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Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

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Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#671

Post by koonsolo »

badatshipping wrote: post #252

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…

Monopoly? Let's see how these platforms will hold up against all the distributed platforms like DTube, DLive, Mastodon, etc.

The tighter the rules get for these traditional platforms, the more push there is towards distributed platforms.

Do you want to earn your livelihood from a platform that can kick you out at any time with any rule they want?

The new EU rules of Article 13 will make the push even stronger. Because it's not only up to the platforms anymore. You want to serve EU citizens? You need to make damn sure to put in filters that lean towards false-negatives.

Interesting times up ahead.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#672

Post by aeturnum »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #374
aeturnum wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, no, I would not say that's the "good" part of the the Nation of Islam. However, just like Christianity has been able to do some amount of "good work" while insisting that "Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says"[1], the Nation is not "all bad." I personally would judge its good works to be more crippled by its doctrine than most faith…

That was PART of the apostle Paul's admonition about keeping order in a gathering of the saints, from a wide variety of angles. I think the context is explained by the next verse: If they have questions, let them ask their husbands at home. Ergo: don't disrupt the proceedings with distractions. (And even if you accept this interpretation, you may now commence criticizing Paul for inferring that only women needed to b…

> do you actually know any significant branches of Christianity that enforce this?

Not universally. I think there are denominations that use that passage as justification to keep women from being Deacons but I couldn't cite one off the top of my head.

That said, I used it as an example and I'm sure if you're that knowledgeable about scripture you're familiar with the other parts of scripture that are (or have been) used with questionable intent. If I wanted to be less fair I could have cited the passages that slave owners used to argue that slavery was "christian." I could also have talked about the anti-homosexual (or perhaps anti-decadence) passages in romans.

I also could have cited the Mormon church's doctrine around skin color, but that's a bit of a horse of a different color.

My point, which I think is preserved, is that scripture and practice are two different things. Scripture colors practice - but the Nation of Islam is not (as far as I know) going around hurting white people because they're demons any more than Christian denominations go around forcing women to be silent because there's a passage from Paul.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#673

Post by logosmonkey »

speedplane wrote: post #628
badatshipping wrote: post #252

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…

> Every time this subject comes up, someone inevitably says something like "Facebook is a private corporation, the first amendment only applies to the government..." ... Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies. For this reason, I see Facebook's blocking of specific voices as a potentially positive trend. There used to be a credible hypothesis that social media platforms could be neutral…

Hell, if Facebook can do that I might actually use it again.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#676

Post by turk73 »

pas wrote: post #631
stOneskull wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it doesn't matter. just about every media is like that. many are much worse.

could you point to a worse medium (and show some examples of its badness)?

The New York Times?

Read about how the Spanish American War got started and what role the media played in it.

Read about Puerto Rico.

None of this is new. What is new is how far the media elite have tried to take it this time. They dropped all semblance of objectivity out of fear that Trump would become some kind of despot. Or was the real fear that unconscionable crimes would be exposed? What would the people do if they found out their elites enjoyed having sex with children, for example?

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#677

Post by toofy »

Pils wrote: post #347
badatshipping wrote: post #252

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…

> The issue is not whether Facebook is breaking the law but whether philosophically the market leader in a category should get to decide who can use their product when their product category is fundamental to modern life. Saying "no one is owed a platform" brings us no closer to an answer. By acceding to public pressure, doesn't that demonstrate that these "market leaders" don't actually get to decide what content th…

> ...to public pressure, doesn’t that demonstrate that these “market leaders” don’t actually get to decide what content they host?

This is a strange way to frame what businesses do every single day. If a business believes a certain product is unethical or that the product wont sell very well, they choose not to peddle that product. This is a determination just about every business deals with on a regular basis.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#679

Post by wdr1 »

badatshipping wrote: post #252

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…

> Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies.

They're not monopolies, they're just expedient ways to reach larger audiences. There's a difference.

A lot of clones do exist. They would just leave it the content creator to bring their audience.

If anything, there's now a danger that the platforms that cater to the fringe now start to gain traction, as some of these figures do bring with them a sizable audience of their own.

Re: Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

#680

Post by Zeppin »

toofy wrote: post #657
speedplane wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can use facebook, youtube or twitter to reach lots of people, how could any one of them be a monopoly on reach? Even though they are competing for attention, they each use different mediums. As an analogy, it's like only having one radio station, one TV station, and one magazine. There needs to be dozens of each for there to be a true marketplace of ideas.

There are many many video content hosting sites, there are countless twitter clones, and there are a crazy amount of sites doing things like Facebook with profiles and such. Because people are choosing to use mainly those doesn’t stop anyone from using others. This isn’t like a utility or phone company where people literally had no alternatives. No one is stopping any of us from connecting to Mastodon for example and…

Again, it's about reach.

My local dive bar can serve me burgers whether it has a customer base of 1.000 or 1.000.000. A social network, however, cannot function without hundreds of millions of users. Otherwise it's an anti-social network.

As a result I can post my video to DailyMotion instead of YouTube but how am I going to build a following without engaging with Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter?

These networks require mass user engagement to be effective which precludes a myriad of competition. I don't think breaking these companies up as Elizabeth Warren suggested is the correct solution because it fundamentally handicaps their ability to function. But I think there does need to be regulation around how they do business which sadly does not exist.

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