, say, Andrew Wakefield to any single specific case of parents forgoing vaxines.
I also think the ideas that Jones and Yiannopolous promote are easily seen to be harmful. Yiannopolous has promoted violence against journalists and associated himself with white supremacist movements. Jones has promoted the harassment of many victims of crimes and generally undermined public trust of institutions (including limited support of anti-vax views). I suppose it's up to you if you feel those ideas could cause harm - I feel they (and other ideas both have promoted) do.
The parents of Sandy Hook victims receive harassment and death threats to this day because of Alex Jones promoting the narrative that they're "crisis actors".
While a practicing Roman Catholic, Yiannopolous also claims to be Jewish (citing his maternal grandmother to support this; I think this is a claim to ethnic not religious connection.)
Jewish ethnically. You personally haven't seen his husband, and you personally haven't seen a public record of his marriage.
OK, so he's a white supremacist who pretends to be Jewish and pretends to have a black husband. Totally makes sense.
Seriously, there is no evidence that he has white supremacist beliefs. He hates political correctness and radical leftist ideas. The SJW's/leftists are offended by his criticism and call him a Nazi. Everyone who disagrees with leftists is called a Nazi.
Ethnic Jews, black people, white people married to black people -- ALL of these types of people can absolutely still hold white supremacist thoughts, despite how little sense it might make to you and me.
But that's not what I think is going on with Milo; in his case, I think that being ethnically Jewish and married to a black person are absolutely not barriers to associating with white supremacists, anti-LGBT-rights activists, misogynists, etc.
Even by the abject standards of this shitty thread, your comment here crosses into name-calling and personal attack. Posting like that is a bannable offense here. Would you mind reviewing the guidelines and taking the spirit of this site to heart?
I know the rules, and I don't mind getting banned. It's easy to make a new account. I am sick and tired of toxic insane leftist morons getting all the non-leftists banned / deplatformed everywhere, just for having opposing views. This backwards third world shit needs to stop.
I think it's clear to most readers, separately from their leftness or rightness, how badly your comment broke the site guidelines. Why not just take them to heart and follow them? It's mostly not that hard, and will have the nice side effect of making your posts more persuasive.
The guidelines aren't that way because those people necessarily deserve better, but because the community deserves better. When you break the guidelines like that, you're damaging the community you're participating in. Worse, you're damaging it where it's most vulnerable. HN is only valuable because smart, thoughtful people choose to come here.
Come on man. That's a childish thoughtless response. If you actually read my responses to these nutcases you will agree that THEY are the ones damaging the community by mindlessly supporting this third world dark age of censorship.
> The Department of Health can provide certified copies of legal records to verify civil union status in Hawaii to those who are entitled to receive copies pursuant to state law
I got a chuckle from reading that the Domestic Union in Hawaii was signed by Governor Abercrombie, admittedly.
There is zero evidence that he has white supremacist beliefs. Why haven't journalists found any evidence to the contrary? I don't care who he is married to. It is utterly irrelevant, trivial, small minded, petty nonsense.
is there evidence that Yiannopolus associated himself with white supremacists? because every piece of material I’ve seen has been about free-speech and social-justice, often questioning the said association created by media
> These new emails and documents, however, clearly show that Breitbart does more than tolerate the most hate-filled, racist voices of the alt-right. It thrives on them, fueling and being fueled by some of the most toxic beliefs on the political spectrum — and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream.
> It’s a relationship illustrated most starkly by a previously unreleased April 2016 video in which Yiannopoulos sings “America the Beautiful” in a Dallas karaoke bar as admirers, including the white nationalist Richard Spencer, raise their arms in Nazi salutes.
So someone asks for a nexus between Milo and white supremacists, and someone linking a source with a video of him serenading neo-nazis with their arms stretched out gets voted down?
The it’s-about-free-speech-not-alt-right-sympathy shtick really needs some update...
Would you please not break the site guidelines by taking HN threads further into ideological flamewar? It's predictable, therefore tedious, therefore off-topic on this site.
Even if other comments are already going there, going there worse is not cool.
Free speech has limits, but given Schenk was overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio (and arguably by earlier cases, effectively), is an odd case to cite to support that position and explain the actual limits.
Assuming that "Singing Karaoke while Richard Spencer & co throw up Nazi salutes" qualifies as "associating with white supremacists": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLNLPIRS62g
> Andrew Wakefield to any single specific case of parents forgoing vaxines.
You're right, you can't because the anti-vaxx movement is as old as vaccines themselves. Wakefield's license was revoked for actually legitimate reasons. For his actions in falsifying data, not for expressing the idea that vaccines cause autism.
> I also think the ideas that Jones and Yiannopolous promote are easily seen to be harmful. Yiannopolous has promoted violence against journalists and associated himself with white supremacist movements.
Incitement to violence is a crime. We have processes for reporting crimes and seeing justice is done.
> I suppose it's up to you if you feel those ideas could cause harm - I feel they (and other ideas both have promoted) do.
"Ideas causing harm" is exactly the wrong way to look at it. Actions cause harm.
Sometimes ideas lead to action, but we should always police the action, not the thoughts. We start down a dangerous path to thoughtcrime as soon as someone is no longer permitted to think or express an idea.
> Wakefield's license was revoked for actually legitimate reasons. For his actions in falsifying data, not for expressing the idea that vaccines cause autism.
But imagine a doctor that merely says "Don't get vaccines, they cause autism" but doesn't falsify any data. That doctor is probably going to be erased from the English register.
>But imagine a doctor that merely says "Don't get vaccines, they cause autism" but doesn't falsify any data. That doctor is probably going to be erased from the English register.
No, but they would likely be censured.
A doctor has to spectacularly screw up to get struck off. It's not done lightly. One obstetrician accidentally decapitated a baby during birth and kept her licence.
Wakefield faked data, concealed two financial conflicts of interest, and ordered painful, invasive procedures (spinal taps and colonoscopies) on severely autistic children that were not clinically indicated and that he did not have the training to interpret. He even paid children at his son's birthday party for blood samples, then laughed about them crying during a later talk.
That is not the sort of man I want practicing medicine.
Hold on - I'm not defending Wakefield. I'm saying he did a lot more than falsifying data. The falsifying data alone would eb enough to strike him off, but he did a lot more than that.
> A doctor has to spectacularly screw up to get struck off. It's not done lightly. One obstetrician accidentally decapitated a baby during birth and kept her licence.
You're talking about medical error, and I agree you're right there.
I'm talking about dishonesty, and doctors (in England) get struck off for dishonesty relatively easily.
Mistakes happen, and can be remediated. Dishonesty is seen as harder to remediate.
> But imagine a doctor that merely says "Don't get vaccines, they cause autism" but doesn't falsify any data. That doctor is probably going to be erased from the English register.
Because that doctor is also falsifying data, namely, the data that they're presenting to their patient so they can make an informed decision.
The actions are policed and no one here is suggesting thoughts be policed. These individuals are free to shout their ideas in the public square. Facebook is a corporation not a government agency and they have the right to control their own products. Facebook isn’t refusing people based a protected status. Should a baker be required to make a cake promoting a hateful cause?
> Facebook is a corporation not a government agency and they have the right to control their own products.
It's always fascinating how quick people are to jump on the free market bandwagon when it suits their ends. Free speech protections also sometimes apply to privately managed public spaces, like malls.
> These individuals are free to shout their ideas in the public square.
Facebook is arguably the new public square, which is precisely my point.
It's always fascinating how quick people are to jump on the slippery slope bandwagon when it suits their ends.
Your suggestion that privately held malls are subject to free speech protections is misleading. See Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner. There are counter examples of course, be these apply only in niche situations.
Regardless, Facebook is not a public space. It's very much a private space. Suggesting that Facebook be treated as a public space is a pretty radical idea.
> Your suggestion that privately held malls are subject to free speech protections is misleading. See Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner.
Not misleading at all, I said it sometimes applies, which is true because some states recognize it as a right and some don't.
> Regardless, Facebook is not a public space. It's very much a private space.
A private space that anyone and everyone can freely access, and are, in fact, encouraged to frequent as much as humanly possible, and arguably has become intrinsic to the daily life of many, perhaps most, Americans. In fact, it's probably one of their primary means of socializing with friends and family, and definitely a medium for political discourse. Arguing it's a private space seems increasingly flimsy, frankly.
> Regardless, Facebook is not a public space. It's very much a private space. Suggesting that Facebook be treated as a public space is a pretty radical idea.
Further precedent I recently came across suggests it's not so radical after all:
Are there no constitutional protections if you live in a company town? Facebook is effectively the company town of mass real identity to real identity communication. One of the Net Neutrality arguments championed by the EFF was that private oligopolies being allowed to do whatever they want with their own property constituted a threat to free speech.
> Facebook is arguably the new public square, which is precisely my point.
Hey, I think Clay Shirky wants his point from 2008 back. Since we actually have more than 10 years to have reflected on this idea, we can now see it's patently nonsense, given that the idea of the "public square" doesn't encompass harvesting the conversations which happen therein, aggressive tailored marketing, and leaking of personal information from everyone who crosses through. Facebook capitalises on the notion of a public square. That does not make it one.
> given that the idea of the "public square" doesn't encompass harvesting the conversations which happen therein, aggressive tailored marketing, and leaking of personal information from everyone who crosses through.
Oh, so marketers aren't allowed to poll, film or listen in on conversations that happen out in public? In fact that's perfectly legal.
> Facebook capitalises on the notion of a public square. That does not make it one.
And free speech protections also need not be limited to overly strict definitions of public square. The question these types of controversies should be raising is whether free speech protections should extend to services like Facebook.
Facebook is a private space that anyone and everyone can freely access, and are, in fact, encouraged to frequent as much as humanly possible, and arguably has become intrinsic to the daily life of many, perhaps most, Americans. In fact, it's probably one of their primary means of socializing with friends and family, and definitely a medium for political discourse. Arguing it's a purely private space seems increasingly flimsy, frankly.
Firstly, I don't think I ever made a slippery slope argument. That seems to be something you've read into my comments somehow.
Secondly, any legal distinction is established via a multi-part test. As a first pass, I would ask:
1. Is the site open and particularly, targeted to the general public?
2. Does the site enjoy widespread use by the general public?
3. Is the site intended to foster open discussion on any topic? For instance, the public itself drives most conversation on the platform.
This isn't necessarily exhaustive, just a first pass. HN is targeted at a technical audience (although its open to anyone), it's typically used only by this subset of the general public, and its content is narrowly focused on technical subject matter, so it would fail two parts of this test.
Facebook definitely passes all three qualifications, Twitter doesn't have as widespread use by the general public but it continues to grow.
> What about all those shadow banned users, are they entitled to their free speech on any website that allows comments?
Shadow banning seems like a poor idea. Terms of service that encourage civil discussion are perfectly fine, and violators should get an explicit and public timeout, never a ban. I've toyed with the idea that repeat offences trigger exponentially increasing timeouts.
Judging violations of ToS should be a transparent process. Something like jury duty as a term of using a service also seems like it might be a workable idea. Corporations have their own motives for censorship, primarily profit motives to draw in advertisers, and so they have incentives to bury anything even remotely controversial and are not incentivized to evaluate anything "fairly".
