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Is this an international policy change? In Germany holocaust denial is straight up illegal, so I imagine posts are have been required to be removed since the inception of Facebook. It's kinda weird to see that this is only now a thing.
I don’t know how they handled Germany, but a few years ago he used this as an example of something FB would allow despite it being awful.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/18/zuckerber...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is slipperiest of slopes if I ever heard one.
Can you explain how that is a slippery slope?
If you ban Holocaust deniers, then you're in the business of drawing lines, proclaiming what is truth. This is a powerful position and many will wish to use it for more than just the Holocaust. They will initially do so by presenting a variety of outrageous content which maybe should be banned, applying public pressure, and their initial targets will be reasonable.
But the outrage industry is big these days, and its targets are many. I shall present some recent evidence of its working. Consider a figure like, say, Bruce Gilley, who I was just reading about this past week: he's an academic who says non-mean things about colonialism. A public outrage drive, started by Maoist philosopher Joshua Moufawad-Paul (author of "The Communist Necessity") got his publisher to cancel a biography of Sir Alan Burns; similar outrage drives have previously attempted to see his doctorate revoked. I have not read his scholarship and have no reason to suppose his work to be excellent; however, I should prefer that academic degrees are not revoked after the fact for failing to conform to any particular orthodoxy.
Yet these are the times that we live in: we are increasingly censored by the mob. Facebook content moderation is an obvious target and there is no doubt will be targeted. The categories will expand. Facebook's resistance to such measures will either be heroic, or profoundly inadequate.
So consider: Is the Republican party under Donald Trump a hate group? Is it legitimate for them to have Facebook operations? Surely if you work in Silicon Valley you know someone who considers it a hate group, and believes it should not be permitted a Facebook presence. That is where this ends up. It is not a long and tortuous path. And as hateful as Holocaust denial is, it is possible that Facebook might make the world a better place in the end by allowing it, that they may say, "We are not the content police. No one is."
Long overdue. It's worth going into why this is something that is worth doing and also why FB has historically not done it. FB's position for a long time was that they would not remove material just because it was factually inaccurate, in other words they treated Holocaust denial as being essentially ignorance. There is a truly cringeworthy clip of Facebook spokesdrone and former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg in a document…
Will this be allowed on Facebook? I don’t have an opinion either way, but I think the original concern with removing “Denial” content was that it would impact this type of debate.
Admirable move. I think Facebook (and all its properties), Twitter, and other hyper-connected social networks must show a healthy level of intolerance towards groups and ideologies that are beyond reason and recall, especially when those said groups are overtly and unmistakably intolerant themselves. This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speec…
> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech Maybe this is necessary and good, but of course it's an "encroachment on free speech". That's literally what is is. We can obfuscate this by replacing the words "encroachment on free speech" with "heavy-handedness" to get the sentence above. But really what is says if we remove the obfuscation is: > This encroachment on free speech isn't an encroachment on…
The arrow of progress points in a specific direction. The underlying problem here seems to be that progress isn't happening fast enough?
Pretty much everyone agrees with this. What people don't agree about is the direction.
“But it’s ok, we’re the good guys and doing it for the right reasons”, says every tyrant ever.
Never let speech get censored no matter how good it makes you feel in the moment. It’s the worst precedent you can ever set.
I’ll try and give an example here that might be safe to give because it rips the Republican Wing of the Military Industrial Complex.
If Facebook was one of the world’s primary communication channel in say the early 1990s, the people who would have called BS on tearful made up testimony about Saddam unplugging babies from respirators that was used to sell the war to the public wouldn’t have even had an opportunity to challenge the official story. Facebook would have blocked their opinions as hateful content and if they persisted just conspired with the rest of Silicon Valley to completely remove them from the Internet. A chain of events that have cost arguably millions of lives and trillions of dollars can be tied to some of that testimonial propaganda and would have been unable to be talked about critically with Facebook’s current rule set.
Now we want Facebook in charge of determining truth? Be careful about what you wish for. You applaud today, but now the precedent is set. What’s next on the chopping block might not be something you’ll like.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a healthy level of intolerance towards groups and ideologies that are beyond reason and recall How can you tell if they are beyond reason if you are not allowed to read their arguments?
I draw the line at hate. If one side wants to destroy me do I have to listen to their arguments?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, unless hate is completely unchecked, it will be completely unchecked?
It should be argued against, not silenced. Silencing it merely pushes underground where you don't hear it, and festers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24754897
Refutation is not predicated on first disseminating the hatred as widely as possible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably because the comment is taken to mean that we shouldn't do anything about this case because we aren't doing enough on the other ones.
I don't think that's what it's arguing for, but rather than Facebook should have a consistent policy.
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I'm not sure if it's classified as hate speech, but it will be classified as fake news and false/misinformation.
Keep in mind that the forces behind these "post-fact" trends aren't average joes that happen to have an opinion, they're likely foreign government agents trying to influence people's relations with each other (infighting) and political directions.
Examples: Trump is friends with Putin and $400 million in debt; I wouldn't trust him as leader of a country with those influences.
A constant campaign of "immigrants are here to take your jobs" in the UK has led to Brexit, removing an important economic and military force from the European Union whilst crashing the UK economy. This weakens the EU whilst allowing rich people to get richer.