14 ms·

No. It's more effective to lobby your local member of parliament/congress to pass laws restricting what media organisations can or cannot do. Granted, by "more

• awinder 10y ago
  Why is Facebook a media outlet as opposed to, say, a private gathering place like a mall or movie theatre?
  • shabda 10y ago
    Because it is becoming the predominant way people consume media. If it were only used by 10% of its current use, it shouldn't be, but it current levels it should. As Stalin said "quantity has a quality all its own".
    • nine_k 10y ago
      Referencing Stalin in a media freedom context is, well, so liberal.
      • throwanem 10y ago
        Stalin was quoting Napoleon. I'm not sure where you're going with this.
  • paganel 10y ago
    Facebook has become a de-facto political "agora" for the politicians and high-Government officials from my country (I live in Eastern Europe). More exactly, that's where now they first express their views on current political, social and economics affairs affecting my country. Nowadays I would say that most of the important stuff first gets posted on FB, and only then it gets re-published by the local media (whatever it's left of it at this point). So, even if I would want to "get off" FB and decide to ignore it completely then I would just have an "inferior" experience as a citizen of my country, i.e. I would not have first-hand account on what's shaping the things around me. It's not that I like what Facebook has become, but there's nothing that I can do to change it at this point.
    • wyager 10y ago
      So once your platform gets popular enough, the government can tell you what to do with it? Why? It's not Facebook's fault that politicians started using it.
      • sitkack 10y ago
        Yes.
      • zdkl 10y ago
        It's astounding so many people defend variants of 'power to the mighty'. Are you so naive you believe you are one of the mighty?
        • wyager 10y ago
          Huh? What are you talking about? I'm defending the right of everyone to be free of excessive government interference, whether it's an individual or a popular company.
          • rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
            But you're totally ok with people having no right to be free of corporate interference?
          • PhasmaFelis 10y ago
            It's never clear, with these arguments, why being oppressed by a corporation is better than being oppressed by a government.
      • lostlogin 10y ago
        They can tell you what to do with it and not use it too. This is the way it should be. Think of the harm that can be done in all sorts of abusive ways if there was no regulation of sites and services.
      • Daishiman 10y ago
  • pjc50 10y ago
    .. both of which are subject to different kinds of government regulation. But Facebook is definitely a medium. In some ways like a telecom or transit operator.
    • awinder 10y ago
      Sure, but they're regulated differently, and the parent seemed to assume it should be regulated as a media outlet
    • kefka 10y ago
      There's a simple path to change things here. Start criminally charging Facebook for every criminal act they fail to remove. If they're playing the censor, then they need to be punished when they fail in that role. The other choice, is not to censor anything, other than by the requirements of the law. Like the telephone system does.
  • red_admiral 10y ago
    Facebook arguably has a monopoly position in the way that your local mall, movie theatre or newspaper does not. If I don't like the Times, I can read the Guardian instead. If I don't like what's on at one cinema, I can go to another (granted this may be harder in a small town with only one). Of course I can close my facebook account and move to diaspora, but then I'd lose everything from keeping in touch with my friends' latest accomplishments to the schedule of my local hiking club. I already find if I'm away hiking for a weekend without internet access and couldn't be bothered to catch up on facebook on Monday morning because there's already a pile of e-mails to deal with, at coffee break it's like I've missed some important social information that everyone else knows, because team member A has done something and posted about it on facebook and everyone else has been liking and commenting on it, and everyone expects you to be up to date with this. Without a facebook account you may as well wear a badge that says "antisocial". I personally think governments should regulate media outlets in proportion to their influence on people's lives. FB is the new IE.
    • amscanne 10y ago
      TIL that I wear an antisocial badge. It's perfectly possible to be happy and healthy without a Facebook account. You might lose out on one particular kind of "social" connection, but that doesn't mean you lose actual social connections. You just catch up with people in person, via telephone, via email, via chat, or a million other ways. Personally, I don't really find the "social" information Facebook has to offer all that valuable. It's just a stream of trivia from extended not-really-friends.
      • visarga 10y ago
        The parent poster just said that he felt like he missed on some important communication that he was expected to have been aware of. It's not possible to be happy without FB, it's not possible to be happy with FB either.
        • wonder_er 10y ago
          It is so possible to be happy without FB. Just decide your life is fine, despite the occasional time lags in you discovering certain information. FWIW, I deleted my FB account months ago, and my quality of life has gone up. If someone expects me to be available via FB, I give them my email address.
  • dredmorbius 10y ago
    How might a government or society have an interest in, say, the content carried by a private radio station? What possible interest might there be? http://rwandanstories.org/genocide/hate_radio.html http://rwandanstories.org/genocide/hate_radio.html
• briandear 10y ago
  That's a very dangerous path on which to travel. China passes some strong laws what media organizations can and can't do. Free speech isn't a right given by governments, but one cultivated and protected by the people. The marketplace solves these problems. Nobody is forced to use Facebook. If so many people care, perhaps they ought to vote with their dollar and seek alternatives. If they are unwilling to do that, it's on them and not the company that would support censorship. Don't like tacos? Don't buy tacos. The government ought not tell taco vendors they can't sell tacos but instead reduce regulation to make it easier for a pizza guy to start a business. Less regulation by definition, increased freedom.