Jones never promoted the harassment of victims of crimes. Can you support your statements with some direct quotes? Or are you promoting the harassment of Jones with unfounded lies?
Undermining the public trust of institutions is alive and well in the discourse of the US president, who openly erodes trust in the media, the FBI, the DNC, and the IC (including limited support of anti-vax views https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/44952526852981555...). Should the president enjoy protection against de-platforming when others get banned for less?
I am familiar with those lawsuits. Alex Jones did not promote harassment. He did not even factually conclude that Sandy Hook was a hoax, just floated the possibility.
He reported on anomalies, on the conspiracy, on using Sandy Hook as a pretext to take away guns, on Adam Lanza probably using big pharma drugs. He stated that he understands why people would see Sandy Hook as a hoax, because history shows other events have been staged to further a political agenda.
Alex Jones was himself a victim of the media, who put weeks long pressure on SV tech companies and made it look like Alex Jones was sending his followers to harass the victims, long after Alex concluded it was not a hoax, and that Adam Lanza was the killer. They purposely took his statements and unhinged rants out of context and painted him as a transphobic, violence instigator, and maker of death threats.
The trick to attack free speech that is opposed to yours, is to make it seem like violence instigation or racism, so then it does not deserve the protection of free speech. The other is to put pressure on advertisers and commercial platforms and make them guilty by association. We've seen both of those tricks and they are dangerous and spell trouble for the future.
> He did not even factually conclude that Sandy Hook was a hoax, just floated the possibility.
So on April 16, 2013 on his YouTube channel when he said “Sandy Hook was staged, and the evidence is overwhelming” he was just “floating the possibility?”
That’s an awfully definitive statement from someone who’s supposedly speaking of a hypothetical.
Edit: I also see you managed to sneak an edit into your first comment after I provided the citations. What originally read "Can you support your statements" now reads "Can you support your statements with direct quotes." A+ effort at moving the goal posts.
In the deposition he clarifies this out-of-context (it is not the full sentence and not even a correct quote) statement and puts it into context. At that time, he did not think the whole thing was staged, but that the way the media handled it, used it against gun owners, was synthetic. He says some reports about the incidents were covered up. He says he thinks there was a cover-up of some of the negligence in the town and of the school. He did think there was some cover-up, but it was not that the whole thing was staged. Specific areas were faked, not in a totality. He believes school shootings happen, and now believes that Sandy Hook happened.
Even if, it is a far cry from promoting harassment of victims.
Edit: I did that edit not in response to you (I had not read your response yet, just like I made this post without reading your edit), but because people cite news stories, instead of Alex Jones. I am sure you can find news stories stating that Alex Jones instigated harassment of victims, as it was one of the big justifications for deplatforming, but I never saw Alex Jones say anything to that effect. The direct quotes are just not there... Even for your "quote" that is attributed to Alex Jones, it is not a correct quote, nor is it the full sentence, it seems to be Chinese whispered from a reddit thread. I myself got tricked by taking news stories about Alex Jones as factual, but when I saw the actual direct quote/news clip, I saw how what was presented as fact, was the journalists' biased interpretation. I read a news article stating Alex Jones was transphobic and promoting transphobia, but then I saw he was talking about this: https://mediadc.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/1179838/2147... and saying it looked demonic to him, and that he did not want this normalized. It was very much in the style of: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/forget-mr-rogers-drag-que...
About moving the goal post: The lawsuits are about making misleading statements, not about instigating harassment of the victims. Alex Jones did not instigate or promote harassing the victims of Sandy Hook. Some of his deluded followers took that upon themselves. You can find direct quotes where he says they should not do that and that it is wrong.
> About moving the goal post: The lawsuits are about making misleading statements, not about instigating harassment of the victims.
Also incorrect. All four seek damages for harassment induced and caused by Jones' comments. Two of the suits don't even allege defamation at all, only intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Why don't you read the petitions, affidavits, and the other documents filed with the court? I have to imagine it will be vastly more interesting than blindly repeating the lies you've been fed on InfoWars.
Re Alex Jones: The targeted and continual harassment of the parents of Sandy Hook victims is definitely dangerous. Not to even mention the promotion of the pizza gate conspiracy which inspired someone to walk into a pizza place with an assault weapon. Different types of danger but still danger.
For what it's worth, Alex Jones retracted his Sandy Hook reaction years ago and apologized. Since then he has repeatedly scolded his followers telling listeners not to harass the parents. Same with the specific pizza restaurant. The damage is already done, of course, but it is not continual.
There is a recent long-form interview on Joe Rogan where you can hear it from himself - the beginning is focused on his apology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5yh2HcIlkU
Alex Jones deserves to be de-platformed and probably put in jail for the trauma his behavior caused to the parents of Sandy Hook victims, if nothing else.
The whole idea of free speech rights rests on the assumption that speech can cause action.
There have been quite a few recent shooting sprees where the perpetrators either explicitly referenced online personae, or the investigation revealed they consumed these sources predominantly.
That’s not to mention the obviously far larger number of people who don’t get radicalized to the degree where they livestream mass murder, but where society still suffer because they live out their hatred in less obvious ways.
The idea that people aren’t influenced by what they read seems somewhat indefensible, anyway. Because if it were true, we could shut down the non-transactional parts of the internet without it having any effect.
> The whole idea of free speech rights rests on the assumption that speech can cause action.
No, free speech is a natural right. The recognition of free speech is not contingent on any outside factors aside from the recognition that humans speak just like they breath.
> There have been quite a few recent shooting sprees where the perpetrators either explicitly referenced online personae, or the investigation revealed they consumed these sources predominantly.
So? Did these shooters also go to the grocery store? It's ridiculous to ban Coca Cola because a shooter predominantly drank diet coke. You're a) inferring a spurious causation simply because you want there to be one, and b) even if there were a causation, that does not entail that the online personnae are in any way responsible for the shooter's actions.
> The idea that people aren’t influenced by what they read seems somewhat indefensible, anyway.
Who's defending that? The issue I'm raising is who's responsible for someone's actions. Speech is not action. The most widely recognized limitation on free speech is treating incitement to violence as violence. That's perfectly reasonable. Is that the case here? Doesn't seem like it, because if it were, they'd be charged with crimes.
>So? Did these shooters also go to the grocery store? It's ridiculous to ban Coca Cola because a shooter predominantly drank diet coke.
This is ridiculous, if drinking diet coke made people violent and go on shooting sprees against innocent people, it'd be banned. We all know they're radicalized on places like 4chan, 8chan, Voat, Gab.ai, many alt-right subreddits, alt-right YouTube channels and Facebook accounts.
> This is ridiculous, if drinking diet coke made people violent and go on shooting sprees against innocent people, it'd be banned. We all know they're radicalized on places like 4chan, 8chan, Voat, Gab.ai, many alt-right subreddits, alt-right YouTube channels and Facebook accounts.
And you can prove that these online sites cause people to go out and shoot people? Because actual studies on these topics have failed to support any such conclusion:
Would you also support deplatforming Sen. Sanders as well then? It was his supporter who went on a shooting spree, and I don't think he was a big fan of Jones or Milo.
I really wanted to disagree with both 'fringe' and 'dangerous', but it must be said your argument in favour of fringe is compelling.
'Dangerous' is still unsettling. Mark Zuckerberg has been floated as a possible-but-out-there presidential candidate and he isn't likely to run on the Republican ticket.
Words like 'dangerous' with justifications like yours ('well, they aren't directly responsible but they might ...') can be used, with minor variations, to justify suppression of:
* Any major religion
* Any racially coordinated group that trys to organise to better their social poisition
* Any innovative business model that threatens established companies
If Facebook bans show an ideological bias then that is bad even if it is legal. It isn't like the left is free of dangerous idiots inspired by rabid media [0]. There is going to be some bias in some direction - obviously - but this is a space to watch for evidence of a real problem. Facebook should not be shaping political dialog in the borderline cases, that isn't something they are known to be good at.
>allowing those views on your platform make you complicit
Every faction since the dawn of history has said that the views of the other factions are objectively harmful. What is it that blesses SV neo-something-or-other as the one true faction that has finally discovered the objective truth?
I don't think I made a claim that SV (or anyone) is an objective arbiter of truth.
I said:
1) At some point, if you allow a view to be expressed on your platform, you become somewhat implicated in that view spreading.
2) I believe (and I think FB believes) that the views these people promote are harmeful.
Now, should we trust Facebook? No! Facebook has banned many people and groups for far less than these people were banned. The reason Facebook is pushing this news so hard is that they have been letting things slide again and again because these people were prominent figures (see also how Twitter keeps not banning trump despite his many threats of violence).
I am not the author of the parent comment that you're replying to, but I appreciate your civil reply in a flamebait-y thread.
That said, his point seems to be that FB is banning e.g. Farrakhan without making any effort at disproving Farrakhan's claims, and furthermore that many of the commenters in this thread are similarly dismissive of Farrakhan's claims without offering anything resembling a good-faith disproof of those claims.
(Note that the parent and I are not making any statement about Farrakhan's correctness or incorrectness, but are instead merely noting the widespread absence of proofs about this correctness).
Personally I know essentially nothing about Farrakhan and his claims, but I like to believe that I can think critically enough to evaluate his claims on their merits, and do not need to be "protected" from hearing them by Facebook or anyone else. I (and perhaps the parent poster) would like to participate in an agora of ideas where everyone is welcome to promulgate his claims, no matter how allegedly outlandish, and the strongest ideas will win on their merits. Contrast this to a situation wherein the winning ideas win because their rivals are excluded from the agora.
Of course I don't mean this just about Farrakhan. Similarly, I have never read the Protocols of Zion, which are mentioned several times elsewhere in this thread, and I have no clue whether they are related to a Jewish conspiracy for world domination etc. But many commenters here are asserting claims about the Protocols, without offering any attempt at a proof beyond a link to Wikipedia, which personally I find very unconvincing as a matter of principle, on this and any other topic.
In general I am not convinced by assertions/bannings, and prefer evidence.
I would argue that when a website get enough users, it should be seen as a government. The number is as ill-defined as “how many grains of sand makes a heap”, but FB is now defining the social interactions of more people than the largest single nation state.
On the other paw, I don’t believe in absolute freedom of speech, because the very power which makes the freedom worth having also enables it to cause harm. I think the quote “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him“ still applies today.
I wish I had a solution to that rather than just a vague feeling. Vague inexpressible feelings are part of the problem.
I agree there is an argument for regulating large for-profit social media sites as a public utilities... but I can't see how they are "a government" in and of themselves.
Not quite. I mean that it has rules of behaviour, it hires people to enforce those rules, it has strategic objectives and engages in world events, and is an economic force just above the middle of the IMF 2018 list, roughly equivalent to Slovenia (assuming GDP ~= revenue), or North Dakota if prefer to compare against a state of the USA.
Facebook is not a nation, despite all that, but not all government are national governments and I think it counts as a kind of government.
I’m British. Nobody’s forcing me to use the British government, as evidenced by the fact I left the country with no intention to return. (Some people have even given up their citizenship). Sure, there are things that makes it hard to do, but that’s true for leaving FB too.
