Live data from Hacker News

Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

rollingstone.com

281–290 of 407 posts

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#281
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t just need human moderation, we need due process. These companies control too much of our digital lives and make so much money from us, but have zero regard for us as soon as it’s inconvenient to investigate a case, because that would cut into their insane margins. I was permabanned for Twitter recently merely for getting the attention of some large influencers who disagreed with me (no actual rule was broken…

They only control what we voluntarily give them. Social media controls nothing of importance in my life.

I haven't used Facebook or Twitter in well over a decade.

Nothing is more freeing than not having to put up with entitled, whiny idiots who think they are the moral authority on pretty much everything in the world. Especially since most of them couldn't accurately point to country that isn't America on a map.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you don't interact with anyone, that's a completely untenable position due to network effects. eg My family (spread around the world) uses WhatsApp for communicating with each other, which I'm not much of a fan of but it's pretty much impossible to get them over to another platform given that I don't live anywhere near them anymore to teach them and they have to use it anyway for communicating within their res…

WhatsApp isn't social media, it's a messaging app, but more critically it's based on phone numbers, so WhatsApp really has no control over access to your contacts. > Unless you don't interact with anyone, that's a completely untenable position due to network effects It doesn't have to be this way though. Between sms, email, telegram, signal, and discord I have communication channels to every person I actually care ab…

I am aware that WhatsApp isn't social media, it's just an example of an app I would ideally like to switch away from.

I'm not really sure how it's defeatist when trying even to only get myself off the app would require making things much harder for my relatively tech illiterate parents on the other side of the world with no tech literate relative to lean on to help them out. With Whatsapp they've used it for a few years and can easily get help from any young neighbor in case of issues.

It isn't like I'm not trying. For example, for communicating with some close fairly tech literate friends, we go through a relatively big effort to host and maintain our ideal of a self-hosted Matrix and Misskey node. But there we can manage it due to everyone in the group being able to at least describe the errors they run into.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#283
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, you can publish "The effects of the Jewish population on the 1930s German economy" which can be either a genuine bona-fide analysis, or something which essentially boils down to "Jews destroyed German economy before the war". I think the "reddit model" where you have smaller communities with community mods works much better than the Facebook or Twitter model where there's one "global community". Not that…

Reddit has a very bad antisemitism problem. It's a cesspool. By no means is reddit 'the model'. In practically any sub except the explicitly Jewish ones, I will find an avalanche of antisemitism on any post that touches on Judaism/Israel/Jews.

Reddit has a bad anti-everything problem.

That place is a cancer.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#284

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…

To me, what you talk about with “economies of scale” is similar to the depravation of access to the power process people experience in industrial society that Ted Kaczynski described in Industrial Society and its Future. The work that our species did to stay alive, such as find food, is already handled by society, and the ability to influence the direction our lives, has been exported to corporate board rooms and legislative assemblies. As a result people now engage in surrogate activities to satisfy their needs to engage in the power process. This includes things like entertainment media, subcultures, and sports. Social media is another instantiation of surrogate activities. I think it’s no wonder that moderation is not benefiting the general public.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#285
post #272
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

[flagged]

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#286
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, you can publish "The effects of the Jewish population on the 1930s German economy" which can be either a genuine bona-fide analysis, or something which essentially boils down to "Jews destroyed German economy before the war". I think the "reddit model" where you have smaller communities with community mods works much better than the Facebook or Twitter model where there's one "global community". Not that…

> Furthermore, you can publish "The effects of the Jewish population on the 1930s German economy" which can be either a genuine bona-fide analysis, or something which essentially boils down to "Jews destroyed German economy before the war". When I was in college, I was looking around an FTP server and found a holocaust denier book. So I read it. Well, more moderately skimmed (not lightly). It was exactly like this -…

> "...it purported to be a sober view of history, well cited and no name calling. Literally none of the references were to anything real; it was all fabricated bullshit trying to push the reader to a particular conclusion (Jews are bad)."

But the problem is that censorship assumes that you are too stupid to come to that conclusion yourself and must be protected from the "misinformation".

It also robs the marketplace of the ability to hear the legitimate criticisms and the opportunities to expose said bullshit.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#287
post #34

The problem is that no automatic method we have now will catch context. There is a difference between "Jews were murdered by Germans during war" and "Jews destroyed German economy before the war" that will not be recognized by any machine we have nowadays. The first is true, the second is bullshit, how algorithm can now this? More, even if Facebook employees humans to do moderation still for some contractor from Asia…

Furthermore, you can publish "The effects of the Jewish population on the 1930s German economy" which can be either a genuine bona-fide analysis, or something which essentially boils down to "Jews destroyed German economy before the war". I think the "reddit model" where you have smaller communities with community mods works much better than the Facebook or Twitter model where there's one "global community". Not that…

Reddit literally had /r/Holocaust controlled Nazis who would post Holocaust denial on it for years until reddit for too emberassed

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Seems like a good way to may Facebook much much worse

It's not hard to see why major platform has such a policy

Also I don't want people to get blocked for pirating stuff. Or weed.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Ah yes, the toxicity of "let people be themselves in peace".

While I have never directly encountered toxic social justice activism (not even an ex's mother whose activism made me realise "Champagne socialist" was more than just a right wing straw-man), there is no cause so pure it cannot attract numpties.

There is a video (don't know if it's real, staged, missing context, a one-off, whatever) of of some activists going to a restaurant and apparently cajoling diners to agree with them by using the slogan "silence is violence".

(Trouble is with stuff like that, in any cause, it gets amplified by both toxic opponents and socially inept supporters).

Post reply on HN