This is awesome news. Deplatforming works and these guys are so blatantly harmful.
Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others
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Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others
#32And in Russia they ban instead this or that free speech advocate. And in China it is some other group of people that cannot speak. And in India, and in Brasil, Iran, Pakistan, UK, etc. There are always offensive people or sensitive subjects. The only question is Facebook going to ban each group of people per country basis or globally. If globally, we are going to have a very limited, gray area of speech in Facebook.
Only happy birthdays, congrats for graduations/wedding/babies/house, and condolences for deaths.
Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others
#33I think this is one of the more interesting and important debates of our time. As so much moves online, we realize that our speech belongs to these huge companies.
On one hand, it's great to see these toxic people kicked off, because deplatforming them works wonders in terms of stopping them from spreading their hate.
I think most of us have some doubts as to how it might play out in the future, though, and there are of course questions about how healthy it is for such huge corporations to have that much sway in the first place.
There are all kinds of other shenanigans going on with many of these companies too:
https://popular.info/p/trump-ad-contagion-spreads-on-faceboo...
Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others
#34Ignoring for now the larger debate over censorship, Facebook's implementation of this ban is suspect. All of these accounts have been alleged to be in violation for months, if not years, and some already had been partially banned (Alex Jones was banned from FB but not IG). Why now? Were there new violations? And/or is it a new policy change that affects how FB will be banning accounts moving forward? Is FB going to do bans for a specific user across all platforms, instead of a platform-by-platform basis?
Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others
#35It’s only unfortunate that it took social networks this long to ban their toxic behavior and talk. These people did a lot of damage. A lot. All in the name of free speech. And to those saying, just because Facebook can, doesn’t mean they should. These people had the same freedom. Just because they can, they shouldn’t. But they chose hatred. And here we are. You reap what you sow.
Facebook doesn’t owe them anything.
Edit: a couple of words.
Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others
#36...and nothing of value was lost. Facebook is not the government. They have no obligation to allow all speech.
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.
Is property truly private when it's the public square for 1/6 of the population of the entire planet?
It's like if someone owned all of the streets outside of your house and censored you on their private property.
Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others
#37I'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.
What has he said that's racist?
Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others
#38I'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…
At the end of the day, that's for Facebook to decide. If Facebook decides they don't want to host content from them, that's their choice as the private company they are.
People keep bringing up "freedom of speech" when it comes to these trolls, like the world owes them something.
Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others
#39Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others
#40I'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…
Agreed. Facebook and Twitter are private companies so they can do whatever they want as far as I'm concerned. But given their reach, it is disturbing that their censorship of content (and CNN's inevitable approval of it) is clearly political bubble motivated.
Recent examples are James Woods and the Unplanned movie. While far more egregious speech (assuming the same standard) on the other side is given a pass.
It would be great if they would list all those that are blocked (maybe only the high profile ones) so that we could have some actual data around it.