Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#681

Post by efdee » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

andrewclunn wrote: post #106

kevinmgranger wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're more or less encouraging a coup, the "fire in a crowded theater" analogy couldn't be more applicable.

Ah yes, either Trump is a cult leader who is threatening the very core of our democracy, or the election was rigged and we're about to get a Chinese style Manchurian candidate in the White House. I'm so glad that the media vigorously looked into these allegations of corruption and fraud, instead of dismissing them for partisan reasons, because then we might have a split, between people who get their information from…

Why would the media need to "vigorously look into them" if judges already threw out the cases?

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#682

Post by hi5eyes » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

youeseh wrote: post #528

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…

Traditional TV and Print News Media gets the most eyeballs when they are controversial. Fox, CNN, MSNBC all do everything they can to coddle their specific segment. They phrase and comment on the news in a way that'll either excite their segment when they think it'll benefit and soften the blow whenever they think it'll hurt. And no, none of them appeal to a general audience. The ads that each network displays will t…

>Twitter's audience is narrow: Most of the people I know (across countries, religions, genders, professions) do not have a Twitter account.

most of the people in media are on twitter 247, talking heads take from twitter discourse and export that to other media

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#683

Post by ModernMech » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

throwaways885 wrote: post #629

oivey wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a pretty false equivalence. To cite the most recently example, Fox repeatedly propagating Trump’s lies about the election has no analog on the left.

What about Trump/Russia collusion?

Trump claimed his campaign had zero contacts with Russia and no business deals in Russia. Turns out his campaign had hundreds of contacts with Russia and Trump was planning to build a tower in Moscow with a penthouse gift for Vladimir Putin. Source: Volume 1 of the Mueller Report

Trump's son, son in law, and campaign manager met with a convicted Russian spy at Trump's house to discuss a trade of damaging information on Hillary Clinton in return to relaxed relations between the two nations in the form of repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Trump lied that this ever happened and tried to create a cover story which was blown apart. Source: Volume 1 of the Mueller Report

Trump's campaign manager met with a Russian intelligence officer and exchanged internal Trump campaign data which is presumed to have been transferred to the FSB. Source: Senate Committee on Intelligence of Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference

Russian interference in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systemic.” Major attack avenues included a social media “information warfare” campaign that “favored” candidate Trump and the hacking of Clinton campaign-related databases and release of stolen materials through Russian-created entities and Wikileaks. Russia also targeted databases in many states related to administering elections gaining access to information for millions of registered voters Source: Volume 1 of the Mueller Report

The Mueller team was unable to establish a before-the-fact criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. The Mueller report includes a whole second chapter dealing with obstruction from the President and his allies, which included lying (by the President himself), witness tampering, interfering with principle investigators, and destroying evidence.

And what did Democrats do with all of this? Did they storm the capital? Did they even impeach the President for any of this? There was literally no response what. so. ever.

Oh, and during all of this the President promised pardons for those who would obstruct the investigation, such as Paul Manafort, who was literally meeting with a Russian Intel Officer and handing him Trump campaign data. If that is not collusion, what is? And then Trump pardoned him. So more obstruction on top of it all.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#684

Post by notahacker » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

T-hawk wrote: post #639

th0ma5 wrote: post #231

All of these HN comments are defending shouting "Fire!" falsely in a theater under the guise of it being a slippery slope before all speech is lost. I have lost a lot of respect for these slippery slope arguments because they are easy to make and ignore the obvious problem which is that some speech shouldn't be tolerated... Especially intolerant or harmful speech.

The problem with prohibiting hate speech is that you can prohibit any speech by calling it hate.

You can prohibit any speech by calling it obscenity, adult content or spam, but for some reason people are much more willing to argue for special privileges for hate...

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#685

Post by glitcher » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

noctua wrote: post #453

th0ma5 wrote: post #231

All of these HN comments are defending shouting "Fire!" falsely in a theater under the guise of it being a slippery slope before all speech is lost. I have lost a lot of respect for these slippery slope arguments because they are easy to make and ignore the obvious problem which is that some speech shouldn't be tolerated... Especially intolerant or harmful speech.

> 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.

For those who may strongly disagree with that statement, I would be curious to hear their counter argument to the paradox of tolerance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#686

Post by CryptoBanker » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

molbioguy wrote: post #674

esoterica wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s hardly Facebook’s fault. It’s not their responsibility to educate their users on what a public utility is

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#687

Post by molbioguy » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

elgfare wrote: post #625

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…

Yes, but in a lot of ways, the laws of society are a sufficiently objective moral basis, since those are the rules we chose for ourselves. Undermining those is just bad in so many ways.

In some cases, yes. But in other cases they just represent the view of the vocal majority or those in power. Laws are official and objective, morals are relative. It's fine to base decisions on agreed upon laws. Appealing to morality is just using your own opinions

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#688

Post by linuxftw » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #643

klank wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I see with that line of argument is that it basically means you're arguing we can't do anything about it and just have to accept whatever actions people take regardless of the impacts of those actions. It reads to me like "it's hard, so let us just do nothing".

Incitement to violent insurrection seems like a pretty clear example of "too far." So is peddling provable lies to extremists which are easily linked to terrorist acts. Ultimately you either think domestic terrorism is fine or you don't. I don't see a case for the media wilfully and knowingly misleading people and inciting violence.

If this was true, then prosecute for incitement to violent insurrection which is already a crime. We already have the means to police unlawful speech, censorship need not be one of them.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#689

Post by esoterica » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

throwawaybchr wrote: post #594

This was going to happen regardless of yesterday's events. Anyone working in close proximity to the activist groups on campus knows this already. Yesterday has provided perfect cover for folks to do what they want to by using their positions in these companies for political reasons. Unfortunately many folks think the ends justify the means. Patriot act, WMD in Iraq, FISA courts, now arbitrary banning of politicians b…

It's funny how so many conservatives do not seem to grasp the concept of "private property" ostensibly the being the party of private property rights. They only care about property rights when it comes to complaining about the government taking their tax money.

On the flip side, when other entities choose to exert their private property rights in a manner unfavorable to them (e.g. by banning certain users from their servers) they are completely blindsided and insist they are being "oppressed".

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#690

Post by strategyanalyst » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

wrsh07 wrote: post #624

youeseh wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional TV and Print News Media gets the most eyeballs when they are controversial. Fox, CNN, MSNBC all do everything they can to coddle their specific segment. They phrase and comment on the news in a way that'll either excite their segment when they think it'll benefit and soften the blow whenever they think it'll hurt. And no, none of them appeal to a general audience. The ads that each network displays will t…

I tend to think that the business model of a cable news room is pretty fundamentally broken. Insofar as you value investigative journalism or pieces with some depth, you will be disappointed by organizations that host ESPN style shout fests, but they're produced for exactly the same reasons. It's cheap to make garbage filler content. When you see that all of the channels are deeply flawed, it's because they're incent…

John Oliver is also focused on a sub-segment and is also at least misleading at times.

There are no sources of information that are credible with more than 45-55% of US Gen pop. We really need a source that can at least be relied upon as accurate source by 70-80% to avoid total collapse of democratic order in US.