Facebook to ban white nationalist content • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#571

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #491

WhompingWindows wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you transparently protect those in Christchurch NZ or at one of the sites of nationalist, extremist violence? Transparency does nothing to deter the mentally ill and psychotic individuals who perpetrate mass murder.

Being aware of people and surroundings in their true form is better than gagging some of the people around us, yes? We have been hating on others not like ourselves since the caveman days. I honestly can’t think of any time in history when we haven’t been doing horrible things to each other. It’s like cancer. We are able to diagnose it and hear more about it now. It’s like saying ...we are going to install a ban on s…

Yes and no. It's definitely better if you're in the business of tracking down violent extremists and interrupting their recruitment or action plans. On the other hand, not everyone is cut out for that and it's unreasonable to expect everyone to do that all the time for themselves.

Rather than gagging certain people, anti-racism and CVE focuses on raising the cost of certain kinds of speech acts, specifically ones that are less about intellectual inquiry than about intimidation and coercion, which behavior may endorse or actually escalate into violent physical acts.

Despite the aphorism 'sticks and stones may break by bones but words can never hurt me', hate speech imposes a significant burden on the unwilling recipient from general anxiety up to full-on fight or flight reactions, and the infliction of this burden is deliberate and strategic. It seems entirely reasonable to me that the people who want to engage in such speech should experience for themselves how their speech acts feel for the recipients.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#572

Post by 3xblah » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 8:36 PM UTC

function_seven wrote: post #31

I consider myself a free speech absolutist. Or very nearly so. But that runs both ways. Not only do I think that almost all (to borrow a mathematical term) speech should be permitted, but also that the onus is on the speaker to make themselves heard or to find an audience. No company or platform owes them anything. In earlier times, that meant that no newspaper or printing press was required to print everything sent…

"... like DNS or network connectivity."

If I recall corrrectly, early in the history of the commercialisation of domain names (1990's), for a time the sole appointed registrar Network Solutions would not accept domain name registrations that contained certain "offensive" words.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#573

Post by themacguffinman » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 8:37 PM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #27

There was a time when the FB newsfeed was chronological, and just showed what your fiends posted as they post them. It seems like less blame for the world's problems could be put on FB if it was just treated as a dumb bulletin board. Why not go back to Facebook being a "dumb pipe?"

How does that change Facebook's dilemma? Facebook faces PR pressure because they host the content at all, serving it chronologically or non-chronologically makes no difference. Who is complaining that the problem is really that Facebook serves white nationalist content in the wrong order?

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#574

Post by beat » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 8:38 PM UTC

rangerpolitic wrote: post #544

josefresco wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we've seen the definition of white supremacy slide from "people who espouse views that whites are better than nonwhites" to "people who espouse views that are not in line with progressive orthodoxy". No we haven't. We've seen white supremacy being legitimized at the highest levels, and as a result white supremacists claiming to be "victims" openly because they feel emboldened by the election of white supremacist po…

> We've seen white supremacy being legitimized at the highest levels "White supremacy" is extremely vague. Please define the term in a coherent manner, noting the attributes which must exist for something to be considered white supremacy. Thanks.

[flagged]

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#575

Post by beat » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

DuskStar wrote: post #250

weberc2 wrote: post #112

The obvious questions are and always have been "what constitutes 'harmful speech'?" and "who gets to decide?". Sure, we can agree that "white supremacy" is harmful, but in the last 5 years we've seen the definition of white supremacy slide from "people who espouse views that whites are better than nonwhites" to "people who espouse views that are not in line with progressive orthodoxy".

> seen the definition of white supremacy slide from "people who espouse views that whites are better than nonwhites" And even there it is debatable - does saying "people with pale skin are better at producing vitamin D in low-light conditions than people with dark skin" make me a white supremacist?

That's not what is meant by white supremacy and you damn well know it.

Stop making bad imaginary corner cases and stick to the actual problem.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#576

Post by Techonomicon » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

factsaresacred wrote: post #560

joshuamorton wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If Facebook decided to ban all Chinese, Islamic, or African-American content, then the conversation would be completely different. People wouldn't say, "so be it -- go set up your own servers". This is because we have laws about discrimination based on race. White supremacy is not a race. You're free to discriminate against someone due to the views they hold.

> You're free to discriminate against someone due to the views they hold. I'm pretty sure discriminating against people for their views on religion is illegal. Ditto for their political views. It's the definition of bigotry.

Political leaning is not a protected class.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#577

Post by josefresco » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

rangerpolitic wrote: post #544

josefresco wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we've seen the definition of white supremacy slide from "people who espouse views that whites are better than nonwhites" to "people who espouse views that are not in line with progressive orthodoxy". No we haven't. We've seen white supremacy being legitimized at the highest levels, and as a result white supremacists claiming to be "victims" openly because they feel emboldened by the election of white supremacist po…

> We've seen white supremacy being legitimized at the highest levels "White supremacy" is extremely vague. Please define the term in a coherent manner, noting the attributes which must exist for something to be considered white supremacy. Thanks.

Please define "progressive orthodoxy" and how it relates to white supremacy.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#578

Post by DisruptiveDave » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

metamet wrote: post #490

DisruptiveDave wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's start with curbing speech that encourages harming others. You've already disproven your "that's pretty easy" note. Who defines "harm"? The goal posts seem to move damn near weekly on this. That's the problem that can't be solved as easily as you purport.

[flagged]

Nazis would say "no."

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#579

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

piokoch wrote: post #564

Hmm, I don't even know what "white nationalist" mean. Nationalism is often confused with chauvinism. The difference is rather important. Nationalism is a natural and mostly positive attitude: a person lives at some place (country, city, village), surrounded by people with that person spends most of the time, with whom that person talks, trades. So it is natural to be more eager to help those people around than someon…

> So, coming back to the FB declaration, "white nationalist" does not make much sense

That's because you are trying to reason out what it might mean as if it were a simple combination of two words whose meaning should be transparent from the constituentsz rather than a name for adherents to the ideology named “white nationalism” which isn't “white” modifying “nationalism” but rather a construct with (very loosely; it was originally a bit of a PR term for those selling it) the same relationship to the idea of a (putative) “white nation” with specific traits that “nationalism” has to “nation”.

But, you know, you don't have to guess about things like that, there are search engines and decent general references at hand any time you have access to the internet, so even if you didn't know the meaning, you could easily look it up and find out. [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nationalism

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#580

Post by KorematsuFred » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

"But over the past three months our conversations with members of civil society and academics who are experts in race relations around the world"

Sorry I do not agree with this sort of shit. I have left facebook long back as a platform. I do not want some Phd in Gender Studies and Race relation to dictate what I can read and what I can not.