191–200 of 451 posts
As long as Facebook is attempting to care about the spread of misinformation, can they nuke the various Flat Earth groups? I swear those people provide breeding stock for almost every other conspiracy theory on the planet.
Surely, this is sarcasm? If not, then I guess as a society we're starting to be okay with just outright silencing people.
That's not censorship. It's Fb's and other social media's desperate attempt to appease new government to prevent strong legislation, such as being held liable for their user's content, forced real names, regulation, and breakup.
im saying this because it seems like such an obvious point but i havent seen it here- why are people who want the government to be replaced by the "free market" allowed to be upset that private companies are silencing them? what is the rationale for squaring this circle
The opposite of a contradiction is another contradiction. Why are people that believe in regulation of the world's largest corporations suddenly laissez-faire libertarians? If you have opposed the Citizen's United ruling for a decade, don't suddenly act like you care about a corporation's civil liberties, including freedom of association and freedom of expression. The answer is obvious: both sides want power more tha…
I also believe that every association of citizens should have civil liberties. I have no desire or plans to become Facebook, but I want the freedom to make much smaller companies (or collectives, or charitable organizations, or whatever) and have the discretion to associate with whomever I want. If that right is taken away from Facebook, I am harmed.
If the ability to become Facebook-scale is taken away from Facebook, I am not harmed, because I have no interest in doing so. So that's what I advocate.
(If you search through my comment history, you can see this is not a new belief for me, e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19338090 from two years ago agreeing unironically with Paul Graham's strawman suggestion that Google should not exist, or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24797482 from three months ago arguing in favor of Elizabeth Warren's proposal, and motivation, to break up Big Tech in a specific way following specific principles.)
If your side wants power more than you want to stick to your expressed ideals, go ahead, but don't drag me down to your level. My side's ideals look like an opportunistic and self-contradictory version of laissez-faire libertarianism simply because our position is not laissez-faire libertarianism at all.
im saying this because it seems like such an obvious point but i havent seen it here- why are people who want the government to be replaced by the "free market" allowed to be upset that private companies are silencing them? what is the rationale for squaring this circle
The opposite of a contradiction is another contradiction. Why are people that believe in regulation of the world's largest corporations suddenly laissez-faire libertarians? If you have opposed the Citizen's United ruling for a decade, don't suddenly act like you care about a corporation's civil liberties, including freedom of association and freedom of expression. The answer is obvious: both sides want power more tha…
im saying this because it seems like such an obvious point but i havent seen it here- why are people who want the government to be replaced by the "free market" allowed to be upset that private companies are silencing them? what is the rationale for squaring this circle
>why are people who want the government to be replaced by the "free market" allowed to be upset that private companies are silencing them Because there's a clear government-enforced bias. Can you imagine the shitshow if they banned, let's say, black people?
Obvious lie. The current government is controlled by the group pushing the "stop the steal" propaganda. No reasonable person would believe Trump's own government is compelling Facebook to remove it.
> Can you imagine the shitshow if they banned, let's say, black people?
Sure... And what, pray tell, does that have to do with removing _posts_ containing calls to violence? How are those two things comparable?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What mechanism would you propose to implement your suggestion? Some kind of Ministry of Truth, or Council of Honesty? Or maybe just run everything everyone says through a fact-checker app and if they fail, lock them up? We have laws for actual harmful lies, such as falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. But beyond that, it's a grey area, slippery slope, etc.
The amount of people advocating for a literal Ministry of Truth is very disappointing. It's almost like they read 1984 and thought "hey, that's a good idea!". Although in reality I think they just don't realize the implications of their suggestions.
Are we really so stupid that we cannot see through this kind of thing and need to actively censor it to have civilized society continue to function? When do we just give up on democracy completely?
Are we really so stupid that we cannot see through this kind of thing and need to actively censor it to have civilized society continue to function? When do we just give up on democracy completely?
That's not censorship. It's Fb's and other social media's desperate attempt to appease new government to prevent strong legislation, such as being held liable for their user's content, forced real names, regulation, and breakup.
> social media's desperate attempt to appease new government to prevent strong legislation, such as being held liable for their user's content That's an interesting hypothesis, but doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. It's the current administration that's been calling for the repeal of Section 230, which is what would make platforms liable for their user's content.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In most cases you'd be shadow-banned. (The post looks fine to you, but is invisible to everyone else.) Or, they just put their thumbs on the scale and make sure your post isn't shown to anyone (or very few people) rather than your typical audience.
Okay. A non-friend was able to view it a few seconds ago, so it's definitely not totally invisible. But I only have about 600 friends (haha) so I guess they don't care about small fry. If they have 1.73 billion daily users, that's a lot of data to scan. I'm guessing they'll only go after the big fish.
The Facebook newsfeed is quite similar to TV, because you can only change channels, but have very little control over what is displayed.