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Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

swp.org.uk

531–540 of 550 posts

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#531
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not an attempt to interfere in politics and they are assuredly not being banned due to their political views. Facebook bans groups and people all the time, it does not imply that it's political. It seems FB has no given their reasoning for the ban, which is rather odd given the significance, I suggest we'll either hear from them forthcoming with evidence of 'violence' or they'll walk back their mistake.…

The bit about "no explanation" is completely fair. That's how bans on Facebook work -- nobody gets an explanation, so it's inherently fair.

Actually Facebook always gives an explanation by referring to a particular breach of terms. It may not feel sufficient or fair to the banned, but you do get a reason for why you are banned.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#532
post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> See the “Bernie Bros” who flipped into full Trumpists a few short months later in 2016. I’m sure if you look back at the Spanish Civil War and other divisive historical time periods you’ll find plenty of turncoats that flip from one extreme to another. This seems like a bit of a myopic, low-dimensional view of the political landscape. Bernie and trump (esp candidate trump) weren't "opposite extremes" when it came t…

Bernie and Trump were also both anti-war during the preliminaries, each for different reasons. I prefer Bernie's reason of defunding the military in order to put the money into more social benefiting areas, but Trump goal on focus more on internal US interests could have some of the same effects. The outcome naturally has a lot to desire.

Yup. The idea that there's a single axis along which Bernie and trump is an incredibly simple-minded view of the world. Unfortunately, most voters are pretty simple-minded, which tells you a lot about why politics is the way it is.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Citizens will require a personal licence to access the internet, and anonymous use will be illegal. Sadly, given the actions of Twitter, Facebook, Apple, and Google, that is a preferred option to the current state today. Ironically we will have more freedom in that state.

Are you sure that you have an accurate assessment of how bad things are currently vs how bad they would become in a world where access to the Internet was strictly controlled by governments and anonymous/pseudonymous communications were forbidden? Don't you think that the risks in the second scenario are in a different category to the risks in the first one? While being sent to Facebook Jail could limit your social l…

Based on the freedom I have with using phone, electricity, water, roads, and other public infrastructure, absolutely I am sure. Twitter, Apple, and Facebook have showed their hand. I want no part of that future.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#534

Tim Berner’s Lee and the Solid project have a good answer to these issues I think. Everyone owns their posts and likes and comments and friends etc. Any new platform can spin up and instantly compete because they just have to make your data more useful to you. It’d be like you owning all your music online and Spotify is just an interface, if you don’t like it you can jump to Apple Music. Or make your own or download…

That sounds like an improvement for sure but it looks like it just shifts the problem to pod providers and hosts. If the web was all pods then the Socialist Workers Party could just as well end up in a situation similar to Parler's in the end.

The hope is pod hosts would compete, some could be free and mine your data for ads etc, others could pay and focus on privacy. If that doesn’t work you host your own pod server, as long as it has an address that can be reached by the web that’s all that’s needed.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've yet to see a strong political movement on something that actually matters. Everything is half-assed and the major movements all fail. Look at Bernie, the Wall Street bailout, China buying out our mortgages, the war on: Iraq, Afghanistan. And these are just recent memory. The will of the American people has been long controlled. Now they only care what the oligarchs tell them to like unions, universal healthcare,…

I am an American, and I don't feel like my will is being controlled... It is important to understand that everybody has a unique life situation and makes their own choices. Elon Musk hasn't been able to implant Neuralinks in our heads yet. I think the rebuke of Donald Trump in swing states like Georgia really shows that any attempt by an established group to clutch onto power is always going to be a gamble. It took t…

What I mean is that things are really out of our control. The government decided to move manufacturing out and there was nothing we were able to do about it. Colleges decided to raise their prices to obscene levels and there was really nothing we could do about it. The banks did whatever they wanted, we bailed them out and we really didn't have any say in the matter. The healthcare industry keeps charging us the highest prices in the world and we do nothing about it. The list goes on and on.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've yet to see a strong political movement on something that actually matters. Everything is half-assed and the major movements all fail. Look at Bernie, the Wall Street bailout, China buying out our mortgages, the war on: Iraq, Afghanistan. And these are just recent memory. The will of the American people has been long controlled. Now they only care what the oligarchs tell them to like unions, universal healthcare,…

