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Instructions from Facebook not to touch the posts of the cabinet minister

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Re: Instructions from Facebook not to touch the posts of the cabinet minister

#11
post #7
post #3

And rightly so. I'm surprised more countries haven't enforced rules on Facebook, like China does. Saying like "only things that are illegal are to be prohibited". It's insane to leave it arbitrarily to the opinion of a foreign company.

Why would Facebook have any content moderation obligations towards any government? It is their private platform, their rules. A community they built = their community standards. They can decide what content they allow on the platform. Governments imposing content rules upon private companies is a form of censorship. China is not a democracy. If a country doesn't like their citizens having free and unlimited access to…

>Why would Facebook have any content moderation obligations towards any government?

This argument, if applied strictly, would allow any government to meddle in the affairs (say, influencing elections) of any other government simply by establishing ostensibly private companies that'd perform to their wishes, whether overtly or secretly. That being anti-democratic, there's clear need for limiting actions of private companies.

While I am against compelling speech, I do not consider Facebook a newspaper publishing its own editorial content, but rather a platform for publishing third-party content. In fact, posts on Facebook are clearly attributed to the author, which, with minor exceptions, is not Facebook itself. On the other hand, official communications of Facebook are marked as such and clearly delineated from users' posts. Thus preventing Facebook from deleting posts (i.e., forcing them to let posts remain) would amount to preventing them from performing (the seemingly arbitrary and capricious) censorship, rater than compelling them to speak.

For me the line is clear - illegal content must be removed, legal content must be left undisturbed, and if Facebook considers law of some country to run counter to their conscience, do not operate in that market.

Re: Instructions from Facebook not to touch the posts of the cabinet minister

#12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lazar, who was a minister back then went out to Vienna and made a video that said the city is flooded with migrants, it isn't safe and Budapest is much better, safer and such. Oh, also he didn't feel safe in it too.

I see. I have a female friend in Vienna, she's said similar stuff to me. Things are getting bad there.

It really is. Fascists like yourself are on the rise everywhere in Europe.

Re: Instructions from Facebook not to touch the posts of the cabinet minister

#13
post #7
post #3

And rightly so. I'm surprised more countries haven't enforced rules on Facebook, like China does. Saying like "only things that are illegal are to be prohibited". It's insane to leave it arbitrarily to the opinion of a foreign company.

Why would Facebook have any content moderation obligations towards any government? It is their private platform, their rules. A community they built = their community standards. They can decide what content they allow on the platform. Governments imposing content rules upon private companies is a form of censorship. China is not a democracy. If a country doesn't like their citizens having free and unlimited access to…

Hungary is a sovereign country. Why would a government have any obligations towards any medium, to allow it to operate within the country? Esp. when said medium has an agenda to influence public opinion? (In this case, by taking down videos expressing the opinion of the democratically elected government, and by only allowing videos criticising the opinion of the majority of the citizens). Governments can decide what content they allow in the country. Or is it the case that Facebook's community standards should for some reason be universally accepted?

Re: Instructions from Facebook not to touch the posts of the cabinet minister

#14
post #6

The Facebook video in question is linked in the very first sentence, but the yellow highlighting doesn't distinguish the link from the rest of the text. So here's the link for the curious (in Hungarian of course): https://www.facebook.com/lazarjanosfidesz/videos/19566176783...

I don’t speak Hungarians and so I have no idea why this video would be offensive. Can you try to explain?

Re: Instructions from Facebook not to touch the posts of the cabinet minister

#15
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Facebook have any content moderation obligations towards any government? It is their private platform, their rules. A community they built = their community standards. They can decide what content they allow on the platform. Governments imposing content rules upon private companies is a form of censorship. China is not a democracy. If a country doesn't like their citizens having free and unlimited access to…

They don't have any obligation, but then again neither has the government any obligation to permit/not penalize the business. If Facebook wants to operate in the EU, it will have to follow EU rules.

I agree.

And in muslim countries, if someone posts LGBT or atheist positive posts, they should immediately be moderated and the poster reported to authorities.

Facebook should also prevent users from these countries seeing such content posted from more liberal places.

Re: Instructions from Facebook not to touch the posts of the cabinet minister

#16
post #4

The whole concept of "community standards" for a worldwide communication channel strikes me as newspeak for centralized moral policing. Imagine the leading social network weren't facebook but vkontakte or weibo and they imposed their own standards on billions of people communicating with each other. Filtering should be a tool available to individuals and delegatable to groups that are aligned with their own standards…

> The whole concept of "community standards" for a worldwide communication channel strikes me as newspeak for centralized moral policing.

Moral policing? This article is about the opposite-- Facebook telling its "moral police" not to moderate posts from pro-government posters.

The article also features a claim that someone at Facebook guided pro-government posters in the government to use dog whistles to get around their filters. Hence changing "muslims" to "migrants."

Not much evidence is given for the claim, but it's there.

Re: Instructions from Facebook not to touch the posts of the cabinet minister

#17
"When asked, Facebook officials told us only immutable characteristics and traits that people are born with warrant special protection. Being a migrant is not such a trait, therefore freedom of speech takes priority."

What about forced displacement? There are 10s of milions of forcibly displaced people around the world. It's not a small group compared to some other mentioned protected groups.

If the basic idea is that you can't attack people for things they didn't choose, this would match too.

Anyway why it's ok to attack someone for something he chose and not ok for something he didn't choose? Choice is often based on intellect and education, and many people don't really choose that either, even if you accept the basic premise of choice being the main differentiator.

Re: Instructions from Facebook not to touch the posts of the cabinet minister

#18
post #15
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have any obligation, but then again neither has the government any obligation to permit/not penalize the business. If Facebook wants to operate in the EU, it will have to follow EU rules.

I agree. And in muslim countries, if someone posts LGBT or atheist positive posts, they should immediately be moderated and the poster reported to authorities. Facebook should also prevent users from these countries seeing such content posted from more liberal places.

Personally, I'd rather not operate in a country than face arbitrary censorship requests, but then, I don't run a billion dollar business (and even countries like EU and US have some fairly "arbitrary" censorship requests).

Re: Instructions from Facebook not to touch the posts of the cabinet minister

#19
>Imagine the leading social network weren't facebook but vkontakte or weibo and they imposed their own standards on billions of people communicating with each other.

I would argue that their standards vs Facebook (which isn't that great) are exactly why they aren't the leading global social networks with billions of users.

Re: Instructions from Facebook not to touch the posts of the cabinet minister

#20
post #6

The Facebook video in question is linked in the very first sentence, but the yellow highlighting doesn't distinguish the link from the rest of the text. So here's the link for the curious (in Hungarian of course): https://www.facebook.com/lazarjanosfidesz/videos/19566176783...

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