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Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

swp.org.uk

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Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#371

Post by BoorishBears »

throwaways885 wrote: post #84
elmomle wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, don't draw a false equivalency between a major political party that does not play host to violent rhetoric, on the one hand, and groups that where plans (very real, actionable, and actioned-on plans!) to subvert the government are incubated, on the other. Put another way--let's not turn sedition into another us-vs-them political game. That's how democracy ends.

There is no false equivalency. Deplatforming is wrong, left or right, rich or poor. Disenfranchised people not having a voice is a cause of radicalisation and violence. If you don't believe me then talk to the Black community in America. I defended Parler in another thread and I'll defend the SWP here, despite not particularly liking either group.

I'm black. I don't believe hate speech deserves a platform.

And you're insulting me and black people everywhere trying to create equivalence between Parler being deplatformed for deciding to not moderate hate speech insofar as it didn't amount to a civil tort... and the systematic oppression of black people based on their skin color.

It's disgusting you'd stoop so low to try that.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#372

Post by Marinus »

roenxi wrote: post #305
ssakamoto wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is a private company and can do whatever they want.

That statement is neither true, wise nor a rebuttal. (1) They have to obey a whole bunch of laws. Including laws on political interference. (2) If there is a corporate exception to foreign interference, foreigners will found corporations to interfere. If founding an LLC lets someone interfere without hinderance then the world would soon be contending with the NSA, LLC and GRU Pty. Ltd. and Guoanbu Inc. (3) Any US bil…

Weird how that statement was 'true' when it was Trump&pals getting kicked of, but now that radical leftists get kicked of, it's not true anymore.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#373

Post by pmlnr »

garbagetime wrote: post #307
pmlnr wrote: post #142

> They are demanding to be reinstated immediately. LOL. You were using someone else's website - Zuck's, to be specific. If you demand that he allows you to post on his site, could I make demands to post on your site? I'm actually glad these are finally happening. People need to learn to go back running their own services, under their own domain, owned (bought or leased) hardware, etc. The current "social" media + clo…

>If you demand that he allows you to post on his site, could I make demands to post on your site? Of course you could. Whether you would have a good case is another question. If you're implying an equivalence between the two situations I think what you're missing is that Facebook and the SWP's websites are very different kinds of website. Facebook is a social media website[1] that hosts various kinds of communities,…

> different kinds of website

Are there any laws that differentiate between "public" and "private" websites?

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#374

Post by JustinVx »

Marinus wrote: post #372
roenxi wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That statement is neither true, wise nor a rebuttal. (1) They have to obey a whole bunch of laws. Including laws on political interference. (2) If there is a corporate exception to foreign interference, foreigners will found corporations to interfere. If founding an LLC lets someone interfere without hinderance then the world would soon be contending with the NSA, LLC and GRU Pty. Ltd. and Guoanbu Inc. (3) Any US bil…

Weird how that statement was 'true' when it was Trump&pals getting kicked of, but now that radical leftists get kicked of, it's not true anymore.

I think it’s mostly liberals that have been spreading this statement. If you take a look at for instance Glenn Greenwald’s latest tweets or statements from the ACLU you’ll be hearing something very different.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#375

Post by roenxi »

simonh wrote: post #347
adventured wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even as our nation spent years outraged over Russian interference Only a minority of the country was (supposedly) outraged about the mostly non-existent Russian interference. Most of the US knew it was bullshit the entire time, the Russians had near zero impact on the prior election (amazing how they didn't somehow swing this latest election, given their apparent god-like powers, despite how close it was). Trump's…

If I was American and there was clear proof that Russia had interfered in elections, I don’t care how ineffective it was. I’d want it investigated and stopped. I’d also rain fire and fury on anyone who interfered with or obstructed those investigations. But that’s me. I suppose caring about free and fair elections in the US is now a partisan issue over there. For a British conservative that grew up under Reagan/Thatc…

> ... I don’t care how ineffective it was. I’d want it investigated and stopped.

The level of interference to the election was so trivial I doubt you can back that attitude up. At some level of ineffectiveness, having an investigation and stopping the activity is more costly than just ignoring it. Investigations take time, money and it turns out have collateral damage:

Looking at the charges out of the Mueller investigation, for example [0]:

- ~80% of those charged are beyond the reach of the US government and the charges aren't going to be tested. Weak evidence that whatever it was they were doing did anything given the Trump 2020 election counts were pretty similar to/improved on the 2016 counts.

- ~15% of those remaining hadn't done anything wrong until they were hit with process crimes in the investigation itself (counting those with only "false statements" charges + R. Stone).

