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Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

theguardian.com

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Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#321

Post by smsm42 »

red_admiral wrote: post #45
RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #28

If you're a Facebook user and you are unhappy with the way the company strongarms, censors and manipulates its audience, the most effective way for you to express this dissatisfaction is to close your account, block social media bugs and encourage your friends and family to do the same. Facebook doesn't care how you feel when you use their service; their bottom line simply depends on your contribution to the statisti…

No. It's more effective to lobby your local member of parliament/congress to pass laws restricting what media organisations can or cannot do. Granted, by "more effective" I mean something like 0.1% instead of 0.01%, but it's worth a try.

If you measure everything purely by effect, there are more efficient ways of restricting media organizations from doing certain things. E.g., many news organizations avoided republishing the famous Muhammad cartoons, not because their parliaments were prohibiting it, but because they were afraid of violent retaliation. If you are OK with abandoning morals, you can be very efficient in preventing people from doing things. Mafia can be very efficient in preventing witnesses from talking, for example.

Now, you can say, employing threat of government-mediated violence through congressional law is not the same as employing the threat of direct violence. But the only real difference I can see is that you can claim "it's all for common good". Oh, wait, they do the same too...

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#322

Post by smsm42 »

kefka wrote: post #232
Dirlewanger wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. Government should have no say what a private entity can/can't do in their walled garden. The fact that over a billion people use it is a different issue.

A private individual, sure. I'll accept that argument. But a corporation should have no such leeway. Companies exist for the mutual benefit of the citizens, and their shareholders. Just because we've lost that sense of ethic doesn't make it not true. Now, the predominant view is "A company can fuck over whomever they want, as long as it lies within the confines of the law", is preposterous. Public corporations are al…

> Public corporations are already required to be sociopathic, given the legal requirement of profit

There is no such legal requirement, it's a myth (disproved many times in many places if you only bothered to look it up).

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#323

Post by PhasmaFelis »

jlmorton wrote: post #186
jMyles wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can concede that there could be good reasons to pull the photo. Yeah?

Sure. Facebook is not a history book. It's a social network with kids on it. Napalm girl is a powerful photo. So are photos of Aushwitz. So too are photos of trench warfare. Saddam Hussein's hanging is historically important, as are all the images of children killed in Aleppo, or drowned families washing up on shores in Italy. That doesn't mean we need all these things on Facebook. I'm sensitive to censorship, and Fa…

> It's a social network with kids on it.

So is reality.

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#324

Post by joelberman »

wyager wrote: post #265
Daishiman wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You become a medium of public discourse with network effects. That seems perfectly fine to regulate.

I disagree that anything on Facebook is "public" in the sense of "public ownership". Facebook is a private platform. Just because things are (maybe) publicly visible doesn't mean they're public property. Should the government be able to force people to put up or take down posters in public-facing Windows?

If I buy or rent space for a billboard I am not allowed to put anything I wish on it. That is no different than putting a poster in a public-facing window. It gets more interesting when a website in one country is offensive to another country.

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#325

Post by smsm42 »

kefka wrote: post #282
landryraccoon wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP but: A corporation crosses the line when it has a single person who is protected from the legal actions of the corporation by statue (i.e., a shareholder). At this point the quasi-libertarian theory of a corporation as "just a bunch of guys" completely breaks down as there is a special legal protection for shareholders. A corporation isn't a partnership. A partnership is just a group of people who have agr…

The state can still attack people in the corporate structure individually. For example, if VP Jones decides to go execute a competitor, VP Jones can be brought to trial for murder. But if that company decides to, say dump toxic chemicals in the waterways, it's only a few hundred thousand dollars, versus millions to dispose of them. Or if the company decides to refuse doing a recall because the cost of recall doesn't…

> Corporations can, and do, a great deal of harm.

People can, and do, a great deal of harm. There's nothing in corporation that is not actions of people consisting it. Corporations are not able to do anything by themselves, there's always some person that takes specific action. "Company" never decides to dump toxic chemicals, there's always a person deciding to do it, and there's always a person doing it. At least until we invent AI, then we may have something else. Until then, there's only people all the way down.

