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Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

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Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#481

Post by PontifexMinimus »

root_axis wrote: post #206
PontifexMinimus wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If FB are blocking things that they deem bad, then they are clearly setting themselves up as arbiters of morality, even if they say they aren't.

Facebook has opinions about the type of content they'd prefer not to facilitate on the Facebook platform, that doesn't make them "arbiters of morality", it just makes them curators of their product identity.

So they might say "we don't want $X type of content on our platform, as it would negatively affect our product identity".

But that's in fact a moral judgement! It's saying "some people think $X is bad, and we agree with them (or at least choose to pretend to so as not to soil our image)".

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#482

Post by PontifexMinimus »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #428
root_axis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find the idea of Zuckerberg as an arbiter of morality both absurd and dystopian This is a very common characterization that I find frustratingly absurd. Zuckeberg is not "an arbiter of morality" in any respect, the contents of Facebook is a corporate business decision, not a reflection on morality.

If yellow journalism can stampede a nation into war (e.g. "Remember the Maine") through presenting a slanted view of the situation, well, Facebook and however it chooses to editorialize what it allows to be presented to its users has a vastly bigger audience than the newspapers of old. There's nothing "absurd" about that.

If future, as social media gets more powerful, they will be able to determine who gets elected. No-one will be able to get elected if they go against them.

Once that happens, Google and Facebook will never have to pay their share of taxes ever again!

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#483

Post by PontifexMinimus »

SantalBlush wrote: post #429
PontifexMinimus wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will facebook be forced to show its users the same nastiness it just booted off, because of the interop necessities? Facebook should be forced to show me the feeds I choose to subscribe to. I'm perfectly capable of deciding for myself whether I find something nasty, and I find the idea of Zuckerberg as an arbiter of morality both absurd and dystopian.

>Facebook should be forced I would consider this sentiment more absurd and dystopian than Facebook freely removing content from its own website.

All governments apply rules to corporations forcing them to do or not do things. Are you in principle against that?

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#484

Post by LimaBearz »

naniwaduni wrote: post #272
bitwize wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an ironclad fact that more Americans have been killed by right-wing domestic terrorists than by Islamic terrorists since 9/11.

"since 9/11" is one hell of a cutoff cf. https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/31/terrorists-vs-chairs-a...

Just to point out… 9/11 is close to 20 years ago now.. society has marched forward quite a bit since then. While that date as a cutoff point is fairly arbitrary there has been a substantial and alarming rise to extremist right violence I’m the last 10 years or so and that can’t just be swept under a rug

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#485

Post by LimaBearz »

devwastaken wrote: post #78

I'm not concerned. If I ran a platform serving out qanon BS I'd ban and log their details. Terrorists don't get protections from a private company, nor should they. People don't understand just how insane these groups of people have become. Without FBI interference these terrorist groups would have murdered multiple state governors and carried out plenty of bombings. I'm not going to "be neutral" to such people. 1. G…

It’s really interesting to see how quickly things have changed. The world watched in horror at Jan 6th, we decided we needed to be better than that and stopped a certain someone and friends who were spreading blatant lies that millions chose to accept as truth because it served an end goal, ignoring all evidence and facts disapproving..

Today you and others who point out what brought us here are downvoted, others like myself flagged.. as if the circumstances that brought us to this junction means nothing.

You’re right though, CP is illegal, revenge porn we decided as a society is unacceptable, we have slander and liable laws, etc… we’ve drawn some lines in “free speech”, and we discovered another one on the 6th

I get that some folks who bought the lie are upset now but this is society marching forward, and it’s interesting reading this post, watching it being overrun by extremism

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#486

Post by LimaBearz »

throwawaystream wrote: post #390
bitwize wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an ironclad fact that more Americans have been killed by right-wing domestic terrorists than by Islamic terrorists since 9/11.

Mind providing a source for this "ironclad fact"?

Not OP but a quick google search can get you there, if you’re lazy here’s one going over some stats

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...

I recently stumbled onto a clip on YT of Tucker Carlson using this term “the radical violent left”. The data is clear.. the right is getting far more violent (and far more violent than this “radical left”), I suspect the media is getting ahead of that narrative and pre-labeling the left what they’re becoming themselves as a method of cutting off any debate. Think McConnell at the start of Obama labeling him the most obstructionist president ever, and them republicans being the most obstructionist. It’s an attempt to destroy any credibility to the evidence by some weird form of um… pre-poo flinging?

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#487

Post by clucas »

PontifexMinimus wrote: post #480
clucas wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this gets you into really weird places really quickly. How do you not end up with a censorship department of the government, that is tasked with writing moderation rules? It probably wouldn't be called a censorship office, but that's what it would be: a government office determining what can and can't be posted on social media. This seems entirely antithetical to the idea of the first amendment. Do you have a…

> How do you not end up with a censorship department of the government, that is tasked with writing moderation rules? That already exists: governments already have laws limiting some forms of speech e.g. copyright infringements or pornography. Obviously corporations that want to stay in business have to obey the laws. > "the idea of free speech in modern liberal democracies" As I've already pointed out, all states al…

> What I actually want is a world where people don't care whether FB censors things, because it doesn't matter as people can and do use other means to communicate.

Fortunately, we already live in this world! We have the internet!

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#488

Post by timwaagh »

Honestly aren't there bigger problems in this world? These days it's all privacy and tech. What about governments going out of their way to deny people a roof over one's head?

Now I know that isn't necessarily eff's problem but it's a bigger problem than Facebook censoring stuff that doesn't align with their idea of political correctness. Don't get me wrong I didn't like it when FB censored one of my countries greatest traditions, but it's just one of those annoyances that you just need to accept.

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#489

Post by [deleted] »

ddvvff wrote: post #476
cutemonster wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you wrote sounds to me a bit like claiming that it's impossible to qualify paintings as beautiful or not, so therefore there cannot be any art museums

Well, objectively, you can't have an art museum that has only beautiful art in it, since beauty in art is subjective and non quantifiable, so yes there can not be an art museum that has only beautiful paintings, and the beautiful paintings that supposedly are there might only beautiful to the eye of the curator. Either way, the point is not wether or not you can have a place with discourse with the all good qualities…

[deleted]

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#490

Post by ashtonkem »

khawkins wrote: post #113
ashtonkem wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick perusal through history will show that conflicts where one side is censorious and the other is not has basically never happened. Usually the winning side sweeps their misdeeds under the rug afterwards. See: US behavior towards communists and left wing groups during the Cold War, or censorship during WW1 and WW2. The whole "fire in a crowded theater" trope comes from the unanimous Supreme Court decision uphold…

Most people are openly taught about the misdeeds of the McCarthy era in schools and in public discussions. This wasn't swept under the rug, most people agree that it happened and wasn't a good thing.

Eventual recognition of misdeeds is nice, but irrelevant when the original claim is that there is (or has been) one side that’s anti-censorship. Being pro-censorship and then apologizing later isn’t enough.
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