Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing

My statement about Facebook's right to editorialize is not limited in scope to moderation. Facebook has the right, for example, to hide all posts by a certain ethnic minority group if they so choose, or to publish only racist posts and nothing else, if that were their policy. It's their website.

I think there should be additional regulation restricting this, but only for DMs and perhaps small, private groups, where the platform is serving as a communications tool. Censoring those types of communications is actively harmful to society.

Facebook deciding what is or isn't in your news feed is Facebook's freedom of speech.

Ultimately, I support Facebook "erring" on the side of leaving content up. I would even support free expression restricting regulation regarding their legal ability to censor DMs; that is to say that, when functioning as a person-to-person communications medium, they should not be permitted to arbitrarily suspend accounts or censor messages. When your Facebook account is otherwise suspended, you should still be able to log in and send and receive messages from your contacts. Imagine if the telephone company stopped your ability to send or receive SMS if you said things on the phone that they didn't like!

That said, for the part of Facebook that is closest to "web hosting", it's their show, and their rules. It's entirely up to them if they wish to editorialize in the feed, although I agree it's harmful to society and that the state should educate and train people to avoid Facebook, the same as they do with alcohol or gambling.

I'm not sure how you stay sane working on those micro-issues though.

I suspect if this were true this letter would not have been needed. http://hillsdalecollegian.com/2020/06/on-the-college-and-sil...

> People might be fired for being against BLM, but that's only right. If you get up and say a group of oppressed people should continue to be oppressed then you absolutely should be fired.

Black Lives Matter, as a movement generally, is riddled with Marxists. I have seen signs from the Marxist wing at every protest in the city, calling for the end of capitalism, free subway rides, and the immediate removal of Donald Trump without recourse to an election.

Marxists sent my family to Siberian labor camps, and I have a beef with them. I expect free NYC subways would be economically inefficient. There are many other parts of BLM to which I object. I object to the charge that silence is violence. I object to the destruction of property, and to the statement that destruction of property is not violence. I object to those who have pulled down certain statues, like Grant and Washington. I object to the march slogan, which I have heard at half a dozen protests: "No cops! No KKK, No Racist USA"; the KKK are more than abstract bogeymen, but are real, and sometimes dangerous, and I have family who have been targeted by persons who I reasonably suspect to be bona fide members, as one of their other objects of hate: Roman Catholics. Perhaps this chant would be powerful in the American south, but I respectfully doubt that the half-white protest crowds of New York City are qualified to know the first thing about such matters. I further object to those who, in the name of BLM, head on to Twitter to solicit allegations of racism and names of people to doxx, harass, and get fired.

All of these have taken place under the banner of Black Lives Matter. Perhaps some of them shouldn't have. Perhaps the brand should be more protected; in what I have witnessed, it's not.

I have not previously raised these matters in any venue whatsoever, because I do not wish to undermine the reform of police impunity underway. My objections are typically not a matter of general interest, and I would not impose on people to subject them to such things. But for the purpose of this conversation right here, that I may rebuke you vigorously, I will freely admit to you: I am opposed to Black Lives Matter. I am opposed to them as a specific reification of needed reforms. I wish to be outside the group of BLM supporters. I have not blackened my profile picture, I have not used the hashtag anywhere in particular.

You suggest this is sufficient to merit firing — or at least, your suggestion of what merits firing is not structured so that I might infer that my position ought to be safe.

How dare you? How dare you presume that you or anyone like you are entitled to pass any judgment on my employment whatsoever? What right have you lot to threaten me, or to threaten anyone, like this? How fortunate for the world that your dreams of ideological tyranny should be thwarted! How fortunate are those of us still sufficiently blessed by liberty with the privilege to ignore those of like persuasion, to dismiss your empty screed, to cast you all down off the high horse of self-righteousness and be rid of your moralizing. Let all people strive to keep you from power. Let us never mistake loyalty for righteousness. Let us work instead to extend such blessings to all the world. (I hear, for instance, that black people often experience barriers which keep them from such blessings. Let us reach out to them in brotherhood.)

I will further add that my CEO is African-American. I am proud of him. He's spoken out about racism in America, giving interviews to major news outlets, penning articles for high-profile publications. I dare not say that I speak for him, yet I would guess that if it you asked him to fire me, showed him what I have written here, that he would rebuke you: for I know he has passed through the fires of ideological scrutiny firsthand, and I think he has experienced personally these forces which your lot aspires to channel — seen how little they care for mercy, or even decency.

Lafayette Square is a public place, and that is where POTUS cleared peaceful protectors with force, so that he could walk across it for his photo op at the church. If it were an issue of protecting St John's Church property, they could have cleared just that property, and brought the president in with a helicopter. But the whole point was to demonstrate the show of force against the protesters.

You appear to be focusing on St John's Church's private property with the goal of distracting attention from the public place where the actual use of force against peaceful protesters took place: Lafayette Square.

One doesn't need to be a liberal to call out the shamefulness of that incident. In fact the hardly liberal James Mattis did exactly that, as did the other general who was caught in the photo op.