- ~5% of charges I can't be bothered to read up on, but given that 95% of the charges are scrambling to find a problem I doubt the remainder are all that impressive.

I'm not deeply up to speed on the all 5 of those "false statement" charges - but the one against Flynn were probably politically motivated. They were interviewing him about a call where the investigators already had a transcript of the call. It is unclear why they were charging him for what could be a mismemory of routine diplomacy.

By my reckoning, at least 75% of the charges in the Muller investigation that could actually be prosecuted were crimes that wouldn't have existed except for the Muller investigation! That is a big cost for what turned out to be nothing much. Even if you want to use some sort of irrational strategy as a deterrent the cost is higher than the benefit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_charges_brought_in_th...

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#376

Post by radiator »

Marinus wrote: post #370
lenkite wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me-thinks that their automated procedure for banning right-wing actors removed large swathes of left-wing actors too. Not surprising really. After all, the SWP describes itself as "revolutionary" and that has got a bad name in recent days. Looks like they will need to make special "permit-list" for the language of left wing parties.

Why should onky left wing parties get special protection?

GP did not say they should, they just mentioned the fact that they do.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#377

Post by garbagetime »

pmlnr wrote: post #373
garbagetime wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you demand that he allows you to post on his site, could I make demands to post on your site? Of course you could. Whether you would have a good case is another question. If you're implying an equivalence between the two situations I think what you're missing is that Facebook and the SWP's websites are very different kinds of website. Facebook is a social media website[1] that hosts various kinds of communities,…

> different kinds of website Are there any laws that differentiate between "public" and "private" websites?

No idea. When I said "Whether you would have a good case is another question" I wasn't talking about a legal argument - I was just talking about whether or not you'd be able to make a compelling argument likely to affect actual change.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#379

Post by Aeolos »

stretchcat wrote: post #181
throwawaygh wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I view this as a passive voice excusing of responsibility for direct political action in exactly the same way that some people view "the algorithm" as a passive voice excusing of responsibility. The president pro tempore of the US senate was a Segrationist in 2001. Literally, segregationists of the US Senate outlived pets.com If any component of your blame or solution to the state of western politics includes…

> Again, I view this as a passive voice excusing of responsibility for direct political action You are mistaken. Neither intentionalists nor functionalists excuse the responsibility of anybody, least of all the organization's leadership. To both, the organization and its leaders are to be held responsible for the actions of the organization. The functionalist model does not absolve anybody of guilt. If you want to se…

I understand your sentiment. I expect this will not solve the underlying issues and will indeed create more issues in the long run: with that rule, interpreted strictly, only established multi-billion/trillion dollar companies will be able to assume the liability and risk of insuring software against “negative impact”. The bar “careful or you may go to jail / be financially ruined” would be too high for most SME or open-source developers to clear.

Take medical software as an example: a highly regulated space, that very few SMEs and approximately ZERO open-source projects can afford to enter.

And even in that space, strict liabilities are restricted to the software’s *intended use*. As long as the manufacturer has taken steps to clearly indicate what is appropriate use / misuse of the software, the manufacturer is NOT liable if the software is misused by the user. At that point, the liability shifts to the user of the software instead.

An in-between approach would be GDPR-style regulations that define what is and is not appropriate to do, with proportional penalties for failing to do that: intended vs unintended failure; penalties proportional to company income so it can hurt small and big companies alike without outright killing them on the first few strikes. However there is a cost even to that: such regulations do block valid innovation and they tend to expand and get more complex year over year.

There is no easy way out here that I can see...

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#380

Post by ohthehugemanate »

pmlnr wrote: post #157
mantap wrote: post #127

I'd argue this is a good thing. Facebook is not immortal. Every user that Facebook alienates is a win. Already many non-technical people have been moving to Signal after Facebook's new privacy policy. We need better alternatives, not better Facebook.

Sadly, Signal is not the ideal solution either. When I started with the internet, there were countless free/non free email providers, and now nearly everything is gmail, outlook, yahoo, qq, and a few more big ones. We're playing the same with messaging, whereas in reality what we'd need is federated providers, competing with their client software which can all write to each other - see SMS and email. I was talking wi…

What are the intermediate steps to get there?

For me, an intermediate step to a lot of worlds I like better than this one, is for a diverse ecosystem of messengers to compete on security, openness, and guarantees of not surveilling/monetizing users.

In the last weeks I've had all my WhatsApp groups of "normal people" start discussing alternative messengers on exactly these terms. They've looked into Viber, Telegram, SMS, Signal, and others. So i'm happy with that.

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