So can they stop acting like they censor equally across the ideological/political spectrum? It's fine that they have an agenda, but the corporate lawyer speak after events like this, feigning equal censorship, is so disingenuous (and I can't stand one minute of Jones or Yiannopoulos).
They aren't self-anointed. We anointed them by using their platform. They're only gatekeepers because we user keeping choosing to walk through their gate instead of choosing any of the many other paths onto the Internet.
>They aren't self-anointed. We anointed them by using their platform
Nahhh, it's way more nuanced than that. They started as user friendly simple services with little to no purposeful mass censorship. Then the user base grew into the billions effectively creating captive audience due to the network effect. Then they became increasingly user hostile (i.e. switching from chronological timeline to a psychologically manipulative news feed) and got into the business of political mass censorship and electioneering; like a bait and switch.
Don't know about Watson, but Milo had been previously slapped for an Instagram post that was seen as cheering on an attempted mail bomb attack in October:
Milo Yiannopoulos getting the bully pulpit on TV and university stages, to say, as though it were a fait acompli, that trans people are sick is dangerous.
Paul Joseph Watson spewing misinformation about the extent of the refugee crisis is dangerous.
>Paul Joseph Watson spewing misinformation about the extent of the refugee crisis is dangerous.
Is it any more dangerous than the lies politicians spewed about it in Europe though? We know that a bunch of those politicians straight up either lied or didn't know what they were talking about. We have had terror attacks carried out in Europe by refugees or asylum seekers that have killed people. Some sources even claim that quite many people have died [0], but I am not sure how credible this is.
I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion. The question is whether information about the refugee crisis is dangerous or not. Every attack carried out by a refugee or asylum seeker wouldn't have happened if they hadn't been there.
>Yes, this is why America started its war on terror after 9/11.
Huh, I thought 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers came from a country allied with America, that wants to buy $350 billion of weapons and military technology from it...
I think if lying about facts and figures is this level of dangerous, then there are many more people who should be banned... such as Obama. Only different is he is stating "facts and figures" (even if they are false) that you agree with.
The issue is that this is not a solved cultural issue. We don't know what causes trans people to be trans. Some believe it's nature, some say it's nurture. With such an up-in-the-air issue, is it really right of us to suppress the speech of those who think it's affected more by how we're raised?
Briefly following my graduation, I was friends with more trans women than cis women. The closest any of them got to seeming unwell was that one was a workaholic.
Saying racist stuff constantly but playing it off as "ironic" and wearing a suit doesn't make it less racist. Good, they should have kicked these guys off years ago.
When you’re talking about someone like Farrakhan, and the explicit racial basis for slavery and segregation, is simply being “racist” sufficient justification for a ban? By that same token, can Facebook ban say Armenians for being racist against Turks? Should Facebook step blithely into these very complex issues?
First, he's cartoonishly anti-semitic and has been for years. He's as much of a hate monger as any of the other people who were banned and that's enough reason to ban him.
That given, he has also materially supported vulnerable populations in a way that few organizations have. He has pushed very hard for black people to be proud of their blackness and to create narratives in which blackness is not looked down upon. This is good, needed work.
Members of the black community have spoken about and wrestled with this difficulty. [1][2] I don't think I can add anything other than to agree his situation is more complicated, though I also agree that he should be excluded from the public square as long as he continues to promote hatred.
Farrakhan is, to be frank, not a tough case. There are plenty of people who have incited mass hatred who also were, not coincidentally, very much promoters of their own ethnic identity and superiority. Yes, black people have faced and continue to face unjust oppression. But that doesn't give carte blanche for anti-Semitism, with quotes like:
“The Jews, a small handful, control the movement of this great nation, like a radar controls the movement of a great ship in the waters. … The Jews got a stranglehold on the Congress."
Or implying that Jews are subhuman insects:
“I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite.”
Or veiled calls to violence:
“And you do with me as is written, but remember that I have warned you that Allah will punish you. You are wicked deceivers of the American people. You have sucked their blood. You are not real Jews, those of you that are not real Jews. You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell. But I warn you in the name of Allah, you would be wise to leave me alone. But if you choose to crucify me, know that Allah will crucify you.”
Or explicit calls to violence:
"Can that be the holy land, and you have gay parades, and want to permit to have a gay parade in Jerusalem when no prophet ever sanctioned that behavior. How can that be the Israel, how can that be Jerusalem with secular people running the holy land when it should be the holy people running the holy land. That land is gonna be cleansed with blood!"
Seriously, this is cut and dry. There are plenty of other people to lionize for e.g. promoting black bodies. And if wanting to kill all the Jews and loudly, repeatedly proclaiming his belief that they're evil and worthy of death to his religious followers on social media isn't a big enough deal to make it non-complicated, we're talking about the guy who called for the death of Malcolm X and whose religious followers carried out his assassination within months. He is violent and deranged and his followers have acted violently at his behest before.
(Also, respectfully, I don't think Farrakhan's anti-Semitic proclamations feel particularly "cartoonish" to the Jews he's targeting.)
The point is not whether there are people to “lionize” that are better. The point is whether an organization like Facebook (which didn’t have a single black board member until last year) has standing to police such opinions.
I vociferously oppose him, and think liberals have made a huge mistake being soft on anti-semitism lately. But leave that aside. Would just the stuff he has said about white people justify Facebook banning him? If so, that’s a pretty breathtaking assertion of power to police a very complex range of narratives.
Anti-Semitism is literally what he's being banned for. How can you "leave that aside?"
Should FB be able to ban religious leaders who repeatedly, consistently, publicly call for the death of Jews from their platform? If they should be able to ban Milo, then — yes, obviously.
If you're arguing that no one should be able to be banned, I think our opinions differ, but I suppose we're each internally consistent with our values.
The OP I was responding to just said people should be able to be banned for “racism” without qualifying it to anti-semitism. While that might be Facebook’s ostensible justification, the fact is that Farrakhan is famous for representing one of the extremes in the spectrum of black attitudes towards whites.
I also think facebook should be able to ban people. But I think that Facebook banning someone like Farrakhan, who is famous for being an anti-white extremist in a country where white people enslaved black people, and where white police officers routinely gun down black people, opens up a huge can of worms. It’s an organization where black Americans are almost completely unrepresented policing the spectrum of responses black people are allowed to have in response to their treatment in this country.
He is a notable anti-Semite and extremist hate leader who blames black slavery on the Jews. Trying to provide cover for him by claiming it's simply "anti-white" is disingenuous at best. If you don't trust me, trust the Southern Poverty Law Center: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi...
Being black in America doesn't give you a free pass on anti-Semitism. If you can't see that, I don't know what to tell you.
I don’t know how old you are, but I think you’re being ignorant about the full spectrum of what Farrakhan represents. He co-organized the Million Man March, which was a defining event in the 1990s, much like the Ferguson shooting is today. A recent Rasmussen poll found that over half of black likely voters had an at least somewhat favorable impression of him. You’re acting like he’s just anti-Semitic and not culturally significant for other reasons. That you can ban him for that one thing and that makes no statement about what he represents overall. Farrakhan has always been anti-Semitic, and nonetheless many black people have been willing to overlook that. Here is a poll from 1986 where blacks split about evenly in their view on his favor ability (still, twice as high as Reagan’s): https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/01/18/r...
Maybe the anti-semitism alone warrants a ban. Maybe any one of his extreme view warrants a ban. But it’s very problematic for Facebook, a company with almost no black leadership, to be making that call.
I'm fairly old, thanks, and I understand that Farrakhan has been a loud voice in America. But a radical anti-Semite who uses social media to promote violence against Jews being banned from FB is, IMO, the right thing to do. Being a black political figure isn't an excuse.
> Farrakhan has always been anti-Semitic, and nonetheless many black people have been willing to overlook that.
Have the Jews he's been targeting with death threats been willing to overlook that?
> Maybe the anti-semitism alone warrants a ban.
Yup.
> But it's very problematic for Facebook, a company with almost no black leadership, to be making that call.
Frankly, on this one, no. Anti-Semitism is abhorrent regardless of what race you are. Being black does not excuse anti-Semitism. Should FB have more black leadership? Obviously yes. And it deserves to be called out on that. But banning someone for explicit, obvious anti-Semitism isn't problematic because they're black.
If Farrakhan were banned for being "anti-white," as you previously tried to provide cover for, that would be something else. But explicitly targeting a minority religious group with repeated, credible death threats (and one that has faced horrifying degrees of ethnic cleansing within the last century, and continues to face persecution in America today, such as the recent San Diego synagogue mass shooting) is unconscionable, and FB is entirely within its rights to ban Farrakhan for that.
Let me be clear: I think antisemitism should get you banned from Facebook (in the abstract). But if you think that's what this conversation is about, then you're missing the point entirely. My point is: Who are you or I, or the almost entirely white executive leadership and board at Facebook to make the judgment call that his antisemitism justifies silencing his other views, in contravention to how black people have historically done the balancing? I think, at the very least, that presents a hard question.
Furthermore, you're being obtuse by saying that it's just a matter of Farrakhan "being black." There is a spectrum of views among black people about America. For better or worse, Farrakhan is a culturally significant part of that spectrum. And he's a fixture of black politics. (Here he is standing next to Obama in 2005 at a Congressional Black Caucus event: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-appearances/the-...). Facebook is now silencing all of his messages. I think there is a real question of whether a company that almost entirely lacks black leadership has the moral authority to do that.
> If Farrakhan were banned for being "anti-white," as you previously tried to provide cover for,
I don't know where you got the idea that I was covering for anything. The original post I was replying to didn't specifically mention antisemitism, it said "racism" is justification for banning someone. That leads to the obvious question of whether Facebook would be justified in banning Farrakhan over his anti-white statements. After all, that would seem to follow if "racism" (generically) is a justification for being banned on Facebook. Would you agree that would be a harder question to answer?
Being a culturally significant figure in black politics isn't a good reason to keep someone who's attempting to incite mass murder against a minority religious group on a forum like Facebook. You mention the picture of him standing next to Obama: that's actually a fairly famous photo. Obama explicitly rejected and denounced Farrakhan [1] when he ran for president, and in an ironic turn of events (considering the nascent alt-right's smear of Obama as being supposedly-Muslim) Farrakhan later accused Obama of being "the first Jewish president" who was "selected before he was elected ... [by] rich, powerful members of the Jewish community." [2]
Silencing Farrakhan in general on Facebook is a consequence of silencing his particularly horrifying views about Jews and removing access to the platform he uses to spread them. This isn't because he's a culturally significant black man, it's because he's an anti-Semite. The others de-platformed along with him are not fellow black leaders, they are racists and conspiracy theorists who are similarly dangerous and have similarly used these platforms to spread hatred to millions of followers.
> The original post I was replying to didn't specifically mention antisemitism, it said "racism" is justification for banning someone.
While on the one hand you're claiming to only refer to the hypothetical question of a black leader who is anti-white, you also specifically defend Farrakhan's presence on social media, and question whether Facebook should be able to ban specifically him for his anti-Semitism; for example:
> I don’t know how old you are, but I think you’re being ignorant about the full spectrum of what Farrakhan represents. He co-organized the Million Man March, which was a defining event in the 1990s, much like the Ferguson shooting is today . . . Maybe the anti-semitism alone warrants a ban. Maybe any one of his extreme view warrants a ban. But it’s very problematic for Facebook, a company with almost no black leadership, to be making that call.
