Facebook to ban white nationalist content • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#601

Post by atonse » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 9:18 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 realize I kicked up a hornet's nest by accidentally omitting one word: "physical" – I meant to say let's start by stifling speech that directly calls for _physical_ harm.

The next would be maybe an argument of banning speech that _indirectly_ calls for physical harm, since that leaves room for interpretation. Calling for a white ethno-state indirectly calls for physical harm to all non-whites. Why? Because how the hell else are you going to move us out, other than by force? Are you planning to pay each of us $2 million to leave the country? Obviously not.

The third would be all other forms of hate speech (which arguably would cause even more debate).

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#602

Post by d_burfoot » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

I think this is bad news for Facebook, the tech industry, and America as a whole. This kind of activity is going to prompt an enormous backlash from the right. And the right-wingers aren't going to make fine distinctions between the good tech companies and the bad ones.

Censorship may be a necessary evil, but if so, it must be done by duly elected or appointed government officials. FB and other tech platforms should build APIs that allow government officials to make the relevant decisions about when a piece of content is unacceptable. That is a principled and nonpartisan strategy that will allow the tech companies to focus on what they're good at - technology innovation - and avoid what they're bad at - politics and public relations.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#603

Post by T-hawk » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

Rapzid wrote: post #599

tedivm wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm convinced a lot of people do not understand "free speech" as it applies to the First Amendment and as a fundamental principal of democratic systems of government. The First Amendment puts limits on congress. It's a check against government oppression, full stop. The Fourteenth Amendment extends that all the way down to local governments. I feel like many people are then trying to bend its scope past the breaking…

This is true, that the First Amendment only refers to government action. But its underlying spirit is often taken to be that no entity with power should seek to use it to suppress free discourse.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#604

Post by beat » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #324

Legally, of course, FB is completely right. Morally - try to replace "white nationalism" with, say, "communism" (one can argue communists killed a lot of people, so why not?), "Christianity", "Islam", "Black separatism", "Wiccans"... I could continue forever, but I hope you get the point. If you're consistently fine with any $GROUP put there, no matter how much you love it/disgusted by it, then your position is consi…

Morally, FB is completely right.

They only become wrong by running down your slippery slope. They're not banning Christian speech, or Republican speech, or whatever.

The existence of a slippery slope does not demonstrate that everything that could reach the slippery slope is de facto immoral.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#605

Post by garbonicc » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

So now facebook is explicitly editorializing content, are they now exempt from safe harbor provisions and legally responsible for illegal content published on the platform?

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#606

Post by pc2g4d » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

If the views can't expressed, then they can't be refuted either. Banning this sort of content from Facebook will only foster a sense of persecution in white nationalists, which will likely strengthen their movement overall, while isolating them further from contrary opinions.

John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" is essential reading for those who wish to silence speech they find offensive, especially corporations which may or may not have the right to regulate content on their all-but-universal, essential-to-modern-life platforms.

In the meantime we should all ask ourselves how we can move forward to a world where no single Facebook-like entity has so much say over the ability of Americans to freely assemble, speak, and publish in the modern world.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#607

Post by DoYouEvenLFTR » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 9:24 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…

That seems reasonable. Let them set up their own website. What's that? No one wants to be a hosting provider for a bunch of neonazis? Well, they better go and set up their own hosting provider.

And before you know it, you need to build an iron mine because no one wants to sell you steel for the basic infrastructure of the town you were forced to build because no one was willing to let you enter their store to even buy groceries!

At what industrial level is it okay and not okay to exclude someone from that?

Censorship isn't an 'answer'. Don't ask me what the answer is, though. I leave that to smarter minds.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#608

Post by sagichmal » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

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…

> What do you think would happen if these "private companies" with such deep hooks into our communication infrastructure suddenly decided to remove all data associated to the Republican Party? For that matter, the Democratic Party?

They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry. Luckily, as moral agents, we humans are capable of differentiating "general political party" from "white nationalists", and can target the latter and not the former.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#609

Post by thundergolfer » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 9:24 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…

Those identity categories are not all equivalent. Wanting to live among only "white" people is not a coherent or rational preference. It can really only be grounded in racism.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#610

Post by MadWombat » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 9:25 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"

Would you take a similar stance if Facebook banned LGBT content or YouTube kicked atheist videos off their site? I am not saying you wouldn't, but both your examples seem to be a bit one sided.