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Removing Holocaust Denial Content

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Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#301

Post by rbanffy »

leftyted wrote: post #104
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…

> 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…

> Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree.

True, but it kind of crosses the line when something denies well documented fact and tries to discredit reality itself. This "gamification" of alternative realities is insanely toxic to democracy and society.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#302

Post by josephcsible »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #261
josephcsible wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is so hard to understand that government limitations on free speech are fundamentally different from private ones? Because Facebook wields more power than most countries' governments do. This would almost certainly be a lot less upsetting if it were a smaller site doing it.

That's a nice soundbite you've got there, but what does it actually mean? Facebook can imprison people? Fine them? Revoke their permission to travel? Fire them from their jobs? Decide their contractual disputes? Determine the taxes they should pay? None of the above?

More power in terms of ability to censor/effectiveness of censorship.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#303

Post by latch »

cm2187 wrote: post #208
latch wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you believe in the First Amendment, then Facebook itself gets the freedom to decide what does and doesn't go on its platform. If you want something more generic, you could start with hate speech laws in Australia, Belgium, Canada...Spain, Switzerland, the UK, etc. Or even more generally, the UN's International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. So, there's plenty of establis…

Having the right to do something doesn’t make it a good idea. The issue here isn’t about Facebook having the right to do it.

The question was: "Who defines unreasonable"?

As a matter of fact, the answer is: Facebook. That _does_ seem like the issue to me.

I think that you're moving the goalpost from "who decides" to "is it a good idea". To which I've already answered: yes, it has a proven track record.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#304

Post by free_rms »

duxup wrote: post #287
free_rms wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What % of a religion would need to be, say, anti-gay, before we deem the whole thing problematic and ban it from facebook? The more I investigate "where to draw the line", the more I'm convinced we aren't capable of doing so in a just fashion.

I feel like any given region's propensity to say not like a particular sexual orientation is dramatically different from say holocaust denial that is straight up rooted in antisemitism.

So you're making a narrow case that holocaust denial is specifically bad and not endorsing more policing by facebook in general?

There's certainly precedent for holocaust denial being considered specifically and uniquely harmful, although it feels a little dated in the year 2020.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#305

Post by fennecfoxen »

hef19898 wrote: post #251
fennecfoxen wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll make a principled stab at it. 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 i…

There is such a thing as factual truth. That we, as a society, have reached a point where we lost the basic concensus of that is very troubling. Denying the Holocaust is like denying gravity. Both things, the Holocaust and gravity, are factually true. We have to be able to call people out for denying that. And while denying gravity is just stupid, denying the holocaust is outright dangerous. Taking steps against that…

It is factually true! And yet there are many disputes over the facts in our world, and the "Fact Check" is an entire genre of opinion journalism these days, and Facebook is already applying censorship based on these opinions.

Take, for instance, this overtly right-wing partisan here, John Stossel, also writing within the past week: https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2020/10/07/fake-fac...

I have little traffick with John Stossel's work, and will not attest to any specific claims about wildfires, but Facebook's idea of "fact checking" this specific video involves groups like Climate Feedback, who are apparently empowered to lie about Professor Stefan Doerr of Swansea University reviewing his video.

This is not about Stossel, whose work I will not condone here. This how much you should trust Facebook to be an effective arbiter of Factual Truth, which should be very near zero. And there's a word for enforcing the "Factual Truth" like this: it's called Orthodoxy.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#306

Post by amadeuspagel »

hef19898 wrote: post #167
amadeuspagel wrote: post #107

"Unfortunately, even while the protests about the cartoons were still underway, a new problem about convincing Muslims of the genuineness of our respect for freedom of expression has arisen because of Austria's conviction and imprisonment of David Irving for denying the existence of the Holocaust. We cannot consistently hold that it should be a criminal offense to deny the existence of the Holocaust and that cartooni…

It is avery strong way to publicly, and legally, counter that specific case of propanda and falsehoods. Extending that to social media can only be a good thing. It also makes it very clear, that everyone agreeing with people like Irving, and following them, is aslo most likely a Nazi. And these claims have been refuted so often already, that not everyone making these claims has to be refuted on an individual basis.

Yeah, clearly freedom of speech doesn't apply to things that have already been refuted.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#307

Post by nickysielicki »

whoisjuan wrote: post #249
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…

Not really. Freedom of speech as defined in the constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Internet speech is not the same as freedom of speech. Facebook is a private platfor…

Freedom of speech is a principle that our constitution enshrines. It exists independently of our constitution and government.

The fact that the government isn’t violating an obligation to not restrict free speech does not mean that the principle isn’t being violated by other parties.

XKCD was wrong.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#308

Post by twright »

Vaslo wrote: post #201

If we ban this speech then how can we argue against these ideas? The photos, evidence, eyewitness accounts demonstrate the Holocaust is undeniable. BUT we know that there are people that say the world is flat, moon landing was faked, etc. If anything I’d like to engage these people and verbally smash them. If anything, Facebook should make posts like this unblockable, so people can’t defriend or block people with who…

> The photos, evidence, eyewitness accounts demonstrate the Holocaust is undeniable.

Yet it is still fervently denied. They cannot be "verbally smashed" because they are so much more invested in these ideas and because of this they are beyond the reaches of rational argument (i.e. you will be the one getting smashed). There are nearly 100 claims they will throw out such that no single person can know them all, here is a helpful academic source of these claims: https://www.hdot.org/debunking-denial/ Removing an accessible location of discourse is the best solution for this instance.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#309

Post by anigbrowl »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #72
runarberg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn’t it? Do you have any examples, or should I just take your word for it?

I'd suggest approaching this from the other direction: providing even one counterexample would refute GP's assertion.

Surely it's up to the GP to bring at least some evidence for such a broad claim before the obligation falls on other people to spend their valuable time refuting it.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#310

Post by throwaway894345 »

nabla9 wrote: post #222
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…

Civil law systems have "The abuse of rights principle". It means that legal right can't be used in the purpose of _only_ causing annoyance, harm, or injury to another or violating or invalidating the rights. In the EU the principle is codified in the article 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights and in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. They both prohibit the use of rights in a way that…

This seems like it would be very difficult to litigate. How do you ascertain the "predominant motive"? How do you define "serious or legitimate"? To whom? If a Muslim woman wants to wear a head-covering (or a Christian wearing a cross necklace) in a French school, it's probably very serious and legitimate to her, but perhaps not to a tribunal of secularists. There aren't any silver bullets for the issue of speech freedoms.
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