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Removing Holocaust Denial Content

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Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#611

Post by Barrin92 »

will4274 wrote: post #591
Barrin92 wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India flat out has laws that prohibit hate speech and creation of racial disharmony of all sorts. I'm not sure if an Indian court has ever dealt with holocaust denial in particular, probably because there's barely any Jews in India at this point, but Indian limitations on speech go far beyond the genocide-speech laws that exist in Europe. Same of course is also true for Singapore and most other Asian countries.

You may want to check out the Indian supreme court opinion on the topic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_India

Other than one dissenting view in 2014, that page indeed does document decades of enforcement of the Indian penal code, which is very clear, and cited on that page.

"Whoever (a) by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, promotes or attempts to promote, on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any other ground whatsoever, disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities, or (b) commits any act which is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities, and which disturbs or is likely to disturb the public tranquillity, . . . shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both."

That is without a doubt very explicit and much further reaching than any European legislation. And from the cases actually given in that article also practised as such.

Just to take one example, but there are many more in that very article

In 2007, R.V. Bhasin's Islam - A Concept of Political World Invasion by Muslims was banned, and house raided, in Maharashtra on grounds that it outrages the feelings of Muslim section of society.[12][13][14] In January 2010, the Bombay High upholds the ban imposed by the Government of Maharashtra.[15]

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#612

Post by shadowgovt »

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.

Perhaps people should go elsewhere (such as historical sources) to get information on the history of the holocaust.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#613

Post by FpUser »

rbanffy wrote: post #601
FpUser wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"...and tries to discredit reality itself..." So you are saying they will remove the Earth is Flat, The God had created world in 7 days and other similar things?

You can't prove God didn't create the world in 7 days any more than you can't prove the Flying Spaghetti Monster did that 15 minutes ago. That the Earth is not flat is easily and conclusively provable.

Of course I can't. I thought that the onus of proving is in the court of the ones making a statement.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#614

Post by heylook »

nostromo wrote: post #526
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't like the way other people are thinking, you have to have a conversation with them and try to change their views the hard way. Again, that’s not how people work. “The marketplace of ideas” is an idealism, a mini-utopia. It does not account for known and unpatched vulnerabilities in human psychology - and a fix from the vendor is not expected any time soon.

It is how people work, as evidenced over and over again by a widening view of compassion for others. Just look at the past 20 years and the success of the gay rights movement. Views changed because of millions of one-on-one conversations between people who disagreed on gay marriage. No censorship was required for progress. In fact, censorship would have been counterproductive, as I believe it is here. It's no coincid…

Political change of this magnitude happens because different people are voting, not because the same person changed their mind. Literally it’s because the old people died before they could pass 100% of their bigotry to the next generation.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#615

Post by tomp »

UncleMeat wrote: post #524
tomp wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you be a holocaust denier (i.e. a strictly historical perspective) without also being pro- "outright violence"? That's like removing all of BLM just because some of them are also violently rioting...

There is no strictly historical perspective that leads to denialism. It is fundamentally tied to antisemitism and providing ammunition to modern day fascists and racists.

Sure, but surely you can be a fascist without also being violent? I mean surely you can be a communist without supporting violent revolutions...

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#616

Post by LanceH »

KodoCoder wrote: post #230
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…

Free speech isn't the issue here. It's not censorship, it's moderation, and companies have every right to moderate what content is allowed on their platforms. I think it's important to distinguish between the two. Censorship, that is the government proscribing or restricting what people say and thinks in general/public/day-to-day life, is an egregious attack on people's liberty. I think we shouldn't tolerate any limi…

Except that Congress is leaning on FB right now to remove "fake news". Facebook's sudden interest in removing content is inextricably tied to censorship until the government stops pressuring.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#617

Post by jonahx »

shadowgovt wrote: post #563
jonahx wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If petitioning your employer to fire you for something you said works, maybe you said something that your employer would fire you over? Possibly, but there is another possibility which also occurs with alarming frequency: The employer, feeling bullied and afraid of bad press, demonstrations, etc, makes a calculated risk vs reward decision: Is keeping this employee worth the (possibly existential) risk to my busines…

If an employer fears bad press, perhaps it's because the thing their employee did is unpopular and their business is built on public perception? I mean, we can keep digging, but at the end of the day the story keeps resolving to "Someone said something people didn't like and there are consequences." Technology has made it easier, by dint of lowering the cost of investigation of a person, to apply those consequences;…

> If an employer fears bad press, perhaps it's because the thing their employee did is unpopular and their business is built on public perception?

> I mean, we can keep digging, but at the end of the day the story keeps resolving to "Someone said something people didn't like and there are consequences."

I see your argument here, in theory. Two things make me uneasy with it: lack of perfect information; and the power of disinformation.

That is, "unpopular" and "someone said something people didn't like" can't be taken for granted. A small vocal minority, especially one skilled with social media, can make something appear more unpopular than it actually is. And few people are equipped to gauge what the reality is (accurate polling, eg, can be problematic even for those with large resources, let alone a small business owner).

