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Facebook to ban white nationalist content

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Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#261

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

s/explicitly/implicitly ?

I mean this was the approach they were taking to White supremacist material until now, which was why people were giving them a hard time.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#262

Post by nilkn »

tedivm wrote: post #206
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 consti…

This is a nuanced topic, but I think the subsequent cases you mentioned all make sense and are consistent with the proposition that certain social media sites actually should obey the "company town" precedent.

Malls aren't and have never been the primary space used for public social discourse and commentary. Today, such discourse increasingly happens online, and it's increasingly true that sites like Facebook and Twitter actually are the primary space for public discourse.

It's really never before happened in history where a private company has become the mediator and facilitator of discourse involving millions of people simultaneously. Previous forms of media had extremely restricted participation roles in comparison. Newspapers, TV, and radio can all only publish a relatively tiny amount of content, so the idea that millions of people could simultaneously publish content to those platforms was never viable; they were only capable of pushing out content from a few folks to many, but they were never many-to-many. This almost infinitely scalable many-to-many communication property of modern social media makes it feel much more like a public space than newspapers, TV, and radio ever did.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#263

Post by sparkie »

marvindanig wrote: post #40

Too little, too late. Brexit is around the corner spiraling Britain down to chaos not seen for a hundred years. America is hurting its closest allies with a joker that pathetic dictators love to watch. Meh. Anonymity is still very important for the web. Until FB moves away from the 'face' part of their book, it's a terrible outcome for the Internet any day even with all kinds of curation that they are announcing now.…

Brexit is good for Britain, but bad for the EU. The only chaos is in parliament which is betraying the British electorate by going against their vote to leave and trying to remain at all cost. They will meet their maker at the next general election and any decisions they're making now will be overturned anyway.

The world actually enjoys watching Donald Trump because they see the USA as a world leader, and look up to it as an example. If the USA is doing great, then other countries can do great too! Making America Great Again is making the world great.

On the other hand, you have "progressive" dominated cities like San Francisco which have become cesspits, and the world is definitely not thinking "I wish we were more like that!" Quite the opposite - the real jokers are the democrats fighting for the title of the most degenerate.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#264

Post by commandlinefan »

talmand wrote: post #194

At what point do such things change into a public discourse problem? Do we wait until it can be shown that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. influenced elections because they refused to serve information from a candidate they didn't like? If we aren't already there, it's not long before it is. What do you think would happen if these "private companies" with such deep hooks into our communication infra…

> influenced elections

In fairness to Google and Facebook, etc. TV networks have always been super biased and had far more reach than internet platforms - and it was actually conservatives who shut down (with good reason) the "fairness doctrine" that would have forced them to carry content they didn't necessarily agree with.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#265

Post by api »

I'm still such a fence sitter on this. I am fairly close to a free speech absolutist, but I agree with others that FB is a private platform and isn't obligated to provide bandwidth to anyone.

Another concern of mine though is that just banning this stuff atrophies our ability to effectively debate it.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#266

Post by kyleperik »

Quite clearly this is just a move to gain back support.

But this has nothing to do with free speech. If I tell someone something, they have no obligation to broadcast what you said. Why should Facebook act differently?

I don't like that they're targeting such a specific group. I think we should be on the lookout for real racism, and this is certainly an example of that.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#267

Post by stcredzero »

tedivm wrote: post #206
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 consti…

> 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.

So if a site has a monopoly on video commentary, that would seem to be "sufficiently dedicated to public use" to me.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#268

Post by bscphil »

ianleeclark wrote: post #93
ThomPete wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone who cares more about freedom of speech and the free sharing of ideas, than what political stance people have it's a sad day. However, at least Facebook now admits their political bias and people can make informed choices. And no I do not support white nationalism.

> And no I do not support white nationalism. Saying that white nationalists, despite their inherently violent nature, deserve a platform is categorically support. You're not acting as a neutral arbiter. Instead, you're saying that this group who spouts violent rhetoric, despite the fact that we as a society have said hate speech should not be tolerated, ought to be able to spread their message.

>Saying that white nationalists, despite their inherently violent nature, deserve a platform is categorically support.

What? There's no room to support the right of certain people to speak without "supporting" them? "Deserving a platform" is a total red herring here. There's room to worry about the largest platform in the world suppressing speech without claiming that those it suppresses "deserved" that platform.

>despite the fact that we as a society have said hate speech should not be tolerated

I can't believe you are serious at this point, because it is just so obviously untrue. Have you read what people have had to say in this thread at all? Are you aware that the position of the ACLU is that not only is "hate speech" to be tolerated, it is protected by the First Amendment in the US? https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/free-speech-can-be-mes...

I say this as someone who's pretty okay with Facebook taking down white nationalist stuff. As big as it is, Facebook simply isn't big enough to create major worries about controlling speech. My problem is that you're not making an argument here at all; you haven't really come to terms with the fact that quite a few reasonable people disagree with you.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#269

Post by deegles »

root_axis wrote: post #251

What is it about nazis and white supremacists that causes everyone to boot them from their platform? From cloudflare to microsoft to twitter and now facebook, why is everyone so hostile to them? They just can't catch a break, if this keeps up they'll only be able to host content on platforms that are supportive of the message or they'll be forced to build their own platforms and since so many people are hostile to th…

Yes.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#270

Post by lukifer »

fixermark wrote: post #188
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.…

Company towns were a bizarre (and, arguably, pathological) special case in American history.

I don’t disagree; but, it could be argued that social media giants are equivalently bizarre institutions, that also blur the line between private property and public Commons.
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