Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, etc.. are user-generated content publishers. They have the right to refuse whatever content they feel like.
This is the same as a newspaper refusing to publish an op-ed they don't agree with.
Facebook to ban white nationalist content
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Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can claim that white nationalism has penetrated the White House all you want, but there is no evidence of this being the case.
Uh, Trump invited Steve Bannon into his cabinet. They did not part ways because of Bannon's extreme white nationalist views...
Steve Bannon was a close friend of Andrew Breitbart (who was Jewish and famously anti-racist), and was hired by Breitbart to be Editor. Bannon greatly expanded the Brietbart Israel office and managed a number of non-whites such as Raheem Kassam, Ben Shapiro, and others, placing them in leading positions.
While I do think Andrew wouldn't approve of what Bannon has done recently (and many of his old colleagues do not), there is no evidence his views have ever gone into "extreme white nationalist" territory.
Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content
#423[flagged]
Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content
#424There is merit to maintaining an open environment. Censorship makes the censored content seem lucratively dangerous; it looks like the powers that be are afraid of what some people are saying. I think it is best to let bad arguments fail on their own merit. The problem is that most people are unable to recognize a bad argument.
Yes, it's like book burning. It makes the banned content more enticing. This is the big issue with New Zealand banning the recent shooters manifesto. What if news organizations want to read it to report on it (even if it is just to say, this is why he's a nutjob)? Banning his manifesto grants it more important. It shows the government is afraid of it for some reason. Mein Kampf is still available for purchase in NZ.…
You can get a waiver from the NZ censor for having copies of that material if you're a scholar or researcher: https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/news/latest-news/ch...
it should be discussed in schools, so students and teachers can explore his breaks in logic and contradictory statements
How about the explicit calls for assassination of specific individuals, among other direct incitements to terrorism?
Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content
#425I 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…
The question here isn't whether Facebook/Twitter/etc. have a right to control what is on their platform, they absolutely do. The question is whether there should be safe harbor provisions that protect them from legal repercussions of what they do choose to allow on their sites. A case can be made to protect someone who allows all comers, who increases the reach of the public to communicate with each other, and who ex…
The problem is that, for a paper or a TV network, control scales. You can pump your network TV signal out twice as many antennas, and still control every frame of video.
For the telephone network, control does not scale. There is no way for the phone company to censor what happens in one billion daily phone calls. It can't be done (until we get adequate speech recognition, but that's not an answer that I want to see applied in this way).
Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are like the phone company, not like newspapers and TV. Censorship does not scale.
Twitter, being text, could think about trying to automate censorship. The problem is that people do all kinds of typos, circumlocutions, innuendo, and dog whistles to get around such things. Words are really flexible, so it's a hard problem.
Facebook and YouTube are worse. They can try to have automatic assists, but pretty much the only way it can be done is via user reporting. Even that doesn't scale all that well.
Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content
#426Why not ban all racist nationalism entirely? What is unique about white nationalism versus Chinese nationalism in China, or black nationalism in South Africa? There are many racist movements all around the world. Only banning white nationalism is giving fuel to the white nationalist belief that whites are being unfairly targeted. That's not something we should encourage IMO.
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…
That seems incredibly arbitrary.
1. a Chinese nationalist can post about China while living in the USA.
2. You don't need institutional power in order to do harm to other people.
3. How do you handle cases where power is evenly split? 60/40? 70/30? Who gets to be racist?
Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content
#427Earlier 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. "Speech that harms people" and "speech that hurt people's feelings" are so closely related and sometimes people (intentionally or unintentionally) mix them up.
Are you saying that white supremacists only hurt people's feelings and does not have real and tangible outcomes? Look to Christchurch or the innumerable attacks/murders/gig economy fascism in the US perpetrated by the far right.
That's a fallacious argument. You could make the same argument about pro-Islamist sentiment (which is all over FB if you know where to look).
Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content
#428Censoring them confirms their narrative and only makes young white men who've been exposed to their rhetoric pay closer attention.
Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content
#429Censorship is evil, facebook sucks, whats new
Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content
#430There is merit to maintaining an open environment. Censorship makes the censored content seem lucratively dangerous; it looks like the powers that be are afraid of what some people are saying. I think it is best to let bad arguments fail on their own merit. The problem is that most people are unable to recognize a bad argument.
Yes, it's like book burning. It makes the banned content more enticing. This is the big issue with New Zealand banning the recent shooters manifesto. What if news organizations want to read it to report on it (even if it is just to say, this is why he's a nutjob)? Banning his manifesto grants it more important. It shows the government is afraid of it for some reason. Mein Kampf is still available for purchase in NZ.…
Copycat violence is a thing, when you offer people to make a political statement and then get immortalized, history has proven that people will take you up on that.
Secondly regarding the most recent NZ manifesto, it isn't a well argued thesis as much as a dump of memes and shitposting.