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Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world

#51

Post by drzaiusapelord »

antirez wrote: post #37

The United States are a great country, but in the topic of censorship, balanced politically correctness and easy to speak about all the topics, I believe that the old Europe has very interesting things to say, so I'm also a bit worried that the technological leadership of US may have an effect on what is believed to be sensible to discuss / post in Europe too. I hope is the other way, that is, we european can in some…

> I believe that the old Europe has very interesting things to say

If anything European countries are much more deeply invested into censorship than the US. The UK's incredibly short sighted libel laws for example. Or the EU's ridiculous "hate speech" laws. I find it amusing you decry US political correctness in favor or Europe's much more tough legislation.

Also the EU censors items on Facebook all the time, usually in regards to protecting minorities from "hate speech." Facebook is beholden to every government it has a presence in. Lots of examples of how the European system works here:

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8189/social-media-censors...

I'm not even going to go into eastern Europe's epidemic of murdered journalists and other basic human rights issues that Europe can't or won't fix.

Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world

#52

Post by [deleted] »

antirez wrote: post #37

The United States are a great country, but in the topic of censorship, balanced politically correctness and easy to speak about all the topics, I believe that the old Europe has very interesting things to say, so I'm also a bit worried that the technological leadership of US may have an effect on what is believed to be sensible to discuss / post in Europe too. I hope is the other way, that is, we european can in some…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world

#53

Post by DanBC »

dmix wrote: post #26
mark_l_watson wrote: post #17

The FSF has a lot of good material to read on why we don't want centralized control of our data. Applies to Facebook, Google, etc. As a card carrying FSF member (and supporter of EFF, ACLU, Software Conservancy) it embarrases me a little that I probably spend 30 minutes a day using Facebook, Google +, and Twitter; but I enjoy them, I keep the material I produce largely on my own infrastructure, and I work to prevent…

Why can't your friend be responsible for not posting violent pictures? Otherwise a) you confront the person politely telling them why you think it was inappropriate or b) unfriend/mute them. Reddit uses a NSFW filter over videos that you have to click through to see the video first... that would also be up to the user to mark as NSFW... or you unfriend them. Or even a downvote button is community-based. The reason he…

> Why can't your friend be responsible for not posting violent pictures?

Because Facebook have already said that some content is not allowed on their platform.

For a while women who'd had breast cancer and had reconstructive surgery were posting images of their new breasts, or of their now nipple-less breast with tattoos. Or breast-feeding mothers were posting images of their feeding children. Facebook said that those images were not allowed, and removed a bunch of them. But at the same time Facebook was doing nothing about beheading videos. It was weird to see a mother being banned for posting a photo of a feeding child, and someone else not get banned for posting terrorist propaganda.

If facebook is saying "anything goes, as long as it's legal" that's one thing, but as soon as they start to control what's allowed it's reasonable for users to say what content should be more tightly controlled.

Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world

#54

Post by mgleason_3 »

Americans are so bought into the idea that "explicit" images are bad that they can't see another viewpoint. Its become "natural". And, as the author pointed out, Americans are so blind to it that you don't even see the problem with censoring nipples but not beheadings.

We literally cant see that noone should be injured by seeing a womans breast, but seeing a beheaded body - thats OK?

Its interesting to see this story come out so soon after the LA times story about libel and the fight against court ordered take-down of posts critical of companies (think Yelp, etc.).

Maybe the point is that censorship shouldn't be allowed?

Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world

#56

Post by briandear »

danjoc wrote: post #39
shiftpgdn wrote: post #2

If you don't like Facebook's actions then don't use it. Having open speech on Facebook's platform is not an inalienable right. I don't agree with Facebook's privacy policies and thus have deleted my account and use other platforms. This isn't difficult. This article is tantamount to saying "Woe is me, NYT won't publish my op-ed." and expecting anyone to take you seriously.

>If you don't like Facebook's actions then don't use it. In other words, "You're free to speak, as long as no one can hear you." Nice bait. Look at all your replies. >Having open speech on Facebook's platform is not an inalienable right. So long as the government ensures that Facebook is the only platform via patent/copyright/trademark enforcement, I beg to differ. When I can build a Facebook clone of my own and not…

Trademark? Why would you need to violate trademarks? MySpace got crushed by FB -- IP and trademarks had nothing to do with it, unless you want to fool people into thinking that you were Facebook.

