The word boycott suggests a grassroots campaign against a company. But these are companies attacking individuals. Restricting their ability to trade, make a living and communicate.
What we have on our hands is a trade blockade.
Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott
281–290 of 356 posts
Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook already has a definition for hate speech and this boycott is not asking for any changes to that definition so complaints about how anyone but Facebook defines hate speech is mostly irrelevant.
They are asking for "experts", who will likely come from the extremely left leaning Social Science departments. If they attempted to fill those slots with centrists then they'd be decryed for not using the "real experts" or something similar. On most platforms racism is only defined using the systematic defintion and not the traditional definition [1]. Calling a white person a Karen seems to have definite racist qual…
Why is the systematic definition worse than the traditional one?
The only advantage I see to the traditional definition is that it is semantically nicer. The traditional definition 'does what it says on the tin'. So sure, maybe we should use another word than racism.
However, if this were a problem, I think the solution would be to change the wording of the policy to match the interpretation. Not change the policy to match the wording.
When we say 'racism is a big problem to be solved' that big problem (in the west) is discrimination against non-white people. At least as seen by most people. This is why calling someone the N-word is a lot worse than calling a white person anything relating to their race. Because white people suffer a lot less from racism.
That is not to say that racism against white people is totally okay, but the badness of it is on a totally different level than racism against e.g. black people. And to say that one form should be treated just like the other is ignoring a whole lot of context, just for the sake of semantics.
Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook already has a definition for hate speech and this boycott is not asking for any changes to that definition so complaints about how anyone but Facebook defines hate speech is mostly irrelevant.
They are asking for "experts", who will likely come from the extremely left leaning Social Science departments. If they attempted to fill those slots with centrists then they'd be decryed for not using the "real experts" or something similar. On most platforms racism is only defined using the systematic defintion and not the traditional definition [1]. Calling a white person a Karen seems to have definite racist qual…
> They are asking for "experts", who will likely come from the extremely left leaning Social Science departments.
It's peak anti-intellectualism to question someone's credentials and an entire grouping of fields of study just because their educated opinions don't coincide with your own.
> On most platforms racism is only defined using the systematic defintion and not the traditional definition [1].
Why are these two definitions at conflict in your mind? Furthermore why is that the definition? Why not Wikipedia's?
"Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to physical appearance and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another."
Your definition would seem more in-line with prejudice at large, not racism which carries a very specific historical context.
> Calling a white person a Karen seems to have definite racist qualities but it's perfectly acceptable for some reason. Calling someone a N* means people applaud when you get beat up.
Calling someone a Karen doesn't carry even remotely the amount of history or hatred as the other. No one's been called a Karen as they were being lynched, as their hat was being knocked of their head for not removing it as a white person walked by, for being relegated to the back of the bus, or to being bought and sold as slaves.
It's frankly perverse you'd compare the two.
Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott
#284> Private company tells other private company which speech they should be censoring Welcome to the new era of information folks. You thought private companies were too powerful before, well, guess what? You've now given them the power to control almost all forms of communication. "But, but, private companies should be able to decide who they want on their platform! What about the free market?" Wake the hell up. Read…
What, exactly, is your alternative here? The government forces me to fund speech I hate? Facebook is not allowed to ban literal NAZIs? A mandated minimum ad spend for all TV programs? I can’t understand the supposed end-game for this idea that no one is allowed to moderate speech on private property.
The solution doesn't lie in either extreme. The solution is not 'companies can't censor anyone' nor is it 'companies can censor whomever they want'.
The issue is that a functioning society needs a public forum to have discussions. Access to that public forum thus is important. Reasons to deny access to that forum should be weighed against the effect on the public discussion.
Where that balance lies affects society a lot, so society should have a big say. At the same time, we can't just take over a private company's control over the public forum wholesale. Instead, we need regulations made by government to inform how to weigh those decisions. We need a decent enough appeals process to fix mistakes.
If a company cannot handle that process, then that company shouldn't have that much control over public discussion. The fact that they didn't intend to have that control doesn't matter. At some point, the needs of society come before the needs of private companies.
Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Literally anything can lead to violence. It’s just a matter of interpretation. How about stopping with the censorship and fighting with the violence itself?
> Literally anything can lead to violence. Literally anything and lead to anything, that's not an argument it's a distraction. > How about stopping with the censorship For the 1,000,000th time, private company cleaning up garbage content its "censorship". Only governments engage in censorship. Every private business has the ability to clean up their space without needed to ask permission.
> Literally anything can lead to anything.
I’m glad you get my point.
> private company cleaning up garbage content its “censorship”
And again )
Jokes aside - I am still waiting when people like you start burning books with “garbage” content. I’ll give it 2 years from now. Oh wait, haven’t you already started? Thinking of “Gone with the Wind” now. Oh, it’s back already. But with a disclaimer that it ‘denies horrors of slavery’ and stuff. Like modern people are just unable to understand it right and they require some proper guidance to think in the correct way.
An anecdote: in USSR we had these western/European movie shows on very rare occasions. Normally, before every show a communist party member would make a speech where he/she would warn the watchers that the alien western ideology might harm their soviet minds. It’s very interesting to see how there same thing starts to happen again, voluntarily, in the western world. Way to go, kids )
The argument you’re using - “only governments engage in censorship” - is just an excuse for you to justify the censorship in social media. It’s just a matter of definition, but the result is the same. The social media corporations of the Facebook scale have the same (or even larger) impact on the public consciousness as the government propaganda machine and should not be treated differently.
