Facebook to ban white nationalist content • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#361

Post by lukifer » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:48 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.

No doubt, explicit threats or advocacy/conspiracy to violence exist, and should not be tolerated.

However, there are countless complicated grey areas subject to interpretation and potential bias. Was Kathy Griffin advocating violence by holding up a mock Trump severed head? Is “Abortion stops a beating heart” a coded message to inspire violence against abortion doctors? What about “Eat the rich” or “The only good billionaire is a dead billionaire”?

My favorite edge case is this WKYK sketch, which is clearly satire, yet trivial to indict as an explicit call to unlawful violence: https://youtu.be/eg3_kUaYFJA

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#362

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

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.

May I suggest reviewing the history of the civil rights movement? That sort of discrimination used to be normal in large parts of the US and was overcome through a combination of civil disobedience and legal challenges.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#363

Post by Not_a_pizza » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:49 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…

> If FB decides to ban bigots, or YouTube wants to kick anti-vaxxers off their site, so be it.

Will they get rid of Mark Zuckerberg? If there is any single bigot driving that company into the ground with both illegal practices and bigotry, it's him.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#364

Post by gpm » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #207

Inu wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

I suspect that Chomsky would consider child porn - or at least the part of it that is illegal - not speech in this sense.

Speech is the process of communication ideas. Porn is the process of sexually arousing someone remotely. Criminalizing the latter is not criminalizing the former.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#365

Post by oh_sigh » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

edmundkorley wrote: post #285

At least in the United States, it is the power dynamic that differentiates White Nationalism. White nationalists and their ideology have penetrated the Senate, the White House, and our police force to name just a few places of power. This has huge and potentially violent consequences for non-Whites in the U.S. and needs to be take more seriously. We have seen historical manifestations of this from slavery to contempo…

You can claim that white nationalism has penetrated the White House all you want, but there is no evidence of this being the case.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#366

Post by empath75 » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #100

Why are white people specifically targeted. As someone of an Indian background, I've seen plenty of Hindu nationalist content on Facebook, and -- despite it actually affecting my Christian family who are still in India -- there is no ban on that content. Such nationalism has led to more violence and death than any of the white nationalism stories.

I imagine they'll get around to it eventually.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#367

Post by bduerst » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

wolco wrote: post #322

In the case of facebook. If they removed one side from debating that side will leave. Creating a smaller more similiar group of people. That would go against the goal of connecting the world and change the goal to connecting the left or right. Plenty of those sites. Facebook's ideal strategy is not to get involved.

Except deplatforming is shown to work against alt-right hate speech: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-...

Anti-semitic speech has traditionally relied on soap boxes to spread their message, for decades before the internet even existed. That's why most academics won't engage them, because these groups are not interested in genuine discussion but in broadcasting their prejudice.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#368

Post by joshuamorton » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

ramblerouser wrote: post #356

joshuamorton wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

So chinese people who are proud of their heritage and promote it can be discriminated against because being proud of your race is just a view one can hold?

There's a difference between celebration of heritage and white supremacy. Please don't conflate celebration of Oktoberfest with calling for an ethnostate. They're different goals.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#369

Post by oh_sigh » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #274

This seems absurd and unreasonable once you look at it more closely. If any group of people say they want to go live apart from others (white, gay, men, linux users, whatever), I'm fine with that. I wouldn't want to live in a racial separatist region myself, but I have no problem with other people choosing to do so. Treating black nationalists as heroes (which in a historical sense they were) while making white natio…

The difference being that white nationalists generally don't want to run away to a large private homestead and live out their lives privately and whitely - they want to convert the existing multiracial society they live in into a uniracial one.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#370

Post by ams6110 » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #130

Inu wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

Thank you. Free speech isn't just an amendment for the government, it's a principle for society. If Facebook were a television station with limited air time for a single track, it would be perfectly valid for them to decide (reasonably) who gets air time. However, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have infinite tracks and time. I don't think the OPs argument is as strong, with that in mind.

Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter also have as their primary purpose the propagation of information and messages by and among their users. It's not some incidental or secondary feature. It's what they do. And they promote this to the public with almost zero barrier to entry. Yes they are still private entities, but like a hotel that is open to the public, they become constrained in the restrictions they can impose since they have chosen to be in that business.