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Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

swp.org.uk

161–170 of 550 posts

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#161
post #88
post #70

This shut down story is another tale in the impending international regulation, and maybe breaking up, of what is comically called 'big tech' ('big' does not begin to describe the sizes involved, the naivety is staggering). As newspaper barons before them, the internet has not policed itself adequately enough, according to the governments of the world, and now they will act in unity to take back some control. And the…

>Citizens will require a personal licence to access the internet, and anonymous use will be illegal. I mean you already do. What do you call a signing up to an ISP?

Require? Illegal? ID is not required to use the internet, nor is it illegal to do so without. I can, or at least could before covid, go to the local public library and use their wifi with no questions asked. That's a government provided service, not some sketchy edge case like 'sharing your social security number with your friends'.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#163
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and anonymous use will be illegal. Super interesting that you mention this. I was just thinking the other day about what an absolute dumpster fire "the internet" is due to anonymity (obviously that's not the _only_ reason, but it's a non-trivial reason). This idea that "Let's give people the ability to be anonymous, and somehow, that's gonna make us all bond together and be better" is pretty hilarious in hindsight.…

>This idea that "Let's give people the ability to be anonymous, and somehow, that's gonna make us all bond together and be better" is pretty hilarious in hindsight. I get irritated by this logic. I don't think many people are arguing that anonymous access makes us more likely to get along. There are lots of areas where we have the freedom to do something, that access objectively makes things worse in terms of social…

Maybe modern societies need to stop pretending we want anything to do with each other. This idea of unity or tolerance only exists because we continue to act like we somehow are supposed to like each other or sacrifice for each other. But why?

Why can’t we just leave each other alone and let people be free? Minimize the politics of it all and stop pretending we care a single bit about each other.

Yes we live in a society but maybe our shared goal is to be left alone to live our lives with the ones we care about. We just seem to be pushing each other to the limits of what’s considered broadly acceptable and it’s creating more and more hate.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#164
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like they opened a Pandora’s box. They feel they have the power and self imprimatur to manage speech as they see fit, but now also activists are telling them to shut this or that voice they disagree with. They made this bed themselves.

Well... not exactly. I mean it is true they did it. But they got help. Because I remember when all this was starting up two decades ago there were a lot of pressures to block this or that. Maybe hate speech, or maybe you crossed RIAA, or maybe you were of dark complexion and Middle East descent and nobody could tell what your arabic said but it defenitely had to be dangerous. So it became pretty customary to have cor…

While the RIAA is problematic, it was done under plausible cover of law. So, I understand following criminal laws and such.

As for foreign locales, I think the solution is to operate locally like a Mazda or a PepsiCo has to do. Have locals manage your local ops, of course reporting to HQ.

But now they decided to enter the unwieldily realm of figuring out intent of speech and whether it’s crossed moral lines or ethical lines or political lines.

That’s just impossible and sets them up for failure.

They deserve this failure.

They want to dictate TO THE WORLD right and wrong speech UNIFORMLY. That’s utterly ridiculous.

So China or Venezuela or Iran said mean things. So what! At least we know what they’re thinking and if serious enough take proper measures. It should not be FB or TWTTR who decide these things.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#165

I think FB/Twitter and others got bold, but kinda forgot they are also most likely digging themselves deep into regulation hell.

Digging themselves into a regulation hole is one thing. But they're digging the rest of us into that hole with them as they refuse to stop. The regulations applied to them will affect all of us as well.

After a few months of using Facebook years ago it was pretty clear how toxic such an environment was. I really don't know how people have continued to support Facebook over the years.

I still keep in touch with friends and family and most all of those services I use to communicate are benign, unlike Facebook. Unfortunately "vote with your wallet" (or attention, time, content creation, whatever) just doesn't work the way it's portrayed to work and now we have critical masses in these businesses that create governance through their corporate policies and practices.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#166
post #125
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> somehow the official line that it's only Jews that were targeted is not holocaust denial. How is this the official line? Jews were the primary target but I’ve never ever seen anything ‘official’ claim they were the only ones.

>The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah,[c] was the World War II genocide of the European Jews. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust I don't think you can get more of the zeitgeist than the first sentence of a wiki article.

Dude... if you just kept reading it’s clear they aren’t claiming they were the only ones, but Jews by far were the primary targets.

Nobody is denying other shit happened though.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#167
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know my name in the street and I don't know yours. We manage to be perfectly civil to each other. And my reputation does not follow between groups either. I can even have completely distinct friend groups for different activities. Nobody at boxing class knows anybody I work with and the people that hang out with me at a bar can be a completely new set all over. I could even use different names in all these…

Pseudonymity and anonymity are not the same thing. Pseudonyms that are not trivially created and discarded can build reputation and will generally behave themselves (see Urbit’s approach to this problem). Anonymous accounts incentivize awful behavior (see 4chan). Real life is different because you’re not truly anonymous in person - you’re recognizable most of the time and identifiable. There are also more in person n…

Fair, pseudonymity works very well.

I think a lot of it comes down to social norms. From what I remember, 4chan was almost boringly pleasant outside /b/. Because the norm and moderation were towards thoughtful posting.

On the other hand pseudonymous reddits with the norm of knee jerk responses and political twitter are awful. Because that’s the encouraged norm.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#168
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This idea that "Let's give people the ability to be anonymous, and somehow, that's gonna make us all bond together and be better" is pretty hilarious in hindsight. I get irritated by this logic. I don't think many people are arguing that anonymous access makes us more likely to get along. There are lots of areas where we have the freedom to do something, that access objectively makes things worse in terms of social…

Maybe modern societies need to stop pretending we want anything to do with each other. This idea of unity or tolerance only exists because we continue to act like we somehow are supposed to like each other or sacrifice for each other. But why? Why can’t we just leave each other alone and let people be free? Minimize the politics of it all and stop pretending we care a single bit about each other. Yes we live in a soc…

> Why can’t we just leave each other alone and let people be free?

What is that, if not tolerance?

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#169
post #70

This shut down story is another tale in the impending international regulation, and maybe breaking up, of what is comically called 'big tech' ('big' does not begin to describe the sizes involved, the naivety is staggering). As newspaper barons before them, the internet has not policed itself adequately enough, according to the governments of the world, and now they will act in unity to take back some control. And the…

>Decentralized systems, and The Dark Web, will grow.

>Citizens will require a personal licence to access the internet, and anonymous use will be illegal.

Garlic routing provides plausible deniability. ISPs can't know for sure that you are using I2P, for instance, or what you are using it for. Sure, they could force every ISP to ban all encrypted P2P connections. And we could start setting up mesh networks that would subsequently be brought down by authorities. But here's the real question: how much abuse will people tolerate in the name of "security"? What will happen when a majority realizes that these measures are intended to control and suppress them while the elite keeps acting with ever-increasing impunity?

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#170
post #162
post #95

Anyone know why they're named Socialist but seem Marxist/Communist? https://swp.org.uk/theory/

Communism is an idea, a philosophy. Socialism is basically a flawed materialization of that utopistic philosophy.

> Communism is an idea, a philosophy.

“Communism” is a class of philosophies with shared traits.

> Socialism is basically a flawed materialization of that utopistic philosophy.

“Socialism”, in general, is a class of philosophies of which “Communism” is a more specific subset.

In specifically Marxist Communism, “Socialism” is also a named stage on the route to acheivement of the desired end-state at which the philosophy is aimed. OTOH.

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