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Facebook takes down Britain First ads

bbc.com

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Re: Facebook takes down Britain First ads

#81

Post by spaginal »

The question is, how would Facebook treat reverse bigotry that aligns with their personal biases and values? Would it recieve the same hate speech designation, or does “hate speech” end where your own personal politics begin?

That’s my issue with corporations and media playing speech cop. Free speech wasn’t supposed to have carve outs. As long as you are not committing an actual crime, and not just a thought crime, put every vile idea out in the public and let people discuss it.

Censorship is never a sound policy, the scales slide, when old ideas are squashed, what happens when the victors of censorship disagree with eachother? Is their first impulse to actually debate or just continue designating more ideas as hate speech?

Re: Facebook takes down Britain First ads

#82

Post by pjc50 »

mc32 wrote: post #75
pjc50 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinguishing factor is the promotion of hatred and implied violence. I remember when the UK banned Sinn Fein from appearing on TV, including their actual elected MPs , resulting in the ridiculous "words read by an actor" workaround.

Ok, looks like it’s a fascist group which engages in violence. It’s still tricky though because there are independence groups which while they have legitimate goals also engage in violence. Or even AntiFa who bill themselves as anti fascists engage in violence, on occasion. Not sure they buy ads though.

SF/IRA were a lot of things, and undoubtedly violent, but they were never really fascist. Their only consistent position was Irish nationalism (continuation of the Irish war of independence) and Catholicism. At times they claimed to be Marxist, at other times they got Republican senators to raise money for them.

(or are we talking about Britain First? They are sort of associated with the murder of Jo Cox: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jo-cox-murde... - while they denied responsibility there's a stochastic terrorism thing going on there, and related group National action is on the ban list: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... )

Re: Facebook takes down Britain First ads

#83

Post by bluecalm »

Spivak wrote: post #51
ramblerman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain to me why that is not something people can vote on? What if I don't want Saudi funded mosques in particular, is there any nuance allowed. There is no racism or exclusion based on a person's ethnicity here. Should we lock up Richard Dawkins for being anti catholic?

Of course there's nuance allowed. We're talking about human speech, it's basically all nuance. If you say that Saudi funding churches, businesses, housing, etc. is not good for Britain for a reason other than you have something against Saudis as a people then you're fine. If you say you're against all churches because you're an anti-theist then you're fine. There is absolutely exclusion based on ethnicity. It's extre…

What's wrong about being against one religion in particular. I think it's very reasonable to be against Islam because of its stance on gay rights, women rights, penalty for apostasy and their holy book which if interpretet literally (which is how vast majority of Muslims believe it should be interpreted) is full of hate and calls for violence.

Not wanting any more of that or institutions promoting that is reasonable political view.

Re: Facebook takes down Britain First ads

#84

Post by freehunter »

pointillistic wrote: post #8

Anyone remembers how the internet was going to liberate the expression, instead we got two, three bottlenecks manned (or is it personed?) by censors actively supported by the MSM and virtually the entire university system.

That is absolutely not the fault of the Internet and entirely the fault of the people using the Internet. Every time I hear this complaint on a forum other than Facebook or Reddit or Twitter I laugh because if it was true, HN wouldn't exist. The millions of independent phpBB forums wouldn't exist. I wouldn't be allowed to write my own HTML and Javascript if this was true.

Some people willingly put themselves into buckets, yes. It's always been that, it will always be that way. But don't pretend for a second that this is the death of the Internet or a lack of free expression or censorship or any of that nonsense until you can't buy an IP address and host a web server on your own hardware. The web is free and open, and the existence of non-free and non-open parts of the Internet does not negate that in any way.

Re: Facebook takes down Britain First ads

#85

Post by growlist »

Spivak wrote: post #28
alkibiades wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is that hate speech? i don’t want more churches built, is that hate speech?

It depends, why don't you want more churches built? Because it's a Muslim church and you don't like them? Because you're an anti-theist? Because you don't like the noise? Because you think their application for a zoning exception is shaky?

..and this is the problem with hate speech - it involves perceived intent and thus the criminalisation of thought.