If we were talking about a hypothetical black leader who was anti-white (and whether you can call that racism is, IMO, up for debate), and who was not virulently anti-Semitic, I would definitely agree that's a harder question to answer; I'd probably be against banning someone like that, for reasons that are long and complicated and that you'd probably agree with. That isn't what happened here, though, and it's not who we've been talking about: we've been talking about Farrakhan, who's in both my opinion and Obama's opinion fairly indefensible.
> While on the one hand you're claiming to only refer to the hypothetical question of a black leader who is anti-white, you also specifically defend Farrakhan's presence on social media, and question whether Facebook should be able to ban specifically him for his anti-Semitism; for example:
I'm not "defending" anything--I'm simply stating that it's a complicated issue, while you're denying that there is any complexity. And I don't think we really disagree on much. As you state, you might be against banning him if it was just his anti-white rhetoric. My point simply is that, whatever complexity might exist in that hypothetical does not go away just because there is an alternate, easier basis for banning him. Especially given that, many black people themselves have confronted those issues and have been willing to hear him out for his other messages: http://www.cnn.com/US/9510/megamarch/10-14/march/index.html
> "If the house is on fire, I'm not going to sit there and let the house burn just because I have differences with the person who sounded the alarm and started the water going," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Having Facebook--which has almost no black leadership--make the contrary decision is thorny, is all I am saying.
>He has pushed very hard for black people to be proud of their blackness and to create narratives in which blackness is not looked down upon. This is good, needed work.
(disclaimer : i'm about as anti FB and anti-censorship as one can be.)
Well, he (Farrakhan) mostly just taught blacks to hate whites -- which I guess achieves more 'black pride', but not in any manner that I think is sustainable or responsible. Rather than raising one group up, he just taught that the other group was worse than perceived.
"White people are potential humans – they haven’t evolved yet."
“You are not now, nor have you ever been a citizen of America. You are a slave to white America.”
and my personal favorite, although unrelated to whites in America :
“Qadaffi’s a revolutionary, he’s my friend, he’s my brother. And I would never deny him because you don’t like him… I love him.”
Please don't take royal roads to internet flamewars on HN. There's nothing new to be had from any of these arguments. If you want to rehearse them, please do so some other place.
Edit: you've done this a lot and we've warned you before. If you continue, we're going to have to ban you. Not for ideological reasons; for boredom avoidance reasons.
I spoke imprecisely and I appreciate the opportunity to be more specific.
You're right that the Nation promotes the inherent superiority of black people. I didn't mean to endorse that view.
Many of the narratives that describe worlds where black bodies are "lesser than" white bodies are written by people who believe in white-supremacist ideas (even if they don't support the philosophy explicitly - Thomas Jefferson comes to mind). These are not "white supremacist" texts, but they assist in shaping a world view that a white supremacist likes.
The texts and ideas promoted by the Nation are generally explicitly founded on black supremacy (which is unfortunate) but also portray black bodies as superior to white ones - a rare trait. If I can see the good, lofty goals of the US Constitution "through" slavery and the designation of black people as being only 60% the value of whites, I can also appreciate the Nation's work through its own incorrect racial hierarchy.
I also think that both white and black people can appreciate the heritage they come from[1]. The struggles of black americans against all odds are, to me, unambiguously heroic. The innovations and inventions of white americans' European (or American) ancestors are, I think, also worth celebrating.
[1] This gets very tricky because, of course, people who want to promote white people as inherently superior often take this tack. Culture is hard and messy and I think we probably come down a little hard on celebrating European history, but I think we should be far, far, far more celebratory of the the insane stories of various African Americans. Check out this dude! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smalls
Edit: Also we must keep in mind that the magnitude of the problem is related to the amount of power the particular group has. If a prisoner is espousing a philosophy that makes prisoners superior to other humans, even if it's incorrect, it's hard to argue we "need" to crack down on it. Narratives of white supremacy are so harmful precisely because white people have been in a position to ignore the welfare of other groups.
“Black” and “White” as identities are both products of White racism (outside of White racism, individual ethnic identities have historically been prominent, but not a racial identity.) Positive Black racial identity is a reaction against White racism, whereas White racial identity is it's continuation. And it remains the case that the effort to advance a broad crosd-ethnic White racial identity is intimately connected with White supremacy.
Mirror tests work when the things being swapped are actually, in relevant context, similarly situated, but that is simply not the case in Black vs. White identity.
Abstractly, there's nothing wrong with positive White racial identity, but in the real world, that doesn't exist as free-floating thing detached from White supremacist ideology.
"Black", in the "African American" sense we're talking about here, is a distinct and coherent culture, ironically one forcibly created by white slave traders who kidnapped Africans and stripped them of their names, languages, and cultures and left them in 19th century North America to build a new one for themselves, which they did. American Black culture includes jazz and (later) hip-hop, the Harlem Renaissance, a huge chunk of 20th century dance, African American Vernacular English, Black churches (and the civil rights movement), soul food, and so on.
Other coherent cultures include the Irish, Italians, Polish, Russians, and, of course, Germans, French, and English. Parades are held for these cultures; entire sections of major cities are named for them, museums are erected for them, &c.
What people on message boards seem to have a problem with is the idea that "Black" is a culture with similar standing to the Irish --- or rather, they'd prefer to believe that there is a coherent "White" culture that functions similar to Black culture. There is not; the suggestion otherwise is literally an expression of anti-Black racism, as you can see from the way "white culture" has gradually co-opted formerly out-grouped Irish, Italian, and Jewish people, in solidarity against integration with Black people.
Nobody seriously protests the South Side Irish Parade (unless they live in Beverly and care about their lawns), the Polish American Museum, or the New York Columbus Day Parade. They do protest parades of "white pride", for reasons I assume are now obvious to you.
Who's arguing? The question was asked, and I'm answering it. This is like one of the very few social controversies you can resolve axiomatically in an HN comment.
> And black identity is detached from black supremacist ideology?
Yes, it is. Both exist (well, at least black identity and black nationalism do, and that's close enough that I'm not going to quibble about it), but while black nationalism depends on black identity black identity exists and thrives outside of it (and historically does so as a reaction against White anti-Black racist actions and ideology), while White racial identity as opposed to ethnic identities largely does not exist outside of White racism (of which it is also a product, though not, obviously, a reaction against.)
> In fact, logic is useful in evaluating the world.
Logic is useful for evaluating the relationship between abstract concepts, but is only useful for evaluating the world when you join it with all the relevant facts about the world. When you reason about abstractions without facts, or in ways which implicitly make counterfactual assumptions, you reach conclusions that are either without material relevance or incorrect.
So white pride is celebrating prominent white actors, educators, inventors, business leaders, and culture--things that have historically been denied or discounted.
> to create narratives in which blackness is not looked down upon. This is good, needed work.
so like:
In the Nation of Islam, both God and the devil are human beings. Elijah Muhammad identified the devil as the white man, the Caucasian race. According to Elijah, though the black race is many trillions of years old, the white race began a mere six thousand years ago with Yakub, one of the Black Gods of this time cycle.[15]
Elijah explained, "The white race is not equal with darker people because the white race was not created by the God of Righteousness. . . . They were made by Yakub, an original Black Man—who is from the Creator. Yakub, the father of the devil, made the white race, a race of devils—enemies of the darker people of the earth. The white race is not made by nature to accept righteousness."[16]
Hah, no, I would not say that's the "good" part of the the Nation of Islam.
However, just like Christianity has been able to do some amount of "good work" while insisting that "Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says"[1], the Nation is not "all bad." I personally would judge its good works to be more crippled by its doctrine than most faiths.
If you want to read a good thinking wrestling with the Nation of Islam I recommend The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. I think he does a good job of capturing the contradictions and attractions of Elijah Muhammad (another undeniably hateful man) in the flesh.
That was PART of the apostle Paul's admonition about keeping order in a gathering of the saints, from a wide variety of angles. I think the context is explained by the next verse: If they have questions, let them ask their husbands at home. Ergo: don't disrupt the proceedings with distractions. (And even if you accept this interpretation, you may now commence criticizing Paul for inferring that only women needed to be told this.)
People who look down on Christianity love to bring up this scripture, but do you actually know any significant branches of Christianity that enforce this? I'm a fan of one of the most stringent denominations around, and even we have A LOT of women speakers and ministers in our organization. I honestly don't know any which abides by a literal application of this scripure. I've only ever seen it used as a wedge issue against strict biblical interpretation.
> do you actually know any significant branches of Christianity that enforce this?
Not universally. I think there are denominations that use that passage as justification to keep women from being Deacons but I couldn't cite one off the top of my head.
That said, I used it as an example and I'm sure if you're that knowledgeable about scripture you're familiar with the other parts of scripture that are (or have been) used with questionable intent. If I wanted to be less fair I could have cited the passages that slave owners used to argue that slavery was "christian." I could also have talked about the anti-homosexual (or perhaps anti-decadence) passages in romans.
I also could have cited the Mormon church's doctrine around skin color, but that's a bit of a horse of a different color.
My point, which I think is preserved, is that scripture and practice are two different things. Scripture colors practice - but the Nation of Islam is not (as far as I know) going around hurting white people because they're demons any more than Christian denominations go around forcing women to be silent because there's a passage from Paul.
nevermind the glorification of mary, spreading the practice practicing of monogamy instead of male:multi-female polygamy, being anti-prostitution, etc..
oh right, but those things are really 'supressing women'.
Other religions that have kept their popularity and adherents over the centuries(and much in the past century) have, part, reformed and toned down the significance of these violent mythologies especially in their relevance to doctrine.
To assert otherwise seems like arguing in bad faith.
Yes, you are arguing in very bad faith to ignore the millions dead in the middle east in the last 20 years due to sectarian fighting between abrahamic faiths.
I'm arguing that we have no way to tell if religion is simply just the excuse to make war instead of some other tribal us-vs-them mentality, which humans (throughout history, alas) are wont to do
I get pretty irritated with intentional imprecision, as usually it's attempting to obfuscate what's actually happening. Unidirectional violence from exactly one religion should not be then generalized to a family of religions.
christanity, buddhism, sikhism, etc. among many, many, others do not have racism as part of their theological core doctrines. This is not to say that strands of any haven't misused the theology in the name of racism, but your claim is patently false.
Some strains of Judaism do have racism at the core. They believe they are chosen by God and there are many texts that support the idea that non-jews are lesser beings.
In any case what does it matter? What matters is how many people suffer and die at the behest of a religion, regardless if you can pinpoint racism or not.
Farrakhan was banned for being a notorious anti-Semite; being black doesn't give you a free pass to incite hatred against Jews. This isn't a complex issue.
"Critics have described the organization as being black supremacist[4] and antisemitic.[5][6][7] The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks the NOI as a hate group.[8][9] Its official newspaper is The Final Call. In 2007, the core membership was estimated to be between 20,000 and 50,000.[1]"
i'm not a kook or an extremist.
look up their theology and creation mythology/eschatology -
the teaching is that all humans descend from 'the afro asiatic blackman',
that whites are devils that are spawned by a science project, other races
were failed attempts at this experiment (aka the 'blacker' you are, the more 'pure' you are), and that at the end times the prophet elijah will circle the earth in a UFO
and and destroy the 'devils' (aka white devils) and the nonbelievers and save the believers.
