181–190 of 207 posts
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You're not popular enough. > unfollow In the nastier situations, it's not people who you follow that's the problem. It's the people who @ you from a constant stream of new accounts.
Facebook should add a privacy setting that allows you to disable @mentions completely, or limit them to people you have added as a friend. I would not be surprised if this is already a feature.
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> “Immediate serious violence". That's the US standard for prior restraint. No, it's the US standard for applying the coercive power of government to prior restraint. The US standard for private actors applying prior restraint to their own platforms is “do what you will, so long as you apply any prior restraint the government has dictated based on immediate serious violence.” > That's what Facebook, as a US company,…
This reaction is so stereotypical, so ubiquitous that I wonder people bother to type it out: why not link https://xkcd.com/1357/ and save keystrokes? This reaction is also false. Facebook is part of the state! Why? Organisations like FB organise large-scale information flow, in particular regarding controversial political issues. The majority of citizens receive the information regarding political decisions (e.g. who…
There is a sense in which all corporations are part of the chartering State, and there is a sense in which all citizens (and hence, all combinations involving citizens, with or without others) are part of the State of which they are citizens, particularly if it is a (direct or representative) democracy, but neither of those (nor any other sense in which Facebook might be considered associated with the State) is relevant here, because Facebook is not applying the coercive power associated with the state to prevent others from using their own resources to share information, which is the critical aspect of state prior restraint that is why it is restricted.
> The majority of citizens receive the information regarding political decisions (e.g. who should be president) filtered and structured via FB.
No, they don't. Online is still below TV as a news source, both in preference and actual use [0][1]. FB, or online as a whole, isn't the most used news source, much less the majority source. A very large minority receives some of their news, including political news, via social media, sure.
> Hence organisations like Facebook are currently part of the the state!
Even if the premise wasn't false, the conclusion offered wouldn't follow from it.
[0] http://www.journalism.org/2018/12/03/americans-still-prefer-...
[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/07/americans-on...
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I can’t tell if you’re trolling or not. I hope so, otherwise I’m very worried for your lack of understanding history and how the world works.
How was I trolling? (Note that I didn’t say Facebook couldn’t regulate speech—just that it shouldn’t.)
Facebook is effectively a new kind of weapon that accelerates the ability to target hate speech and let it spread uncontested with no basis in reality, but when done enough “becomes” reality via confirmation bias. It allows a very vocal but tiny population a microphone to amplify their hateful messages and grow beyond what would otherwise naturally occur.
With great power comes great responsibility, and FB/YouTube/etc absolutely should do their best to minimize evil forces from utilizing these platforms to spread false and hateful messages because it really does end in massive reprocussions for society and even death.
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These platforms also censor private person-to-person messaging, between people who don't complain about the content. That's willing-speaker-to-willing-listener, and being censored. And, rather than trying to square-the-circle of global speech standards enforced by crude algorithms and rushed, underinformed low-wage moderators, they could make the remedy for unwanted speech simply unsubscribing/unfriending the source.…
They do censor private messaging, but usually because it's used in targeted harassment of individuals. FB and others could also do as you said - make quarantine zones for specific prejudicial groups and their ideologies. Except time and again these groups have proven they're not wanting to stay in their own special self-moderated zones but are actively looking to broadcast. There are businesses built upon these preju…
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So-called hate speech doesn’t cause harm other than to feelings. It’s constitutionally protected in the US, and Facebook is going down the wrong path trying to eliminate it.
You've clearly never heard of "stochastic terrorism". Words have consequences, and hate speech can have serious consequences. Just because something is included under blanket protections doesn't mean it's harmless to society.
Just because a term exists doesn't mean we should pay attention to it.
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If you owned every pub, street, square, coffee shop, theater, restaurant, and other social and public discussion space in the world, do you think it's be fine for you to enforce your arbitrary opinions on everyone in those spaces? What if it's just people discussing things you don't like amongst themselves, with willing speakers and willing listeners?
Facebook does not own every public space. Facebook is not, itself, a public space. If one had to guess at it, I would describe it as perhaps a publically-accessible but privately owned space. Even if one decided to host something that would be allowed in public streets (for example a protest rally) the landowner of the space can still kick you out at any time from their property. On the internet, if one wants to expr…
As for other places to express speech you label "hate speech" - not really. Domain registrars, hosting providers, and payment processors will shut you down. See what happened to SubscribeStar recently. There actually is nowhere to go if the consortium of megacorporations decides they don't like you.
Cyberpunk was supposed to be a dystopia but you seem to desperately want to bring it about.
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> “Immediate serious violence". That's the US standard for prior restraint. No, it's the US standard for applying the coercive power of government to prior restraint. The US standard for private actors applying prior restraint to their own platforms is “do what you will, so long as you apply any prior restraint the government has dictated based on immediate serious violence.” > That's what Facebook, as a US company,…
This reaction is so stereotypical, so ubiquitous that I wonder people bother to type it out: why not link https://xkcd.com/1357/ and save keystrokes? This reaction is also false. Facebook is part of the state! Why? Organisations like FB organise large-scale information flow, in particular regarding controversial political issues. The majority of citizens receive the information regarding political decisions (e.g. who…
Arguably, if the state permits a company to become a de-facto monopoly, it should be regulated as a public utility. That was a mainstream position from 1920 to 1980.
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The poster never said they were meaningless, simply that they aren't violence. That is, speech itself cannot deprive someone of liberties. Only physical action can do that. It's unquestionable that certain forms of speech[1] can "incite" violence, and we have laws that cover such speech. [1] intent, imminence, and likelihood from: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test
> The poster never said they were meaningless, simply that they aren't violence. Indeed, and the top post in this thread didn’t use the word “violence.” The point is that words do have profound impacts on society. Words can and do lead to material conditions which may cause actual harm to someone’s day to day life. As I said, regardless of where one falls on Facebook’s right to pick and choose their own standards, le…
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What if FB is performing censorship under various kinds of implicit pressure from the "Feds" (and other governments)? Then it's just state censorship, laundered to look like it's "only a private party's decision within their narrow domain".
Look, if the people posting racist hate-speech get banned from all the sites I use, my life is much better. They can go take their trash somewhere else. You are defending some pretty awful excuses for humans....
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So this is the thing now? We don't believe freedom of speech is a good thing anymore? Who decided this? I don't recall being consulted on this. Not that I'd think of arguing , mind you! I'm loyal, I swear!
It seems the pushes against freedom of speech ideals in the US greatly increased after the 2016 election, coming mostly from those who share the ideology of the losing party targeting the speech of the winning ideology/party.
Personally, I'm in favor of free speech. I'm not in favor of being inundated by manipulative propaganda from a foreign power. I don't know how to reconcile those two views.
I mean, I guess I'm in favor of curtailing dishonest advertising, and that's kind of what propaganda is, but... I'm not sure where the lines are.