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Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

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Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#181

Post by justinmchase »

Mirioron wrote: post #119
cirgue wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook used to be popular because it was, at one point, fun. If they're going to remove all the voices they think are "dangerous", what they're left with won't be fun or interesting. Just lukewarm, milquetoast, or worse... lopsided. Honestly, I hope that Facebook becomes more restrictive and more censorship-oriented. That would make alternative platforms more viable and increase diversity in online media. I'm als…

I think private platforms could act as the town square as long as we demand that platforms beyond a certain size can't just censor whatever they like. Make protections in section 230 of the communications decency act dependent on providing a platform for free speech if the platform is large.

I think it should just be based on the sing-up model. If you allow open signup then you don't get to censor those users.

If you want to be able to control their speech then make them sign a contract and agree to pay them money.

It should just straight up not be legal for facebook to ban, block or delete the content of certain users while also having an open sign up model.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#182

Post by ravenstine »

waer34tawer wrote: post #135
ravenstine wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not fair of you to say I am being disingenuous. Please think before jumping to conclusions. I really don't want to get into nitty gritty debate over people like PJW, but most of what you bring up plays into my point. What's your threshold for considering an idea to be dangerous? It could be argued that there are ideas that can cause harmful effects on society, but people also have a right to be stupid. I don't…

> That's not fair of you to say I am being disingenuous. It is. You have heard of PJW. Enough to defend him here. So presumably you're aware of his views, which is what he's known for. > I really don't want to get into nitty gritty debate over people like PJW But that's what you've done. > I don't see how believing in the illuminati, chemtrails, soy causing feminization, or that 9/11 was an inside Job are dangerous i…

[flagged]

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#183

Post by intopieces »

>In some instances, when Facebook bans an individual or organization, it also restricts others from expressing praise or support for them on its platforms

Will it restrict people from saying these things in WhatsApp?

If they already have the infrastructure for wholesale censorship like this, perhaps a China re-launch is right around the corner. They might be able to give WeChat a run for their RMB.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#184

Post by lubesGordi »

throwawaysea wrote: post #141

WHY THIS IS CENSORSHIP: I am seeing numerous comments claiming this is not censorship when it most definitely is. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship > Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a government, private institutions, and co…

Hate speech is still categorically speech and that's why this is censorship. Seems most people are OK with having some ill defined notion of hate speech and censoring that. Personally, I'm OK with being critical of what I hear and helping others be critical, so I'm generally OK with the existence of hate speech. I think we can mostly all decide who is an asshole without making laws about what assholes can or can't SAY. For the reasons stated in the parent, I would say having free speech is more important than not having hate speech.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#185

Post by interlocutor »

Attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot in recent times. This is related to the rise of social media. The advent of social media had made it too easy to spread hate online. It started off innocently enough, with cat videos uploaded to youtube, but soon extremists were taking advantage of social media for radicalization purposes, and others even live-streaming mass murders. This has caused an upheaval in attitudes towards free speech. There needs to be limits. People started imposing limits to free speech. For example, consider that UC Berkeley, renowned for giving birth to the Free Speech Movement, is now making news for banning controversial/harmful speech, such as that by Ann Coulter. The people (as opposed to governments) have decided that some censorship is in order. This is a natural evolution of societal norms. This particular evolution was causated by the excesses seen in social media. It is befitting to see that a social media company, Facebook, is now in the news for censoring harmful speech. This type of censorship, as opposed to absolute free speech, will be the new normal.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#186

Post by aeturnum »

cat199 wrote: post #158
aeturnum wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Farrakhan is a really tough case. First, he's cartoonishly anti-semitic and has been for years. He's as much of a hate monger as any of the other people who were banned and that's enough reason to ban him. That given, he has also materially supported vulnerable populations in a way that few organizations have. He has pushed very hard for black people to be proud of their blackness and to create narratives in…

> to create narratives in which blackness is not looked down upon. This is good, needed work. so like: In the Nation of Islam, both God and the devil are human beings. Elijah Muhammad identified the devil as the white man, the Caucasian race. According to Elijah, though the black race is many trillions of years old, the white race began a mere six thousand years ago with Yakub, one of the Black Gods of this time cycl…

Hah, no, I would not say that's the "good" part of the the Nation of Islam.

