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Removing Holocaust Denial Content

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Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#781

Post by raxxorrax »

ephimetheus wrote: post #444
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.

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.

Germany is also not that successful in not becoming a dictatorship less than once per century. The US approach is certainly more successful and there are reasons for that.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#782

Post by raxxorrax »

ephimetheus wrote: post #698
saas_sam wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Not sure what you dug up, but I’m not aware of anyone with an interest other than proving “see, we weren’t the bad guys”. Since the Holocaust is a historical fact, historians without revisionist goals have no reason to debate its existence. Research into the extent and details of the Holocaust are perfectly acceptable. Side not, the absolute vast majority of German society is on board with this limit of freedom of sp…

You fail to make the distinction in holding the opinion and allowing people to have the opinion. I would a tiny minority of people complaining about speech restrictions hold the opinion or even want to make it socially acceptable.

Most just argue that people themselves should be the ones to cast the judgement, not Facebook. These are very basic comprehension issues and your insinuation on those that disagree are fairly similar to reasoning you see in plain fascism.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#783

Post by raxxorrax »

ephimetheus wrote: post #704
jovial_cavalier wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Holocaust denial is banned in Germany (same as swastikas by the way). It works really well In what way does it "work"? What do you actually gain by silencing those people? It seems like you're lending them credibility. As in "these things that I'm saying are so dangerous that the government wants to shut me up!" You can't control what people actually believe, you can only control whether or not you hear about it. Us…

The problem is that you can’t realistically fight Holocaust denial and the idea behind it with arguments at some point. In the interest of “proving” Germany wasn’t the bad guys after all, these people won’t stop sowing doubt that it occurred, and that’s exactly how you would allow it to happen again. The German democracy is designed to defend itself, and this is one of its tools. Interestingly, the American sort of o…

Then fight it by ignoring it. It is how virality works on the internet.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#784

Post by raxxorrax »

Barrin92 wrote: post #316
jcadam wrote: post #155

To save free speech, we have to destroy free speech. In the future, some historian is going to write the seminal work on the decline and dissolution of the United States - and there's going to be an entire chapter dedicated to social media.

lol do you think the criminalisation of holocaust denial is a new invention that somehow needs to be studied by future historians? Most democratic countries on this earth, except for the US , not only ban holocaust denial on private platforms, which is insidious historical revisionism, but punishes it by law. I have absolutely no idea how someone can be so childish as to not see that rights have their limitations to…

The US actually is a successful democracy. Compared to that Germany performs abysmally and state regulated speech doesn't work. It is just isn't enough to cause issues. That is the reality of things.

If our ministry of foreign affairs actually would look at the big picture, maybe they wouldn't have inspired autocratic governments worldwide to extend content controls.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#785

Post by baobabKoodaa »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #734
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If as you claim, free-speech proponents are arguing that coercive behavior (harassment, threats, etc) are "free speech", then they are contradicting themselves. Once again: where is the contradiction? For example, I might say "Christianity is causing a lot of suffering and death". I think that statements like that are "free speech" and not "harassment", but a fundamental Christian person who hears this statement ma…

That statement isn’t harassment (however awful it may be). If you follow Christian groups around protesting them at their events and so on then perhaps that constitutes harassment, but merely expressing a negative opinion of something is plainly free speech and not harassment. > You think there's a contradiction somewhere in there. You asserted the contradiction, not me. I merely confirmed your observation that a fre…

> merely expressing a negative opinion of something is plainly free speech and not harassment.

Again, this is merely your opinion, and it does not reflect the opinion of everyone else. Another person will see that statement and believe it is harassment and not free speech.

> You asserted the contradiction, not me. I merely confirmed your observation that a free-speech proponent who alleged that harassment was free speech would be contradicting himself because by definition harassment is not free speech.

No, this is false. You asserted the contradiction and you still have not demonstrated that it exists. If you look up this chain of comments to find the first mention of "contradiction", that mention was made by you (not me!) as a response to my comment where I said:

""The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents.""

...to this comment you responded:

""If they are doing this, then they are contradicting themselves""

Notice that I never said "free-speech proponent alleges harassment is free speech". The example I gave was very clear that the label "harassment" is not given by the speaker - it is given by an observer. You seem to hold on to this strawman that you constructed where the speaker labels their own speech as harassment and free speech simultaneously. This does not really occur in practice. What occurs in practice is that the speaker does not label their own speech as harassment, the label is given by other people who are offended and want to silence the speaker . In some instances we might agree with speaker, in other instances we might disagree with them. But in any case, the speaker's internal position is not contradictory; they don't believe that their speech constitutes harassment.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#786

Post by nailer »

duxup wrote: post #693
nailer wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Nearly every interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah is anti gay (I personally interpret the story as about not raping, but that's off topic). Why wouldn't it be OK to ban a belief system that specifically discriminates against an innate feature?

