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Facebook to ban white nationalist content

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Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#331

Post by Kalium »

camelNotation wrote: post #89
Kalium wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To the people that say "Where does it end?" – that's pretty easy. Let's start with curbing speech that encourages harming others. This may come as a surprise to you, but this response will not be comforting to those with genuine concerns about civil liberties. Avoiding the question of where to draw the final line with the question of where to draw the first one just implies that you intend to draw more lines in the…

We always draw a line somewhere when we write a law. Saying "I don't want to draw a line at all" is an attempt to abdicate our responsibility to protect weaker members of society under the guise of some higher ideal that is not threatened by good laws.

You're absolutely right! We unquestionably have a categorical imperative to protect our vulnerable friends, neighbors, and community members.

To those ends, I don't want to not draw lines. I want some kind of clear criteria and process around thw drawing of lines. Perhaps we could consider a system whereby we can make sure that the power to draw lines is not used against weaker members of society under the guise of some higher ideal.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#332

Post by mrtesthah »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #302
mrtesthah wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese nationalism probably should be banned in China (but not the US) for the same reason that white nationalism should be banned in the US: the racial designations "white" and "black" are completely arbitrary terms, not grounded in any scientific fact, and are social constructs based around an in-group (whites) wielding political, economic, and cultural power over an out-group (blacks). "Irish" is an ethnicity. "L…

It's taxonomically arbitrary but not completely arbitrary, and in fact is grounded in scientific fact.

The terms attempt to classify people based on an arbitrary collection of visually distinct phenotypes rather than fundamental genotypes -- however, the One-drop Rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule) works only on the basis of the latter. This inconsistency alone makes the terms scientifically irreconcilable.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#333

Post by ada1981 »

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…

It’s interesting that you seem to equate African-American content with White Nationalist content.

Facebook isn’t banning content from white people, it’s banning content that is racist by design.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#334

Post by goodfight »

karmelapple wrote: post #243
SkyBelow wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Unfortunately, most of the time we aren't privy to their definitions. If they publish them publically to a literal extent then they MIGHT actually have to follow them! No company wants to have to follow their own rules, it's a Schrodinger situation.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#335

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

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 tend to agree.

I think the main argument against that can be made is that the Internet is now so complex that the forbidden speech can easily be silenced entirely, if you start your own blog independent of FB. Especially with DDoS attacks, it can become prohibitively expensive to stop those and the core/root internet infrastructure simply doesn’t stop it. It’s basically a paid add-on and if you want to do it yourself you will need both funding and/or technical expertise.

Either way, I’m still in support of Facebook and others removing this type of speech as I think it’s a net negative to society to amplify it in this day of discovery algorithms.

Seems like we also need to do more to improve the core infrastructure so that you don’t need 5Tbps of bandwidth to keep your blog online.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#336

Post by stronglikedan »

theseatoms wrote: post #276
cortic wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No company or platform owes them anything. This is discrimination of opinion , strange as that sounds. There is a reason we don't see signs up like; 'No Blacks', 'No Gays', 'No Jews' in private establishments. Its because its not allowed, we either have a list of protected groups - or a general rule that forbids banning anyone because of their 'group'. If we don't fairly quickly extend free speech into these platfor…

> There is a reason we don't see signs up like; 'No Blacks', 'No Gays', 'No Jews' in private establishments. Could you imagine the immediate public backlash against this type of behavior by a private establishment? I don't think the law is doing the heavy lifting here.

There's plenty of places where there would be zero public backlash for those types of signs, if they were permitted by law.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#337

Post by joshuamorton »

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 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".

This is because we have laws about discrimination based on race. White supremacy is not a race. You're free to discriminate against someone due to the views they hold.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#338

Post by wesammikhail »

karmelapple wrote: post #243
SkyBelow wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

While I agree with you, Tim Pool (as well as many others) made a good point recently about the fact that when platforms are as powerful as being able to influence elections, maybe allowing them to define the structure within which we communicate might not be a good idea.

I am a free market guy, so for me these companies ought to have the right to determine the parameters within which their users can operate on their service. However, with things such as EUCD and GDPR rules, introducing competitors to the established networks becomes harder and harder for each day, which only benefits the existing platforms. So when the platforms are biased and competition is hindered by red-tape and regulations, we cannot expect alternatives to popup that can compete with said entities.

All of this leads me to believe that things will only get worse as I don´t see a way out of this clusterfuck we´re in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZCBRHOg3PQ

Edit: why the downvotes? :S

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#339

Post by kadendogthing »

someguydave wrote: post #286
kadendogthing wrote: post #171

I'm going to caution against people using the phrase "free speech" as a thought terminating cliche when discussing this. Banning speech can and typically has been harmful, especially when governments get involved with doing it. No one is ignorant about this fact. But we're collectively discovering that not doing anything about what can be published and said is just about as harmful, if not more so in concentrated cir…

Are black nationalist ideas up for debate? Who gave you the power to decide what is up for debate?

Removing yourself from any kind of rational framework removes the required considerable characteristic of an idea or view point. Especially when those ideas and view points have been tried on top of just generally being a Bad Idea (TM).

So I haven't done anything. There's no need to start an epistemological bankrupt conversation here. Or to engage in philosophical waxing about intellectual curiosity surrounding view points that serve no purpose.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#340

Post by DuskStar »

tnzn wrote: post #299
DuskStar wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

If you're saying it in a conversation about wether or not we should allow non-white people to be in a country with low light, yeah. There is no objective, neutral statement.

And if I'm not saying it in a conversation about creating an ethnostate, but perhaps one about seasonal affective disorder, or about vitamin D deficiencies? My point was that the GGP's definition, even the most restrictive one, was arguably still too broad.

(Or perhaps people need to become more accepting of a distinction between better at x and better. Michael Phelps is certainly better at swimming than I am, but that is mostly orthogonal to whether he is a better person than I am)

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