Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#691

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

Imagine for a moment that Trump's putsch succeeded, that lawmakers, under duress, voted to annul the election results and gave Trump a second term. What would you do? Would you protest? Would you organize? Would you revolt? Now imagine that organizing ~potentially~ violent protest is illegal, and censored on Facebook and Twitter and whatsapp and etc. You would be alone, in a dictatorship.

The failure to imagine "attempted coup succeeding" when hearing "attempted coup" is astounding to me.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#692

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

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…

The larger a company gets, especially in influence, the more regulation is needed to enforce accountability. With great social power, comes great social responsibility.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#693

Post by dionidium » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

protonimitate wrote: post #468

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 "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…

> "Slippery slope" is also most commonly a fallacy, which a lot of people seem to ignore.

I don't ignore it. I reject it outright. Politics especially (and human behavior, more generally) operates on slopes. Allowing x quite literally can and does often lead to x + 1. If x + 1 is unacceptable, then it's perfectly legitimate to oppose x on the grounds that it will produce x + 1 (even if we all could agree that x is itself acceptable).

The fallacy, such that it exists, is that the truth value of x exists independent of whether it will lead to x + 1. You can't disprove something about x by arguing that it will produce x + 1. That's all well and good, but it's not what anybody's talking about when they invoke a slippery slope argument in the context of human systems.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#694

Post by efdee » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

tetrometal wrote: post #571

efdee wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single case got struck down by judges. People were pissed about a lack of election transparency that wasn't actually there. If the opinion of judges wasn't enough to convince them, what makes you think that of an auditor would make a difference?

I think the truth will eventually come out. I HOPE that those claiming sufficient fraud to effect the election are dead wrong. The alternative would be a nightmare. That's why the media and big tech shouldn't have buried their head in the sand. "Every single case got struck down by judges" is not a new argument to my ears. Do you think most of those judges heard actual evidence, or were throwing cases out on procedur…

Sure, let's throw out rule of law, it's not like we can trust those judges, right?

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#695

Post by linuxftw » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

jturpin wrote: post #506

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.

Freedom of speech is important enough to where the logic of disallowing shouting fire in a theater should not be taken for granted. There are few if any black and white cases to be had here - it might seem like that since we are living in times where "reasonable" speech has always been well tolerated and supported, so it seems like a non-issue for us.

The fire analogy is flawed. Nobody is preventing you from shouting fire. If you shout fire and there is not one, you may be prosecuted. This is important because it requires a demonstration of actual harm (not 'my feelings').

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#696

Post by olyjohn » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

bra-ket wrote: post #646

AlexandrB wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, Fox News was created as a "junk food" alternative to traditional media. By cutting back on investigative journalism and focusing on commentary and shows like "The O'reilly Factor" Fox could create "news" content for less than their competitors. I'm not sure if the apparent "right" lean was due to the ownership or to market realities that made that kind of content more appealing to right-of-center…

Fox is gone though, drown in liberal propaganda just like other corporate media. The only alternative now is DailyWire with its uncompromising conservative stance.

Is this really what people want in the news? A biased political stance?

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#697

Post by newacct583 » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

NE2z2T9qi wrote: post #600

neogodless wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a phrase "Talking out of both sides of your mouth." He said what he believed the urging of politicans, media and oppositional citizens wanted by saying "go home" while continuing to say what his base wanted to hear - "we won in a landslide and it was stolen." Each side could choose to only hear what they want, or recognize it for the manipulation it is. We know what his followers will do - hear what they want…

And when politicians call each other Nazis, or when Joe Biden claimed that Mitt Romney wanted to re-enslave black people? Seems like you're only going to apply your "inciting violence" claim to one side. I watched cities burn over the summer and intense levels of violence... And yet no one on the left trotted out speech bans and "incitement to violence" claims. It's obvious you're selectively targeting enforcement of…

> And when politicians call each other Nazis, or when Joe Biden claimed that Mitt Romney wanted to re-enslave black people?

Name calling isn't incitement to violence. Can you point to the specific instances of violence you are talking about and the speech that inspired them?

The issue here is that this isn't theoretical. Trump actually spoke to a real mob, in person, told them to march to the capitol, and then praised him once they had invaded and sacked it during a joint session of congress. Given that, yes, we look at his speech with much less tolerant criteria. He wasn't just spouting off, he is at least a proximate cause of a direct attack on our seat of government.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#698

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:01 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.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#699

Post by matthewrobertso » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:02 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…

Was the new york times factful in its reporting on iraq in 2003?

And if they later investigated themselves and found that they published information that was not true, would that cancel the war pushed on us by the military industrial complex across all of our media and bring 500,000 dead Iraqis back to life?

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#700

Post by slutd » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

noctua wrote: post #655

guerrilla wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really true. You won't be allowed on most anarchist servers unless you agree not to be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.

I'm not active on any online anarchist servers so I can't comment on that. But the anarchists I know in real life, at least based on the conversations we've had, support absolute free speech.

as an anarchist, i can explain that none of us support government restrictions on speech, and i would like my enemies to be as loud as possible so i know who to target.