I think people are conflating real violence with pretend violence in many of these comments. Real violence is way more restricted than nudity in US.
Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world
211–220 of 348 posts
Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
France in the 18-19th century had many smart people who spoke against this type of stuff (everyone loves to quote Voltaire). But modern France has become the absolute counter-point for wishing to have less censorship and centralized social control. So this problem isn't limited to the United States. This is an issue in all modern liberal societies. Big government and centralized control has exploded over the last cen…
It's absurd to think governments grew because of "community complaints". The rise of nation states happened precisely to benefit the megacorps that now exist - to support massive, centrally planned economies and subsidize megacorps that now rule the planet. The gov (or rather, the public, us) have every right to demand certain basic guarantees from these companies that benefit so much from public investment.
So megacorps regulation = always bad, community-backed regulation = always good?
I agree with you that large companies can have a significant influence of policy and legislation. And yes they definately contributed to the problem. But considering the standard approach to everything (including your own comment here) is that 'more centralized control is the solution' it's not surprising that corporations are playing the exact same game to their advantage.
I'm questioning the value of using that approach as a default solution. With the exception of it being the very last resort rather than the go-to solution to every problem. Because the state is good at a few things but it many cases it's heavy handed, expensive, time consuming, and very slow to adapt to change.
Regulation, policy, and agencies should only be used carefully and there should be a culture of constantly re-evaluating the necessity of programs/agencies/policies - which doesn't seem to happen. Once it's set up it stays, scope and legislation only grows in size, government employees are incredibly hard to fire, etc, etc, and that's how a nation-state grows into a massive unwieldly beast.
It's a complicated problem no doubt with many sources. But the status quo of the modern nation-state is very dysfunctional. It's sad that people so passionitely defend it blindly on ideological grounds. Questioning the value of government as the solution to all things brings out people who defend it like a religion. Which is how it ends up functioning in places where it often doesn't belong or worse ends up contributing to societal problems.
This same ideology is the reason why Facebook gets blamed every time there is something posted that makes people uncomfortable. Instead of the person who posts the content.
Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I believe that the old Europe has very interesting things to say Like UK libel laws that are so nice that they created a phenomenon of "libel tourism" where people come into UK to sue others for libel because in other places they'd be laughed out of court? Or like courts forcing search engines remove pages because some person feels uneasy with true public information about them being out there? Or criminal penaltie…
Very solid whataboutism. Yes, Europe is not perfect and has some serious problems with freedom. That being said, the first amendment (jurisprudence) in the USA suffers from two serious flaws not necessarily suffered by freedom of expression legislation in other countries: 1. The first amendment has the egregious exception for obscenity with an absurdly subjective community standards test. 2. The first amendment is on…
What old European states are your referring to that have an absolutist right to free speech like the 1st Amendment? Our egregious exception for obscenity has been whittled down to bestiality, the sexual use of urine and fecal matter, and having sex with a person who is physically restrained. And even these are unevenly enforced, with Insex and its successor sites in Kink.com making sex with restrained people a brand.
There are plenty of places in Europe where you can be jailed for political speech. Britain regularly jails for hate speech, and recently jailed Anjem Choudary for 5 1/2 years for his open and public support of ISIS.
Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually is one of the rare instances I've seen "do a 360" used appropriately. Facebook revamped their policy around the issue while ending up at exactly the same place: you have to use your real name.
But doing a 360 doesn't mean doing a 180, and then sometime much later, doing another 180.
I think it's a matter of context and time-frame. If the end up pointing the same way they started, that's 360 degrees. That might entail two 180 flips at different points, and if talking about one of those specifically, it would be appropriate to say they did a 180 when referring to that specific situation.
Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world
#215Maybe it's time to consider Facebook, Twitter, et al, as common carriers, which, under the new net neutrality law, would disallow them from censoring content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier#Telecommunicati...
While I often disagree with the censorship on Facebook I also think it's required to some extend. Imagine an uncensored Facebook: how quickly would it degenerate into 4Chan?
If Facebook allowed nudity it would become a massive porn site over night. I actually understand their nudity censorship, just censor anything with naked people, to avoid complaints about differential treatment.
Facebook would go out of business if anyone could post anything. It wouldn't be a place most average people could enjoy or feel safe in.
Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world
#216Americans are so bought into the idea that "explicit" images are bad that they can't see another viewpoint. Its become "natural". And, as the author pointed out, Americans are so blind to it that you don't even see the problem with censoring nipples but not beheadings. We literally cant see that noone should be injured by seeing a womans breast, but seeing a beheaded body - thats OK? Its interesting to see this story…
What cultures, outside Europe, think it's ok to display sexualized body parts? Even in an advanced/industrialized nation like Japan, typical women don't even show cleavage, because it's considered indecent. Typical TV dramas hardly show kissing scenes.
And even in Europe their views aren't that much different. It's not like they are showing porn on primetime tv. They just view breasts differently.
Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
...what is the distinction? Both are "actual" nudity. Nudity is nudity.
And violent depictions are violent. I wouldn't recommend Kill Bill to a child because the gore isn't real.
Violence is bad because of people getting hurt, not because they're getting red liquids all over. Fictional and real violence have a huge difference in who gets hurt. Fictional and real nudity are largely the same thing.
Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world
#218Americans are so bought into the idea that "explicit" images are bad that they can't see another viewpoint. Its become "natural". And, as the author pointed out, Americans are so blind to it that you don't even see the problem with censoring nipples but not beheadings. We literally cant see that noone should be injured by seeing a womans breast, but seeing a beheaded body - thats OK? Its interesting to see this story…
America has something like 330 million people in it. I assure you, there are a lot of us who see the basic logic around this and think we should stop worrying about the occasional nipple. In this particular instance though, it's worse than your complaint. We're talking about censoring an iconic image captured from an important time in our history. I'd be willing to bet that even among the anti-nipple people, this ima…
This issue is beyond simple American prudish tendencies. Because America has always been a bit weird about sex, this reaction about sexualizing children is very new. Before the 80s or 90s nobody thought of child nudity as sexual.
This exact photo was on the front page of the NYTimes when it was first taken.
This issue is more about the hyper paranoia about child abuse and child porn. Then again something like 1/8 children are sexually abused. So maybe it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.
Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world
#219Americans are so bought into the idea that "explicit" images are bad that they can't see another viewpoint. Its become "natural". And, as the author pointed out, Americans are so blind to it that you don't even see the problem with censoring nipples but not beheadings. We literally cant see that noone should be injured by seeing a womans breast, but seeing a beheaded body - thats OK? Its interesting to see this story…
American here. As always there can be a middle ground. I 100% agree that the female body (or male body for that matter) is not the end of civilization but there's still a line to be drawn with regards to what children see. You never see the human body depicted in media as simply the vessel we exist in. It's always sexualized almost always with the aim of selling a product. My kids don't need to be seeing that until t…
To take Sweden as a historical example, it used to be quite common that Swedish movies had nudity in them. Sweden has a lot of lakes and shores, and the capital is built on top of cluster of islands, so swimming nude during the summer was a very common scene in movies made before 2000 (sometimes with children among the adults), as would comedian pieces with people running in the street naked. The neck spirit was also a fairly common figure, used in similar style as ghosts or faeries. In each case, the human body depicted was just that of people (or made up people).
Violence was however very limited and the state censor was active in protecting children from it. A famous case was that of darkwin duck that got removed mid season. Swedish media blamed movie violence for increase gang violence in cities, with examples like "kids learn how to jump kick other children in the head".
Then American movies and tv shows over took both the market and mind share. With that, those aspect of Swedish movies went away, and much of the culture with it. Violence censoring went away, and much of media started to self-censor against nudity.
Re: Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world
#220Lots and lots of people seem to forget: Facebook is an American COMPANY. It is not a utility, it is not a non-profit organization. People choose to use it, and hence they have to put up with their rules. If they don't like it, they should stop using it and start using the open alternatives.
That might be true, but imagine you phone company or E-Mail provider is ploughing through the content of your messages or even actively filtering your phone calls and is deciding what you can communicate and assumes control over whom you are able to reach.
It might be perfectly legal, you still would not want that to happen and people expressing their concerns should never be shrugged off with the simplistic attitude of "but they are allowed to do that".
A lot of things which are allowed for a company is still not the right thing and should be called out.