However, just like Christianity has been able to do some amount of "good work" while insisting that "Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says"[1], the Nation is not "all bad." I personally would judge its good works to be more crippled by its doctrine than most faiths.

If you want to read a good thinking wrestling with the Nation of Islam I recommend The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. I think he does a good job of capturing the contradictions and attractions of Elijah Muhammad (another undeniably hateful man) in the flesh.

[1] 1 Corinthians 14:34, NIV

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#187

Post by crispsquirrel »

dullgiulio wrote: post #161
throwawaysea wrote: post #141

WHY THIS IS CENSORSHIP: I am seeing numerous comments claiming this is not censorship when it most definitely is. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship > Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a government, private institutions, and co…

Not giving a microphone to someone is not the same as censoring them.

Technically it's the taking away of said microphone, which I guess would be censorship

Edited if to of - typo!

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#188

Post by vowelless »

balfirevic wrote: post #143
vowelless wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s great that the site decides. It is exerting editorial control in this case. Hence, they should be liable for the speech that they do allow. Which means, they should be sueable if a user does slander on their platform, posts copyrightable material, etc.

> It is exerting editorial control in this case. > Hence, they should be liable for the speech that they do allow. I see this sentiment often on HN, as if the latter somehow logically and necessarily follows from the former. It doesn't, and if that is what you advocate then you should justify it with proper arguments.

The argument is about whether Facebook is a platform or a publisher. This discussion has been going on for years and not just on HN.

Being a platform, like ATT telephone lines, bring certain protections from lawsuits of content. The core of net neutrality is also based on a similar idea; with net neutrality, platforms (cable companies) can not between distinguish services (like throttling Netflix).

In the exact same vein, if Facebook is a platform, it cannot distinguish between the “services” (users producing the content) unless that content is federally criminally illegal. With this, they are not liable for civil matters like slander.

However, if Facebook is a publisher, meaning it can editorialize the content (similar to att choosing to throttle Netflix ), then it will become liable just like every other publishing company (nytimes, nymag, Rolling Stones, you name it).

Hope this helps. There is a lot more info about this on the internet. There were even House hearings on this topic. I encourage you to go look them up.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#189

Post by MagicPropmaker »

ravenstine wrote: post #18

I'm not a fan of either of these people, but how exactly are Milo Yiannopolous and Paul Joseph Watson "dangerous"? Maybe it's not good material for people to be watching, but to call them "dangerous" comes off like the religious right of yore claiming that video games depicting violence are dangerous and need to be censored. I wouldn't normally step in to defend these people, but this article by CNN is a prime exampl…

Milo is an "edgy" comedian. His shtick is to be provocative. I can't imagine he's dangerous in any real way. Offensive, yes, but not dangerous.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#190

Post by StanislavPetrov »

anoonmoose wrote: post #76
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would only be true if Facebook was truly private and not taking direction from government-funded entities like the Atlantic Council. The government isn't simply allowed to outsource censorship to do an end-run around the 1st Amendment. This remains true whether or not they claim to be doing so because of the dastardly Russians or anyone else. http://fortune.com/2018/05/17/facebook-atlantic-council-elec...

"Despite its connections, the Council is by charter independent of the U.S. government and NATO, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization."[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Council I guess what I'm saying is, Facebook is a private company by any reasonable legal interpretation.

Their claims of independence are irrelevant - they are funded directly by NATO. Its a pity the Hacker News woke crowd is so hostile to the 1st Amendment - a sign of the times.

http://www.thinktankwatch.com/2013/02/atlantic-council-relea...

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