Malcom X left NOI specifically when he undertook the Haaj and realized
it had nothing to do with actual Islam, which, separate point, I also disagree with, but that's a separate topic, and at least it isn't a racist religion. This is likely (at least part of)
why he was assassinated.
and yes, antisemitism fits in as a part of this belief system.
but to categorize the group as only 'antisemitic'
is to do a disservice to the general level of divisive, racist drivel that they promote against all humanity, including africans and african americans (by encouraging belief in this nonsense).
Facts.
but yes, facebook banning them is also just as silly. but if they are banning them, it should be for the wider racism, and not just one among many (antisemitism).
"Farrakhan blames Jews for the slave trade, plantation slavery, Jim Crow, sharecropping and general black oppression. Farrakhan’s tone grew more belligerent in June 2010, when he sent letters to several leaders of the Jewish community as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center demanding that they acknowledge the evils they have perpetrated and that they work to further Farrakhan’s goals. The letter ended with a threat to “ruin and destroy your power and influence here and throughout the world” if his terms were not met."
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. They don’t necessarily self-describe with those exact words, but it’s not by any means a stretch based on the org’s teachings.
>Should Facebook step blithely into these very complex issues?
The trick here is that you don't needlessly overcomplicate the issue. People promoting 'race realism' as a theory we should base society around, yeah those people should definitely go.
They shouldn't "blithely step into these very complex issues" but I'd argue they have a moral and societal responsibility to address them seriously and responsibly somehow. I think this means spending money on teams with the linguistic and cultural skills to be able to understand complex and disparate cultures, and empowering those teams to be able to act to enforce rules around content. I think it also means having some sort of overarching ethical policy framework coming from the leaders of the company to shape those rules and guide the teams.
Doing this properly would be complicated, messy and expensive but if Facebook is going to be part of our society going forward I think its something they will have to deal with somehow or some other change will be forced upon them.
As I write this I realise that perhaps the ruthless arithmetic of a publicly traded company whose business model is web advertising, with shareholders to endlessly appease is probably by definition an entity that is fundamentally unable to make the above choices in the same way that I couldn't just decide to breath underwater.
I don’t know if I agree with that. The Turkish ethnostate tried to wipe Armenians off the map. Who is Facebook to tell Armenians how they can express their response to that?
They're Facebook. They run Facebook. That is the source from which they draw their authority to ban racism against the 80 million men, women, and children who inhabit Turkey. On Facebook, I mean.
I take your point and am not trying to be snarky. I just don't see the problem here. The legitimate historical grievances of Armenians are orthogonal to what Facebook should allow to happen on their platform.
It’s great that the site decides. It is exerting editorial control in this case. Hence, they should be liable for the speech that they do allow. Which means, they should be sueable if a user does slander on their platform, posts copyrightable material, etc.
> Hence, they should be liable for the speech that they do allow.
I see this sentiment often on HN, as if the latter somehow logically and necessarily follows from the former. It doesn't, and if that is what you advocate then you should justify it with proper arguments.
The argument is about whether Facebook is a platform or a publisher. This discussion has been going on for years and not just on HN.
Being a platform, like ATT telephone lines, bring certain protections from lawsuits of content. The core of net neutrality is also based on a similar idea; with net neutrality, platforms (cable companies) can not between distinguish services (like throttling Netflix).
In the exact same vein, if Facebook is a platform, it cannot distinguish between the “services” (users producing the content) unless that content is federally criminally illegal. With this, they are not liable for civil matters like slander.
However, if Facebook is a publisher, meaning it can editorialize the content (similar to att choosing to throttle Netflix ), then it will become liable just like every other publishing company (nytimes, nymag, Rolling Stones, you name it).
Hope this helps. There is a lot more info about this on the internet. There were even House hearings on this topic. I encourage you to go look them up.
Thanks for the clarification, but I don't find it convincing.
I disagree with the underlying premise that we should clump social media into (only) two categories (platforms and publishers) where if you exercise any editorial control you are immediately categorized as "publisher" (category that is appropriate for an entity that explicitly and deliberately chooses everything it publishes) and where only "platforms" are protected from lawsuit about their users' content.
All manners of platforms have terms of services that you must comply with it to be allow you to use that platform. It's not like you are given full freedom to just do whatever you want.
Facebook is no different in this respect.
You make it sound like platforms are these wild west environments where anything goes. It's not like that.
Facebook or any similar website can not be expected to vet every single piece of content. There is simply too much and mistakes will be made with automated processes. But what they can do is vet individuals who routinely post inappropriate conduct.
My personal working definition of "racism" is any thought process that leads me to judge either an entire race or certain individuals within that race by the actions of other individuals within the race. That's no more justifiable if your name is Farrakhan than it is if your name is Yiannopoulos.
I don't know much about either of those people, though, so I can't say whether or not Facebook should boot them off.
The reason he was (finally) banned from Twitter was for encouraging his racist supporters to harass Leslie Jones and send her gorilla memes (a wildly racist trope, as you know).
Proof? I've always heard it insinuated that the instructured his followers to send her gorilla memes but the only thing I've seen Milo say about Leslie Jones was that she looks like a former male sex partner of Milo's.
Given that there is such a high correlation between religion, race and cultural background I don't think it's always possible to say that racism is fine but bigotry and xenophobia aren't.
We need to be able to criticize cultures, as they are choices and not unchangeable traits at birth, and some cultural behaviors are absolutely unhealthy. Your premise opens up certain cultures to be immune to criticism, which is a terrible thing.
In America, there isn't really. For the most part, immigrant groups have adopted a culture completely or substantially different than the one from which their ancestors came.
"Some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships, the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents."
Agreed. Facebook and Twitter are private companies so they can do whatever they want as far as I'm concerned. But given their reach, it is disturbing that their censorship of content (and CNN's inevitable approval of it) is clearly political bubble motivated.
Recent examples are James Woods and the Unplanned movie. While far more egregious speech (assuming the same standard) on the other side is given a pass.
It would be great if they would list all those that are blocked (maybe only the high profile ones) so that we could have some actual data around it.
So, some guy I never heard of is not fringe because he has 1.6 million subscribers, but Facebook "used to be popular" because they only have 2.38 billion users?
Come on now. The numbers clearly show that to Facebook, 1.6 million subscribers is very fringe.
1.6 million doesn't even get you into the top 5000 on YouTube.
I'd highly recommend the book "The Coddling of the American Mind." I just finished it and it talks a lot about our current cultural migration to seeing words == violence. Words are NOT violence. Violence is violence.
Eric Clanton, a UC Berkley employee hit a trump supporter with a bike lock, causing a skull fracture. He got three yeas probation. I'm not a fan of Trump either, but he could have killed that man, and should have gotten at least 3~6 months in jail for assault.
Violence is violence. Words are not dangerous (with the exception of specific calls to violence--which are not protected under US speech). New Zealand is fining a man $10k NZD for distributing the recent shooters manifesto; which honestly just makes that Aussie loon's words even more valuable in the eyes of many.
As far as the article and social media, who cares. Maybe this will finally get people to start paying to host their own stuff again. Big centralized social media is the opposite of what originally made the Internet awesome. The big players are focused on money, making us cattle, and their services have been shown to make us more anxious and depressed.
FB can do what they want with their platform, and if these people are calling for specific violence (Jones sometimes does cause he's just a moron; the others listed are fairly careful though), well that's not even protected under free speech laws in countries that have them.
I extract my Facebook events via the ical link and use the messenger with 3rd party apps. When I do log in to Facebook, I go directly to my profile page and I have 50+ notifications. I want to try to hit 100.
> If they're going to remove all the voices they think are "dangerous", what they're left with won't be fun or interesting. Just lukewarm, milquetoast, or worse... lopsided.
> Note the use of the word "fringe" in reference to people like Paul Joseph Watson, despite the number of views and subscribers(1.6 million) he has on YouTube alone. The word "fringe" used to mean something a lot more, well... fringe
fringe noun
1. A decorative border.
2. A marginal or peripheral part.
3. Those members of a political party, or any social group, holding unorthodox views.
Nope, still means the same thing or are we not trusting dictionaries now also?
"They" out and attack trans people and intentionally-and-maliciously spin up their literally-not-figuratively crazy followers to inundate with death threats the parents of kids who died in school shootings.
Where I come from, having a speaker own the results of that sort of thing isn't particularly controversial and I would think that you, specifically you, could find it within you to be better than this.
Do they? This is the video you're perhaps referring to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2oV1QKUMdM and the person in question was commented upon because they were already in the news as a trans activist making a scene in that same campus (to be allowed to the women's toilets). What counts as an "outing" at this point?
You might not like the tone or politics, but this is tame stuff, pumped up into some kind of evily evil monstery, because it doesn't follow the "Bien-pensant" etiquette. Which is the whole shtick of such people -- to give some controversial opinions and not the same-old.
Besides, people have been making fun and attacking all kinds of other people they disagree with -- or just wanna take a shot at -- for ages, without being de-platformed. Does it only matter when it's done from people on the right/conservative side (similarly to how, back in the day, it mattered only when it was done from the left/progressive side)?
The fussy way people are these days, they would run Zappa and Carlin off the stage today, never mind someone like Hunter Thompson...
Idk how HN will receive this but it's because CNN hard shills for the left. They're circumventing first amendment principles because of their power. They want to I censor anything that disagrees with their propaganda.
Black supremacy should be treated the same as white supremacy. There is nothing wrong with pride in your race, but when it comes at the expense of others, there needs to be a line drawn.
I would argue that there kind of is something inherently wrong with externalizing pride in your race beyond a point, even if it's not belittling another group.
It's arbitrary. It's a grouping that was largely invented to divide people. Even if people the same color as you did amazing things, that doesn't mean anything about you. Variance within groups is enormous. Variance between groups is comparatively small.
You should take pride in things that you actually deserve, that you earned. Even if people that share a genetic and cultural background with you are amazing, it's fundamentally the same problem as being outwardly proud of how successful your parents are. Sure, privately being proud that your dad is a great self-made CEO is okay, but making it a part of your identity or projecting that outwards as though that reflects your personal worth is insane and disfunctional.
I get that most people talking about pride in their race are trying to counter a racist narrative that makes people feel bad about their race, and I completely support that, but I really don't think it should go further than helping everyone feel comfortable and accepted in their skin.
Giving equal air time to falsehoods and inciteful language is in my opinion dangerous. An anti-vaxxer should not be given the same air time as a scientifically accredited researcher who has decades of research behind them. We don't give holocaust deniers a platform and I don't believe we should give any other racial or religious hate speech anything remotely approaching equal air time.
Facebook is a platform that allows children (13+) and families to share posts and content. I don't see how they can simultaneously provide an environment for religious and racial hate speech and anti-vaxxers to spread their FUD without compromising on one or the other. Either you're family friendly or you're a platform for 'edgy' content.
