Agreed, there is a fine line and it should not be decided by companies.
If it's that company's site then I don't see who else has any business getting involved. Do you want someone telling you what (legal) content you can or can't show? Why?
They can do whatever they want but we can comment on whether they're accomplishing what they think they are or if they're creating a culture of closed dialog. When multiple major companies start taking similar policies for manipulating content we can and should call out the trend if for no other reason than to discuss its pros and cons.
These walled gardens have have TOSes. Extremist or political, content that violates TOS gets taken down .
From the Facebook TOS, and YouTube's is much the same, with different, more casual verbiage: You will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user. You will not post content that: is hate speech, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence. That is such a broad swathe that any unpopular opinion can get disqualified. Is me posting a video of how to sharpen a kitche…
Or as US Supreme Court Justice Stewart said:
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."
That was in reference to identifying "hardcore pornography" but seems appropriate in talking about hate speech, threats, bullying, and a variety of other issues.
These walled gardens have have TOSes. Extremist or political, content that violates TOS gets taken down .
From the Facebook TOS, and YouTube's is much the same, with different, more casual verbiage: You will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user. You will not post content that: is hate speech, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence. That is such a broad swathe that any unpopular opinion can get disqualified. Is me posting a video of how to sharpen a kitche…
They need broad rules because whatever rule you come up with, some clown is going to try and get around it. Or just post something obviously against the spirit of the rules then argue about it. Users don't have a stake in Facebook, YouTube etc, but the companies running them do. They'd probably all prefer to just have "don't be a dick" but we live in a world full of pedants and lawyers and professional irritants so by having something a little more concrete it preempts a lot of rather tedious complaints.
If you're a rebel prophet with something exciting to say then no-ones stopping you paying a small amount of money for a domain name and hosting and away you go. If you can't do that then I'd agree there's censorship and there's a problem. Other than that, you should have absolutely no expectation that other people are going to do the heavy lifting for you, whether that's paying for your hosting/bandwidth, or taking the heat when users, advertisers etc complain about your content.
I wonder what it is they hope to accomplish by blocking this type of content. One could argue that what actually happens is a Streisand effect that promotes the views these companies are attempting to squash. My belief is that movements like Trump are a direct effect of overreaching censorship by the left which has essentially created a new right wing movement due to people backlashing against left wing media shaping…
If by "extremist content" you mean religious fanatics beheading people, or calling people to arms, or giving tips on producing bombs or whatever, then you are entitled to treat this as "unpopular ideas" which "need defending in a free society" or whatever, but don't be surprised if sane, rational people take a somewhat different view and decide they don't want to spread hatred, nor leave themselves open to lawsuits for the honour of hosting this content for free. All companies like to talk about fostering freedom or whatever, but as organisations which exist to make profit it's partly because censorship costs them money, and also the more content they have, the more of a surface they have to make money from. They don't really give a shit about you or your freedom, and there's precious little internal conflict about whether to host this months crop of terrorist atrocities.
Agreed, there is a fine line and it should not be decided by companies.
If it's that company's site then I don't see who else has any business getting involved. Do you want someone telling you what (legal) content you can or can't show? Why?
Why do people confuse legality with morality? I can't legally stop Youtube from censoring videos. But I can criticize the practice, think it's unethical, or be concerned about the consequences.
If it's that company's site then I don't see who else has any business getting involved. Do you want someone telling you what (legal) content you can or can't show? Why?
They can do whatever they want but we can comment on whether they're accomplishing what they think they are or if they're creating a culture of closed dialog. When multiple major companies start taking similar policies for manipulating content we can and should call out the trend if for no other reason than to discuss its pros and cons.
No-one's saying you can't discuss it. But where's the discussion?
I just don't see how you one can say "company A has no right to decide what appears on company A's servers" without following up with some watertight legal or moral reason why this should not be the case. Of course they should be able to.
One man's "extremist" video is another man's political views. Where does it stop? Does a video supporting Trump become an extremist video if enough people complain about it? What about a video that shows you how to take apart a pistol for cleaning?
The problem is that current social media software just makes it too easy for extremist bubbles to form. There is no feedback, no discussion, no diffusion, no guiding culture and plenty of false information spread by people who would be unable to publish anything to larger audiences if it wasn't practically for free. To a certain extent, economic systems do filter out people who are challenged at seeking truth. Internet technology has weakened this filter and here we are witnessing attempts at fixing this problem.
One man's "extremist" video is another man's political views. Where does it stop? Does a video supporting Trump become an extremist video if enough people complain about it? What about a video that shows you how to take apart a pistol for cleaning?
Agreed, there is a fine line and it should not be decided by companies.
> it should not be decided by companies
I don't think it is. It's basically a covered up government imposed censorship.
I wonder what it is they hope to accomplish by blocking this type of content. One could argue that what actually happens is a Streisand effect that promotes the views these companies are attempting to squash. My belief is that movements like Trump are a direct effect of overreaching censorship by the left which has essentially created a new right wing movement due to people backlashing against left wing media shaping…
If by "extremist content" you mean religious fanatics beheading people, or calling people to arms, or giving tips on producing bombs or whatever, then you are entitled to treat this as "unpopular ideas" which "need defending in a free society" or whatever, but don't be surprised if sane, rational people take a somewhat different view and decide they don't want to spread hatred, nor leave themselves open to lawsuits f…
Parent comment didn't say they were ideas that "need defending in a free society", or anything about freedom. He just said that censoring them might have negative consequences.
I don't know if it's correct in this case. But I know that in general, people see censorship as validation of the ideas being censored, and also as a rallying flag for something to be angry about.
I wonder what it is they hope to accomplish by blocking this type of content. One could argue that what actually happens is a Streisand effect that promotes the views these companies are attempting to squash. My belief is that movements like Trump are a direct effect of overreaching censorship by the left which has essentially created a new right wing movement due to people backlashing against left wing media shaping…
If by "extremist content" you mean religious fanatics beheading people, or calling people to arms, or giving tips on producing bombs or whatever, then you are entitled to treat this as "unpopular ideas" which "need defending in a free society" or whatever, but don't be surprised if sane, rational people take a somewhat different view and decide they don't want to spread hatred, nor leave themselves open to lawsuits f…
I'm not talking about videos of beheadings (although there's a case for keeping things like that around too to help educate people). I'm talking about suppression of everyday right wing viewpoints. Things like this: http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-supp...
For context, I'm not right-wing myself but absolutely object to censoring content based on political viewpoints such as this.