I don't think that any system that has something you can find objectionable about it would mean you should ban a group. There is a difference between groups with some questionable beliefs about others, and those whose groups are entirely about hating other people.

That's a reasonable answer, but note that's it's a different answer from the OP - you're not proposing to ban intolerance per se, but rather any group whose purpose is solely intolerance.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#787

Post by freen »

betwixthewires wrote: post #769
freen wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama A private dinner party is not publicly accessible. There is a distinction there.

So I can’t delete comment spam on my public blog as that would violate “free speech”?

I also don’t need a Facebook account in order to post content and consume it?

You are missing the point about Marsh v Alabama: unrestricted public accessibility vs the private club with authentication and exclusion built into its very core.

Rockefeller center, though a “public” space closes and excludes the public for around 5 minutes annually to prove that it is not a truly public space and so they can kick anyone out at any time for any reason. Facebook’s registration and authentication does the same. You publish at their pleasure.

In marsh, the equivalent would be a velvet rope around the sidewalk where only approved and registered people could enter, view and express their opinions. Facebook is emphatically not the public sphere, as much as y’all want it to be: it is allowed exclusion of anyone according to its own choosing. That it can ban someone and delete their account makes Facebook not a public sphere.

Same as my blog: your comment stays up if I want it to, no implication on the right to free speech.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#788

Post by thu2111 »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #450
konjin wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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". NO U. That aught to be enough for the argument to be closed, but since we like to pretend we're better than that: how can you tell that someone holds bad faith views? I do not have a machine to peer into the soul of man, neither do…

There is a a very very close to zero percent chance that somebody that is denying one of the most heavily documented genocides in history is acting in good faith.

Yeah, but there's also a very very close to zero percent chance that people labelled as "deniers" are actually saying the Holocaust never happened. The sibling comment seems to reinforce this intuition and in fact the article groups "deniers" with people who "distort" the Holocaust. That would appear to encompass any historian who attempted to disagree with any aspect of the historical record at all, in any way.

How many people have you ever met, or even heard of directly, that claim the Holocaust never happened? I can honestly say I couldn't name a single one, not even in places like the USA where they'd be able to make such speech under the First Amendment (not on Facebook). I've only ever heard about such people indirectly, via what censors claim about them.

Now how many people do you see who throw around the term "Nazi" like it's a schoolyard insult? That happens every day. I see people being compared to Nazis all the time, right here on HN which claims to have strong moderation.

The likelihood of this sort of censorship being applied to people who literally deny the Holocaust is tiny. Facebook have spent 2020 routinely censoring scientists who don't agree with the WHO, even though the WHO changes its mind every five minutes. Many of the people in high places in these companies seem to believe any disagreement with authority is worthy of censorship. They are not free speech absolutists who make an exception for truly dire cases.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#789

Post by throwaway894345 »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #785
throwaway894345 wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That statement isn’t harassment (however awful it may be). If you follow Christian groups around protesting them at their events and so on then perhaps that constitutes harassment, but merely expressing a negative opinion of something is plainly free speech and not harassment. > You think there's a contradiction somewhere in there. You asserted the contradiction, not me. I merely confirmed your observation that a fre…

> merely expressing a negative opinion of something is plainly free speech and not harassment. Again, this is merely your opinion, and it does not reflect the opinion of everyone else. Another person will see that statement and believe it is harassment and not free speech. > You asserted the contradiction, not me. I merely confirmed your observation that a free-speech proponent who alleged that harassment was free sp…

> Again, this is merely your opinion, and it does not reflect the opinion of everyone else. Another person will see that statement and believe it is harassment and not free speech.

You are mistaken. Criticism is never harassment and it’s always free speech by definition. Someone might have their feelings hurt by criticism and they might even believe it to be harassment, but they’d be mistaken. The president would prefer the media not to criticize him so much and I’m sure he believes they harass him, but never the less, he is mistaken.

> No, this is false. You asserted the contradiction and you still have not demonstrated that it exists.

I interpreted (evidently “misinterpreted) your comment as a contradiction; I wasn’t claiming a contradiction. It seems like your point is instead “some people consider harassment to be free speech” which is fine, but incorrect at least per the widely accepted definition of free speech. You can have your own definition of “2” for example which means “3”, but you don’t get to call others wrong when they say “2+2=4”—they are simply using the conventional definition of “2” and not your personal definition.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#790

Post by ephimetheus »

raxxorrax wrote: post #783
ephimetheus wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you can’t realistically fight Holocaust denial and the idea behind it with arguments at some point. In the interest of “proving” Germany wasn’t the bad guys after all, these people won’t stop sowing doubt that it occurred, and that’s exactly how you would allow it to happen again. The German democracy is designed to defend itself, and this is one of its tools. Interestingly, the American sort of o…

Then fight it by ignoring it. It is how virality works on the internet.

Sure but ignoring it is precisely how you let it happen again, and I’m not down with having that on my conscience.
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