Facebook to ban white nationalist content • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#181

Post by FakeComments » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

It’s interesting that Facebook chose to focus on the problem of white nationalism when the national press is talking about an actor faking a crime to incite hatred against white people and create a false narrative about white nationalism.

What steps is Facebook taking to prevent racially motivated hoaxes meant to incite hatred, like the one by Jussie Smollett?

Ive seen repeated and consistent misrepresentation and lies on the issue by public figures, such as Mr Smollett or the case of the media harping about police shootings massacring unarmed people, only to find shooting unarmed people is rare and the breakdown corresponds to who commits crimes. Or the consistent representations of the police being violent, only to discover later they acted with appropriate force.

Im not sure I buy the narrative that this is a problem, rather than lies for power.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#182

Post by Inu » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

Might sound good in theory, but in effect it means that some low ranking Facebook employee will have to decide whether Jordan Peterson is allowed to publish on Facebook or whether he is to be categorized as a white supremacist, a decision the outcome of which will vary according to ideological disposition, the ability to read and comprehend texts, and the power to navigate the realm of ambiguity and conflicting interpretations.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#183

Post by pesmhey » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #67

Why not ban all racist nationalism entirely? What is unique about white nationalism versus Chinese nationalism in China, or black nationalism in South Africa? There are many racist movements all around the world. Only banning white nationalism is giving fuel to the white nationalist belief that whites are being unfairly targeted. That's not something we should encourage IMO.

Agreed. There isn’t necessarily a strong black or Chinese nationalism movement in the US, but it does make sense to target the behavior of ethnic nationalism as opposed to any specific brand of it. It’s:

‘We don’t like it when individual ethnic groups in our multi-ethnic empire presume to have privileged rights over all the others’

Vs.

‘We don’t like it when just white people do it.’

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#184

Post by ceejayoz » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

insickness wrote: post #170

Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk, even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town. The Court based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.…

Of course, the follow-ups are important, too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Corp._v._Tanner

I'd put Facebook more in the "mall" example than the "company town" one.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#185

Post by itry2develop » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

What about Black Nationalism? Or Asian Nationalism?

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#186

Post by chubot » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

I don't have a strong opinion on this particular issue, but I don't think your comment gets to the core of it.

If Facebook decided to ban all Chinese, Islamic, or African-American content, then the conversation would be completely different. People wouldn't say, "so be it -- go set up your own servers".

Obviously they have to make a value judgement, and they have done so here and said as much (which I appreciate). In other words, they made a considered and conscious decision that's beyond my expertise. But it's still a value judgement about particular content. The decision really can't be made on an abstract "free speech" basis.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#187

Post by 99052882514569 » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

Ragnarork wrote: post #148

99052882514569 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To the people that say "Where does it end?" – that's pretty easy. Let's start with curbing speech that encourages harming others. But that is not where they're starting though, is it? They're going much further: >Today we’re announcing a ban on praise, support and representation of white nationalism and separatism on Facebook and Instagram Praise, support and representation not of speech encouraging harm, but the id…

Totally with you on the accurate labeling: this isn't censorship. This is deplatforming, which is entirely different. > This sentence indicates they're picking and choosing which ideologies to censor. [...] This is wrong [...] This is censorship of political thought, not censorship of "hate speech" Are you saying that hate speech comes off of a vacuum? These two concepts do overlap.

>deplatforming

In this context, that's simply a neologism for private-sector censorship. Again I want to reiterate that I don't think the private sector should be prohibited from censorship. But using euphemisms like "deplatforming" distracts us from the fact that it is private-sector censorship, and from drawing our conclusions about these platforms, how widely representative they are, and how safe our own speech is on those platforms from future "deplatforming". Thankfully I'm not anti-immigrant, pro-theocracy, anti-abortion, communist, don't hold views like 'homosexuality and transsexuality are not genetic', etc. But if I were, I'd be worried.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#188

Post by fixermark » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

insickness wrote: post #170

Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk, even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town. The Court based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.…

Company towns were a bizarre (and, arguably, pathological) special case in American history.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#189

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

crushcrashcrush wrote: post #4

[flagged]

I was going to comment on here that the reason people calling for a ban on "white nationalism" concerns me is because every time I turn on the news somebody calls Donald Trump a white nationalist without any evidence. Phrases like "Make America Great" and "Learn to code" have been denounced as white nationalism. And here you are, a few pages in, saying exactly that...

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#190

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

rmbryan wrote: post #19

I don't know as much about hate as I should, perhaps, but it seems arbitrary to make rules about what's hate and what's not. This part, especially, from the article... We also need to get better and faster at finding and removing hate from our platforms. Over the past few years we have improved our ability to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to find material from terrorist groups. Last fall, we starte…

[deleted]