Actually, the government’s censorship looks even nicer, because they at least provide the legal definition of “garbage”, whereas you guys just call a “garbage” anything you don’t like today. Anything “alien” to your current ideology.
There’s also no such thing as a “right thing”. There are only actions that are legal or not. The violent acts are illegal - work on stopping these. Otherwise, it’s (obviously) a slippery slope (I can’t believe I said this). Simply because the fluctuations of the meaning of “right thing to do” and “garbage information” are completely unpredictable you should be very much afraid of using such moral criteria.
That’s basically the freedom of information and speech people of my country died for in mental hospitals and gulags.
Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are asking for "experts", who will likely come from the extremely left leaning Social Science departments. If they attempted to fill those slots with centrists then they'd be decryed for not using the "real experts" or something similar. On most platforms racism is only defined using the systematic defintion and not the traditional definition [1]. Calling a white person a Karen seems to have definite racist qual…
>... Karen ... >... N* ... Your comment was being parodied[1] years before you wrote it. It is not a centrist position to think Karen is anywhere close to the N word on the spectrum of hate speech. Once again, Facebook is not being asked to redefine hate speech. Instead the boycotters are asking that the people moderating hate speech are knowledgeable about hate speech. That seems reasonable to me. Do you think those…
I'm not trying to say Karen has the same history as N. I see Karen as a word used to target white female and to shame them into acting exactly how the far left expects a white woman to act. You might have seen the recent video of a guy confronting a woman who cut him off in traffic [1]. Widely shared, she's clearly in emotional trauma because she knows the social consequences of being taped and shared online. Oh and she's also scared because he followed her home, recorded her plate and home address to share online. Turns out he's got a history of making claims against people and restraining orders against him for harassing women.
It's a word that is being used to harm some people and to control others. Is there a line on the hate speech spectrum where some hate speech is ok but others needs to be banned? If so, exactly what is on each side of that line?
The man in this video keeps uttering it constantly to her. He's clearly in a positon of power and he's taking a lot of enjoyment out of causing her pain. I say if we're getting rid of racist speech it needs to cut both ways.
[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckYouKaren/comments/hf5t61/hyster...
Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott
#287Increasingly, I just want a completely decentralized social networking toolchain, where people can subscribe to the moderation and filtration they like, and nothing can be universally censored.
It's not "completely decentralized" due to various realities, but federated and self hostable services such as Matrix, Mastodon, and PixelFed should mostly work for use with family and friends at this point.
I am a regular user of Matrix and Mastodon. You've just turned me on to PixelFed.
Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect you might not get an answer to this since it's not something anyone has actually said here.
Headline: "Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott" Root Comment: "Sounds like Verizon's Facebook advertising spend is losing value because of COVID-19, so they're using this a way to redirect focus away from the negative impact on their business." Parent Comment: "Why is it impossible that Verizon is responding, at least in part, to public pressure against Facebook?" Your Comment: "I suspect…
Verizon's earnings are down something like 3% YTD from their guidance [0] and their stock price is down 10%. Fortune 500 companies do not prioritise doing social good over profits when their share price is down 10%. Too many people are losing too much money; these are numbers that are supposed to go up.
It is obvious Verizon is taking action in context of the Facebook boycott because they've told us that in a press release. But it is a very safe bet that the decision is made accompanied by data that says "Facebook ads have not been especially cost effective for us over the last 12-18 months" and was probably already a decision in the works prior to learning about the boycott.
There are ~8 billion people in the world. Corporate executives are the tiny fraction of that population who are both hyper-competent and hyper-motivated by money. They did not suddenly wake up this morning and decide to try and do more good in the world than they were yesterday, and the odds are bad that they made this call based on nebulous "oh there is a boycott this month we just realised Facebook is nasty" style considerations.
[0] https://www.investors.com/news/technology/verizon-earnings-v...
Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott
#289Sounds like Verizon's Facebook advertising spend is losing value because of COVID-19, so they're using this a way to redirect focus away from the negative impact on their business. All of the companies doing this right now are 'pausing spend' rather than redirecting. They're reducing their marketing budgets and pointing the finger at Facebook so no one looks too closely at the implications of their reduced ad spend.
The real reason doesn't matter. If a company leaves and says it's due to Facebook's promotion of hate speech then there's no way that company can go back to advertising on Facebook before that changes (it'd look like a change of heart, and that now they think promoting hate speech is OK). Facebook are seeing a drop in ad revenue no matter what, and the only way to get the companies back will be to change. Maybe FB don't care about getting them back, but I suspect that's not likely.
Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
>... Karen ... >... N* ... Your comment was being parodied[1] years before you wrote it. It is not a centrist position to think Karen is anywhere close to the N word on the spectrum of hate speech. Once again, Facebook is not being asked to redefine hate speech. Instead the boycotters are asking that the people moderating hate speech are knowledgeable about hate speech. That seems reasonable to me. Do you think those…
I'm not trying to say Karen has the same history as N. I see Karen as a word used to target white female and to shame them into acting exactly how the far left expects a white woman to act. You might have seen the recent video of a guy confronting a woman who cut him off in traffic [1]. Widely shared, she's clearly in emotional trauma because she knows the social consequences of being taped and shared online. Oh and…
I'll be the first to admit I don't have the answers to all your potential questions on hate speech. If only there were experts on the subject that Facebook could add their moderation team to help answer these difficult questions.