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Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

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21–30 of 776 posts

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#21
I used to be against this sort of thing, but now I think the faster Facebook, Twitter, and Google make themselves irrelevant for public discourse, the better. Their ad-based business model is just incompatible with free speech, and the more obvious that fact is to everyone, the better.

I still think it's bad when non-branded content carriers like web hosts, CDNs, payment processors and banks ban clients based on ideology though.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#22
post #7

Regrettable. Are they banning radical left types? Of course not.

Who is a radical left type on Facebook that you feel have crossed boundaries?

My personal belief is that Facebook shouldn't be trying to censor speech this way, it's impossible to be (or appear to be) impartial. The people who are booted off just go to their own corner of the internet and never have their ideas challenged.

But to answer your question, https://www.facebook.com/kathygriffin/ comes to mind (with the beheaded Trump photo).

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#24

I'm not a fan of either of these people, but how exactly are Milo Yiannopolous and Paul Joseph Watson "dangerous"? Maybe it's not good material for people to be watching, but to call them "dangerous" comes off like the religious right of yore claiming that video games depicting violence are dangerous and need to be censored. I wouldn't normally step in to defend these people, but this article by CNN is a prime exampl…

Saying racist stuff constantly but playing it off as "ironic" and wearing a suit doesn't make it less racist. Good, they should have kicked these guys off years ago.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#25
For years 'InfoWars' was promoted on YouTube, allegedly they now ban Alex Jones and his brand of media, along with - now - Facebook.

During the Bush years he did act as a 'gatekeeper' for people questioning the war. Rather than people get to useful facts they only got as far as Alex Jones rants. This had a useful effect of neutering anyone questioning the particulars of how the war started.

I would not say it is sad to see him banned from every platform but you have to wonder if he has outlived his usefulness.

The bigger problem is the recommendation algorithms, giving him the oxygen of publicity. People would never have discovered his content without these algorithms, unless a friend personally recommended 'Infowars' et al.

We should still have the option to read or watch content that does not agree with us in the realm of politics. I have not read 'Mein Kampf' myself, however I have listened to that one clip of Hitler actually talking rather than delivering a speech. I found it useful for understanding a little bit more about that war. There may be neo-nazis we need to protect from such hate speech but it is also at a cost to understanding history.

With Alex Jones there is that theory that he is the same person as Bill Hicks. That story does interest me and I would like the option to study some original Alex Jones content to see if that is a credible conspiracy story or just some entertaining hogwash. If every trace of Alex Jones is banned from the internet then I won't have that option.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#27

I'm not a fan of either of these people, but how exactly are Milo Yiannopolous and Paul Joseph Watson "dangerous"? Maybe it's not good material for people to be watching, but to call them "dangerous" comes off like the religious right of yore claiming that video games depicting violence are dangerous and need to be censored. I wouldn't normally step in to defend these people, but this article by CNN is a prime exampl…

There has to be some sort of US free speech legal action that could be taken to stop this crack down by an internet platform company on free speech. I'm not sure how many people actually take FB seriously as a 'news' platform, but it can be useful to discuss the way corporate entities such as CNN present information on their specific home pages on Facebook.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#28
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish all users had your capacity for reason. FB is private property. Play by their rules or GTFO. People who scream about censorship in instances such as these are being willfully dismissive of the property rights of others. And that's a dangerous road to start down.

Just because Facebook can do something doesn't mean Facebook should. Freedom of speech is much more than a legal concept about governments and governed. It's also a guideline on how we should structure an open society going at least back to Ancient Greece.

There never has been a right to free speech on some private companies system.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#30
post #15

...and nothing of value was lost. Facebook is not the government. They have no obligation to allow all speech.

Just wait till people on the other side of the spectrum start getting blowback because establishment left are done with them, then we’ll hear how speech is being kerbed in the interest of the establishment and corporatism.

Left-aligned bloggers/organizations that report on extremist right politics got caught up in a mass ban for their reporting and cried foul about it just last week actually.
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