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Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'

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Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spam alone would eliminate its utility.

Spam can be blocked, though, right? Edit: To address the commenter below, Congress has addressed spam before, in the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.

Ok, so the rule is now:

Only content that is literally illegal or is spam would be removed.

See where this is going? It is hard to craft rules that allow everything without leaving a site unusable.

Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'

#292
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have a valid point here if all people were 100% rational actors with perfect knowledge and agency. Unfortunately, they aren't.

> Unfortunately, they aren't. Yet they are allowed to drive cars, fly planes, raise children, buy guns and vote but somehow cannot decide for themselves what’s good or bad, and need a higher moral entity like Facebook to babysit them. I find this a weak argument.

Beside voting and children, most of the time people need a permit/license to show that they are fit to do the things you mention.

I don't know what a way to show that you are a rational, well informed, mentally fit citizen able to responsibly vote without falling for basic fakes news and misinformation attacks would be.

At least denial of reality should raise serious questions. How can we expect a flat earther, 6000year-old-world believer, climate change and holocaust denier to rationally chose who to put at the helm of a country?

Politics should be about people disagreeing on the means to address a set of common challenges, not about those who imagine living in another world so far removed from ours that they can't have a valuable opinion.

Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we’re talking about banning people for saying things against the consensus view, we can wipe the books of Galileos name

This is a false equivalency. Facebook, unlike the Catholic Church 500 years ago, doesn't rule anything.

No, they just control the world's largest public square.

Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'

#294

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.

I see removing "stop the steal" posts as an attempt to prevent violence. Flat earth groups aren't trying to incite violence as far as I've seen.

Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s not. The post I’m responding to made a case for why censorship is fine in this case. That reason applies very very broadly. If we are ok with that reason, then we are ok with that reason, and we must acknowledge what else is caught in that net.

> If we are ok with that reason, then we are ok with that reason, ... This is a slippery-slope fallacy. Facebook removing content containing speech directly associated with highly illegal activity doesn't mean the country is becoming socialist.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I never said it was becoming socialist. I gave a simple warning that the reason is enough to silence vast swaths of public discourse.

Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'

#296
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Is Facebook doing this out of genuine business interest? Or because they're concerned about legal and/or regulatory backlash?

What’s the difference? Business interests include mitigating legal and regulatory exposure.

Because the latter would definitely be a form of government censorship. In fact it's essentially how most censorship in Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey work.

If you tell a newspaper that they'll be regulated out of existence if they publish a certain opinion, it doesn't matter that the private platform is the one doing the censoring.

Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'

#297
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are just appeasing the Democrats before they take control and break them up. Big Tech has had no issue offering services to third world dictatorships but when Americans drink the same koolaid, suddenly it's a pressing issue! Just to be clear, I am not blaming them, I am just pointing out the hypocrisy.

Or it was because of a literal coup attempt last week.

Facebook facilitates coups all over the place. Successfull ones, even! They care now because the democrats can actually do something in retaliation.

Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'

#298

Should the US government make its own social network? That would cut off all kinds of issues. Only content that is literally illegal would be removed. Everyone would be guaranteed access.

It could also be funded by tax dollars solving the targeted advertising problem, and all data on it could be given 4th amendment protections solving the big brother problem.

Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'

#299
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's quite a step from "don't use AWS to plot a violent overthrow of the United States Government" to all communication being monitored and a firewall blocking foreign sources. Why should Facebook and Amazon use their resources to help this cause?

I think it’s quite a step to say all comments with the phrase Stop the steal want to overthrow the government. We, as a society, should be allowed to be very critical of our election process. Stifling discussions about the legitimacy of the election actually reduces my confidence in the election process. I’ve listen to their arguments and I didn’t believe them, but I feel good that people are allowed to do openly que…

I don't think anyone is stopping you from discussing the electoral process. What they are stopping is a specific campaign that transitioned from questioning to violence. The violence is the problem.

You have to accept that there is a difference between questioning the results of an election and walking into the Capitol, killing a cop, and wrecking the place up. "The line" on what gets you deplatformed exists somewhere between those two points.

Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'

#300
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is because all the big tech companies are eliminating popular dissent concerning the government, which makes many question if the government is in cahoots and using private companies to further public goals of censorship, which would be more difficult to do directly as government. It smells fishy at the very least.

Eliminating dissent?!?

Sure, watch as Biden berates black leaders. Tells one she can't read. Once you secure power, you don't necessarily like sharing it. Its like splitting the loot between thieves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3G7n21p0kY

Lenin after securing power, quickly killed off or imprisoned people in his own communist party that he deemed might pose him a threat. Sadly this included most of the well meaning people and idealists.

Hitchens narrates a great and chilling example of this:

Iraq's 1979 Fascist Coup, Narrated by Christopher Hitchens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR1X3zV6X5Y

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