The right to free speech (in the US at least) is a tremendous and wonderful thing but there's no mention that every fool should be given equal air time in every newspaper, TV programme or now on private content platforms like Facebook. There are sites aimed at providing a haven for edgy or outright false and inciteful speech. Facebook and in my opinion Twitter are not it.
At the end of the day, that's for Facebook to decide. If Facebook decides they don't want to host content from them, that's their choice as the private company they are.
People keep bringing up "freedom of speech" when it comes to these trolls, like the world owes them something.
That would only be true if Facebook was truly private and not taking direction from government-funded entities like the Atlantic Council. The government isn't simply allowed to outsource censorship to do an end-run around the 1st Amendment. This remains true whether or not they claim to be doing so because of the dastardly Russians or anyone else.
Their claims of independence are irrelevant - they are funded directly by NATO. Its a pity the Hacker News woke crowd is so hostile to the 1st Amendment - a sign of the times.
I'm not hostile to the 1A, I just recognize that the Constitution applies to actions made by the government and not by private companies. Facebook can take money from NATO and still be private.
Funnily enough, even if Facebook was receiving money directly from several governments, they wouldn't be violating the First Amendment because they aren't the government. The First Amendment was designed to protect free speech from government (and the American government at that). It's arguable that even if the US government was providing some funding, they still wouldn't be violating the First Amendment.
So no, this is not a "First Amendment" issue. Nobody's telling these people they can't participate in society or publish their own blogs. They are just telling them that their anti-Semitic crap won't be allowed. And for that, we should all be thankful.
He's dangerous as he stokes the kind of fear, based on falsehoods, that cause a government such as ours to split up migrant families with no regard as to how to reunite them. And that's just the beginning of what will happen based on the kind of rhetoric Trump and Yiannopolous put out.
Milo is a known associate and darling of the alt-right.
Facebook by definition is milquetoast and that's part of what makes it great. This is like accusing Disney of being boring by not having an voice from the alt-right.
> how exactly are Milo Yiannopolous and Paul Joseph Watson "dangerous"?
"Pizzagate," for example. Milo and InfoWars pushed a loony conspiracy theory until some guy believed them enough to show up at a random restaurant with an assault rifle, which seems dangerous. They did it to sell fake nutritional supplements.
EDIT: They're welcome to continue ranting away on their own blogs, but I don't see any reason that Facebook should give them a free megaphone.
The MMR vaccine does not give full immunity(the reason booster shots exist), immigrants can enter the country while carrying the disease, and sometimes live virus vaccines like MMR can leave the people who get them contagious. The only ways to have zero cases of any disease in the country are to either eradicate it globally (like small pox), or to eradicate it nationally and prevent cross border transmission (like polio).
I can't possibly explain the mechanics of disease eradication without mentioning the movement of infected people. I don't want to get reported for bigotry though so I should simply have not replied on this topic to guarantee my continued use of this site. Unfortunately that means all the discussions here are partial. The ability of hacker news users to educate themselves with discussion is severely limited by the self censorship you impose on us. The fact you completely misunderstood what I said is not surprising as you likely choose to live in a censored world of partial arguments that leave you ignorant, uneducated, and comfortably numb. I would still never report you though.
Nothing in the post stated that immigrants are a major source of MMR, only that stopping cross border transmission is a requirement for effective eradication.
The same “slippery slope” argument that’s used to defend GPL3’s extraordinary licensing reach and “don’t let anyone search your phone” activism applies here as well.
Is it a slippery slope from Milo to White Supremacy? Yes. Does WS endorse violence towards others? Yes. Therefore, is it dangerous to others to give Milo a platform? Yes.
If you don’t believe in slippery slope arguments, that’s your right, but there’s quite a lot of sociology contradicting you, and the various internet platforms are realizing that the sociology (and memeticists) were probably right all along.
There has to be some sort of US free speech legal action that could be taken to stop this crack down by an internet platform company on free speech. I'm not sure how many people actually take FB seriously as a 'news' platform, but it can be useful to discuss the way corporate entities such as CNN present information on their specific home pages on Facebook.
Freedom of speech is only enforced by the courts w.r.t government entities. Private companies can censor speech for any reason, including "I feel like it."
Actually you're not entirely correct. Private property rights have been ignored in court cases before where that property was the "public square".
This has come up in cases of corporation-owned/built towns meant to house workers that then violated their residents (i.e, employees and their families) free speech rights in said towns. Constitutionally protected speech was upheld vs Private Property rights.
There have been very good arguments made that the same should be applied to Facebook, et. al.
This is super interesting. What was the specific argument for company towns? I'm not a lawyer, but I could imagine an argument where since the company town took on government functions, then it therefore should be treated as such with regards to constitutional protections. Am I close?
I don't exactly recall but I think they focussed just on private property rights since extraterritoriality isn't a thing (really that would make the government panic).
Exactly what I was thinking when I wrote my down voted comment. FB et al are enabling a public forum. If a town is built with a public town square the city can't subsequently decide who to ban from it based on their views, only if they are drunk and disorderly, a public nuisance etc.
They get to decide. Legally they are like a bar or a restaurant or a mall, it's their property, they can kick you out for practically any reason, protected classes aside, and political belief is not a protected class in the US.
"Free speech" doesn't apply to private entities at all. They have full rights to refuse service to someone for whatever reason they want to, same as any other business.
I don't agree at all. What about an energy company denying you connection to the grid because they don't like you? Or the telephone company doing the same? And what if these companies are monopolies in the area, or if there is only a handful of companies and they all make the same decision- perhaps out of fear of losing other customers to the competition?
Facebook is a de facto monopoly in the social networks space, and it's deciding to deny service to specific individuals based on their political opinions. It's not something I'm willing to shrug off as unimportant.
And I have to disagree with xkcd too on this one. Protecting the freedom of speech means setting limits to the freedom of others to harm you when they don't like what you say. People are free to disagree and switch channel/ unfollow/ stop buying a newspaper/ etc. But harassment and mobbing are a different matter.
Most the responses here revolve around Facebook's autonomy as a private platform. Meanwhile, Facebook's autonomy is called into question when it comes to fake news on the site that influences politics, or their ability to use the data on their platform as they see fit.
That would amount to “forced speech”, which is an even bigger no-no than restricting free speech, both legally and morally. It’s the reason warrant canaries are a thing.
I'm wondering if a tipping point will be reached where so many people will be deplatformed that users will start to flock to uncensored sites (think of Gab, but it doesn't have to be Gab) en masse to be able to read what they want to read, to the point where those sites will have enough "normal" users that they won't be complete cesspools like Voat is.
What will come first is one of these companies (probably Twitter, Facebook, or Google) will overreach in some way (like nuking the President's account or something else equally outlandish) and force a legal fight on the matter.
The nature of free speech on the internet, when the internet is an interconnected series of other people's back yards, is not a fight that Silicon Valley would prefer to have. This idea carries some amount of legal precedent for physical locations [1].
They'd also rather not have their status as platforms vs publishers reevaluated - the more control they exert, the closer they come to that point of being a publisher, and therefore responsible for the content they host.
1. Is there evidence that they've actually incited hatred and violence? If so, then they've violated the law. If there's no such evidence, then what justification would you use now?
2. Where's the evidence that hatred and violence are spreading?
3. Where's your evidence that censoring is successful in "stemming the spread of hatred and violence"?
Except the videos of Watson aren't spreading hate or violence but he is just another person with an opinion. Because it's unpopular opinion and because he worked with Infowars in the past it's easy to make him into the "bad guy".
So will CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, etc. finally be de-platformed for "Weapons of Mass Destruction". This has caused actual destruction in terms of trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's lives and the rise of ISIS with massive destruction in the middle east.
A trove of emails between Steve Bannon, Breitbart, Milo and I think Paul Joseph Watson were released a while ago. In those emails Bannon instructs Milo/etc to target specific groups. There were multiple instances of this throughout the emails.
They were coordinating and planning to falsely target groups with their hate speech, With the full knowledge that their targeting would cause repercussions in the real world.
I lost a friend to the Breitbart "prison planet", etc toxic sludge dump. He started sending me picture of people in tinfoil hats marked with "CNN", "NSA" and such.
Then he started sending me videos about aliens babies (birth defects) and flat earth. Finally he went full out racist, with muslim crusade theories.
Even to the point of telling me a city in Sweden was overrun with Muslims and a white man couldn't walk down the street safely. I have a friend living in that exact city, so I offered him a video chat with him. His immediate quote was "Your friend doesn't know what he's talking about".
Some people go farther and shoot up people in mosques, or churches. And Alex Jones, Steven Bannon, Milo, PJW, etc knowing planned for these ends to happen. We just don't have the legal means to hold them accountable.
So yes, these people are dangerous. Very dangerous, in the same way that Julius Streicher (Publisher of Der Stürmer before WWII) was. Streicher was tried at the Nuremberg trials and hung. Streicher was found guilty because he continued knowingly publishing outright falsehoods and hate speech in Der Stürmer after he was aware they were false.
Hopefully that precident can be used against the current crop of hate-mongers at some point.
Sorry for feeding the trolls in this thread.
Edit: Even after Julius Steicher was found guilty at the Nuremberg trials and executed, Andrew Anglin thought it was a good idea to resurrect it as "the daily stormer". If that doesn't raise the hairs on the back of your neck I don't know what will.
> In those emails Bannon instructs Milo/etc to target specific groups. There were multiple instances of this throughout the emails.
I suppose you mean the Breitbart emails. Targeting groups would not surprise me, they obviously have an agenda and bias, like most organizations. The real question is whether these same emails actually suggest that they don't believe the propaganda they published, and that they're just doing it to fulfill ulterior motives.
Edit: I see now you added considerably more text. Sorry to hear about your friend, but I don't see how Breitbart is any worse in principle than hocking crystals and astrology (and I know people who have stopped meds from this kind of influence). As long as they are not directly inciting violence, we should be policing actions not words.
You're suggesting Julius Steicher shouldn't have been charged in the Nuremberg trials?
There is a direct comparison to the actions taken leading up to and during WWII and now. It's the exact same material being published again.
In fact in some cases it's literally the exact same "Jew pulling puppet strings of <X> from above" posters/ads as were in WWII. You can look up some of the ads Brexit leave campaigns have put out.
There absolutely is a direct plan to incite violence, check the emails. These guys just know if they don't directly say it they're not accountable.
> You're suggesting Julius Steicher shouldn't have been charged in the Nuremberg trials?
If Breitbart and Bannon were acting solely at the direction of white supremacists or neo-Nazis, and so the ultimate agenda of ethnocleansing were clear, that's a totally different scenario. There's no need for charity or a presumption of innocence. The summaries of the emails I've read suggest that isn't the case.
> There absolutely is a direct plan to incite violence, check the emails.
I'd love to, but googling doesn't seem to turn up anything but comments and summaries. Given the emotionally charged nature of this topic, I'd prefer to read the source myself. If you have a link please share.
> And of course a video of Bannon laying things out
Sounds like he's laying out a campaign strategy. Again the question is whether he actually believes in it, or if he's pushing this agenda for ulterior motives.
An agent whose goal is to spread hate and misinformation is probably the best description of mass media from the days of Hearst onward, so you're not wrong.
