Removing Holocaust Denial Content • Hacker News Board

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#411

Post by btmiller » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

I finally watched Hamilton the other day and the contrasting narratives of Hamilton and Burr offer a good comparison of how Facebook sets policy. Facebook has the choice to take either take their shot and speak their mind or to talk less and smile more (i.e. leave people guessing as to what their position is).

What this position essentially shows us about Facebook is that they are more interested in policy only after watching which way the wind is blowing. White supremacy and hate groups have always been around on their platform, yet only now they decide to ban it? I think it’s really important to think about the timing of this: less than a month from Election Day, and after 4 years of divisiveness, controversy, and conflict invading their platform. I can’t imagine it took 4 years of analysis to make this decision, but now they themselves can/will claim some moral high ground for a new political atmosphere.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#412

Post by munificent » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

> Institutions focused on Holocaust research and remembrance, such as Yad Vashem, have noted that Holocaust education is also a key component in combatting anti-Semitism.

This is a good, important point. But I also think it is important to understand how this generalizes. The Holocaust is a vivid example of how authoritarianism inevitably leads to human rights abuses, both of a nation's "own" people and often some Other selected by the authority as an enemy to get people to rally around. Learning about the Holocaust is not just a reminder that the Nazis were bad, but that every fascist or authoritarian government has that same potential which is why we must be vigilent against them.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#413

Post by fareesh » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

realmod wrote: post #262

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…

But that is not what is happening instead they feaster inside their bubbles and grow even more convinced and dangerous. It should simply not be tolerated. "You cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into."

Sounds like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and every other religion

If people want to believe something in their bubble, they should be allowed to.

Most, if not all of those belief systems have fringes which advocate harm.

By your argument, there would be no atheists, yet you see some people who were extremely religious becoming atheists.

It's factually incorrect and dishonest to push with certainty this idea that you cannot reason with people who have passionately held views. They are our neighbours, friends, family members, countrymen and fellow humans. To throw them out of our shared spaces is weak and pathetic. We are better than this.

A superior solution is to make these posts opt-in, hidden by default and mostly everyone on the platform will never see them or be disturbed by them, or become accidentally brainwashed by them.

Those who remain there can be engaged with by the rest of us, who have the patience and superior mental discipline to convince them otherwise.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#414

Post by beervirus » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

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

No, that's exactly what it is. Free speech means nothing at all if it doesn't mean freedom of unpopular speech.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#415

Post by fortran77 » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

One issue I find is often the people who promote this sort of content don’t sit in their private groups and discuss it among themselves, but go out and actively court confrontations by posting to forums of Jews and others directly victimized by the actions of the Germany in World War II. I see it all the time on Twitter —- and on Hacker News.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#416

Post by Rebelgecko » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

aixi wrote: post #236

logicalmonster wrote: post #176

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…

That's just a slippery slope fallacy. The holocaust is a non-recent and well documented event, and its denial is clearly a masquerade for hateful speech. Holocaust denial is outlawed in Germany for good reasons. 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.

>book burning is a real issue only when its state sponsored.

Strong disagree from me. These corporations are becoming an increasingly large part of how people communicate. Imagine if phone companies started deplatforming people the way social media sites do- it would become incredibly hard (perhaps impossible) to live a normal life in 21st century america.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#417

Post by ako » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

asimpletune wrote: post #374

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this same denial of "well documented fact and to discredit reality itself" extend to religious doctrine, also or do the corporations get to pick and choose what realities they choose to censor?

Good point but I don’t think so because those ideas, religion, are not falsifiable.

Do you have proof for that?

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#418

Post by baobabKoodaa » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #385

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you have a very, very specific idea of what should be considered free speech, and you seem to have very little tolerance for people who hold a different opinion on that topic. Rather than saying "we disagree on what should be considered free speech", you describe the people who disagree with you as confused and ignorant, who need to be educated with more debate. I have news for you: people can have dif…

You've missed the point. Free-speech is widely understood to exclude threats and harassment, but even if it were only a niche definition used by free-speech proponents the pro-cancel-culture argument would still be nonsense because it claims that the pro-free-speech argument is inconsistent and self-refuting based on a definition of 'free-speech' that includes threats and harassment . Anyone who makes this argument p…

No, the "free-speech proponents" do not adhere to your specific definition of what should be considered free speech. The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#419

Post by beervirus » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #114

How are they going to determine what is HD? Some scholars get labeled denialists because they have different estimates for the number of Jews killed in concentration camps. Seems worrying to have FB moderators determining what's acceptable historical debate and what is wrongthink.

Anything other than the party line is verboten thoughtcrime.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#420

Post by throwaway373438 » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

Certhas wrote: post #360

leftyted wrote: post #104

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…

This is a typical slight of hand in these discussions. We are talking about deeply intolerant, bad faith actors, and you substitute this with "censoring opinions outside the mainstream". This is deeply dishonest by you. We are not talking about removing peoples right to use a platform because they are out of the mainstream and we disagree with them. That is NOT the reason. There is plenty of non-mainstream opinion ar…

I don't think the person you're replying to is being dishonest. You've simply listed reasons as to why this content isn't acceptable. Of course there are often reasons why content and beliefs might be rejected by mainstream thought -- "it's a pack of lies" is chief among them.

There's a definition problem here. We could use "no one is talking about removing the content" as a rubric to determine whether content is truly outside of mainstream thought for example.

Pointing out that there's diversity among mainstream thought is not at all the same as tolerating dissent.