451–460 of 776 posts
Every time this subject comes up, someone inevitably says something like "Facebook is a private corporation, the first amendment only applies to the government, and if you want to use Facebook you have to play by their rules. No one is owed a platform." Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies. They are the only services in their class to take seriously if you're looking to gain a follow…
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The OP I was responding to just said people should be able to be banned for “racism” without qualifying it to anti-semitism. While that might be Facebook’s ostensible justification, the fact is that Farrakhan is famous for representing one of the extremes in the spectrum of black attitudes towards whites. I also think facebook should be able to ban people. But I think that Facebook banning someone like Farrakhan, who…
He is a notable anti-Semite and extremist hate leader who blames black slavery on the Jews. Trying to provide cover for him by claiming it's simply "anti-white" is disingenuous at best. If you don't trust me, trust the Southern Poverty Law Center: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi... Being black in America doesn't give you a free pass on anti-Semitism. If you can't see that, I don't know wh…
Maybe the anti-semitism alone warrants a ban. Maybe any one of his extreme view warrants a ban. But it’s very problematic for Facebook, a company with almost no black leadership, to be making that call.
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Yes, you are arguing in very bad faith to ignore the millions dead in the middle east in the last 20 years due to sectarian fighting between abrahamic faiths.
Hate to break the news to you, but... https://qr.ae/TWIst4 "...Anti-religion has caused more deaths than religion" I'm no fan of abrahamic faiths nor religion in general, though. I just try to separate fact from fiction. I'm kept very busy. ;)
I don't agree with this at all. If they want to put a big warning on it, contain the posts, etc. that's fine, but banning is not cool. One person's radical fascist is another person's ardent hero. Facebook should support freedom of speech, not freedom from speech.
It doesn’t give you the right to continue using someone’s platform as a megaphone if they decide you’re an asshole.
Being banned from Facebook doesn’t mean that these people no longer have the right or ability to spread their message. They can use another platform, or make (or host!) their own website, or print and distribute literature, or go stand on a street corner with an actual megaphone.
Facebook is not the government, and— agree with it or not— they can decide who uses their platform and how.
(For the record, I’m not a fan of Facebook.)
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Saying racist stuff constantly but playing it off as "ironic" and wearing a suit doesn't make it less racist. Good, they should have kicked these guys off years ago.
When you’re talking about someone like Farrakhan, and the explicit racial basis for slavery and segregation, is simply being “racist” sufficient justification for a ban? By that same token, can Facebook ban say Armenians for being racist against Turks? Should Facebook step blithely into these very complex issues?
Doing this properly would be complicated, messy and expensive but if Facebook is going to be part of our society going forward I think its something they will have to deal with somehow or some other change will be forced upon them.
As I write this I realise that perhaps the ruthless arithmetic of a publicly traded company whose business model is web advertising, with shareholders to endlessly appease is probably by definition an entity that is fundamentally unable to make the above choices in the same way that I couldn't just decide to breath underwater.
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"Given what we know about social media and violence" you mean how social media is akin to a pressure relief valve, and how actual violence has gone down since it took off? And how this is probably about clicks and stirring the pot than actual violence, and how this is just going to completely backfire? Shall we burn some books too?
Citation needed
1960 288,460
1961 289,390
1962 301,510
1963 316,970
1964 364,220
1965 387,390
1966 430,180
1967 499,930
1968 595,010
1969 661,870
1970 738,820
1971 816,500
1972 834,900
1973 875,910
1974 974,720
1975 1,039,710
1976 1,004,210
1977 1,029,580
1978 1,085,550
1979 1,208,030
1980 1,344,520
1981 1,361,820
1982 1,322,390
1983 1,258,087
1984 1,273,282
1985 1,327,767
1986 1,489,169
1987 1,483,999
1988 1,566,221
1989 1,646,037
1990 1,820,127
1991 1,911,767
1992 1,932,274
1993 1,926,017
1994 1,857,670
1995 1,798,792
1996 1,688,540
1997 1,636,096
1998 1,533,887
1999 1,426,044
2000 1,425,486
2001 1,439,480
2002 1,423,677
2003 1,383,676
2004 1,360,088
2005 1,390,745
2006 1,435,123
2007 1,422,970
2008 1,394,461
2009 1,325,896
2010 1,251,248
2011 1,206,031
2012 1,217,067
2013 1,199,684
2014 1,197,987
Real stumper. Absolute number has much gone down steadily since the early 90s. Even as the population grew from ~250M in 1990 to ~310M in 2010.
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…
fringe noun
1. A decorative border.
2. A marginal or peripheral part.
3. Those members of a political party, or any social group, holding unorthodox views.
Nope, still means the same thing or are we not trusting dictionaries now also?
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> The word "fringe" used to mean something a lot more, well... fringe Did it? How many people do you think were interested in old school conspiracy theories like Area 51 [1] or the protocols of the elders of zion [2]? Henry ford printed half a million copies of the latter! >how exactly are Milo Yiannopolous and Paul Joseph Watson "dangerous"? I think "dangerous" is probably not quite the right word. They're dangerous…
> How many people do you think were interested in old school conspiracy theories like Area 51 [1] or the protocols of the elders of zion [2]? Henry ford printed half a million copies of the latter! I think most of the people were interested in it for entertainment, just like people are interested in horoscopes for entertainment. Or would you argue that all these newspapers that had horoscopes in them pushed fringe co…
With that said, we have to understand that large swaths of the American population get almost all of their "news" from the figures they follow on Facebook and it ends up codifying the belief systems by which they live their lives and make decisions. So when you say:
> You have to show some evidence for a wild claim like that, because you're insinuating that Paul Joseph Watson and Milo are getting people killed.
Well, I don't really understand how you can claim that anti-vaxxing views are not dangerous. We enter social contracts with each other when we enter into public spaces and we should have the right to ensure that others won't intentionally get us sick. I'm not sure whether or not the aforementioned characters have a specific stance on anti-vaxxing, but they definitely are responsible for spreading other types of equally dangerous ideology to millions in ways which have hurt and killed many (Alex Jones being the preeminent example here; my otherwise levelheaded friend bought an AK because of him to prepare for the upcoming class warfare). And this is in Seattle. Just imagine the kind of behavior you can expect to see inland when these kinds of nutty beliefs are bolstered by their local social popularity.
We have to understand that other members of our populace don't have the facilities to be able to separate fact from fiction and these people specifically are the most vulnerable to adopting beliefs that weaken the social fabric of our society, making our country more hateful and divisive. Again, I think free speech is important, but speech that is intentionally misleading and that sews hatred and violent tendencies needs to be examined closely.
I think Facebook has probably extrapolated the siloing effect that social media has on groups forward a few years and come to the conclusion that certain groups (namely the far and alt right) base much of their ideology on not only hate, but conspiracies and misinformation. This will eventually come to a headwind in which domestic national security in our country begins to look more like the middle east and that is something that we should try to avoid.
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Trans people absolutely are sick. Trying to normalize them is, ironically, dangerous and fringe.
Is this flame bait or do you actually believe this? It saddens me to see this here on HN