I am an American, and I don't feel like my will is being controlled... It is important to understand that everybody has a unique life situation and makes their own choices. Elon Musk hasn't been able to implant Neuralinks in our heads yet. I think the rebuke of Donald Trump in swing states like Georgia really shows that any attempt by an established group to clutch onto power is always going to be a gamble. It took t…

Trump's only real selling point was "I'm not the establishment". People rejected him for all kinds of reasons, but "disrupt the entrenched power" wasn't one of them.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#537
post #368

For any non-Brits, the SWP is the main left of Labour party in Britain. As a student in the 80s I remember them as an earnest, way too serious bunch of ideological zombies ranting into microphones at the Student's Union about the latest crimes against humanity perpetrated by 'Thatcher'. They're the kind of people that come up to you in the street with leaflets about some atrocity in Africa and shout "Would you murder…

> I always found them quite comical.

Sounds like you were fine with Thatcher taking an axe to organized labor, and weren't all that bothered about those children dying in Africa or what-not. After all, unlike them, you weren't "way too serious".

> If they are getting banned by Facebook something has gone horribly wrong.

Well, many things have gone horribly wrong. Among them, one thing that's wrong is:

> Quite possibly some of them got a bit excited and posted things they shouldn't

this outlook on things.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even as our nation spent years outraged over Russian interference Only a minority of the country was (supposedly) outraged about the mostly non-existent Russian interference. Most of the US knew it was bullshit the entire time, the Russians had near zero impact on the prior election (amazing how they didn't somehow swing this latest election, given their apparent god-like powers, despite how close it was). Trump's…

> mostly non-existent Russian interference This is not true. The Republican-led, bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee found, over the course of their 3.5 year investigation, that there was in fact Russian interference. You can find the actual report (all 5 volumes) here [0]. Alternatively, a TL;DR summary can be found here [1]. > amazing how they didn't somehow swing this latest election Let's for a moment, assum…

> The Republican-led, bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee found, over the course of their 3.5 year investigation, that there was in fact Russian interference.

1. It "found", i.e. asserted, that there had been - but no evidence of interference in the elections, nor even covert influence on public opinion, by the Russian government was presented.

2. Of course Russia had some influence the elections: Through RT America, which has significant viewership. This is actually much more influential than the sophomoric Jesus-vs-Satan or Buff-Bernie Facebook memes which much of the investigation focused on.

> You can find the actual report (all 5 volumes) here [0].

I scoured the Muller report, when it came out, looking for the evidence of ussian interference

> Let's for a moment, assume that the Russians were indeed behind the interference campaign

You're already assuming there had been an interference campaign. But there wasn't one.

Also, the term "The Russians" conflates Russian people with the Russian government. This use of plural nouns is nearly always underhanded: "The Americans", "The Jews", "The blacks" - they all must have done something nefarious, they're up to no good, they're a danger to "us" etc.

> it was about weakening your enemy's unity... tried and true methods... enemies of the US... Russian long-term psyops

Ah, back to the cold war.

This kind of rhetoric also emphasizes how the Russia interference conspiracy theory is at the end of the day an internal political tool, to discredit criticism of the political establishment as it veers farther away from public sentiment.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#539
post #80

It's a positive thing for these ejections to be across the political spectrum, because it makes the demand for distributed moderation come from across the political spectrum. I hope that demand congeals on support for an open blogging protocol, such that people can very easily post once and direct it to multiple platforms or any listener. If this becomes popular enough, and posts aren't owned by a particular platform…

That's optimistic. What I'm seeing is a lot of "we should regulate things so that facebook isn't allowed to censor things I like but is obligated to censor things I don't like". If people reacted to censorship in a principled way, we wouldn't be where we are today.

If people reacted to censorship in a principled way, nobody would use Facebook. It's an inherently censorious platform. The whole argument is about regulating or influencing Facebook's patterns of censorship.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the problems with this is opening up to criticism, liability, and further argumentation. That's not a problem ; it's the point . > It's better for users if the platform's transparent. Exactly. > or even sue you because that line of reasoning makes you liable. Also the point. Corporations are not people, and their reasoning should be assumed liability-worthy unless shown otherwise.

It also leads bad actors to game the system.

Bad actors don't need to game the system, they either:

* Get their government cronies/buddies to skew the system in their favor.

* Use their business relationship with Facebook to skew the system in their favor.

* Own the system from the get-go.

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