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Facebook Backs Down on Censoring ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo

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Re: Facebook Backs Down on Censoring ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo

#171

Post by mark_l_watson »

I agree with the comments that having public forums controlled by single companies like Facebook and Reddit can be problematic if they start censoring what people are allowed to post.

What I do, and what I encourage family and friends to do, is to have your own blog and post substantial writings on your blog and use social media posts to reference your blog. I still use social media for posting vacation pictures, commenting on other people's posts, and links to interesting stuff to read on the web.

I think this is a good compromise.

Re: Facebook Backs Down on Censoring ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo

#172

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Freak_NL wrote: post #150
Synaesthesia wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US used to have a vibrant newspaper scene with all kinds of papers ranging the spectrum. This was in the 29th century. Since then a handful of giant corporations have dominated the media industry.

> This was in the 29th century. Good to hear newspapers still exist in the future. :)

They clearly meant BCE as they used the past tense. ;o)

Re: Facebook Backs Down on Censoring ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo

#173

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jMyles wrote: post #98
nerfhammer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Algorithms can't tell the difference between porn/gore and historically significant graphic images

If an algorithm mistakes this image for porn, it's pretty damn broken anyway.

Now see how many people can write a description of a way to discern the difference between the two using just the image. I hesitate to say it but experience suggests this probably is 'porn' for some sick person.

It's made to be porn by the context it's viewed in and by the reaction of the viewers - some people, I gather, are turned on by car crashes.

It's a harder problem than your comment seems to be suggesting.

Personally I think a blanket ban on images of full-frontal nudity of a person would be reasonable for both a public forum like Facebook and a newspaper.

Re: Facebook Backs Down on Censoring ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo

#174

Post by e12e »

tn13 wrote: post #128

It would have made much more sense to say "no nude children" no matter what and consistently apply it. Naplam girl's photo could have been blurred a little and still be shown to convey the exact same message. This sort of exception based polciies would lead facebook into same trouble as the way they were censoring conservative news.

What age are children, and is other nudity allowed? Pictures of states like David? It's not dimple to find a moral common ground for the entire world (or even some arbitrary selection of countries that are deemed to have "valid" morals).

Re: Facebook Backs Down on Censoring ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo

#175

Post by Freak_NL »

reitanqild wrote: post #166
reitanqild wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short answer: to encourage diversity.

Slightly longer answer now that I have time: We don't need the masses to migrate now, it doesn't need to be either - " everyone away from Facebook, Whatsapp, Google, everybody use only GPL and nothing for NSA, ФСБ etc to see" or - otherwise utter fail. Getting people to try alternatives goes a long way. We have seen Microsoft changing massively over the last few years after Apple started eating away at the high end p…

Ah I see. Getting people used to a status quo where having multiple chat networks in use is normal is better than a monoculture in the long term. I can agree with that.

Re: Facebook Backs Down on Censoring ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo

#176

Post by abysmallyideal »

Freak_NL wrote: post #149
mei0Iesh wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't people talk about https://wire.com/ ? It's encrypted and mostly open source. It has the most features I've seen including multiple devices, group chat, audio, desktop app.

Is it really a solution to the walled gardens people are stuck in now? The clients are open, so presumably it would be possible (and encouraged?) to write a custom client. That is definitely a big plus. But it still looks like a centralized communication protocol that depends on proprietary servers and a private network to use. The issue with the walled gardens we're seeing (this week with this iconic photograph) is…

The real issue is the brass tacks. Who can afford to run their own private servers, or pay for data throughput for synching. Not to mention the enormous waste of energy and resources due to duplicated posts kept across millions of peer to peer networks. Convenience is King as usual, and places like Facebook have the motivation and ability to monetize and optimize.

The idea of private data atolls in the day of free services is a luxury and they are exploiting that facet. Cloud services like Gcloud, AWS, etc reflect this from their premium pricing.

