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Removing Holocaust Denial Content

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Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#711

Post by zapnuk »

dcolkitt wrote: post #500
ephimetheus wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holocaust denial is banned in Germany (same as swastikas by the way). It works really well. The only people complaining are literally people trying to twist perception of the arguably worst crime in the history of humanity, to make Germany look like a victim. FB is clearly doing the right thing here. Free speech has limits.

> It works really well. The Weimar Republic did have hate speech laws, that were vigorously enforced and similar in spirit to modern-day Germany's laws.[1] Not only did that fail to stop the rise of the Nazi party, but the legal machinery was actively co-opted post-1933 to censor anti-Nazi groups. In contrast, in the 1930s the most ardent pro-free-speech countries were the America and Britain. (Contemporary British h…

> America's 250 year history of free speech absolutism, with virtually no extremist groups gaining widespread traction is evidence of this.

Ku Klux Klan?!? QAnon? There are plenty of extremists groups with varying number of members and activities.[1]

The US has also plenty of domestic terrorism [2] the majority was committed by right-wing or religious (christian + muslim) extremism.

Most 'modern' terrorists are also self organized+radicalized. Social media and access to more and more extremist content plays a crucial role in their radicalization process.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_terrorism_in_the_Unit...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States...

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#712

Post by bjourne »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #695
skrowl wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's a refutation of the new and dishonest argument that censorship actually protects freedom of speech Once you convince people that the other side is evil and your side must win at all costs, they'll rationalize any behavior. This includes censoring and de-platforming voices that don't agree with them. After you've convinced yourself that "I believe that we should hire whoever is the most qualified, regardless of…

Just to reground the rhetoric, we are talking about facebook removing posts by people that try to convince others that one of the largest genocides in human history didn't happen, not about all that other stuff.

The Holocaust was peanuts compared to the looming climate catastrophe. Thus, we absolutely must silence anyone who denies that the earth must become carbon neutral by 2040.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#713

Post by pjc50 »

refurb wrote: post #233
pjc50 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Those things you worry about are already illegal. Direct threats of violence (through speech) are already illegal. Funding raising for terrorism is already illegal, including fundraising through speech.

This fundraiser appears to be going just fine: https://www.insider.com/fundraising-efforts-kyle-rittenhouse...

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#715

Post by throwaway894345 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #692
throwaway894345 wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If that's the case, then one is assuming that the public is incapable of discerning good ideas from bad ideas. I'm assuming that the mob can't, and that even a democracy struggles; however, given enough debate good ideas will rise to the top more often than not. The viability of this kind of debate depends on free-speech ideals, however--our debate is presently very toxic in no small part to the fear that cancel cu…

What is the difference between "the mob" and "the public?"

I wouldn't get too hung up on the term for the group as long as we both know which group I'm talking about. I used "the mob" because cancel culture behaves like a mob (a group seeking extrajudicial justice), and because it's silly to use "the public" to refer to https://today.yougov.com/topics/entertainment/articles-repor...

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#716

Post by throwaway894345 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #703
throwaway894345 wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If cancel culture doesn’t depend on implicit threats of career repercussions, then no one should object when we pass laws to protect employees from this kind of mob-based termination. Of course, in this substantial thread, I don’t think anyone has disputed that CC is about threats and harassment and at least one CC proponent has advocated against employment protections. This is consistent with my observations in othe…

I'd love it if free speech advocates were uniform in their attack on "cancel culture". I have two friends, each faculty members at top schools, who have been personally attacked on Fox News and called enemies of America. This has led to hundreds of people sending them death threats via email and constant calls to their department chairs demanding their firing. Not a peep from organizations like FIRE. And why is sendi…

> I'd love it if free speech advocates were uniform in their attack on "cancel culture". I have two friends, each faculty members at top schools, who have been personally attacked on Fox News and called enemies of America. This has led to hundreds of people sending them death threats via email and constant calls to their department chairs demanding their firing. Not a peep from organizations like FIRE.

