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Removing Holocaust Denial Content

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Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#211

Post by andybak »

zests wrote: post #132
latch wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a logical fallacy, and a bad one as it generally doesn't bear out how you're implying in the real world.

The labeling of "slippery slope" as a "logical fallacy" versus a "consequentialist logical device" is becoming quite the political statement. Check out the history and the talk page of the wikipedia article for slippery slope. For the record, I disagree that it is a logical fallacy in all cases.

> For the record, I disagree that it is a logical fallacy in all cases.

Isn't that ambiguous?

You could mean:

> It is not a logical fallacy ever.

or

> It is not always a logical fallacy.

I suspect you mean the latter but some might intepret you as meaning the former.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#212

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

gridlockd wrote: post #140
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and Goebbels and Stalin were both part of the government . Why is so hard to understand that government limitations on free speech are fundamentally different from private ones? Freedom of the press means being able to print what you want, not being able to compel the printer. Facebook doesn't have to be complicit in publishing speech it finds repugnant, and why should it?

If Facebook becomes a publisher and not merely a conduit of speech, it must simultaneously be legally liable for what it publishes.

Let's not hide behind the technicalities.

Facebook makes your content available to a much larger audience than you might otherwise have access to, which is to say publishes it in the common English meaning of the word even if, under US law, it's not regarded as a publisher w.r.t user-generated content.

In your terms, Facebook might be a mere conduit of speech, but there is nothing that says it has to a perfect/unfiltered conduit.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#213

Post by dustingetz »

lki876 wrote: post #175
dustingetz wrote: post #144

The arrow of progress points in a specific direction. The underlying problem here seems to be that progress isn't happening fast enough?

> The arrow of progress points in a specific direction. Pretty much everyone agrees with this. What people don't agree about is the direction.

nobody needs to agree about anything, progress is a measurement of historical average direction over timespan of decades

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#214

Post by donatj »

ignoramous wrote: post #14

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…

Somehow you completely missed the point of the paradox of tolerance.

You cite it as if it wasn't completely contrary to what you are saying. Facebook's acts are being intolerant to beliefs they disagree with.

The paradox of tolerance states that "society must be intolerant of intolerance" thus society must be intolerant to Facebook's intolerant actions here.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#215

Post by lki876 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #191
lki876 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of free speech has nothing to do with governments or private institutions. The legal differences between those entities has nothing to do with the general concept.

The concept, no; however, freedom of speech also covers Facebook's freedom to not provide a platform if they choose to do so. You cannot make me say, write, or publish something I don't agree with; freedom of speech is also the freedom to NOT speak. This extends to individuals and platforms both. In WW2, newspapers were controlled by the invaders; they were told what to publish, even if the people behind it disagreed…

This confounds the difference between a platform and a publisher. If you chose what to publish, you're a publisher. That means you chose to speak, or not to.

A platform does not chose, but merely let's people speak -- or if it doesn't it interferes with free speech.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#216

Post by refurb »

ignoramous wrote: post #14

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…

The paradox of tolerance completely falls apart when you get into the details. Who decides what shouldn't be tolerated? There is no objective measure of that.

The USSR didn't tolerate certain speech either because it was a threat to their system. They used the exact same rationale that they needed to be intolerant to prevent the system from falling apart.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#217

Post by kitbrennan »

globular-toast wrote: post #138
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed? Which scholars, what are their claims / papers, and who reviewed their work? I mean I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers used now are not entirely correct, but if there's unscientific work being done to downplay it, they're in their right to brand it as holocaust denial.

David Irving to give one example.

I'm not sure David Irving can be called a scholar or a valid source considering he has been firmly debunked, and lost his libel suit because he lied and made up sources.

To quote one of the expert witnesses at his trial:

> Irving (...) had deliberately distorted and wilfully mistranslated documents, consciously used discredited testimony and falsified historical statistics. (...) Irving has fallen so far short of the standards of scholarship customary amongst historians that he does not deserve to be called a historian at all.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#219

Post by [deleted] »

clairity wrote: post #129
ignoramous wrote: post #14

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…

> "..isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society..." a necessary impediment? no reasonable person denies the holocaust, but it's also not reasonable to try to suppress denial, no matter the desire, because that has its own paradoxical consequences. it's the same overbearing fear-driven irrationality that gets us into lockdowns that destroy lives a…

[deleted]

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#220

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

Spivak wrote: post #174
lki876 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You have to be careful because you risk taking all the meaning out of the terms when you say that anything other than a completely unfiltered firehose is encroachment on free speech because you catch spam, bots, threats of violence, abuse, scams, etc. in the crossfire which (at least to me) are not types of speech that should be protected.

Trouble is that Holocaust denial isn't spam, bots, threats of violence, abuse, or scams. It's a different interpretation of history, something that is protected under the First Amendment. Except these sites aren't considered public forums for some reason, even though they've supplanted the public forum in modern society.

When a handful of corporations determine the Overton Window in society, that is a cause for concern.

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