Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

rollingstone.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 407 posts

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#271

Post by yamtaddle »

nradov wrote: post #269
yamtaddle wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what would it mean if Facebook were treated as the "publisher or speaker" of information they... well, publish? This passage does something by preventing them from being so classified. Right?

That's a meaningless question because it's tangential to the Communications Decency Act. Censoring content or changing a social media feed algorithm isn't classified that way. You might not like the law but that's how it works based on the plain language of the statute and confirmed through extensive case law.

Asking about the effect of a passage in the Communications Decency Act is a "meaningless question" and is tangential to the Communications Decency Act?

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#272

Post by nradov »

skizm wrote: post #131
nova22033 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...

Devil's advocate here (I won't comment on if I agree with the argument or not), but this article seems to miss the point of the section 230 debate. All of the stuff here is about what the law is now. The objection most people have is that it shouldn't be like this and we need to change or remove section 230. It specifically allows sites to be biased while also not holding them legally accountable for anything they ch…

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has suggested extending common carrier laws to cover social media. This would essentially prevent them from censoring any legal content, much like legacy telephone companies can't block users from discussing certain topics. Such a change would require an Act of Congress to amend or replace the Communications Decency Act. And there are potential First Amendment concerns in terms of forced speech.

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984440891/justice-clarence-th...

So it's an interesting policy idea but I'm not sure whether it would be better or worse than the current state.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#273

Post by BlargMcLarg »

root_axis wrote: post #270
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emphasis 'we', not 'my'. These guys are already making shadow profiles out of info given by friends, corporations, etc. Not participating is also causing red flags in certain circles. Withstanding peer pressure is one thing, having your identity made up or flagged out of your control is another. This is a slippery slope that should be tackled before it gets to that. The only people not affected indirectly, are the pe…

> These guys are already making shadow profiles out of info given by friends, corporations, etc. True, it's a shady practice indeed, but signing up and giving them even more information directly from the source is obviously far worse than the fraction of signals they can extract from your friends. > Not participating is also causing red flags in certain circles. There's no accounting for the peculiarities of social g…

I don't think you fully grasp what the slope is sliding to. There are enough token anecdotes of companies doing background checks on social media, and will actively flag individuals for having zero presence. We also have social credit score horror stories.

Your answer doesn't work anymore when lack of participation is considered wrong. We should be blocking that instead of assuming things will just work out forever as long as individuals guard their identity. Again, this goes beyond just standing up against peer pressure.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#274

Post by drewcoo »

matrix_overload wrote: post #230
BrainVirus wrote: post #189

This is not an exception. This is the norm. All major social media platforms operate under the assumption that it's better to ban 100 innocent people than to let one "bad" person publish something. The scale of censorship is ming-boggling. The scale of denial and ignorance about censorship on HN is even more astounding. The big lie of online censorship is that controversial cases where most people think the person "d…

The platforms do it because of armies of miserable people online looking for an outlet to their outrage. So the platforms are stuck trying to appease the angry mob, while spending as little resources on it as possible (hence, shitty algorithms). And I think I even know where the mob came from. Humans apparently have an intrinsic need to have some goals to be passionate about. And since the "economies of scale" have o…

> armies of miserable people online looking for an outlet to their outrage

I just call them "lawyers."

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#275

Post by kbelder »

etchalon wrote: post #174
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy: stop moderating. Just allow everything.

"Crime sure is hard to stop." "Well, just make everything legal."

Allow legal things. Block illegal things.

It seems crazy that it's impossible to find a major platform that has this policy.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#276

Post by logicalmonster »

triceratops wrote: post #268
logicalmonster wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was reading quite a lot recently about war in Angola and still I have doubts which side was "good" and which was "bad", besides that people who lived there were hurt in the history like almost no other nation. Norm MacDonald (I didn't even know he was sick) is said to have made the following quote, which is an interesting filter to look at all you know about history through. "It says here in this history book tha…

> It says here in this history book that; luckily, the good guys have won every single time. Is that really true? The conquest of the Americas is near-universally seen as "evil" defeating at least "innocent" if not "good". Leaving aside the people who say "The Aztecs had it coming". The Roman empire did some pretty shitty things, that most people would recognize as evil (slavery, Celtic genocide) but is still regarde…

> Is that really true?

That's sort of the joke. It's another way of saying "the victors write the history books"

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#277

Post by root_axis »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #273
root_axis wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These guys are already making shadow profiles out of info given by friends, corporations, etc. True, it's a shady practice indeed, but signing up and giving them even more information directly from the source is obviously far worse than the fraction of signals they can extract from your friends. > Not participating is also causing red flags in certain circles. There's no accounting for the peculiarities of social g…

I don't think you fully grasp what the slope is sliding to. There are enough token anecdotes of companies doing background checks on social media, and will actively flag individuals for having zero presence. We also have social credit score horror stories. Your answer doesn't work anymore when lack of participation is considered wrong. We should be blocking that instead of assuming things will just work out forever a…

> There are enough token anecdotes of companies doing background checks on social media, and will actively flag individuals for having zero presence.

I'm sure it happens, but I don't believe that to be a real issue since using the presence of a social media account as a filtering tool for hiring is obviously ridiculous, and as someone who has done a lot of hiring, it's completely absurd to imagine we'd ever turn away a good candidate because their name didn't hit on a social media search, especially because it's very common for people to use nicknames or false names on social media or to completely remove their account from search altogether.

I also don't see the peer pressure thing as an issue. Adults don't meaningfully peer pressure other adults to use social media, nobody cares, and kids will peer pressure for everything from video games to sex and drugs, but it's pretty obvious that being peer pressured to do drugs isn't a valid reason to use drugs.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#279

Post by semiquaver »

tl wrote: post #256
commandlinefan wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The scale of denial and ignorance about censorship on HN Even here, where you would think people would know better, you still see people insist that it's not censorship because it's not the government doing it.

Facebook is the government. PRISM [1] makes it explicit in Facebook's case, but any corporation beholden to a government for its continued operation is a policy arm of that government. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

Just curious, can you name some large companies for which this doesn’t hold? Or are you saying that all corporations are arms of the government?

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#280

Post by BlargMcLarg »

root_axis wrote: post #277
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you fully grasp what the slope is sliding to. There are enough token anecdotes of companies doing background checks on social media, and will actively flag individuals for having zero presence. We also have social credit score horror stories. Your answer doesn't work anymore when lack of participation is considered wrong. We should be blocking that instead of assuming things will just work out forever a…

> There are enough token anecdotes of companies doing background checks on social media, and will actively flag individuals for having zero presence. I'm sure it happens, but I don't believe that to be a real issue since using the presence of a social media account as a filtering tool for hiring is obviously ridiculous, and as someone who has done a lot of hiring, it's completely absurd to imagine we'd ever turn away…

I'm not sure why you circle back to peer pressure when we agree it isn't an issue. Are you reading past the comments?

>it's completely absurd to imagine we'd ever turn away a good candidate because their name didn't hit on a social media search,

Understand for a moment many of these people are not developers with well-established CVs. These are normal people working the bottom of the ladder where there are plenty of replacements, and the answer to being irreplaceable is effectively 'start becoming a prodigy, establish a network early or be lucky'. Often too late for them. Even that advice alone is insane for the yet-to-be-born given a virtually global mental health crisis.

Leaving things up to executives behaving in a sane manner has given us multiple global problems to deal with. I wouldn't count on their sanity to prevent another.

Post reply on HN