It is easy, then, to force the employer to make a decision about a risk they cannot gauge accurately, and which is made to appear much larger than they would view it if they knew the true average opinions of their customers. Couple this with most people's natural risk aversion, and you have a genuine problem that you can't write off as "well, employers are just finally being forced to respond to the will of the people."

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#618

Post by saas_sam »

davorak wrote: post #595
saas_sam wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cursory search reveals your characterization to be inaccurate. Note: I had no real interest in this topic until I read your critique which just sounded totally outlandish to me. The ONLY people complaining about this limitation are people with terrible motives? No legitimate philosophers, political scientists, free speech activists exist with valid critiques? They're all just evil historical revisionists, eh? Doubt…

> Sure enough, plenty of well-reasoned critiques exist from Jewish groups, Noam Chomsky (hardly an anti-Semite), Christopher Hitchens, and others. Are these armchair critiques? Or are these people/groups putting in serious effort to change things? That indirectly indicates their priority for the issue for them.

Your comment is strange...

1. ephimetheus: The only people who have a problem with these laws are bad people with evil intent

2. me: I just looked and there are a lot of people voicing problems with these laws who are good and have noble intent

3. you: But are they prioritizing the issue enough or are they just saying stuff?

...Uh, what is the argument you're trying to make here? That if people aren't making enough of an "effort" in some way, that their critiques should not be taken seriously? Maybe you're serious, but it sure sounds like an extreme moving of goal posts to me. Presumably I would then link to you some activist group or other pushing to change these laws -- I expect you'd then come back with some variation of "oh well, that's not really trying /hard enough/, look at all the /other things/ they care about more." Just... very strange.

If you don't think sticking your neck out as a prominent intellectual like Chomsky or Hitchens to defend neo-nazi's right to lie in the public square.. if you don't think that constitutes a "serious effort" in and of itself, then YES I guess you can go further and look at Human Rights Watch's statements or whatever else.

I doubt you will. But maybe other readers of this exchange will leave better for reading my comment here.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#619

Post by whoisburbansky »

naniwaduni wrote: post #598
evgen wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those things are incredibly rare occurrences, and there is still a greater probability that you will be the victim of one of them than that the country becomes North Korea.

That seems wrong. No matter how I slice it, risk of being North Korea (specifically) seems to clock in at somewhere between 0.1% and 2%, appreciably more than incredibly rare occurrences.

Is this the risk of, say, a randomly chosen person happening to be North Korean or the risk of the USA turning into North Korea? If the latter, I'd love to see how you end up at that number.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#620

Post by asimpletune »

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #578
asimpletune wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't think that refugees flew through space on 747's, a la Scientology (I may have gotten the specifics wrong). But, if you can show me how a 747 can fly through space, I am more than happy to be shown the error of my ways. Many religions have falsifiable ideas in them. Some of their "core tenets" may not be falsifiable but, again, you can't pick and choose through these books to get the pieces parts to fit your c…

Yeah, I see the point you’re making, and I don’t necessarily disagree with it. I didn’t mean to say that no religion has obviously falsifiable claims in them, and the example you gave is a perfectly fine demonstration. I’d even say obviously Jesus didn’t literally rise from the dead, because that’s clearly not possible (and probably besides the point if you are simultaneously a serious, critical believe - I should point add that I’m not Christian by the way).

So what did I mean? As part of a broader concept I’d say that there is a lot we don’t know about the world, that there are problems to solve that are beyond our current abilities to do so, and at a certain point there will always be a need to simply believe, because we don’t have the luxury of not making choices. My concept of religion in this sense then is by definition a system of thought pertaining to the things that we don’t get to know the answers to, but we still have to make choices on because that’s life.

I’ll add that I don’t think the big name brand religions get to dictate what counts as a religion, any more than people in the past have had the right to have a monopoly on what counts as legitimate science. Everyone has a brain and therefore has a right to pursue truth, both for things that are falsifiable and not.

I’ll add that this isn’t static either and hopefully, with time, progress will be made and things will transition from unknowable to knowable. When those things happen I hope that people will continue to update their beliefs (ie religions), and I don’t think that’s too controversial.

With regards to the name brand religions, yeah they definitely have obviously false aspects to them, and I don’t know if people believe them as fact, even though they may say that or even think it. I do however think that they all have aspects to them that are applicable in the religious sense I defined above. For example the concept of a god, etc...

My last thought is I think all of the concepts that are being discussed in this thread are very hard problems. The definitions themselves are hard, what we consider good and bad outcomes are hard, and in a way it’s hard to be compassionate when it feels like people are saying things that are dangerous. That’s basically it, I think it’s important to just remind ourselves that these problems are hard, because I know I have a tendency, or a mental limitation if you will, to get mad or impatient when I forget that. I don’t mean to imply you are btw, but as I was writing I could literally feel a sense of empathy and understanding in the more general sense by reminding myself that this stuff is hard.

Sorry, wrote this on my phone, so sentences, spelling, grammar, structure, etc might suck lol.

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