Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#671

Post by dleslie » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #304

dleslie wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occupying the washington monument is symbolic. Invading the capitol building to stop the electoral count and intimidate congress into overturning the election results is not symbolic.

What did you think of the Kavanaugh protestors who invaded the Capitol building to stop his confirmation? https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/408169-police-arrest-128...

Not symbolic, and also nowhere near the same degree of severity.

At worst, the Kavanaugh protestors committed trespass and pleaded to swing voters; whereas yesterday's mob broke property, assaulted police, looted, and had the intent to overturn the democratic process. While flying confederate and Trump flags and tearing down American flags.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#672

Post by DapperZoom » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

dionian wrote: post #556

technofiend wrote: post #241

I know Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and all the rest don't count as broadcast media but I feel like we got here in part because the 1987 elimination of FCC's fairness doctrine slowly allowed a shift in how we communicate with each other. We went from specious claims and conspiracy theories being the subject matter of newsletters to their public broadcast to millions via talk radio ~and Fox News~, thus allowin…

Fox (however detestable you may find it) was created as an alternative to the corporate media hegemony on thought, I fear you have it backwards.

Yeah, I definitely agree with this. The corporate media is a hive mind of sorts, and look at the unhinged hysteria presented on CNN. I'm definitely not a fan of FOX, but during the Presidential debate, their panel contained two Biden supporters, two Trump supporters, and two never-Trumpers. That diversity of opinion was lacking on all of the other major networks.

I think we're seeing a sort of religious phenomenon here in regards to the corporate media. They're pushing narratives everyone know are untrue, but no-one can come out and say it publicly due to the religiosity of the mob.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#673

Post by a_wild_dandan » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

NE2z2T9qi wrote: post #535

tshaddox wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems more interesting that a software platform like this would be expected to treat a president of a country different than a normal person. Should the queen of England get even more privileges to break rules on the platform? And the peerage somewhere below that (but still much higher than the common folk)?

And what rules exactly did Trump break? He explicitly did not call for violence. It seems like you want people silenced if they question the official narrative. That's precisely antithetical to free-speech ideals. Do you know how often I've seen Republicans called Nazis? Or evil? Or that they need to be eliminated? I don't go crying to Facebook to censor opinions I don't like.

Using a platform to widely spread toxic disinformation about election fraud is probably against Facebook's ToS.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#674

Post by molbioguy » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

esoterica wrote: post #630

molbioguy wrote: post #467

The statements by Facebook and others pushing moral justifications around Facebook's censorship fail to entertain the possibility that even morality is subjective and relative. Facebook makes its decisions based on its own goals and preferences and morals. Facebook has established itself unfairly as a moral arbiter on a platform that is so widely used that is treated like a public utility. The people who currently ag…

It's not a public utility and being widely used does not make it one. Lots of people eat at McDonald's and get coffee from Starbucks, that does not make McDonald's or Starbucks a public utility.

It's treated as such by a lot of it's users. They do not have expectations of being censored. The items you mention are paid services. Facebook isn't for most of its users.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#675

Post by zionic » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

jmull wrote: post #497

This is so Facebook. * Enables and encourages (and makes money off of) spreading hate messages on their platform for years * Hamhandedly does a full reverse and bans of one of the leading spreaders only after it's too late to make a difference. * But just in time to curry favor with the groups newly in power. A twist to the old cliche: too much, too late. How cowardly.

This comment really encapsulates the modern left. Even when they do what you want, it’s never enough.

You’ll fight and scream to get what you want, and when you get it you’ll continue to attack upset that you what you wanted wasn’t done sooner.

This behavior, which I see commonly echoed on Twitter, demotivates anyone from working with you.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#676

Post by jeremyjh » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #632

protonimitate wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "slippery slope" / "free speech" arguments are boring, and come into play almost anytime Facebook gets mentioned on HN. "Slippery slope" is also most commonly a fallacy , which a lot of people seem to ignore. > the fallacy of arguing that a certain course of action is undesirable or that a certain proposition is implausible because it leads to an undesirable or implausible conclusion via a series of tenuously con…

This internet cliché whereby someone in a debate circle declares something a formal fallacy, and then a million internet commenters turn it into a meme, should stop. Slippery slopes can be shown throughout history. Trump himself has put us on a slippery slope it seems. No, it doesn't matter that some college debate class student included it on a list of debate fallacies on Reddit. It's an idiom to succinctly describe…