Build your own system or come up with your own great idea. You don't need to copy Facebook any more than they had to copy MySpace.

You just need to put in some original hard work and make it happen. It isn't Facebook's fault you can't come up with something better that people want to use. There's no patent on social networking.

How would it be fair if you invested a billion dollars in code and marketing only to have someone come along and steal your code? You might not like patents, but they will help protect you and your great idea if you every execute on one.

Facebook isn't stopping you from doing anything.

Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world

#57

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

equalarrow wrote: post #18

I don't get why this is such an issue. I understand the sheer numbers of people that use fb and get their 'news' from it, but it amazes me that people are shocked that fb censors the content. Facebook never claimed to be a news organization nor part of the 5th estate (which, pretty much doesn't exist). So that being the case, I would never expect fb to be a partner for democracy. Just because some recent revolutions…

Normally I'd agree with you, but Facebook have absolutely been positioning itself as a news source. They even publicly talk/gloat (as they should) about how Facebook was used to disseminate information during the Arab Spring.

So they really can't have it both ways. If they want to be a source of news, they're going to get flack if they hide stories, even if it was done by an algorithm.

And all of us here know that Facebook is a private company and they can do anything they want, but for the majority of people that use the Internet, Facebook and Google are the Internet to them. So for a lot of people, this feels like Facebook is "censoring the Internet."

Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world

#58

Post by mtgx »

Twitter is just as bad, if not worse. Take yesterday for instance. The Hillary health issue EXPLODED on Reddit and other places within 2h. And I saw single tweets with multiple thousand retweets on Twitter as well. But not single trending topic on Twitter about the incident the whole day.

There's NO WAY none of those hashtags weren't eligible for trending. Twitter has been caught doing it before, but I think yesterday was far worse than anything they've done before. They've must've told everyone to be on the lookout of any Hillary-related topic becoming a trend, or just automatically banning anything that may be been about it from trending.

Only today you see the body double thing trending, which I'm sure has far fewer tweets and at a much lower speed than yesterday's incident had.

I know Trump looks to be a terrible human being and likely an even worse president, but it really scares me to see that not only the mainstream media actively try to side with Hillary, but now also tech/social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Google, etc. I think if Hillary is president, you'll see the US succumb to the same media censorship and self-censorship that you see in Russia.

Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world

#59

Post by renaudg »

throwanem wrote: post #31
mark_l_watson wrote: post #17

The FSF has a lot of good material to read on why we don't want centralized control of our data. Applies to Facebook, Google, etc. As a card carrying FSF member (and supporter of EFF, ACLU, Software Conservancy) it embarrases me a little that I probably spend 30 minutes a day using Facebook, Google +, and Twitter; but I enjoy them, I keep the material I produce largely on my own infrastructure, and I work to prevent…

FSF has a lot of problems, too, like an unresolved contradiction in its rhetoric between claimed populism ("everyone can be free!") and evident elitism ("but if you don't choose to act in exactly the way we promote, to hell with you!") I thought hard about joining, but I'm not comfortable with endorsing such a contradictory and self-defeating stance. I don't see why you should be embarrassed to use Facebook et cetera…

GNU legacy aside, I see RMS as a sort of extreme moral compass whose views and principles are an important contribution to a number of conversations, but anyone would be insane to actually try and live by them.

Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world

#60

Post by saint_fiasco »

John23832 wrote: post #45
antirez wrote: post #37

The United States are a great country, but in the topic of censorship, balanced politically correctness and easy to speak about all the topics, I believe that the old Europe has very interesting things to say, so I'm also a bit worried that the technological leadership of US may have an effect on what is believed to be sensible to discuss / post in Europe too. I hope is the other way, that is, we european can in some…

I think people often forget the other side of the coin. These companies "cross-pollenate" American morality across the world because they are American companies. Based in America. On American soil. Responsible to America's laws. To ask that these companies not spread American morality (or French morality if they were based in France, or German etc.) is to ask that they not be made to operate under the laws of the cou…

Morality is not the same as legality.
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