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Things from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg and his employees

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Re: Things from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg and his employees

#231
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> social media sites should not be the business of censoring elected officials. That is the job of voters and Congress It's explicitly not the job of Congress. That's the point of the First Amendment. Regulating free speech is up to private enterprise, using private enforcement methods like de-platforming (old school: you can't spew your drivel inside my bar) and shaming.

Just because they legally can does not mean they should censor the official representatives of the voters. The bigger the audience the more important it gets to show all points of views. The sun is the best disinfectant. The wrong ideas should be publicly challenged, otherwise they may silently spread unchecked and surface when it is too late to stop them. You do not need majority to make quick and radical social cha…

I think the last few years have proven what you've said really really wrong. Bigger audiences for toxic speech (on both the left and the right) tend to amplify the ideas contained in that speech, and when those ideas are publicly challenged, which they always are, they become politicized and people become entrenched in a giant shouting match that doesn't accomplish anything. People with big audiences on the internet, especially elected officials, should be held to a higher standard than the average user to facilitate better conversations about important topics, not lower standards just because what they're saying is news worthy.

Re: Things from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg and his employees

#232
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're worried about "whatever is the popular opinion of the day" but want to leave that job to voters? You're talking about censorship as if it's something civil institutions have responsibility for, but private institutions shouldn't be doing? Your comment is concerned about slippery slopes, but doesn't consider the one we're already skiing down where we discourage institutions from taking responsibility for accura…

> we discourage institutions from taking responsibility for accuracy Facts are often debatable; the set of facts that need to be accurate is also debatable; and you are suggesting that both of those debates be settled unilaterally by expecting (requiring?) the institution to "take responsibility for accuracy." Note that public pressure (read: popular opinion of the day) will almost certainly be the deciding factor in…

Where facts are debatable, the responsibility to accuracy would include a description of their basis and the limits of that basis.

Where there's less room for debate, responsibility includes an obligation to avoid "shape of the earth: views differ" approaches.

If individuals and institutions don't take up this kind of responsibility, then there's no such thing as discourse, only speech as indulgence.

And the value of popular opinion is directly related which one of those is used in constructing it. Individual and institutional responsibility, however, will remain orthogonal to that.

Re: Things from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg and his employees

#233
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>social media sites should not be the business of censoring elected officials. That is the job of voters and Congress. What about Paul Nehlen, a political candidate who (before he was permabanned) frequently railed on Twitter against the "Jewish media" and mused about the "JQ", which stands for Jewish Question? Who called Jewish critics "shekels-for-hire" and used the phrase "The goyim know!" as an imitation of their…

> Social media is a not a public square where people can plant their soapbox Except there isn't really an alternative to Twitter - they have monopolised that "short catchy text stream" market. Other services, like Gab, exist - but when services like Cloudflare readily pull support for less mainstream alternatives, its hard to say that if you don't like Twitter you can go somewhere else. For better or worse, Facebook…

> "Except there isn't really an alternative to Twitter"

I'm curious, what's the problem with that?

Re: Things from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg and his employees

#234
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're getting onto our own slippery territory here. If I let someone into my living room, and that person makes political statements I don't like, I'm free to ask them to leave and not come back, or tell other people in my living room that I think the statements are factually incorrect. If Facebook lets someone onto their website, and that person makes political statements Facebook doesn't like, why can't Facebook as…

> I'm free to ask them to leave and not come back And you're free to not ask them to leave, also... which is what we're arguing Facebook should be.

If you’re arguing that they shouldn’t do something, that’s different from arguing that they can’t do something. I’m a free speech advocate, but the First Amendment does not apply to private corporations except in very rare circumstances.

Re: Things from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg and his employees

#235
post #205

So long as their speech remains legal, social media sites should not be the business of censoring elected officials. That is the job of voters and Congress. It’s too easy to walk down a slippery slope where suddenly these sites have to regulate in accordance with whatever is the popular opinion of the day.

>social media sites should not be the business of censoring elected officials. That is the job of voters and Congress. What about Paul Nehlen, a political candidate who (before he was permabanned) frequently railed on Twitter against the "Jewish media" and mused about the "JQ", which stands for Jewish Question? Who called Jewish critics "shekels-for-hire" and used the phrase "The goyim know!" as an imitation of their…

They should not ban him. If for no other reason then that I prefer to know this info about a candidate.

