Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

alva wrote: post #91

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

100% agree with you regarding "hate speech", but I can't help but feel the US public have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to libel laws. Seems to be a current issue as Trump brought it up recently. As far as I understand libel laws in the UK are as follows. Person A makes mass public claim X about person B. Person B suffers financially or in reputation by claim X. If claim X is proven to not be true, alongsi…

> As far as I understand libel laws in the UK are as follows. Person A makes mass public claim X about person B. Person B suffers financially or in reputation by claim X. If claim X is proven to not be true, alongside some evidence that A knew this, then B is entitled to compensation and a full retraction by A.

That's not the UK, that's a fair description of the libel laws in the US. (Actually, in most cases, actual knowledge of falsity is unnecessary; mere recklessness is sufficient. Knowledge of falsity is only necessary for certain cases, such as where the statements are about public figures and/or matters of public concern, where the Constitutional protection of free speech is held to be at its strongest.)

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

#122

Post by alva » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #114

alva wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree with you regarding "hate speech", but I can't help but feel the US public have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to libel laws. Seems to be a current issue as Trump brought it up recently. As far as I understand libel laws in the UK are as follows. Person A makes mass public claim X about person B. Person B suffers financially or in reputation by claim X. If claim X is proven to not be true, alongsi…

> That seems super fair Wait until you make a political commentary and spend next 5 years in courts because the person you criticized has a lot of money to spend on lawyers. You may be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt you criticism is true, or maybe not (just read any political argument and see how much of political criticism is provable by law? Is "Trump unfit to be president" provable or "Hillary is corrupt" p…

All good points and I appreciate you including [2], I had not come across it before. [1] was a good set of laws introduced to curtail some of the issues you have raised.

The libel suits that I have read about tend to be "A publicly claims B is a pedophile", "B is having an affair", "B steals orphans sweets after giving them a slap" etc. In these cases, I think the libel laws are sensible however I do recognise that it can be exploited by the wealthy in an unreasonable way. I suppose we have to introduce new laws to protect against this, or rely on the wisdom of our judges.

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

#123

Post by sp332 » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

r_smart wrote: post #111

sp332 wrote: post #65

Aw, let's be fair now. After all they also ban religious material at the request of the Pakistani government http://tribune.com.pk/story/855030/facebook-censored-54-post... and political content for Hong Kong too! http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/news/art/20100205/13699972 (translation https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr... )

There's actually probably an interesting bigger point here. Why is this image the content that sparked so much outrage? As you point out, they ban a lot of things on behalf of other countries. There's been complaints of conservatives getting censored (who knows how accurate those are). And of course, the hot mic gaff of Zuckerberg talking with Angela Merkel about censoring migrant crisis criticism on Facebook. So is…

Well, it doesn't usually happen to prime ministers. And I'm not convinced that this outcry over the weekend is going to change anything.

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

#124

Post by barrkel » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

r_smart wrote: post #98

barrkel wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And shortly before the internet really took off and started to standardize legal porn (meaning: harmonize to American rules), 16 and 17 year old topless girls were legal on page 3, with harder stuff elsewhere on the European continent. America effectively exported their legal standards here, mostly through credit card companies I expect. (Not saying commercializing topless schoolgirls is just fine, just that normal u…

Where in America is 16 and 17 legal for appearing in pornography? There are places with age of consent laws that low, but often times there's still a band around that age that their partner has to fall into (i.e. if you're 45, 16 is still off limits). *edit: post I replied to had a typo that significantly changed the meaning. I'll leave this for the record, but it's no longer relevant.

Sorry, an interrupted edit of my text switched before with after in my text.

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

#125

Post by John23832 » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

nzjrs wrote: post #120

John23832 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legality is group morality codified.

Interesting definition. Does it have a basis in fact? It also operates with some weird time lags.

That's the logical definition that I've always known.

From MW:

(1) : a binding custom or practice of a community : a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority (2) : the whole body of such customs, practices, or rules (3)

Offhand, I can't think of one group of people who adhere to customs, practice or rules, that they think are immoral.

> It also operates with some weird time lags.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

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

#126

Post by BlackFly » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #94

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 Like UK libel laws that are so nice that they created a phenomenon of "libel tourism" where people come into UK to sue others for libel because in other places they'd be laughed out of court? Or like courts forcing search engines remove pages because some person feels uneasy with true public information about them being out there? Or criminal penaltie…

Very solid whataboutism. Yes, Europe is not perfect and has some serious problems with freedom.

That being said, the first amendment (jurisprudence) in the USA suffers from two serious flaws not necessarily suffered by freedom of expression legislation in other countries:

1. The first amendment has the egregious exception for obscenity with an absurdly subjective community standards test. 2. The first amendment is only applicable to the government as an actor.

Because of the 2nd defect, Americans are all too willing to refuse to label censorship by parties that are not the government as censorship. Book burning is still book burning. Removal of napalm girl is censorship; the whole reason for that censorship is this one defect in the first amendment (jurisprudence) that the USA refuses to acknowledge. The irony being that the exception isn't even in the first amendment, it was created by the courts because "obscenity" was supposedly always understood as not being actual speech.

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

#127

Post by nommm-nommm » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #84

weberc2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an American, and as far as I can tell, beheadings are at least as controversial as nudity. I wouldn't put much stock in the LA Times either; lots of very biased reporting. EDIT: There seems to be some confusion as to whether we're talking about actual beheadings (e.g., ISIS videos) or theatrical violence. My previous statement pertains to the former context; I don't dispute that fictitious violence in America is…

>beheadings are at least as controversial as nudity From one internet stranger to another, and with all due respect: bullshit. We as a society positively freak out over nudity and drop our middle-school kids off to see violent movies without even thinking twice. To claim differently is to either a) appeal to an exception that does not represent the overall social norm b) be disingenuous (which I don't think is your c…

No middle school kid is going to get into an R rated movie if they are dropped off and not escorted by and adult at all times.

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

#128

Post by slezyr » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #65

Aw, let's be fair now. After all they also ban religious material at the request of the Pakistani government http://tribune.com.pk/story/855030/facebook-censored-54-post... and political content for Hong Kong too! http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/news/art/20100205/13699972 (translation https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr... )

Twitter once banned hundreds active and popular people in Ukraine.

http://glavnoe.ua/news/n255558

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

#129

Post by jimmytidey » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

austinheap wrote: post #38

jimmytidey wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with the above. The idea that society should accept that it has no control over the design of a major artery of communication is not sensible. With print media, TV, phone and post, all developed countries have special regulations that ensure these (often privately run) services align with values of democracy (with varying effectiveness). I think the ideal solution would be to compel Facebook to mak…

You can download an archive of your Facebook data already. What "real APIs" would you like the government to "compel" this private corporation to add?

By real APIs I mean ones with sufficient durability and access to data to allow third parties to provide innovative products based on them.

The bundle download that Facebook offers (which I have used) doesn't meet those criteria, we can see this because no one has built a business off it.

At the moment Tinder is the only company I'm aware of that really does this, and it's not exactly a corner stone of democracy.

I've no idea why you've written the word compel in speech marks? If it is because you think it is unacceptable to ever compel a private corporation to anything, I'd point out that Facebook and all other corporations are already bound by all kinds of laws, many of which are very widely accepted. Especially relevant here are the laws (and social norms) TV and print organisations adhere to.

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

#130

Post by bartkappenburg » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

Not sure how the 'flag' system works but based on the two examples (famous news photo and famous work of art), you could easily circumvent wrong flagging (wrong = deleting famous and important photos) by generating a 'similar photo search' in the system and giving context. That would help the over-ambitious flagger to recognize this.