Re: Facebook takes down Britain First ads

#86

Post by pjc50 »

skilled wrote: post #41

> "We thank the BBC.." And why is BBC trying to portray that a canned email response is an official statement? I don't doubt the matter at hand, but this is very sloppy journalism.

That is the official statement Facebook gave to the BBC, and it's proper journalism to report what they said when asked.

Re: Facebook takes down Britain First ads

#87

Post by ramblerman »

gwbas1c wrote: post #15

Maybe it's time to realize that it's very hard to be objective and neutral. In this case, being objective and neutral is just giving the extremes a platform to promote themselves. Maybe sites like Facebook should try taking a "no politics" policy, or a policy where a political ad is always placed next to a free ad from the opposing side?

Agreed, but Facebook can't solve this. They have created the biggest echo chamber that has ever existed. The algorithms designed to show people more of what they like combined with political discourse has given rise to something ugly.

To undo all that partisanship and try to pull people out of their comfortable bubbles would hurt FB's bottom line. They are simply not incentivized.

Re: Facebook takes down Britain First ads

#88

Post by drugme »

ramblerman wrote: post #37
drugme wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle to see why it is they're simply hate speech and not a valid political movement. A quick look at their "No More Mosques!" campaign should suffice to provide the insight you seek.

Explain to me why that is not something people can vote on? What if I don't want Saudi funded mosques in particular, is there any nuance allowed. There is no racism or exclusion based on a person's ethnicity here. Should we lock up Richard Dawkins for being anti catholic?

Explain to me why that is not something people can vote on?

Because there's this thing known as "freedom of religion" which is recognized both in UK and European law (to which the UK is still bound) as fundamental and inviolable.

Meaning: no you can not "vote" on the question of whether a certain group is allowed to practice their religion (yes, in your neighborhood) -- and advertise this fact. The size of the building, or the width of the signage can be regulated perhaps... but the very fact of that house of worship being built -- sorry, no.

What if I don't want Saudi funded mosques in particular, is there any nuance allowed?

The "No More Mosques!" campaign clearly is not limited to foreign-funded mosques (or those funded by nasty regimes); it is explicitly aimed against building mosques in general. That's why there's basically no way to look at it as fundamentally anti-Muslim.

Should we lock up Richard Dawkins for being anti-Catholic?

No, and no one is saying anyone should be "locked up" for carrying those banners, or running those ads.

Re: Facebook takes down Britain First ads

#89

Post by pjc50 »

guitarbill wrote: post #80
pjc50 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinguishing factor is the promotion of hatred and implied violence. I remember when the UK banned Sinn Fein from appearing on TV, including their actual elected MPs , resulting in the ridiculous "words read by an actor" workaround.

While I've had the pleasure of not interacting much with Britain First, and it's possible they do engage in "promotion of hatred" or "implied violence", really that could be anything these days. Like CNN's overreaction to a GIF/meme, or the internet reacting badly to an awful interview. And talking about actual elected MPs being replaces by actors, this is a fairly common tactic since you can't use footage from the H…

I'm very specifically referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc... in re Gerry Adams.

Re: Facebook takes down Britain First ads

#90

Post by drugme »

bluecalm wrote: post #83
Spivak wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there's nuance allowed. We're talking about human speech, it's basically all nuance. If you say that Saudi funding churches, businesses, housing, etc. is not good for Britain for a reason other than you have something against Saudis as a people then you're fine. If you say you're against all churches because you're an anti-theist then you're fine. There is absolutely exclusion based on ethnicity. It's extre…

What's wrong about being against one religion in particular. I think it's very reasonable to be against Islam because of its stance on gay rights, women rights, penalty for apostasy and their holy book which if interpretet literally (which is how vast majority of Muslims believe it should be interpreted) is full of hate and calls for violence. Not wanting any more of that or institutions promoting that is reasonable…

What's wrong about being against one religion in particular.

You can be "against" a particular religion all you want.

But you have absolutely no right to prohibit anyone from practicing that religion simply because you don't like it. Including the "practice" of getting together with friends in a room or a building, and posting a sign outside the door saying this is what you do.

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