Re: Things from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg and his employees

#236
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because they legally can does not mean they should censor the official representatives of the voters. The bigger the audience the more important it gets to show all points of views. The sun is the best disinfectant. The wrong ideas should be publicly challenged, otherwise they may silently spread unchecked and surface when it is too late to stop them. You do not need majority to make quick and radical social cha…

> The sun is the best disinfectant. That has proven not to be the case. Bringing extremist views into the mainstream by way of social media (and politics) has only strengthened their influence.

This was the real eye opener for me over the past 5 or 10 years. I used to be firmly in the "no censorship" camp, but it seems an alarming number Americans (I'm American and can't speak for any other nation) are not capable of using critical thinking when it comes to political issue that they've already made up their minds about. Close friends and family included.

I don't know the answer to this problem, but it seems our education system needs dramatic improvement.

Re: Things from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg and his employees

#237

So long as their speech remains legal, social media sites should not be the business of censoring elected officials. That is the job of voters and Congress. It’s too easy to walk down a slippery slope where suddenly these sites have to regulate in accordance with whatever is the popular opinion of the day.

Those 7 points were very solid and shows that Zuckerberg has a lot more integrity here than those that wish to be the thought police.

Re: Things from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg and his employees

#238
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>social media sites should not be the business of censoring elected officials. That is the job of voters and Congress. What about Paul Nehlen, a political candidate who (before he was permabanned) frequently railed on Twitter against the "Jewish media" and mused about the "JQ", which stands for Jewish Question? Who called Jewish critics "shekels-for-hire" and used the phrase "The goyim know!" as an imitation of their…

> Social media is a not a public square where people can plant their soapbox Except there isn't really an alternative to Twitter - they have monopolised that "short catchy text stream" market. Other services, like Gab, exist - but when services like Cloudflare readily pull support for less mainstream alternatives, its hard to say that if you don't like Twitter you can go somewhere else. For better or worse, Facebook…

> but when services like Cloudflare readily pull support for less mainstream alternatives

What has Cloudflare pulled support for, except the one neonazi site that made them vow never to do it again?

Re: Things from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg and his employees

#239

The problem is really pretty simple: -Facebook has a culture that is extremely biased toward the political left. The left has a (recent?) trend of wanting to censor speech they don't agree with. -America (and the world) has a lot more viewpoint diversity. Zuckerberg is stuck with trying to keep his workers happy but also not wanting to alienate large portions of users, customers, politicans, etc. In my opinion, he ha…

I want to respectfully disagree with you. The kernel of your argument here is that the speech in question is a matter of disagreement. It's important to define what kind of speech we're talking about here, because everyone might mean something different. To be clear, we are talking about verifiably false speech. Verifiably false speech that is sufficiently amplified can have serious consequences. This is unequivocall…

I'm with you on this. In the past 150 years, pseudoscientific disciplines like eugenics and phrenology have directly led to the deaths of millions of people. Geographic determinism and 19th-century racial "science" directly led to the subjugation, abuse, and exploitation of tens of millions of people. Just two years ago, misinformation and falsified news fueled a genocide through Facebook.

You're 100% correct: this is not a game. We have frameworks for verifying truth, in science and journalism - that truth can safe lives.

Re: Things from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg and his employees

#240
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>social media sites should not be the business of censoring elected officials. That is the job of voters and Congress. What about Paul Nehlen, a political candidate who (before he was permabanned) frequently railed on Twitter against the "Jewish media" and mused about the "JQ", which stands for Jewish Question? Who called Jewish critics "shekels-for-hire" and used the phrase "The goyim know!" as an imitation of their…

> Social media is a not a public square where people can plant their soapbox Except there isn't really an alternative to Twitter - they have monopolised that "short catchy text stream" market. Other services, like Gab, exist - but when services like Cloudflare readily pull support for less mainstream alternatives, its hard to say that if you don't like Twitter you can go somewhere else. For better or worse, Facebook…

you can still make a blog! if everyone is technically able to access your content but no one wants to (for reasons other than fearing govt. intervention), that is a very different problem than a freedom of speech problem.
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