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#326

Post by mary_fortran »

I wonder if it was an IP issue? That photo was bu Nick Ut, a person who makes his living taking photographs, and can be licensed for use by its owner, the Associated Press

http://www.apimages.com/Collection/Landing/Photographer-Nick...

Even the Wikipedia only shows a thumbnail of it, and they received express permission to use it.

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#327

Post by voxic11 »

jlmorton wrote: post #186
jMyles wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can concede that there could be good reasons to pull the photo. Yeah?

Sure. Facebook is not a history book. It's a social network with kids on it. Napalm girl is a powerful photo. So are photos of Aushwitz. So too are photos of trench warfare. Saddam Hussein's hanging is historically important, as are all the images of children killed in Aleppo, or drowned families washing up on shores in Italy. That doesn't mean we need all these things on Facebook. I'm sensitive to censorship, and Fa…

Thirteen year old kids and up though right?

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#328

Post by Daishiman »

wyager wrote: post #265
Daishiman wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You become a medium of public discourse with network effects. That seems perfectly fine to regulate.

I disagree that anything on Facebook is "public" in the sense of "public ownership". Facebook is a private platform. Just because things are (maybe) publicly visible doesn't mean they're public property. Should the government be able to force people to put up or take down posters in public-facing Windows?

I'm pretty sure that if you put a two-story tall porn image on your property it's not going to last long. I'm pretty sure that if you post a hugely racist message as big, or some other things, not matter how public that space will be, you'll run into some problem with the law whether at local or federal level.

Whether you're a private or public platform here is not as relevant as the fact that is is a public forum, it is practicing certain forms of censorship, and it a medium of information. Other platforms get regulations applied to them in many respects too.

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#329

Post by PavlovsCat »

mabbo wrote: post #126
falcolas wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the freedom of expression is generally believed to apply more broadly than just to governments. For example, from the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights, Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontier…

Sarcastically, I ask you: I would like to express myself by spray-painting swastikas on the side of your house. Is that protected? I would expect not, but that means there's a line somewhere. Where is it?

There isn't a line, there are poles. Even laws are interpreted by judges who have moods, and what not. Why quibble about imaginary lines in an instance where it's not anywhere close? Could such a line even exist? What is the precise length of the coast of any island? Depends on the resolution, and if you have high enough resolution it also depends on the precise moment you measure.

Can you name any "line", at all, in any sort of dilemma? Obviously it's okay for you to gently tip on the shoulder of someone blocking your way in certain situations, but in other's it's rude, not to mention "physically interacting" with them with more force and different intentions. Where do you draw "THE LINE"? Between being polite and being impolite, as well as being impolite and assault? How would you write the rule book to determine it in any situation for a minimum wage Facebook employee or algorithm so they wouldn't have to apply any of their own judgement? And just because you couldn't, just because nobody including God could, would you still refrain from judging even extreme cases with some certainty?

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#330

Post by npiazza83 »

falcolas wrote: post #219
mabbo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sarcastically, I ask you: I would like to express myself by spray-painting swastikas on the side of your house. Is that protected? I would expect not, but that means there's a line somewhere. Where is it?

I'm afraid this analogy is off-base. To echo Ivan's comment, I'm not offering my house as a freely available communication medium to the world, from which I profit. If I were, then this would be a more valid line of argument. Nobody's spraypainting on Facebook's house here. They're using it as it was intended: as a method of one-to-many communication for messages which contain nothing illegal.

A more apt analogy might be our phone networks for person to person communication.

The public thrives on the basis of such "dumb carriers" as the internet itself.

I can forsee either regulation or self imposed ubiquitous clear CATEGORIES of rights for speech from users on sites and applications similar to software licensing.

You would have a Facebook under the A Facebook under the A Facebook under the A Facebook under the

either under a parent company or as distinct entity. Some are free, some cost money, some may receive tax benefit or government subsidy, all according to how they align with net neutrality regulations, are staffed and moderated.

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