Facebook to ban white nationalist content • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#241

Post by throwawaysea » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

Large privately-owned platforms carry so much discourse across today's society, that censorship and deplatforming in those spaces has the same impact as governmental censorship, for most intents and purposes. Even if these corporations do not constitute what we might traditionally call a "monopoly", they control a large-enough share of traffic to have significant impact when they take artificial actions. That sizable impact is exactly why they are being targeted (not just on this topic but others) by activists or other agents pushing for deplatforming/censorship favorable to their causes.

The big risk is this: when only a few entities funnel so much societal discourse or control our communication infrastructure or process payments, those entities making arbitrary decisions about who they serve has similar impacts/risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law. These companies should not act as a thought police and should not impose their own personal governance above what is minimally required by the law. Nor should they rely on the judgment of an angry mob to make decisions.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#242

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:10 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…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#243

Post by karmelapple » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

SkyBelow wrote: post #201

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 a…

A platform can define what harm is. We can see what definition is, and we can choose to use a particular platform or not.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#244

Post by fixermark » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

DuskStar wrote: post #221

fixermark wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the obvious analogy would be banning things like the Black Panthers. Should Facebook be allowed to do that?

That would likely depend heavily on whether the BP is calling for black nation separatism.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#245

Post by 908087 » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:11 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…

Would you be similarly comfortable with ISPs or cell service providers censoring views they disagree with?

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#246

Post by overthemoon » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

"Free speech" comes up so fast in this conversation it stifles any other aspects, like what counts as "public". We have to figure out exactly what it means that Facebook is a massive platform with billions of users centrally controlled by a corporation and how that affects us, and free speech issues are only one aspect.

I find it so strange how people on the left and right swap argument styles on the issue of free speech, though. As pointed out by Freddie DeBoer, people on the left want to strictly define free speech as government intervention and criticism, contradicting their usual tendency to interpret law more broadly. Then the right, contradicting their own approach to law interpretation, want a more expansive interpretation of free speech to include things like corporate censorship on platforms that aren't necessarily "public" as we'd traditionally understand it, but have public-y qualities nonetheless.

Anyway, good riddance to white supremacy, but this is a transparent bid by Facebook for PR repair. Their public image was trashed by the 2016 election on several fronts, and this hardly rectifies it. It seems like cynical bullshit to me.

EDIT: It also makes me think of Freddie DeBoer's essay "Planet of Cops": https://medium.com/@jesse.singal/planet-of-cops-50889004904d

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#247

Post by dpq » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:12 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…

I think your attitude is still extremely mild. It doesn't matter if we believe ourselves to be neutral, there are groups that consider themselves our opponents, and will work against everything we stand for. And, unless we decide to fight back or at least stop helping them to promote their agenda (which is often incompatible with values widely shared among secular / educated communities), they will prevail in some manner. See also: 2016 U.S. election.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#248

Post by menacingly » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:12 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…

I'll skip over over your answering "where does it end" with where we start, but more importantly:

This is a game, because it initially masquerades as using the definition of "harm" any reasonable person would use, while simultaneously working the other end to redefine and vastly expand the concept of "harm".

We're now supposed to recognize unpersoning, microaggressing, belittling, twitter-mentioning as harm, and it's naivete bordering on manipulative to try to and make the case that our understanding of harm will not continue to expand

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#249

Post by sctb » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

crushcrashcrush wrote: post #4

[flagged]

Please stop with the ideological riler-uppers. They don't actually inform us of anything and instead lead us down a generic, predictable, reflexive road. We don't want that! We want specific, informative, and thoughtful. You can be outraged and still contribute something more substantive than rage.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#250

Post by DuskStar » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

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".

> seen the definition of white supremacy slide from "people who espouse views that whites are better than nonwhites"

And even there it is debatable - does saying "people with pale skin are better at producing vitamin D in low-light conditions than people with dark skin" make me a white supremacist?