Facebook to ban white nationalist content • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#91

Post by gpm » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

function_seven wrote: post #75

rexpop wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your position. The 1A is fulfilled—in word and spirit—to your satisfaction so long as government puts up no barriers to speech, even if private, quasi-monopolistic firms filter speech to their own ends?

I think you do understand it, yeah. The only caveat to that is the private control of what I believe to be public infrastructure. The wires that connect all of us.

What makes the wire public infrastructure and facebook not? What would facebook have to do to become public infrastructure, or comcast have to do to become not?

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#92

Post by ptaipale » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #41

crushcrashcrush wrote: post #4

[flagged]

It's actually not on the rise at all, in fact it is down; just like crime across the board is down. We live in arguably the most peaceful and tolerant time in human history. The number of "hate crimes" in FBI stats is up, but those numbers are often misleading. The only place I actually see a slight resurgence is actually in Europe, and it's largely a backlash against the Syrian immigration crisis...which will genera…

This gets off-topic, but immigration crisis in Europe is not really about Syria, and it's not over either, despite changes in situation in Syria.

(Otherwise I agree that in almost everywhere, people live the best time humanity has had.)

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#93

Post by ianleeclark » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #36

atonse wrote: post #6

Good to see the Valley is starting to get off its "we are just a platform, all information should be free and neutral no matter how bad, so we're not responsible" extremism of the past few years and understand that some forms of speech are harmful should not ever be encouraged and accelerated on any platform or technology, ever. To the people that say "Where does it end?" – that's pretty easy. Let's start with curbin…

For someone who cares more about freedom of speech and the free sharing of ideas, than what political stance people have it's a sad day. However, at least Facebook now admits their political bias and people can make informed choices. And no I do not support white nationalism.

> And no I do not support white nationalism.

Saying that white nationalists, despite their inherently violent nature, deserve a platform is categorically support.

You're not acting as a neutral arbiter. Instead, you're saying that this group who spouts violent rhetoric, despite the fact that we as a society have said hate speech should not be tolerated, ought to be able to spread their message.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#94

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

DisruptiveDave wrote: post #82

atonse wrote: post #6

Good to see the Valley is starting to get off its "we are just a platform, all information should be free and neutral no matter how bad, so we're not responsible" extremism of the past few years and understand that some forms of speech are harmful should not ever be encouraged and accelerated on any platform or technology, ever. To the people that say "Where does it end?" – that's pretty easy. Let's start with curbin…

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#95

Post by andrewla » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

I am also nearly a free speech absolutist, but I feel that platforms like YouTube and FB are nearly in-scope. I can't specifically say what the criteria is, but there's some notion of how much responsibility they take for the content.

Something like the notion of a DMCA shield; where a platform can expose third-party content without consequences so long as they response to take-down requests means that they do not get to do filtering. If they get to do filtering and curation, then they are also directly responsible for copyright violations or libelous use of their platform -- the shield shouldn't apply unless it cuts both ways.

That is, by accepting some immunity from the consequences of free speech, they are then subject to free speech restrictions on their enforcement of their own opinions. A newspaper, for example, is not subject to the same restriction -- they are responsible for all content they publish, so can choose to publish or not publish whatever they want.

This isn't a precise framing, but I'm trying to capture some of my general thoughts on why I find it unappealing that YouTube and Facebook can filter out content that they deem offensive.

Facebook has a natural filtering mechanism through the ability for a user to restrict what they see. If you find content offensive, unfriend or block the person and you're done. Youtube can exercise some discretion in auto-play and recommendations, but they shouldn't be able to ban content unless they are required to do so by inheriting legal requirements.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#96

Post by identity-haver » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #16

I'd encourage people to please read the post before they comment. It seems that this isn't actually Facebook targeting a specific ideology, it is removing a previous rule that excluded that ideology: > We didn’t originally apply the same rationale to expressions of white nationalism and separatism because we were thinking about broader concepts of nationalism and separatism – things like American pride and Basque sep…

I don't think this is correct. They seem to be saying that they allow posting about nationalism and separatism, and white nationalism content was allowed under this umbrella, but now they specifically disallow white nationalism and separatism.

Honestly though, posting about any serious separatist movement has a good chance of violating their "terrorism" community standard: "Any non-governmental organization that engages in premeditated acts of violence against persons or property ... in order to achieve a political, religious, or ideological aim"

You can't tell me with a straight face that if Facebook existed 50 years ago, Sinn Fein would be allowed to post on Facebook, because they were not the IRA.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#97

Post by mcphage » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #12

atonse wrote: post #6

Good to see the Valley is starting to get off its "we are just a platform, all information should be free and neutral no matter how bad, so we're not responsible" extremism of the past few years and understand that some forms of speech are harmful should not ever be encouraged and accelerated on any platform or technology, ever. To the people that say "Where does it end?" – that's pretty easy. Let's start with curbin…

> To the people that say "Where does it end?" – that's pretty easy. Let's start with curbing speech that encourages harming others. This may come as a surprise to you, but this response will not be comforting to those with genuine concerns about civil liberties. Avoiding the question of where to draw the final line with the question of where to draw the first one just implies that you intend to draw more lines in the…

> Avoiding the question of where to draw the final line with the question of where to draw the first one just implies that you intend to draw more lines in the future.

No, it just implies that we don't need to have the perfect final answer now. Maybe we'll draw more lines, maybe we'll find out we don't need to, maybe we'll decide that this line was drawn too far and pull it back. We don't need to pretend that we have all the answers yet—we don't even need to pretend we have all the questions yet.

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#98

Post by fixermark » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

ordu wrote: post #72

> We didn’t originally apply the same rationale to [...] because we were thinking about [...] things like American pride and Basque separatism [...] What do they mean by "American pride"? Googling it brings a lot of marketing, I do not know how to filter all of that to find out an idea.

I think they mean "'Murican pride." ;)

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#99

Post by rexpop » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

QualityReboot wrote: post #59

Kalium wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To the people that say "Where does it end?" – that's pretty easy. Let's start with curbing speech that encourages harming others. This may come as a surprise to you, but this response will not be comforting to those with genuine concerns about civil liberties. Avoiding the question of where to draw the final line with the question of where to draw the first one just implies that you intend to draw more lines in the…

It's a surprisingly comforting response. This ends with decentralization. Let's force all platforms to ban anything even mildly offensive.

Tell us more about your vision for decentralization? Is it anything like twitter.com/BuyThisPlatform ?

Re: Facebook to ban white nationalist content

#100

Post by tathougies » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

Why are white people specifically targeted. As someone of an Indian background, I've seen plenty of Hindu nationalist content on Facebook, and -- despite it actually affecting my Christian family who are still in India -- there is no ban on that content. Such nationalism has led to more violence and death than any of the white nationalism stories.