Live data from Hacker News

Facebook to ban white nationalist content

newsroom.fb.com

41–50 of 1001 posts

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#41

[flagged]

It's actually not on the rise at all, in fact it is down; just like crime across the board is down. We live in arguably the most peaceful and tolerant time in human history. The number of "hate crimes" in FBI stats is up, but those numbers are often misleading. The only place I actually see a slight resurgence is actually in Europe, and it's largely a backlash against the Syrian immigration crisis...which will generally resolve itself as people move back now that the war is over.

China is...a different story, largely because Chinese culture treats rights in a much different light than the West. That being said, if you compare modern China to China of the 70s or 80s, it is vastly better.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#42
post #13

This is good. I am, though, concerned about the negative externalities that could arise. Will this lead to new and stranger commercial activities?

If you want a negative example, check out Voat. It started as a "less moderated/censored reddit" and quickly filled with actual nazis and other vitriol. A business cannot survive on "We accept hate speech" in the same way 4chan has never really been a business proposition; Nobody wants to look like they are supporting hate speech so advertisers won't go near it with a ten foot pole. IMO, this is a good thing, and imp…

So true, I can see that point, thanks.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#43
post #29

Separatism too? As a Spaniard I couldn't be happier about that.

You'll be disappointed here. They are specifically targeting white nationalism/separatism. They specifically exclude other types in the article. > We didn’t originally apply the same rationale to expressions of white nationalism and separatism because we were thinking about broader concepts of nationalism and separatism – things like American pride and Basque separatism, which are an important part of people’s identi…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#45
post #6

Good to see the Valley is starting to get off its "we are just a platform, all information should be free and neutral no matter how bad, so we're not responsible" extremism of the past few years and understand that some forms of speech are harmful should not ever be encouraged and accelerated on any platform or technology, ever. To the people that say "Where does it end?" – that's pretty easy. Let's start with curbin…

You can't show a woman's nipple on Facebook, but you could show white nationalist propaganda. They never genuinely cared about being a platform to begin with.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#46
post #35
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…

The definition of hate speech and its boundaries has been thoroughly explored by the US supreme court. A taste of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat...

THANK YOU! That was helpful to read.

This is my favorite bit, from right at the top: "Hate speech in the United States is not regulated, in contrast to that of most other liberal democracies.[1] The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that hate speech is legally protected free speech under the First Amendment. The most recent Supreme Court case on the issue was in 2017, when the justices unanimously reaffirmed that there is effectively no "hate speech" exception to the free speech rights protected by the First Amendment."

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#47
I fully support scrubbing hateful content from any place where it appears.

I think people should take note though, that this is the exact point in time when the machinery for censoring and filtering the internet is being implemented. Although hateful speech is a great use case for this technology I can't help but wonder what it will get pointed at next. This isn't the kind of development that can sit back idly after performing its primary function.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#50
post #26
post #12

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. This may come as a surprise to you, but this response will not be comforting to those with genuine concerns about civil liberties. Avoiding the question of where to draw the final line with the question of where to draw the first one just implies that you intend to draw more lines in the…

This isn't the first line though–Facebook already bans things like ISIS propaganda. This is in a similar bucket.

White nationalism isn't even remotely like ISIS propaganda. I am no fan of that ideology for sure but it's actually about something very different than most people think and most people haven't actually spent the time understanding their argument before they form an opinion about it.

Edit: Find it pretty crazy that this can't even be discussed without people accusing me of all sorts of things.

Post reply on HN