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Facebook to ban white nationalist content

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Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#891

Post by ineedasername »

alexandre_m wrote: post #725
ineedasername wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No company or platform owes them anything. Precisely. I worked on a college newspaper. It was common , had been going on for years and years in face, that a specific hate group would send an order for advertisements, and threaten to sue if we didn't print them. They were usually Holocaust denial ads w/ anti-semitic conspiracy theories. We never printed them, but some schools inevitably did, failing to understand th…

Bad example. The college newspaper acts as an editor and has to review what content to publish before it's being published. The college will be held responsible if there's misinformation or something of criminal nature being shared. FB pretends to be a medium of information for anyone and they don't moderate what is being published before being published. They do however have an obligation for content being distribut…

> The college will be held responsible if there's misinformation or something of criminal nature being shared.

This is precisely the dynamic that is driving facebook. I don't think the comparison to a newspaper is perfect, but I do think it's apt. In both cases, neither venue is obligated to give anyone their own soapbox to stand on. That was my point.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#892

Post by komali2 »

remarkEon wrote: post #819
komali2 wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"people who espouse views that are not in line with progressive orthodoxy". Nah disagree there. We'll see if Facebook starts arbitrarily banning libertarian content or whatever, but I don't think this spells the doom that conservatives think it will for the bits of their ideology that aren't racist.

You're proving the exact point that you're replying to. You've proceeded to qualify everything except the things you decide of a particular ideology as "racist".

I mean, white nationalism is racist. Do you disagree?

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#893

Post by int_19h »

amalcon wrote: post #837
btilly wrote: post #663

In principle, who could be opposed? In practice, how will this actually work out? True story. I have a friend who got a temporary ban from Facebook (I think 90 days?) for commenting on a story about a Texas billionaire paying to hunt endangered animals, "How much would it cost to hunt Texas billionaires?" That was considered a violation of their anti-bullying stance. Knowing her, it wasn't. It was sarcasm. Moving on…

From the release: > Our own review of hate figures and organizations – as defined by our Dangerous Individuals & Organizations policy – further revealed the overlap between white nationalism and separatism and white supremacy. It doesn't appear that this content is being banned because Facebook surrogates find the politics in question abhorrent (though they likely do so find). It is being banned because it is acting…

> It is being banned because it is acting as part of a recruitment funnel for an ideology that openly advocates violence.

That would be believable, if it was applied as such across the board - e.g. also removing Christian Dominionists, Stalinists, Salafi Muslims, NoI etc.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#894

Post by nyxxie »

This ethnocentric approach to censorship is terrifying. Somewhere in Facebook is a small group of people who have the hubris to say they can decide on what’s right and what’s wrong, and are enforcing these views on some 1/9th of the world’s population. With outright banning white nationalism, they’re essentially shown us that they’re willing to play ideological kingmaker if anything enters the current news cycle that is viewed as evil.

How are people ok with this? Whatever your opinions are on the subject matter that was banned today are, are you honestly ok with the idea that people are now deciding what billions are allowed to see in broad strokes? History is filled with examples of controversial viewpoints being viewed as societal cancer only to be later accepted in some form as sane. Are we really going to now decide that we’ve reached final evolution and can now start judging wrongthink?

I view this as part of an alarming trend of people simply getting tired of seeing people they disagree with continue to exist and wishing they and their speech were just gone. It terrifies me that this is starting to get political will and we’re shifting to censorship as a solution.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#895

Post by tibbydudeza »

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…

I don't see Germany tolerating any support of National Socialism in their public sphere and rightly so ... some ideologies just too bloody abhorent and against the public good.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#896

Post by scarlac »

nyxxie wrote: post #894

This ethnocentric approach to censorship is terrifying. Somewhere in Facebook is a small group of people who have the hubris to say they can decide on what’s right and what’s wrong, and are enforcing these views on some 1/9th of the world’s population. With outright banning white nationalism, they’re essentially shown us that they’re willing to play ideological kingmaker if anything enters the current news cycle that…

> With outright banning white nationalism, they’re essentially shown us that they’re willing to play ideological kingmaker if anything enters the current news cycle that is viewed as evil.

There have been doing this since they launched. You could not post semi-nudity even for educational purposes. Remember the breast-cancer debacle? You couldn't post anything that incites violence. The list is fairly long and is often referred to as their "Community Guidelines".

