It's troubling to me that censorship is being set up as the narrative savior of a free society, when in fact just the opposite is true.
You don't have the freedom of speech you describe on Hacker News at all.
We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
21–30 of 520 posts
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#22The case for free speech absolutism has never looked more questionable than it does right now. Every online platform that has tried to market itself as a “bastion of free speech” has become overrun with the absolute worst of society and as of 2020 is directly implicated in multiple real life terrorist attacks including most recently in the Nez Zealand government’s post-mortem on the Christchurch shootings here https:…
The case for freedom of religion has never looked more questionable than it does right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_terrorism_in_Europe
Trying to wave away this debate by just shouting “RACIST! NAZI!” contributes nothing meaningful to a debate that is sorely missing from society.
Edit: why is this controversial and the post I'm replying to not? We both advocate the exact same thing: to abolish a founding principle of western civilization because sometimes people die. Hell, there's even a quite large disparity between the number of deaths caused by those two principles - my argument has way more merit.
I'd really love to see why these two cases are totally different and incomparable. Three paragraphs of mental gymnastics or less though, please!
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#23Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#24Yuck. Neither democracy nor facebook, thanks. Nor any nannying or moralising about hate speech.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me. Or you.
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#25I think the "Facebook bad" horse has been beaten down to Earth's inner core. Yes, Facebook has its downsides just as any other social platform would. Yes, you can live without it. But I don't believe that the negatives Facebook has enabled comes close to the utility it has provided to society.
I'm sure it's a comfort to the victims of the Rohingya genocide that your mother has a platform to share photos of her grandkids.
You seem to suggest that Facebook itself is to blame for that, and not the people interacting on it.
Previously, mass manipulation was only available to really rich and powerful, or states versed in it. Now it's available to much smaller and less sophisticated actors.
But I don't think that's an issue, the issue is that manipulation is acceptable at all, and how we can draw the new, better line there? (Looking at you too, Marketing)
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#26The case for free speech absolutism has never looked more questionable than it does right now. Every online platform that has tried to market itself as a “bastion of free speech” has become overrun with the absolute worst of society and as of 2020 is directly implicated in multiple real life terrorist attacks including most recently in the Nez Zealand government’s post-mortem on the Christchurch shootings here https:…
To me, the case for free speech has never looked as good. A few (even hundreds) of murders are an acceptable cost of free speech. Restricted speech has killed millions.
Little by little the western freedoms are being taken away. And you want it to go faster?
Rap music which idolizes violence is allowed, despite thousands dying every year in connection to crimimal enterprise. The case to ban rap is just as naive as the case against free speech.
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#27Google censors. HN: "this is the end for democracy!"
FB doesn't censor. HN: "this is the end for democracy!"
In a careful watching of the US Senate committee where the FAANG media companies were quizzed the message was "censor or be broken up". It's why this weeks two big stories, Youtube censorship and anti-monopoly actions against Facebook are intimately tied together.
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#28The case for free speech absolutism has never looked more questionable than it does right now. Every online platform that has tried to market itself as a “bastion of free speech” has become overrun with the absolute worst of society and as of 2020 is directly implicated in multiple real life terrorist attacks including most recently in the Nez Zealand government’s post-mortem on the Christchurch shootings here https:…
The case for freedom of religion has never looked more questionable than it does right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_terrorism_in_Europe Trying to wave away this debate by just shouting “RACIST! NAZI!” contributes nothing meaningful to a debate that is sorely missing from society. Edit: why is this controversial and the post I'm replying to not? We both advocate the exact same thing: to abolish a foundin…
Religion is already banned in places such as France. Did not do them much good. A ban on free speech will be equally as effective.
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#29The case for free speech absolutism has never looked more questionable than it does right now. Every online platform that has tried to market itself as a “bastion of free speech” has become overrun with the absolute worst of society and as of 2020 is directly implicated in multiple real life terrorist attacks including most recently in the Nez Zealand government’s post-mortem on the Christchurch shootings here https:…
Is your argument that free speech exclusively attracts the scum of the earth?
Maybe these hate bubbles wouldn't proliferate if they had to co-exist on a platform with a diverse set of opinions. These people are heavily outnumbered. But of course, all the major platforms are so successful because they aggressively silo people into pigeonholes via curation.
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#30I'm struggling to see the argument here.
Facebook is a very large company, and is taking large amount of advertiser cash. That is true.
That money would otherwise go to publishers (possibly true, although I suspect it would go to google.)
What the author fails to back up is the either facebook/democracy argument.
facebook could attempt to editorialise all content, to give a specific bias to the news feed. But I don't see any evidence that it is, barring the bias towards "virality". (again I'm not convinced that's a function of facebook, I think its a function of society.)
Virtually all publishers (be it paper, radio, tv or internets) are privately funded. They all make editorial decisions about the content they commission, edit and syndicate. I suspect the argument is that because there are more than one of them, its not a concentrator of power. Unlike these entities, facebook doesn't actually wield power, its far to incoherent. It allows certain content to flourish, which has a similar effect, perhaps.
I am uncomfortable with facebook the website, its trivially easy to create organise and operate a group that is contrary to the health of wider society (what the subject is, it entirely left to the reader's preconceptions of what bad is.)
I don't think facebook is the antithesis of democracy. Far from it, we are seeing more people voting. What we are seeing is western democracies struggling with people finding their own voices.
We are also seeing many extreme opinions. Most of them emerging after being amplified to catch eyeballs. Some of it is being driven by facebook, but a lot is being driven by the twitter->pundit->journalist->politician->journalist->pundit feedback loop.