FIRE focuses on the exercise of free speech in education, so if your friends weren't fired or reprimanded for exercising their rights, FIRE probably won't weigh in. Doubly so if no one writes to FIRE on their behalf asking them to cover the case. Ultimately, FIRE can't cover every case (they're a nonprofit), so it might also just be bad luck that your friends' case wasn't selected. Hard to say. It certainly could be that FIRE is discriminating against your friends' for the content of their speech, but FIRE and Fox News are rarely aligned (indeed, FIRE got its start defending academia against conservative illiberalism).

> And why is sending an email to somebody's boss saying that they are an asshole and should be fired fundamentally worse than posting on social media about how so-and-so is a secret jew who works for the new world order and literally sacrifices babies to satan?

No one is making this argument.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#717

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

shadowgovt wrote: post #633
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My goodness, "Free Speech" whatever HN folks imagine it to be does not mean you get to use FB's infrastructure to disseminate it.

Basically. Forcing them to disseminate it infringes Facebook's freedom of the press. Or freedom of association; there are arguments to be made in both directions.

Not really. You would think in a forum full of techbros, FB being a private entity would be the end of the discussion. But because it's white supremacist viewpoints that many of the forum users are sympathetic with, it gets moved into a conveniently gray area.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#718

Post by Oricle »

Ermmm, but it's true!

http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/ij_ch1.htm

There is 20 chapters, just change the 1 to 1-20

2020 years this war as been going on and after 20 centuries and 100 times failing, they are going return us to the dark ages of judasium of 2000bc to 0ad.

They killed their king, jesus, because he wanted all gentiles to have better lives and not just the Jews.

'even in a minority of 1,the truth is still the truth'

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#719

Post by asimpletune »

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #685
asimpletune wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 po…

And I don't mean to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are many wonderful things to learn from the scaffolding of religion and parable. To apply it to our legal system, tax system and to cherry pick bits from it for our military conflicts seem less than fruitful and more than a little hypocritical in a modern age (no accusation on you). As an American, I would much rather we go towards a scientific, histor…

> with tax loop holes removed

Yeah, I agree completely. The fact that there is a material difference between one kind of institution and another gives legitimacy to complaining about religion, IMO.

> To apply it to our legal system, tax system and to cherry pick bits from it for our military conflicts seem less than fruitful and more than a little hypocritical in a modern age

I totally agree and it saddens me to see this happen. I think one crucial detail though is that instead of religion, I would call this dirty politics (or maybe even just rhetoric?). Dirty politics itself isn't new, but what has changed has become the scale at which it is now employed.

> It doesn't matter until the likes of Facebook are turned into public spaces and regarded as havens for free speech or they are not. That's really the question that has to be answered.

I don't really know myself, but I lean towards yes, if the likes of Facebook had a policy of safe harbor, then they should be regards as havens for free speech. I don't know enough about FB to say if they are no longer protected by safe harbor, but they're probably not in that category.

When we consider though the systematic exploitation of human psychology deployed at scale, it's honestly terrifying, but to me instead of treating it as a free speech question (which is hard), it should be treated as a privacy question and the kinds of businesses you should be able to make. All of these terrifying capabilities and their free speech implications are predicated on companies harvesting our data at scale. The answer should be that there are limitations on what you can do, and business should probably just make money by charging people for stuff.

I get that, early on, it may have felt necessary because we didn't know better, and there wasn't a cultural infrastructure for consumers paying for digital goods. However, a lot has changed since then, and the internet has now become basically the equivalent of a welfare state, where our digital existences within it have been sponsored by all powerful benefactors, e.g. Facebook, Google. To me the solution is simply, pay for stuff, and make it hard to have businesses where your users don't pay for stuff. That could be have liabilities around data that you collect, or outright making it illegal.

Can't promise I have answers to all of the details, but this I feel good about the overall premise of my hypothesis.

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