Twitter has rules. Reddit has rules. Most online communities do in fact have rules of some sort and in the end it's up to humans to patrol it.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#897

Post by hackerbabz »

nyxxie wrote: post #894

This ethnocentric approach to censorship is terrifying. Somewhere in Facebook is a small group of people who have the hubris to say they can decide on what’s right and what’s wrong, and are enforcing these views on some 1/9th of the world’s population. With outright banning white nationalism, they’re essentially shown us that they’re willing to play ideological kingmaker if anything enters the current news cycle that…

If white nationalism is 'later accepted as sane', I don't want to be alive in that world. But chances are, I won't have a choice in the matter.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#898

Post by tibbydudeza »

hcurtiss wrote: post #652
sagichmal wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Are you sure? Do we even know, for sure, what "white nationalist" means? I'm white, and I favor a government that's principally oriented toward advancing this nation's interests. Am I a white nationalist?

In Sweden perhaps not since white and nation is analogous but in US you are going have a problem.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#899

Post by arp242 »

HereIGoAgain wrote: post #871
arp242 wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moving on to this policy, I'm happy to see neonazis and the KKK have a hard time. But there are people in the UK and EU who would see Brexit as being a separatist cause motivated by racial animosity. No one is confused about the difference between "I want to kill all Jews" and "I think the British economy would be better off with fewer Polish plumbers". > And remaining banned even for people who support it on econo…

>No one is confused about the difference between "I want to kill all Jews" and "I think the British economy would be better off with fewer Polish plumbers". You clearly haven't been paying attention to modern day discourse over issues like illegal immigration and such. If you listened to some people (unironically the same people pushing for stuff like this) having an issue with illegal immigration is basically treate…

I have been paying a great deal of attention, and it turns out that there is more than an insignificant overlap between actual "kill all Jews" Nazis and regular anti-immigration crowd.

Furthermore, as soon as the literal neo-Nazis get criticized the anti-immigration crowd either outright jumps to their defence or shrugs any concerns of. Trump's "very fine people" remark is a good example of that, or a recent article which "proved" anti-conservative bias on Twitter by pointing out that people like David Duke (former KKK grand wizard) or Richard Spencer (literal neo-Nazi who wants to forcibly eject all Jews and Blacks from US) got banned from Twitter.[1]

So, if you don't want to be treated like a duck, then don't walk and quack like one. How else am I supposed to interpret an article defending literal neo-Nazis as "Conservatives treated harshly on Twitter"? Look at the data that is presented[2], it literally includes the the American Nazi Party. Now, if you want to make the argument that we should allow these people because "muh free peach" then okay, but read that article again, it just talks about "Conservatives" and "Trump supporters" (aside: there are other problems with this "study" as well, such as not including various Liberal accounts that were banned for unstated reasons).

I also agree that sometimes anti-immigration views are brushed aside as "racist" far too quickly, and it annoys me as well. But this kind of confusion is a bed of your own making.

I am not as pro-immigration as you'd might think based on the above, I think there are some real problems caused by both legal and illegal immigration, and that they should be addressed. But it's plenty evident that the anti-immigration right has long since been infested by some very nasty people, which is doing a great disservice to anyone else, especially those with anti-immigration views.

I suggest you first take so effort to purge the toxicity before complaining about "PC".

[1]: https://quillette.com/2019/02/12/it-isnt-your-imagination-tw... [2]: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/88a74d_d231bdbfb13c4b9ab77422...

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#900

Post by colllectorof »

seventytwo wrote: post #880
duxup wrote: post #63

I suspect there is some value in pushing such content off of large sites to reduce the surface area available for recruitment. I used to think that pushing such content off a site or forum was futile and calling it for what it is on a site had value, I'm not sure that is the case anymore. If you look on platforms like reddit and such where you have groups in subreddits calling for race wars, general hatred, and viole…

I spend most of my time on Reddit, and you’re spot on here. Deplatforming is the most effective way to fight the spread of hate. It’s literally a cancer, and it’s goinf to take the chemo therapy of stepping on the toes of free speech to protect our country and society. Sucks, but that’s what it takes - especially when they wrap themselves up in the flag and hide behind the first amendment to spew their hate.

>Deplatforming is the most effective way to fight the spread of hate.

As evidenced by what?

From everything I see, deplatforming creates filter bubbles, which lead to radicalization, which lead to hate.

After the rise of deplatforming tactics in the last 5 years, American society is more radicalized than before.

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