There is a difference though. Uncritically amplifying the misinformation of the Bush administration with respect to Iraq having WMDs and doing no investigation on it is not making a mistake.
If Facebook is going to stop uncritically amplifying the misinformation and fear spread by those they banned then to be consistent that should equally apply to the journalistic organizations that spread misinformation and fear with respect to WMDs in Iraq.
a) Deplatforming should never be used for revenge, but to prevent bad outcomes in the future. You seem to entirely focus on the past instead of arguing for it to have any future benefit. Incidentally, "by now everyone knows it's satire" is one of the better arguments against banning infowars and milo nowadays seems unable to get enough of an audience to make a profit. Thus recent actions happening only now can easily be seen more as virtue signaling than effective deplatforming. But i guess better late than never.
b) It is only possible to deplatform small parties. Wanting to deplatform the US president or the largest media network in the US (or in your case all of them) is unreasonable.
> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a government, private institutions, and corporations.
> The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
We know Facebook is a private corporation. That's irrelevant, as such actions are censorship regardless. So please stop repeating the false claim that this isn't censorship because Facebook can do whatever it wants as a private entity.
WHY FREE SPEECH MATTERS:
Proponents of free speech are pro free speech as a general concept and principle, beyond what protections are afforded under American law today. The idea of free speech predates the existence of the United States. Free speech is hugely valuable to defend, because what society finds acceptable or unacceptable is very much subjective and changes with time/location/culture/setting/leadership/etc. Having an open exchange of ideas is good and necessary for the long-term health and stability of society. Furthermore, making available ideas that challenge current understanding is necessary if we care about being a collectively truth-seeking society.
Free societies are durable over the long term when they protect these rights at all times, for all people, for all ideologies. As a rule of thumb, if the speech in question is not advocating for direct physical violence, it should be permitted. Getting into the business of censoring indirect or non-physical harm is a huge slippery slope. We could frame virtually any idea as having some downstream negative externality and suggest that it should be disallowed. For example, capitalism, socialism, and communism could all be attacked in this manner. Should books on those topic be dropped?
WHY PRIVATE PLATFORMS' CENSORSHIP IS CONCERNING:
Large privately-owned platforms carry so much discourse across today's society, that censorship and deplatforming in those spaces has the same impact as governmental censorship, for most intents and purposes. Even if these corporations do not constitute what we might traditionally call a "monopoly", they control a large-enough share of traffic to have significant impact when they take artificial actions. That is, they constitute a digital public square. That sizable impact is exactly why they are being targeted (not just on this topic but others) by activists or other agents pushing for deplatforming/censorship favorable to their causes.
The big risk is this: when only a few entities funnel so much societal discourse or control our communication infrastructure or process payments, those entities making arbitrary decisions about who they serve has similar impacts/risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law. These companies should not act as a thought police and should not impose their own personal governance above what is minimally required by the law. Nor should they rely on the judgment of an angry mob to make decisions.
You can't say that these people have the right to say what they want on Facebook. And then turn around and say that Facebook has no right to determine what's on their website.
It's their website. They should have the right to determine what goes on it. And whoever doesn't like it can build their own Facebook.
Hate speech is still categorically speech and that's why this is censorship.
Seems most people are OK with having some ill defined notion of hate speech and censoring that.
Personally, I'm OK with being critical of what I hear and helping others be critical, so I'm generally OK with the existence of hate speech.
I think we can mostly all decide who is an asshole without making laws about what assholes can or can't SAY.
For the reasons stated in the parent, I would say having free speech is more important than not having hate speech.
FB is private property. Play by their rules or GTFO. People who scream about censorship in instances such as these are being willfully dismissive of the property rights of others. And that's a dangerous road to start down.
There is the legal idea of free speech, which constrains Congress, but also the moral idea of free speech which says you should let people with different opinions talk to each other and work out their disagreements verbally.
Facebook is, of course, not violating the legal principle of free speech. They are absolutely violating the moral principle. In the same way, if someone came over to your house and made some political argument you didn't like you would be perfectly within your rights to ask them to leave - but you'd be wrong if you claimed that you were open to hearing all kinds of opinions in your house, or that you were completely open minded.
Your comment is also needlessly hostile. Play by Facebook's rules or get out? Imagine applying this sentiment to any other objectionable thing Facebook has done. Facebook's users are just users, not automatons, and until Facebook takes over HackerNews and starts banning people for criticising them, then people should feel no hesitation about voicing fair criticism of Facebook here.
Someone comes to your house. Your private property. They proceed to call your daughter a whore.
Do you and your daughter kick them out?
Or
Do you and your daughter try to explain to them why your daughter's not a whore while you all sit in your living room?
It's a personal dilemma. I'll admit it.
But for my part, the guy's getting thrown out on his rear if he insults my daughters, significant other, or my mother or grand mother.
As a token concession, if he insults my father or any of my uncles, I'll let him have an, uh... "discussion"... with them while they "...work out their disagreements..." But that's not gonna end well for him either. They're all Vietnam Vets. The pissed off enlisted kind. Not the contemplative commissioned kind.
Very few people want absolute free speech. E.g. "Fire" in a crowded theater, or "Give me your money or I'll kill you" are things that most people agree should be restricted.
As I've mentioned the purpose of free speech is not to allow any person to deliver any collection of words. The purpose of free speech is to allow people to discuss different ideas. When, and to the extent that, you prevent discussion of ideas, you are opposing the moral principle of free speech.
If someone were to insult my daughter they'd be communicating the idea "Let's fight". If someone were to tell me that they discovered my daughter were engaging in prostitution, not as an insult, but to talk about it with me, of course that would be very different. I'd want to know so I could talk to her about it and find out what was going in her life. The issue is not the words, but the intent. Insults aren't welcome in my home. Sharing important information certainly is.
I would have no complaint if insults were banned on Facebook, or people were prevented from being mean to one another. I would also have no complaint if larger accounts were subjected to harsher scrutiny than smaller ones. That's not what's happening though. Some people, with certain political ideas, are punished for nominally violating rules. This is an effort to prevent discussing these ideas and is, as I mentioned, absolutely a violation of free speech.
Facebook is, of course, legally free to violate free speech. That's their choice. Likewise, it's my choice to criticize it and point out hypocrisy to the extent that they claim to support the free exchange of ideas.
Yea it would mean you're not open to discourse about that topic. Your totally within your rights to not want to discuss your daughter being a whore or not, but yes then you're not open in regards to that subject. And there is plenty a chance of that person being correct. Furthermore, there is a very significant different between Facebook (which acts like a town square) vs your private dwelling.
>Your [sp.] totally within your rights to not want to discuss your daughter being a whore...
And do you believe me to be violating a "...moral principle..." by refusing the discussion? Or, more precisely, do you feel my daughter and I have a moral obligation to openly discuss such subjects? Are we "...absolutely violating the moral principle..." of Freedom of Speech by bouncing the loudmouth?
> And there is plenty a chance of that person being correct.
That reads like you said that there's a fairly high chance that his daughter is a whore. You should either retract or clarify, depending on whether you meant that or not.
Your analogy works great except that "someone" is actually 1/4 of the humans currently alive, your "house" is now the primary, perhaps only, communication medium for those ~2 billion people, and its a couple million people in your basement calling your daughter a whore.
> Is it your view that a man's property rights are inversely proportional to the number of people who covet his property?
In so many words - I guess. I don't think property rights are naturally extended to Facebook as a global communication medium even if the communication does happen primarily on their property. I suppose I should have written that in the first place! At the very least, respecting those rights is not the paramount virtue. I also believe that the claim "private property first amendment need not apply" is not, by and large, a principled stance when ostensibly the same mob eg cheers on the lawsuit against a bakery for not making a cake.
>I don't think property rights are naturally extended to Facebook as a global communication medium even if the communication does happen primarily on their property...
Then that's where we differ, and we'll never agree. Apple and Toyota are still private property even if they sell and manufacture things all over the world. As more people covet an entity's property, the importance of protecting that entity's property rights becomes more important. Not less.
And, (to be honest, I had to google this whole "cake" thing), you again are well within your rights to refuse service to anyone if you are a members only service. For instance, Costco is members only, so they can even disallow blacks shopping there if they want. Please understand, I'm not saying that Costco has racial exclusivity clauses in its membership agreement. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just using that example to make the point that they would undeniably be within their rights to do so. Just as many members only country clubs do. It's private property. It's members only. It's Costco's rules. It's the country club's rules. Sorry rich black people, you'll have to golf somewhere else.
And again, the nicer the country club. The more people who covet it. The more people who want to use it. The more important it is for us to protect their property rights. Property rights and Freedom of Speech are very much the same thing. You don't really have one without the other. If you infringe a racially exclusive country club's property rights on some twisted notion of free speech, you are very much necessarily infringing the free speech rights of the country club.
I agree with the spirit of your first sentence. This is exactly what we want.
> you should let people with different opinions talk to each other and work out their disagreements verbally
But this part is sadly not happening. Less than ever is there any reason to form a consensus. Social repercussions don't seem to work anymore, now that everyone can find communities believing in whatever they want to, no matter how incompatible those believes are with those of others. We have to find ways to reverse that trend, before it can only be resolved with violence. Everyone of us, including cooperation like facebook, taking responsibility seems like one of the best options we have.
Consensus shouldn't be the goal. Exposure to the other side and other ideas should be. Some people will be persuaded, some won't be. Some people will find value in knowing more sides of an issue. Some people will be satisfied by sharing their ideas as they want.
When I make an important decision I like to explore options and arguments for and against those options. Imagine that your kids are of the age they need to be vaccinated. You read about it online and find tons of positive things, but in real life your friends tell you that vaccines will cause autism. If you post about it online then you'll be banned because the government is trying to cover it up. You create a post talking about it, and sure enough - you are banned! That's pretty suspicious - isn't it? How can you trust that you understand an argument if you can't see the reasons supporting the other side?
Conversely, suppose you hear someone say vaccines cause autism. You google it, read the arguments of the vaccine-autism connection people and decide that - no, they probably don't. You're now free to vaccinate your children with confidence.
Not for everything, correct. But there also are ideas that can hardly coexist and areas were consensus seems necessary. Politics is an obvious one, since at the end of the day the laws we make will govern all of us.
> You google it, read the arguments of the vaccine-autism connection people and decide that - no, they probably don't. You're now free to vaccinate your children with confidence.
It'd be great if the world / human nature worked that way. But then we also wouldn't have got to a point were falling vaccination rates are a problem.
> [..] If you post about it online then you'll be banned [..]
Simply banning everyone doesn't sound like a good way to form consensus, doesn't it? That's a bit of a straw man, isn't it? Have you ever seen someone advocating for banning someone for genuinely asking questions? Do you think the people this article is about were just asking questions?
But yeah, determining who is a bad faith actor isn't an easy task. Especially in highly divisive times.
Just because Facebook can do something doesn't mean Facebook should.
Freedom of speech is much more than a legal concept about governments and governed. It's also a guideline on how we should structure an open society going at least back to Ancient Greece.
Isegoria, the right for every adult male to free political speech(to address the assembly)?
Parrhesia, freedom of speech in the courts and assemblies(and outside public assemblies)?
