3 ms·

Now I have been censored by Facebook

11 points by dragonbonheur 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
StanislavPetrov 10y ago
This is the inevitable result when you erode free speech. Many will say Facebook is private and therefore free speech is not an issue here (an issue up for debate), but the concept is the same. Once you start banning speech for any reason, you no longer have free speech, and the wealthy and powerful will find ways to ban any speech that they don't like. All the people advocating that we ban "hate speech", criminalize "cyberbullying" or otherwise ban speech they find offensive are useful idiots to the powerful interests that want to eliminate free speech for purposes of control. Nothing is as central to the concept of a free and open society then free speech and free expression.
memracom 10y ago
What makes you think that Facebook is censoring you rather than an employee of Facebook who is being paid by somebody else? This is a classic technique of subversion. You don't have to control an organization or get their leaders on your side. You simply get some of your own people into that organization in jobs that have the powers that you want to exercise. These people are sleepers (like the Manchurian candidate) who wait for instructions. To keep them on your side you pay them extra above and beyond the Facebook salary. And when you activate them to do your bidding, you pay them a bonus. From the outside, it looks like the organization(Facebook) is unfair but in reality it has been subverted. So, is there any evidence that this is anything other than subversion by a 3rd party political organization? Free speech is clearly not the issue since there is no free speech in America today. Anyone who looks objectively at the media and free speech over a time scale in decades, will have noticed the steady erosion of free speech since the beginning of the Cold War. Speech has been "captured" by powerful elites. What you see as an assault on free speech is simply one of those elites exercising one of their levers of power. The freedom of speech was already lost when those elites got away with capturing speech. What people today see as "free speech" is only a phantom that is allowed to exist because it covers the real capture of speech. But whenever that phantom of free speech threatens to have a "material" impact, then the owners of the USA, clamp down and beat it back to a dull humming noise. As Marie Antoinette said, let them eat cake. Or Juvenal who said about 2000 years ago, let them have bread and circuses.
- andybak 10y ago
  This explanation feels much more plausible to me. Either that or it's just a cock-up. If it was a command from on high then it's the dumbest thing ever as it was obviously going to be noticed.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  Even though your idea is worth consideration - I highly, highly doubt this is the case. Firstly - because FB is not having '3rd parties' do this kind of stuff. They are a smart company. Second - because FB just had a big PR error over this - and it boiled down to 'humans making decisions' about which 'trends' were important. The whistleblowers who actually did this type of work even indicated that it was not an FB policy - it was just the whims of the whoever happened to be doing it at the time. FB has since fired them all, and replaced them with algorithms, which hopefully are not as biased, but of course that's a difficult thing. FB as a company - and it's staff - are probably a little bit politically in one direction vis-a-vis the other, but I significantly doubt they are doing anything active, and also there just is not a lot of opportunity for 'Manchuican Candidates' to have such impact. In some cases, national leaders and security personnel will ask Facebook to 'do something' - Angela Merkel wanted FB to clamp down on 'racist messaging' for example, and I'll be action was taken. But this case is admittedly surprising. I don't see why they would block an account over a reasonable concern about PBS 'editing standards'.
amiga-workbench 10y ago
Why people expect anything different from Facebook & Twitter utterly eludes me, it takes all of 15 minutes to spin up your own server and host whatever content you fancy. Locking most of the discourse on the web into two or three private platforms severely limits the kinds of discussion that will be tolerated.
- type0 10y ago
  Sad thing is that majority of facebook and twitter users don't care. As this progresses there wouldn't even be a need to censor that much because ppl generally quite good at self censorship - at least on facebook where we have "real name policy".
- memracom 10y ago
  There is open source software called http://pump.io/ http://pump.io/ that does most of what you want in a social network. If you are technically inclined, then yes it is easy to set up a server and run this. But even if you are not technically inclined, there is such a large population of people who have these kind of skills nowadays that if you search through your circle of friends, you will find them. Talk to them, ask them to set up a server for you. Offer to manage it on behalf of your circle of friends, and go for it. P.S. nobody says you have to have only one server and one circle of friends. You can set up a separate one for your circle of political acquaintances too. This is what the web was created for, not to make a small number of new national networks that dominate everything.
jomamaxx 10y ago
As much as we all may loathe Trump - they do this to him every day, all day. I recently had to do some video editing related technology work - we used Trump speeches as samples. Watching a bunch of Trump speeches, none of which I have ever seen in full (because I generally don't care about him) - I found that his rhetoric was pretty normal actually. He wasn't bombastic or crazy. Neither were his positions. But reading the CNN headlines every day - you'd think the guy was Hitler. They took a lot of things out of context. Now - maybe Trump is 'too dangerous' or whatever to be President - I don't know - I'm not American and I don't have that much of an opinion on it politically, other than he does say some things that are a little scary ... That said - the means by which information is edited is just as powerful as creating the script oneself. You don't need to put words in someone's mouth - all you need to do is selectively show the words you want to create a narrative. And of course - this happens all across the spectrum, not just with more extreme candidates.
- memracom 10y ago
  If you've ever been interviewed by the media, you will be shocked at what they publish. Distortion of the message is ingrained even when the topic is totally non-political. The media is mostly about doing a "rush-job". Hurry up and get it out.
rjeli 10y ago
See also - swaths of conservative Facebook groups disappearing, Twitter pulling hashtags critical of Clinton, Reddit taking action to limit the presence of Pro-Trump posts. Regardless of my political affiliation, I am infuriated that both sides of the aisle are being silenced for speaking against the corporate-supported establishment.