Re: Facebook Backs Down on Censoring ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo

#177

Post by abysmallyideal »

Freak_NL wrote: post #154
mei0Iesh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that feeling, but it's too idealistic to be practical right now. We have to accept that convenience has won. These types of social networks depend on a critical mass of users. If the choice is to hold onto principles and lose, or compromise for now closer to the direction we want, then I think we should use Wire. It is the best chance we have for a service that could become popular enough, with people be…

Even if we disregard its flaws, why would the masses migrate to Wire? Or Telegram, or Signal for that matter. I don't deny that it's a lot better than WhatsApp, but it still faces the same problem as any other alternative; the masses aren't using it.

The masses have expectations of free services, and there is no way to monetize privatized data (encrypted data) while providing the service for free. Peer to peer networks will suffer heavily from today's infrastructure due to the cost required to track and process millions of different certificates, as well as symmetric sessions.

There are some creative applications that could be useful, like the models used in East Asia through micro payments. However their culture is conducive to the micropayment model (I.e. emojis, etc) whereas the West is not. A micro payment service on privatized data would be ideal if it could be profitable, yet there is no profitable model to sustain it in the West.

Edit: also, no matter what micro payment model you use, if it is successful or trends, the established free non privatized services will exploit it and provide it for free.

I can see this possibly working doing in enclaves outside the US surveillance apparatus, but directly competing against it by taking on their grandfathered companies is extremely difficult.

Re: Facebook Backs Down on Censoring ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo

#178

Post by gwright »

kijin wrote: post #160
gwright wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two ideas are certainly related but they are also different in very significant ways. Conflating the two makes discussion of these concepts imprecise and muddled. The notion that the government should have limited power to restrict communication is quite different from the notion that private entities have some legal obligation to publish content (i.e. that individuals can assert the right to publish via platform…

Legal obligation, of course not. I don't think anyone involved in the current incident was arguing for a legal obligation for Facebook to do anything in particular. Moral obligation, now that's a different beast. Assuming that free speech is valuable to society as a whole, one might argue that everyone (including Facebook employees) has a moral obligation to promote it, or at least not inhibit it too much.

Your response is somewhat an example of what I was talking about. By not clearly distinguishing between the different concepts you end up with muddled arguments.

You've clarified here and said that in the private case there is a 'moral obligation'. Really? What exactly is the obligation? Falling back on the generic notion of 'free speech' doesn't actually clarify the argument.

For example, if I managed a public forum for discussion of roller coasters, am I 'obligated' to accept all user generated content? What if a controversial post was about labor practices at an amusement park. Perhaps that is tangently connected to 'roller coasters' but maybe I don't want my site politicized and so I moderate/delete that content. Is that some sort of ethical violation (I'm assuming for this thought exercise that my terms of service say that I'm going to moderate content, i.e. this isn't a surprise to the participants).

What if my forum is oriented around a concept, such as regulatory reform? Is there an obligation to accept and publish content that is inflammatory, off topic, superfluous, or perhaps just contrary to my goals? What guidance would help me decide when I am 'morally obligated' to publish the content?

To be clear, I think there is value in healthy debate, I just struggle with the unqualified appeals to 'free speech' to put 'moral' requirements on publishers and unfortunately I think the power of the concept of 'free speech' is often wielded in these cases to advocate for legal requirements, which I think goes way to far.

EDIT: fixed typos

Re: Facebook Backs Down on Censoring ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo

#180

Post by gwright »

matt4077 wrote: post #129
gwright wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time 'censorship' referred to restrictions imposed by governments. Newspapers, magazines, and publishers curating the content of their publications was considered editorial discretion (rules and moderation) and distinctly different than government censorship. Unfortunately all these activities are now simply tossed together into the general category of 'censorship' and as such we've lost the ability to cl…

Counterexample: zuccotti Park. It's privately owned, but the place for Occupy Wall Street. It used to be that life happened on the streets, i. e. public property. If you get a hundred people to walk down Main Street at noon, 2/3 of the city will see it. Over the last 50 years, life has moved (a) indoors, (b) onto private commercial property (mall, airport...) and (C) online, while some properties that used to be publ…

Public spaces and public accommodations are an interesting topic, but I think that is somewhat different from the idea of government blocking publication or other dissemination of information.
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