Digital book burning 2.0. “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 primar…
Removing Holocaust Denial Content
231–240 of 823 posts
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Evidence is that when large social media sites ban hateful groups, they re-congregate somewhere else in much smaller numbers. So while the bans don’t eliminate all of them, they are actually fairly effective at turning the temperature down. Consider people like Alex Jones. He’s still making stuff, his hardcore fans still subscribe to his stuff, but he’s lost all of his marginal followers as well as the massive on-ram…
With the rise of more mainstream alternatives to Twitter and Facebook like Parler, I think that affect is going to be minimalized.
Websites that are predominantly extremist content because the only people using them are those banned from all the major platforms don't tend to succeed.
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost any kind of censorship could be justified with the argument that some voices are "drained out" by others, so to protect the former, the latter most be censored, which is not actually "an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact". WTF does this mean? The internet is not a room where some people have to be silent so that you can hear the oth…
> You can simply ignore people you don't like, or you deem "intolerant", etc. Simply ignore the internet-radicalised mass shooters! Ignore the people raising funds for murderers. Ignore the people gathering molotovs to protest, and the others encouraging each other to run them over with cars. I'm sure none of that stuff will ever happen to you.
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant. What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree. This is an encroachment on free…
The really quick and dirty version: I can't tolerate (neo) Nazis because they want to harm queer people, Jews, disabled people etc. The people they want to harm can't do anything to stop being targeted by (neo) Nazis. Nazis can stop being Nazis and then I'll start tolerating them. It doesn't matter if a Jew stops practising Judaism they will be targeted. It doesn't matter if a gay person is in the closet, they will b…
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#235The unchecked power Zuck and co have has global implications for every tiny decision they make. Who gave them this power? What makes them the best people to be making these decisions? Can we always trust them to get it right?
> What makes them the best people to be making these decisions? Because rightly or wrongly billions of people entrusted their data to FB in exchange for services. There is no best or worst about it -- FB are the only people who control FB servers.
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#236Digital book burning 2.0. “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 primar…
Not to mention Facebook is a private company and it should be free to censor whatever it wants to censor; book burning is a real issue only when its state sponsored.
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do people fight against deplatforming if according to you it's actually beneficial for their cause?
Because it’s a huge pain to re-establish their platform elsewhere, not that it can’t be done.
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#238Admirable 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…
I think the real issue is education. In a better educated society people would understand that II WW did happened and would more or less know what it was about and what Holocaust was. In case the society did not know, it could turn to experts for advice. In any case, deniers would be shunned, belittled and generally not heard seriously.
I still think freedom of speech should accommodate people who want to embarass themselves by claiming obvious falsehoods and this move is just a part of slippery slope to complete loss of what should be universal right.
The response should not be administrative action by private company but ostracism by general public.
Now, this is of course impossible in a society where almost half of it declares would want to reelect a person that lies about everything even when he doesn't need to and who doesn't care about anything other than his own interests.
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#239Digital book burning 2.0. “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 primar…
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#240Admirable 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.
Eliding context to reframe a specific action as a general behavior is misleading, although you may not have realize this.