11 points by dragonbonheur 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

This is the inevitable result when you erode free speech. Many will say Facebook is private and therefore free speech is not an issue here (an issue up for debate), but the concept is the same. Once you start banning speech for any reason, you no longer have free speech, and the wealthy and powerful will find ways to ban any speech that they don't like. All the people advocating that we ban "hate speech", criminalize "cyberbullying" or otherwise ban speech they find offensive are useful idiots to the powerful interests that want to eliminate free speech for purposes of control. Nothing is as central to the concept of a free and open society then free speech and free expression.

memracom 10y ago

What makes you think that Facebook is censoring you rather than an employee of Facebook who is being paid by somebody else? This is a classic technique of subversion. You don't have to control an organization or get their leaders on your side. You simply get some of your own people into that organization in jobs that have the powers that you want to exercise. These people are sleepers (like the Manchurian candidate) who wait for instructions. To keep them on your side you pay them extra above and beyond the Facebook salary. And when you activate them to do your bidding, you pay them a bonus. From the outside, it looks like the organization(Facebook) is unfair but in reality it has been subverted. So, is there any evidence that this is anything other than subversion by a 3rd party political organization? Free speech is clearly not the issue since there is no free speech in America today. Anyone who looks objectively at the media and free speech over a time scale in decades, will have noticed the steady erosion of free speech since the beginning of the Cold War. Speech has been "captured" by powerful elites. What you see as an assault on free speech is simply one of those elites exercising one of their levers of power. The freedom of speech was already lost when those elites got away with capturing speech. What people today see as "free speech" is only a phantom that is allowed to exist because it covers the real capture of speech. But whenever that phantom of free speech threatens to have a "material" impact, then the owners of the USA, clamp down and beat it back to a dull humming noise. As Marie Antoinette said, let them eat cake. Or Juvenal who said about 2000 years ago, let them have bread and circuses.

andybak 10y ago
This explanation feels much more plausible to me. Either that or it's just a cock-up. If it was a command from on high then it's the dumbest thing ever as it was obviously going to be noticed.
jomamaxx 10y ago
Even though your idea is worth consideration - I highly, highly doubt this is the case. Firstly - because FB is not having '3rd parties' do this kind of stuff. They are a smart company. Second - because FB just had a big PR error over this - and it boiled down to 'humans making decisions' about which 'trends' were important. The whistleblowers who actually did this type of work even indicated that it was not an FB policy - it was just the whims of the whoever happened to be doing it at the time. FB has since fired them all, and replaced them with algorithms, which hopefully are not as biased, but of course that's a difficult thing. FB as a company - and it's staff - are probably a little bit politically in one direction vis-a-vis the other, but I significantly doubt they are doing anything active, and also there just is not a lot of opportunity for 'Manchuican Candidates' to have such impact. In some cases, national leaders and security personnel will ask Facebook to 'do something' - Angela Merkel wanted FB to clamp down on 'racist messaging' for example, and I'll be action was taken. But this case is admittedly surprising. I don't see why they would block an account over a reasonable concern about PBS 'editing standards'.

amiga-workbench 10y ago

Why people expect anything different from Facebook & Twitter utterly eludes me, it takes all of 15 minutes to spin up your own server and host whatever content you fancy. Locking most of the discourse on the web into two or three private platforms severely limits the kinds of discussion that will be tolerated.

type0 10y ago
Sad thing is that majority of facebook and twitter users don't care. As this progresses there wouldn't even be a need to censor that much because ppl generally quite good at self censorship - at least on facebook where we have "real name policy".
memracom 10y ago
There is open source software called http://pump.io/ http://pump.io/ that does most of what you want in a social network. If you are technically inclined, then yes it is easy to set up a server and run this. But even if you are not technically inclined, there is such a large population of people who have these kind of skills nowadays that if you search through your circle of friends, you will find them. Talk to them, ask them to set up a server for you. Offer to manage it on behalf of your circle of friends, and go for it. P.S. nobody says you have to have only one server and one circle of friends. You can set up a separate one for your circle of political acquaintances too. This is what the web was created for, not to make a small number of new national networks that dominate everything.

jomamaxx 10y ago

As much as we all may loathe Trump - they do this to him every day, all day. I recently had to do some video editing related technology work - we used Trump speeches as samples. Watching a bunch of Trump speeches, none of which I have ever seen in full (because I generally don't care about him) - I found that his rhetoric was pretty normal actually. He wasn't bombastic or crazy. Neither were his positions. But reading the CNN headlines every day - you'd think the guy was Hitler. They took a lot of things out of context. Now - maybe Trump is 'too dangerous' or whatever to be President - I don't know - I'm not American and I don't have that much of an opinion on it politically, other than he does say some things that are a little scary ... That said - the means by which information is edited is just as powerful as creating the script oneself. You don't need to put words in someone's mouth - all you need to do is selectively show the words you want to create a narrative. And of course - this happens all across the spectrum, not just with more extreme candidates.

memracom 10y ago
If you've ever been interviewed by the media, you will be shocked at what they publish. Distortion of the message is ingrained even when the topic is totally non-political. The media is mostly about doing a "rush-job". Hurry up and get it out.

rjeli 10y ago

See also - swaths of conservative Facebook groups disappearing, Twitter pulling hashtags critical of Clinton, Reddit taking action to limit the presence of Pro-Trump posts. Regardless of my political affiliation, I am infuriated that both sides of the aisle are being silenced for speaking against the corporate-supported establishment.