No, I'm pretty sure it has always had to do with the governments and the governed. It seems popular these days to conflate the general concept tolerance with freedom of speech.
Tolerance has it's limits though as per the tolerance paradox. Freedom of speech says the government shouldn't draw the line, but society at large absolutely should be allowed to.
EDIT: Outside of specific venues and contexts what you could say in Ancient Athens society was much more rigidly defined and there was much less tolerance for breaking those norms than in the USA today.
That is true for content publishers. However, if those systems are claimed to be public squares, then there is a right to free speech for citizens of the USA there.
The tech companies cannot have it both ways. They want to be publishers, then take the responsibilities and liabilities of publishers.
This is a crucial point, IMO. Facebook et al need to decide (or we as a society need to decide) whether they're a public square - in which case they have no business censoring what people choose to say except in cases speech that is clearly illegal - or a content publisher making choices about what to publish and what not.
(In Facebook's case, at least, I'd say that ever since they moved on from the simple chronological "wall" showing posts as submitted, replacing it with a "timeline" where their algorithms - with plenty of input from "sponsors", etc - decide what you'll see, they have chosen to become a content publisher.)
Fine, in the content publisher role they can decide that certain content, or the speech of certain parties, will not be published through their platform.
But then they must also be held responsible for what they do choose to publish - including liability for harmful content such as libel, false advertising, etc.
By that reasoning, people who "scream" demanding that all races be let into restaurants are also being willfully dismissive of the property rights of others.
Just wait till people on the other side of the spectrum start getting blowback because establishment left are done with them, then we’ll hear how speech is being kerbed in the interest of the establishment and corporatism.
Left-aligned bloggers/organizations that report on extremist right politics got caught up in a mass ban for their reporting and cried foul about it just last week actually.
Legally they have no obligation but IMHO Zuckerberg does have an ethical obligation to uphold freedom of speech, particularly as a citizen of a country founded on the principle.
Facebook is as influential and dominant over information as the U.S. government has ever been. Responsibility comes with power and money is Facebook's only motivation here. They're worried about the financial repercussions of upholding this most sacred of American principles.
They fear the backlash from least principled people among us, people that simply can't comprehend the concept of defending even your sworn enemy's human rights.
Zuckerberg is compromising his own ethics for money, clearly proving once and for all that he truly cannot be trusted great power. An intelligent billionaire that is unwilling to stand up to a mob is truly a sad excuse for a human being.
Their legal obligation is one thing, their moral/ethical obligations are another. So are you technically right? Yes. But are you completely overlooking the real problem here? Also yes.
Allowing these platforms to silence anyone at any time for any (non-discriminatory) reason is giving them an absurd amount of power. The least we could do is force them to be transparent - give us a list of who they've banned and exactly why they were banned so we can make informed decisions about supporting those platforms.
As it stands, we have no way of knowing if these bans were arbitrary or justified. And since we depend on private companies for so many fundamental aspects of our lives, it only makes sense that the obligation to protect fundamental rights should also extend to those companies.
I don't agree with this at all. If they want to put a big warning on it, contain the posts, etc. that's fine, but banning is not cool. One person's radical fascist is another person's ardent hero. Facebook should support freedom of speech, not freedom from speech.
The only thing that the constitutional right to freedom of speech guarantees is that the government cannot arrest you for what you say.
It doesn’t give you the right to continue using someone’s platform as a megaphone if they decide you’re an asshole.
Being banned from Facebook doesn’t mean that these people no longer have the right or ability to spread their message. They can use another platform, or make (or host!) their own website, or print and distribute literature, or go stand on a street corner with an actual megaphone.
Facebook is not the government, and— agree with it or not— they can decide who uses their platform and how.
My apologies, perhaps I was not clear in my previous statement. I recognize that this is a private corporation, hence why I said in my last sentence that Facebook should support freedom of speech, not freedom from speech, which I meant as on their platform.
These platforms were commanded by official government bodies to censor. The house homeland security committee wrote an open letter to Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Microsoft after the Christchurch attack
> Your companies must respond to these toxic and violent ideologies with resources and attention.
Now Milo is being kicked out. Now Infowars is being kicked out. It's a clear act of government censorship.
Why do you think they wrote to all big platforms at once? Because they want to completely shut the information down. They want to eliminate the possibility of going elsewhere. They want to eliminate choice completely. They want to eliminate this speech.
What Facebook actually supports is not pissing off their customers. Their business is based on advertising. Advertisers are their customers. I'm not sure why anybody expects anything else.
The ignorance in these comments is astounding. Facebook has already banned many anti-war voices that can in no way be construed as "racist" or bigoted. Its one thing to claim that private companies have the right to silence and censor people, and quite another to cheer on the practice as somehow being desirable.
It's alarming. I feel like the common sentiment on censorship, and many other issues, among my in-group has shifted under my feet. We have existing laws against harassment and terroristic threats, and in the case of Alex Jones it seems to me that those legal avenues are being pursued properly, so de-platforming serves only to create a dangerous precedent. As an anti-war leftist, I know that my group is next on the chopping block if it's not there already.
Yes these are private platforms, but that line of reasoning ignores the extent of the coordination between governments and these corporations. Do any of you Americans ever think how this kind of precedent will play out in smaller countries, where Facebook blindly does the bidding of corrupt governments? The internet and social media networks are the telephone and mail systems of the 21st century. At least until it is more feasible to have an online presence without going through multiple corporations as intermediaries, I think we need to be more diligent about protecting even the ugliest forms of speech on private platforms.
It doesn't really say why these where banned. From a cursory glance, some of these fall into the "anti-vaxxer" and "anti-trans" group. Also, some accounts that you may call "anti-war" or "anti-police" are posting very graphic images of war or "police work". Those bans are warranted on terms of service grounds.
As for the "over 800" you mention, here's what the source (RT) actually says:
"Facebook is again being called out for purging political accounts too far left and right of center, after it removed more than 800 pages just in time for the 2018 midterm elections. Some had millions of followers.
Many of the affected pages were supposedly sharing links between groups using fake accounts, which then clicked "Like" on the posts, artificially upping their engagement numbers. This "inauthentic behavior" violates Facebook's anti-spam policies and goes against "what people expect" from Facebook, the company said."
That's basically platform abuse, so a ban is warranted as well.
To be clear, I'm not necessarily in favor of banning any of these "alternative media" outlets, but I can imagine why those may have been banned.
You don't have to imagine - its because they are at odds with the official government narrative. Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with "right" or "left" or "hate speech" or "graphic imagery" and it has everything about regaining control of public discourse - a control that was lost with the explosion of the internet. Its a concerted effort, across every major tech platform, to use restrictive policies (that are selectively enforced) to ban alternative policies on "service grounds". You could try googling some more information about this, but Google has likewise deranked and delisted alternative voices. Everyone interested in freedom of speech and freedom of thought should be horrified by this assault on free discource - it leads to only one place.
Now let's proceed to people who are _actually_ causing harm, such as, for example, anti-vaxxers, antifa, etc. Alex Jones, chemtrails, give me a break. He doesn't even believe in that shit himself. :-)
In fact, let's also ban CNN from there. It has been peddling fake conspiracy theories and divided the country for the past 2 years pretty much non-stop. That's kinda harmful innit?
Isn't that what they're doing already? How is Alex Jones "dangerous"? He's a joke, he doesn't even take himself seriously. If the stated goal is to minimize harm, then CNN has caused far more harm to the American people than Alex Jones ever will.
So it is that you have a better handle on who is "dangerous" and who is not than FB does.
Why do you feel your analysis is any more valid than FB's?
Just as a matter of full disclosure, my position is, FB's private property, FB's rules. Just like my house, or yours I suspect, if you don't like the rules you have to leave. So that's my position on this whole thing. I'm just wondering why you think we should trust your word over FB's?
All you guys using freemarket/private enterprise excuses to support this have no justification supporting net neutrality or any antidiscrimination 'public accommodation' laws ie (forced SSM cake baking, government interference in private business's choice of customer/employee). Either government steps in for the greater good or it doesn't. You can't have it both ways.
For years 'InfoWars' was promoted on YouTube, allegedly they now ban Alex Jones and his brand of media, along with - now - Facebook.
During the Bush years he did act as a 'gatekeeper' for people questioning the war. Rather than people get to useful facts they only got as far as Alex Jones rants. This had a useful effect of neutering anyone questioning the particulars of how the war started.
I would not say it is sad to see him banned from every platform but you have to wonder if he has outlived his usefulness.
The bigger problem is the recommendation algorithms, giving him the oxygen of publicity. People would never have discovered his content without these algorithms, unless a friend personally recommended 'Infowars' et al.
We should still have the option to read or watch content that does not agree with us in the realm of politics. I have not read 'Mein Kampf' myself, however I have listened to that one clip of Hitler actually talking rather than delivering a speech. I found it useful for understanding a little bit more about that war. There may be neo-nazis we need to protect from such hate speech but it is also at a cost to understanding history.
With Alex Jones there is that theory that he is the same person as Bill Hicks. That story does interest me and I would like the option to study some original Alex Jones content to see if that is a credible conspiracy story or just some entertaining hogwash. If every trace of Alex Jones is banned from the internet then I won't have that option.
> The Facebook spokesperson said such factors include whether the person or organization has ever called for violence against individuals based on race, ethnicity, or national origin; whether the person has been identified with a hateful ideology; whether they use hate speech or slurs in their about section on their social media profiles; and whether they have had pages or groups removed from Facebook for violating hate speech rules.
The reason it's bogus is because there are TONS of people who talk about wanting to kill so called neo-nazis on facebook and they sure aren't getting kicked off.
I have many friends who have said something to the effect within the past few years.
To hate a hate group is completely acceptable.
ChapoTrapHouse routinely incites its followers toward being OK with harrassment, property crime, and violence with their class warfare rants and advocating for mass property redistribution. They aren't on FB though.
My personal belief is that Facebook shouldn't be trying to censor speech this way, it's impossible to be (or appear to be) impartial. The people who are booted off just go to their own corner of the internet and never have their ideas challenged.
The kathy griffin image was a twitter post, not a facebook post. And while that was not a good post, that was a single incident. I don't think it would be correct to put Kathy Griffin and Alex Jones in the same bucket.
I think comedians especially should get a lot of slack, but I'd say this fits the bill for being "dangerous" based on the article.
My point is that this won't be viewed as being fair no matter what Facebook does, and rules like these allow you to easily target basically anyone. I don't know the answer, especially when you're an international company. I do think it's going to cause more political animosity though.
While I have no definitive answer, Farrakhan to me has mostly seemed like an extremist who doesn't neatly fit into the (probably overly simplistic) right-left dichotomy.
Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies. They are the only services in their class to take seriously if you're looking to gain a following. If they didn't exist, alternative services would spring up. But alternative services know they can't compete with FB/YouTube/Twitter, so none exist. When people say "if you don't like FB's rules, use another service" it ignores that Facebook is the reason there isn't another service and thus has some responsibility to uphold values we've collectively decided as a society are important.
The issue is not whether Facebook is breaking the law but whether philosophically the market leader in a category should get to decide who can use their product when their product category is fundamental to modern life. Saying "no one is owed a platform" brings us no closer to an answer.