751–760 of 823 posts
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No it's not
Actually it is, step 1 is define good and evil. Step 2 is enforce your definition.
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We are already well down the slope moving at warp speed. Facebook is obviously selectively choosing what is hate speech according to their leftist political stance. They don't remove hate speech that is anti-police and inciting violence against police (BLM) despite dozens of police having been attacked and maybe half a dozen killings.
Facebook has already shutdown numerous left-wing groups. https://theintercept.com/2020/08/20/facebook-bans-antifascis...
If they shut down a vague classification of people like holocaust deniers, which is like shutting down flat earthers, then clearly they should shut down an organized hate group.
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Censorship in the form of moderation often makes sense for businesses seeking to maintain their properties. If I run a forum for car enthusiasts, I should be able to curate the community and limit discussions on locomotives. But what of the platforms that make my forum possible? The Cloudflares the protect from DDoS, the DigitalOceans that provide the servers, the ISPs that provide transit, the Facebooks that provide…
Should they have the freedom to decide they don't like my forum and kick me off? Yes. Their infrastructure is still private property, and you're using it to provide your own service. Similarly, if you rent a shop space in a food plaza and start a car mechanic's garage there, the owner of the food plaza will kick you out. That the government has a hard-on for monopolies doesn't change the fact that you're still buildi…
I would say the opposite: No. While it might be _legal_ for them to kick me off, I don't think a private company should decide what I say on their platform. For example, should my ISP block websites of competing ISPs if they so choose? What about posting on Facebook that Comcast sucks, should I get my internet disabled for that?
It's amazing to me that people don't see the irony that a major tactic of the nazis was quelling free speech. We are so scared of the nazis that we act like them. This is of course how they framed it too. They would have claimed they needed to protect themselves from the dangerous ideas, literature, art of the Jews.
By the way, companies _can_ take the easy road and allow absolutely everything. _Nobody_ wants to use such a service though. Visit reddit clone Voat, and see if you want to revisit it again.
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> Wouldn't forcing Facebook Feel free to argue that Facebook should be allowed to censor others. But it is still censorship. It is perfectly possible for someone to both think that Facebooks actions should be allowed, and are also censorship at the same time.
If you are yelling or distributing pamphlets in my backyard and I don't like the message, and I ask you to move, I'm not sure you would refer to it as "censorship".
It would have a pretty small effect on other people's ability to engage in speech. But it is an effect none the less.
If you owned a huge amount of property, though, then this would be a larger amount of censorship.
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Define intolerant. If group A says group B is lying about some historical fact, is that in and of itself intolerance?
As far as holocaust denial goes, I don't think there's a mystery as far as the basis for such claims.
This is the exact issue - what doesn't "intolerant" mean? It's a subjective label.
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The line is much less arbitrary when you make it “speech that clearly violates criminal law” versus “speech that I disagree with”. When the govt starts talking about “speech to foments discord” that’s a hell of a slippery slope.
But "violates criminal law" is a statement about the population's beliefs. We pick what is illegal. It isn't some fundamental thing. In Germany, for example, holocaust denial is literally illegal.
In Germany, the line is drawn much further back. It doesn't matter if what you say incites crime, the speech in and of itself is illegal.
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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.
Facebook is not the legislature. You can make Lessig-style Code Is Law arguments, but the fact remains they are not defining the bounds of legality, they are defining the bounds of acceptable on their platform .
If they came out and said "Facebook does not support free speech on it's platform", then at least they'd be hoenst.