Facebook to ban white nationalist content • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#201

Post by SkyBelow » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

atonse wrote: post #6

Good to see the Valley is starting to get off its "we are just a platform, all information should be free and neutral no matter how bad, so we're not responsible" extremism of the past few years and understand that some forms of speech are harmful should not ever be encouraged and accelerated on any platform or technology, ever. To the people that say "Where does it end?" – that's pretty easy. Let's start with curbin…

>Let's start with curbing speech that encourages harming others.

Based on numerous past incidents of corporate behavior (not specifically from Facebook) I do doubt a fair and unbiased application of such a standard. Politically we cannot even agree on what constitutes harm or even murder (abortion being an example of such disagreement). How then is it possible to fairly ban speech that encourages harm when we don't agree on what constitutes harm?

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#202

Post by xkjkls » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

vokep wrote: post #173

function_seven wrote: post #31

I consider myself a free speech absolutist. Or very nearly so. But that runs both ways. Not only do I think that almost all (to borrow a mathematical term) speech should be permitted, but also that the onus is on the speaker to make themselves heard or to find an audience. No company or platform owes them anything. In earlier times, that meant that no newspaper or printing press was required to print everything sent…

I see what you mean, but it does seem different because FB or YouTube are not publications, but public forums, public communication spaces to publish as a person. Things published on youtube are not on behalf of youtube. Basically FB and Youtube and things like it form space where content fills in.

> Things published on youtube are not on behalf of youtube

Tell that to people using YouTube. YouTube will end up being inextricably tied to whatever content is uploaded using their platform as long as they are the ones who manage its display and recommendations.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#203

Post by caprese » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #192

chubot wrote: post #186

I don't have a strong opinion on this particular issue, but I don't think your comment gets to the core of it. If Facebook decided to ban all Chinese, Islamic, or African-American content, then the conversation would be completely different. People wouldn't say, "so be it -- go set up your own servers". Obviously they have to make a value judgement, and they have done so here and said as much (which I appreciate). In…

If we're limiting our discussion to US law and mores, then at least in the context of banning African-American content, there's specific federal law they'd be tripping over. That same law has not been (and probably should not be) extended to protect white supremacy or white separatism, which are political ideologies.

> then at least in the context of banning African-American content, there's specific federal law they'd be tripping over

which specific federal law would that be? I can't think of any law protecting content about specific groups

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#204

Post by bilbo0s » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #163

bilbo0s wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that runs both ways. Not only do I think that almost all (to borrow a mathematical term) speech should be permitted, but also that the onus is on the speaker to make themselves heard or to find an audience. No company or platform owes them anything... This! A thousand times THIS ! People seem to think that free speech absolutists were saying that Facebook should be forced to host extremist content. For my part,…

You're misunderstanding (or deliberately misrepresenting) what free-speech absolutists are saying. Nobody is saying that Facebook should be "forced" to host any particular content, any more than anybody is saying that homedepot.com should be forced to host any particular content. What we are saying is that Facebook is no longer a platform for free and open exchange of idea and is engaging in censorship - and it's ope…

>What we are saying is that Facebook is no longer a platform for free and open exchange of idea...

???

It never was.

I couldn't watch porn movies on Facebook.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#205

Post by thecommentary » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #135

weberc2 wrote: post #112

The obvious questions are and always have been "what constitutes 'harmful speech'?" and "who gets to decide?". Sure, we can agree that "white supremacy" is harmful, but in the last 5 years we've seen the definition of white supremacy slide from "people who espouse views that whites are better than nonwhites" to "people who espouse views that are not in line with progressive orthodoxy".

And what about more complex things? Twitter and Twitch bans people who question some of the modern beliefs on gender ideology, even if they bring up the discussion respectfully. Not to mention, it just means extremists go to platforms that welcome them (Voat, Gab and others). That means platforms that use to have a big mix of views, like Reddit, are now horribly one sided and those other platforms are all extremist.…

Twitter is considering telling journalists to learn to code as hate speech now - we have already slipped down that slope even on the simple things.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#206

Post by tedivm » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

insickness wrote: post #170

Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk, even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town. The Court based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.…

This case was about a "company town", where there was very much a blending of public and private.

> The Court initially noted that it would be an easy case if the town were a more traditional, publicly administered, municipality. Then, there would be a clear violation of the right to free speech for the government to bar the sidewalk distribution of such material. The question became, therefore, whether or not constitutional freedom of speech protections could be denied simply because a single company held title to the town.

It's also not a good idea to bring up this case without bringing up Cyber Promotions v. America Online, in which America Online put up spam filters and Cyber Promotions tried to use the above precedent to say America Online was blocking their right to free speech. You can probably guess by the fact that we still use spam filters how that case came out.

As a final note, even that original case has had limitations based off of the type of property-

> In Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, the Supreme Court distinguished a private shopping mall from the company town in Marsh and held that the mall had not been sufficiently dedicated to public use for First Amendment free speech rights to apply within it.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#207

Post by fixermark » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

Inu wrote: post #116

function_seven wrote: post #31

I consider myself a free speech absolutist. Or very nearly so. But that runs both ways. Not only do I think that almost all (to borrow a mathematical term) speech should be permitted, but also that the onus is on the speaker to make themselves heard or to find an audience. No company or platform owes them anything. In earlier times, that meant that no newspaper or printing press was required to print everything sent…

"Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech." - Noam Chomsky

... and yet, child pornography possession and distribution is illegal. Do we think Chomsky would find this unacceptable?

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#208

Post by CobrastanJorji » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #184

insickness wrote: post #170

Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk, even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town. The Court based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.…

Of course, the follow-ups are important, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Corp._v._Tanner I'd put Facebook more in the "mall" example than the "company town" one.

The mall got out of it because there were many alternate places to distribute messages, so banning mall speech didn't significantly stifle overall speech. That probably still also applies to Facebook today, but not by a wide margin.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#209

Post by jeffdavis » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

function_seven wrote: post #31

I consider myself a free speech absolutist. Or very nearly so. But that runs both ways. Not only do I think that almost all (to borrow a mathematical term) speech should be permitted, but also that the onus is on the speaker to make themselves heard or to find an audience. No company or platform owes them anything. In earlier times, that meant that no newspaper or printing press was required to print everything sent…

"also that the onus is on the speaker to make themselves heard or to find an audience"

On social media, don't you need to find your own audience?

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#210

Post by Dylan16807 » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

ordu wrote: post #180

Dylan16807 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search "patriotism".

So it is not a meme, like a song or some group of active people from the past or anything like that?

Correct, they were referring to a very general concept as far as I am aware.