Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world

telegraph.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 348 posts

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

#221

Post by rhino369 »

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…

Also, even news organizations censor themselves. Facebook is allowed to use editorial discretion, just like every news organization does.

Does everyone think the Aftenposten posts whatever stories it's writers come up with?

I think this was a particularly stupid use of their editorial discretion, but it's their right.

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

#222

Post by RevHaze »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #61
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…

That seems, to me, to miss the point. No one is surprised a private company censors content, it's the cultural homogenisation on a global service that can grate, even though it's no surprise. A global service that tries very hard to be the global platform for everything, including news publication (that may have been unsuccessful). No surprise after many years of this most people's networks are on Facebook. No doubt…

You say it wouldn't be that hard to have regional guidelines, but that seems like an incredibly difficult thing to do.

Even within a country you can have strongly divided opinions on what's appropriate or inappropriate to be hosted on social media, now not only do you need some way to document these (including refining them as norms change), but you also need to implement a system that can "know it when it sees it" so to speak and filter on the fly. That's either going to be a large number of humans filtering the content more-or-less by hand (already got FB into trouble when the humans filtered stories they didn't agree with) or build an automatic screening process that can make the appropriate decisions on the edge cases, which would be difficult to say the least.

Additionally, you run into the problem that many social groups overlap. How many German users need to be friends with a French user before they're covered in the same filter? What about an American vs Iranian? Ultimately you need some way to decide how to break ties and at the moment they're all breaking on the side of the US because that's where FB is based. Unless that changes, I don't see a shift to fragment what's considered acceptable on the platform.

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

#223

Post by soundwave106 »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #61
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…

That seems, to me, to miss the point. No one is surprised a private company censors content, it's the cultural homogenisation on a global service that can grate, even though it's no surprise. A global service that tries very hard to be the global platform for everything, including news publication (that may have been unsuccessful). No surprise after many years of this most people's networks are on Facebook. No doubt…

Us Americans can't even agree though. :)

Note that other big American social media services (Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr for a start) are fine with some various degree of NSFW nudity. Yes, I think Americans overall tend to be a bit more squeamish towards nudity than Europeans, and it shows in our content policies to some degree. But a pretty wide spectrum of opinion exists here; the country Facebook was created in is also the country 4Chan was created in.

I do agree with you that preserving global differences is important, hence why ensuring the web remains "decentralized" is important. Facebook's content policies aren't a big problem as long as there are compelling alternative social media platforms to switch to if you don't like what's going on.

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

#224

Post by khedoros »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #208
khedoros wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In what sense? Legally they are, they act like one so I am not sure in practice what makes that distinct. Facebook, Inc. is a publicly traded company. An example of a private company would be Dell Technologies.

Sorry I interpreted the idea of "private" in this sense in comparison to governmental - not publicly traded - given the context of "censorship" and other comparisons to government type services.

You could be right. Reading the original comment again, they might have meant that Facebook has a level of influence that is exceptional for a private-sphere entity, rather than that they aren't privately-held.

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

#225

Post by Dylan16807 »

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.

"you had a typo" doesn't really need to stay up, and especially not with the note that it's irrelevant coming after people have already read the text.

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

#227

Post by weberc2 »

r_smart wrote: post #144
weberc2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not talking about censoring the image in any meaningful sense; FB told them it was cool if they blurred out the nudity. From FB's perspective, they want to draw a hard line against child nudity so they don't have to deal with the slippery slope between child porn and "art", even though no one thinks this is the former. Personally, I think blurring out the nudity is a pretty reasonable compromise.

I think our definitions of meaningful are significantly different. I try to picture what the image would be like with a girls head atop a blurry body, and it seems to me a totally different thing. Her being naked is a key part of planting the disgust and horror in you that the photographer was aiming for. Granted, seeing it censored might prompt you to go and look up the original image, prompting you to leave Faceboo…

> Her being naked is a key part of planting the disgust and horror in you that the photographer was aiming for.

What else might pixelation or blurring mean in this context besides that she is naked?

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

#228

Post by weberc2 »

omginternets wrote: post #93
weberc2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, d) I thought we were talking about actual beheadings (e.g., ISIS promo videos) and not theatrics.

The theatrical dimension doesn't change much. That's how strange the US is in this respect. The amount of censorship for "real" violence is virtually nonexistent, contrary to the amount of censorship applied to sex, real or otherwise. Do Americans censor "real" violence more than theatrical violence? Possibly. Do they censor "real" violence less than any form of nudity? Yes. You can show Braveheart or a video of a st…

> The amount of censorship for "real" violence is virtually nonexistent

So the ratio of social networks that permit ISIS beheading videos to those which don't is very high in your estimation? How about in the newsmedia--are there very many major U.S. news publications that depict the full gore of these beheadings or no?

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

#229

Post by Dylan16807 »

danjoc wrote: post #156
briandear wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Trademark? Why would you need to violate trademarks? This is a straw man argument. I didn't say violate trademarks. I said trademark enforcement. A small competitor can be wiped out easily with legal costs associated with an extended trademark battle in court. >Build your own system or come up with your own great idea. Same straw man. I don't have to violate patents to be sued out of existence. >There's no patent on…

> I said trademark enforcement. A small competitor can be wiped out easily with legal costs associated with an extended trademark battle in court.

Has anything like that ever happened? Someone starts a business and a competitor with a completely unrelated name wipes them out with a trademark battle?

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

#230

Post by FabHK »

kinkdr wrote: post #85

Lots and lots of people seem to forget: Facebook is an American COMPANY. It is not a utility, it is not a non-profit organization. People choose to use it, and hence they have to put up with their rules. If they don't like it, they should stop using it and start using the open alternatives.

That (essentially libertarian) defence doesn't hold a lot of water.

Even an American COMPANY is subject to rules, which in turn are designed/evolved to satisfy objectives - they're not immutable natural law.

Even Milton Friedman conceded that government intervention was justified in the case of externalities or natural monopolies. Social networks are, by virtue of the network effect, arguably natural monopolies, and in that sense, could be considered a utility. As such, they might have to be regulated more tightly than ordinary small companies.

Post reply on HN