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Removing Holocaust Denial Content

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Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they? Because I still regularly encounter educated people who can't tell the difference between free speech and threats, harassment, etc. If you can't distinguish between free speech and coercive speech, then you don't understand the free-speech position that you purport to oppose ("He who knows only his own argument knows little of that"). I recall a thread on cancel culture a few months ago where virtually eve…

Definitions are a little murky. "Cancel culture" also isn't threats and harassment---it's deplatforming. It's using freedom of association to deny guilt by proxy for spreading someone else's lies, threats, and harassments.

Cancel culture is very often concerted petitioning of someone's employer into terminating someone's employment (harassment) or the threat of the same (recall the Hispanic utility company employee who was terminated for making the 'ok' sign inadvertently or the data scientist who was terminated for Tweeting a prominent black academic's research on the efficacy of nonviolent protests or the journalist who was harassed by coworkers and nearly terminated for interviewing a black man who expressed concern about crime in his neighborhood). It's also frequently walking into a venue and disrupting the speaker such that their message can't reach the crowd. It may also look like forming a dangerous mob outside of a venue such that the venue can't cover the security costs for hosting a speaker.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#392
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…

No one is saying that this is un-constitutional, because the gov would need to be involved for that to be the case. But it is still censorship.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#394

Earlier 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…

It might be worth considering The Paradox of Tolerance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance > The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant.

People point to the Paradox of Tolerance like is a gospel straight from your preferred deity, something absolute and self-evident and universally true and universally applicable.

I personally think the thesis of the Paradox of Tolerance has merit, but far too often I see it used as a blunt object to bludgeon dissenting opinions, with people telling themselves they are doing good and are protecting society.

(And no, I dn NOT deny the Holocaust, and yes, I do think Holocaust denial is a big problem which got only bigger recently and needs addressing)

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#395
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be one of those things where the arguments pro and con have already been so endlessly hashed out that it’s simply become a matter of choice which camp you’re in.

Have they? Because I still regularly encounter educated people who can't tell the difference between free speech and threats, harassment, etc. If you can't distinguish between free speech and coercive speech, then you don't understand the free-speech position that you purport to oppose ("He who knows only his own argument knows little of that"). I recall a thread on cancel culture a few months ago where virtually eve…

I'll be honest I don't understand your usage of the term "free speech" here. The way I define that term is that it's a political concept expressing the desire for people to be allowed to express themselves however they want to the largest extent possible/ethical. An example of law embodying free speech would be the 1st amendment of the US Constitution.

Based on context, I think you are using free speech to mean "speech that is protected by the doctrine of free speech" in the vocabulary I described above. Though that's ambiguous, because to be able to talk concretely about whether speech is protected or not you would need to say what it is covered under. So do you mean speech that is protected under the 1st Amendment, or some other law?

Presuming you mean the 1st amendment, it isn't necessarily true that threats and harassment are not protected, depending on the specifics.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#396
post #330

Earlier 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…

You are transmuting a private organization’s choice, which is equivalent to a person kicking nazis out of their dinner party, into something only a government can do: limit free speech. Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1357/

Not true. Rather, you (and the cartoon) are confusing the abstract general principle of free speech, for the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

If one steps back and observes this conversation from a disinterested 3rd party perspective, one might notice that these same arguments, based on falsehoods from both sides, reoccur every single time the topic comes up. And if one exercises this practice over time, across many conversations, one may notice that this same pattern is present always and everywhere.

Might a reason that we never seem to move the ball forward on these conversations (or representations in physical reality) be that everyone thinks they're talking about "objective reality", but in fact, each person is actually talking about their individual snapshot (perspective, worldview) of reality? If this is what was actually happening, what might the conversations look like? Might they bear an uncanny resemblance to the conversations we see before our very eyes, year after year after year, on topic after topic after topic?

Even funnier about the situation is that typically, at least here on HN, most everyone probably has enough depth in psychology to decently realize the degree to which each individual has a "unique" (to put it mildly) perspective on reality. However, if one is to then consider this, and then observe the nature of the conversations, it appears as if this knowledge is not possessed by people who are arguing over a particular, object level topic (politics, racism, sexism, sexuality, etc). But while people can realize that individual bias exists in the abstract, they seem curiously (and passionately) unwilling/unable to realize (and acknowledge) that it actually comes into play in real world conversations, like this one.

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."

- Pericles

I think "politics" in the above sentence could be replaced with "reality" and it would fully retain it's truth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins

Freedom of speech and expression has a long history that predates modern international human rights instruments. It is thought that the ancient Athenian democratic principle of free speech may have emerged in the late 6th or early 5th century BC. The values of the Roman Republic included freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Concepts of freedom of speech can be found in early human rights documents. England's Bill of Rights 1689 legally established the constitutional right of freedom of speech in Parliament which is still in effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_...

The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which regulate an establishment of religion, or that would prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_century

The 5th century is the time period from 401 to 500 Anno Domini (AD) or Common Era (CE) in the Julian calendar. The 5th century is noted for being a period of migration and political instability throughout Eurasia.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#397
It's always fascinating to me to see who will step up to carry water for Holocaust deniers being able to spread their nonsense on someone else's computer servers as if nobody can figure out how to make a new website.

Holocaust deniers can---and do!---make their own fora all the time. Their freedom of speech is not abridged. Nor their freedom of the press.

On the other hand, forcing Facebook to host content against the owner's wishes is abridgment of their freedom of the press.

People seem to forget the public responsibility to support media you trust. If you don't like that Facebook blocked holocaust denial, then stop using it. Use media you support. The whole point of the First Amendment is to support a marketplace of ideas, free from government interference.

And if there is a slippery slope and Facebook bans, I dunno, trans support groups tomorrow, then we can talk about not using Facebook because banning that content is anti-trans and that's bad by itself, not because they have no right to shape the communications ecosystem they pay for hosting on their servers.

It's the Internet. If you don't like the rules on someone else's BBS, stop expecting them to solve your problems for you and host your own.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#398
Facebook could do better than removing the content, they could burst the Holocaust denial bubble that some people find themselves in.

We have video archives of the liberation of the camps and testimonies from survivors. Every Holocaust denial post could have one of the many evidence of the Holocaust just next to it.

It probably won't change the mind of everyone, but it would hijack the virality of the denial posts and use their targeting to reach precisely the people that need to be reminded of the real history of the Holocaust.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here, I'll make it easy for you: We shouldn't tolerate things that are objectively and provably false. Denying the holocaust is one of those things, and therefore we shouldn't tolerate it.

But they also removed all posts that question the number of holocaust victims - which historically changed a lot.

Because that is a common thing for holocaust deniers. The majority of them is smart enough to not deny its very existence outright. Being more subtle, they decrease numbers, sometimes a lot, deny certain atrocities. Quite often they end with comparing these new, and totally false, numbers with Stalin's atrocities. All to come to the conclusion, that the holocaust wasn't even half as bad as everyone believes. Ah yeah, and that the Wehrmacht was totally not involved in this non-existent and despicable crime against humanity.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#400

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…

Just get some popcorn and watch fb bleed itself dry before it realizes that trying to create a 'safe space' is completely counter productive.
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