The point is not that one thing never leads to another in this way, but that the possibility of a future slippery slope doesn't support an argument by itself.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#677

Post by herbstein » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #621

king_magic wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump - and his supporters - are the "they". They are the monsters here. They are the ones invading capitols. They are the ones emboldening white supremacists, racists and fascists. They are the one demanding to overturn the legitimate outcome of a democratic election. It's an insult to the millions and millions who died during WWII to corrupt the message behind this famous poem/statement and insinuate that Trump and…

> Trump - and his supporters - are the "they" 70 million people. All of them are fascists? I'm pretty sure people in Germany though they were stopping the fascists by supporting the Nazis. You have no idea who the "they" is until it's too late. That's why the freedom of speech covers everybody. In America, we are not afraid of ideas. My dad survived a civil war, got his degree and immigrated here legally to be a part…

> I'm pretty sure people in Germany though they were stopping the fascists by supporting the Nazis.

You'd be pretty wrong. At best they thought Hitler would soften greatly after he rose to power, at worst they agreed with everything he said and did.

In '33 German non-Jewish shops started putting up "German Free" stickers. Einstein fled the country in that same year. His photo was widely published in newspapers with "not yet hanged" as the sub-heading. His friend, Theodor Lassing, was shot and killed, an act that was celebrated in Germany.

Hitler had been imprisoned for his actions before his rise to power, and was a largely known entity before the Germans "turned to him". There wasn't a lot of confusion about what he thought, who he hated, or what he wanted to do with them. Mein Kampf was released in 2 parts across 1925 and 1926.

An actual criticism about the time just before Hitler's rise to power, is that every other powerful party took him for a joke. They didn't expect him to be a viable rival. So instead, the Communist party (one of the major parties at the time) spend their squabbling with the Socialdemocrats instead of focusing their attention on the "real enemy".

If you're actually interested in this topic, you should read the book "They thought they were Free". It chronicles how normal people fell to support the fascists - the Nazi party.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#678

Post by dwaltrip » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

captain_price7 wrote: post #577

jayd16 wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As was said, this is just a slippery slope argument. Which is especially odd considering the platforms already have all the power they need. There is no more power to give.

> There is no more power to give Ability to censor top level politicians, deciding what constitutes acceptable and what needs to be censored is not the kind of power they used to have. Edit: bit clarification

This isn't true. Private entities have never been required to distribute messages from US officials or politicians. I believe the only exceptions are certain emergency broadcasts.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#679

Post by bra-ket » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #645

starik36 wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't be fair when you only blame Fox for fact-free content when the same fact-free content(just inverted) is peddled by all the other mass media outlets. They just cater to a different bubble.

> all the other mass media outlets All? C'mon. You can make the argument that MSNBC is a mirror of Fox News in terms of coddling its viewers, but if you're calling NPR or the New York Times "fact-free," you're only betraying your own ignorance of journalism standards. Investigating facts and reporting them clearly is a solved problem. There are people who go to universities to study how to do this well, then go to wo…

that 'high standard' apparently allows them to present rumors from anonymous sources as facts as long as it fits a certain political agenda.

The burden of evidence no longer applies neither with NYT not any other heavily biased liberal outlets like WaPo or CNN.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#680

Post by noctua » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

spanktheuser wrote: post #609

noctua wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the obvious problem which is that some speech shouldn't be tolerated... Especially intolerant or harmful speech. Many people, both anarchists and non-anarchists, would strongly disagree with that statement. And not all of those people are uneducated edgelords whose main argument is that it's a slippery slope.

I don’t think you should be speaking for anarchists unless you are one yourself & embedded in that community. As a non-anarchist who is sometimes in coalition with them on certain issues I have a very different impression of their view on this matter. I don’t think you can claim their support for your slippery slope / free speech absolutist position.

As I replied to another comment, I'm not active on any anarchist servers, but I know many anarchists in real life. The notion I've gotten from them is that they support absolute free speech. Maybe they're an exception. Maybe it's an Eastern European thing. I don't know. I don't support absolute free speech myself. I just took issue with the statement that it's obvious that some speech needs to be censored, because I know some very educated intelligent people who disagree with it.