  • jonathanstrange 10y ago
    How does the market solve the problem that it is morally wrong (or at least dubious) to delete an iconic picture that exemplifies the cruelties of the Vietnam War? Do you believe that billions of Facebook users will switch to another social network because they are some sort of moral saints who recognize Facebook's mistake and act accordingly? Or do you instead believe that the majority of Facebook users are that much of a moral authority that we should readily concede that Facebook is right, because almost none of their users complain? "the market solves this" is a funny meme, but it's often plain wrong. Markets can solve certain optimization problems and find price equilibria, but they cannot somehow magically solve the vexing moral question of how much (if at all) a social media company should censor their user's content and who should control this in which way.
  • ivan_gammel 10y ago
    It's not dangerous, it's the only path that society can choose. Facebook is dominant on social networking market and is subject to anti-trust regulations, that must be adopted to the nature of the service. Same can be said about Google in some countries. It's almost impossible today for a person to switch SN, because for this to happen it has to be a group decision - most of the contacts must do the same switch. I have accounts in Path, VK and few more "yet another" social networks, but they are useless without social graph and it's beyond my control to move this graph there. It has to be regulated, because having freedom of speech in hands of a single corporation is wrong.
• jMyles 10y ago
  It may be "more effective" to implore the government to crack down on media policies you don't like, but it's also as much a threat to free expression as Facebook's ridiculous and overt censorship of this image.
  • toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Free expression already has limits (No "Fire!" in a crowded theater when no danger exists), I'm absolutely fine with government saying what Facebook isn't allowed to do (remove journalistic posts without due process).
    • rrego 10y ago
      Yes free expression obviously does have limits; It probably doesn't have that silly "Fire in a theater" restriction. Holmes (the supreme court justice you are quoting) said this with respect to this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States where they prosecuted Schenck for anti-war pamphlets. This is something that would be protected by the constitution today. This quote is a pretty lousy excuse for suppressing free expression considering Holmes's track record of dismissing free speech. With regards to Facebook removing posts, why should there be a "due process" for a (specific) company to remove posts. What sense does this make?
      • visarga 10y ago
        FB isn't just a specific company. FB has grown to such a size that it has become a large part of the media/press. So it has to be regulated like press.
        • wonder_er 10y ago
          Er... press isn't supposed to be regulated. Unless that was your point? The first amendment says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press... Where do you get that we should regulate the press? Obviously you could argue that the constitution is wrong, and that's fine with me. It's just a document, but when you say "it has to be regulated..." what is the mechanism you're referring to?
• wyager 10y ago
  While Facebook censorship policies are very annoying, I fully support their right to have complete discretion over what goes on their platform. I would rather punish them through voluntary market mechanisms than by using the government as a blunt instrument to force them to behave as I like.
• ricksplat 10y ago
  * > No. ... * He says as if the possessor of some absolute truth. The ignorant twit.
• alanwatts 10y ago
  >No. It's more effective to lobby your local member of parliament/congress to pass laws restricting what media organisations can or cannot do. No. Facebook has far more lobbying power ($) than any of us. There is a reason why you see the FB logo in the background of the presidential debates. Boycotting their service directly negates that power.
• Dirlewanger 10y ago
  Absolutely not. Government should have no say what a private entity can/can't do in their walled garden. The fact that over a billion people use it is a different issue.
  • JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Walled Garden can be monopoly or trust. Government regulates those things all the time
  • kefka 10y ago
    A private individual, sure. I'll accept that argument. But a corporation should have no such leeway. Companies exist for the mutual benefit of the citizens, and their shareholders. Just because we've lost that sense of ethic doesn't make it not true. Now, the predominant view is "A company can fuck over whomever they want, as long as it lies within the confines of the law", is preposterous. Public corporations are already required to be sociopathic, given the legal requirement of profit (exception given to benefit corps). Or in much more shallow words, "I'll believe corporations are people when they execute one in Texas."
    • Roboprog 10y ago
      People seem to lose sight of that: corporations are REQUIRED to be as ruthless as they can legally get away with, or they are literally in violation of the law in terms of making money for their owners. The law is the ONLY thing that curbs their bad behavior, other than publicity so bad that it (temporarily, until forgotten) causes a sales drop. Yeah, I'd like to see more corporate death sentences handed out, as well. It may or may not deter any other bad corps, but it would cut down on second offenses :-)
      • YuriNiyazov 10y ago
        This is false. There is no such law that requires nothing but ruthless profit optimization. I invite you to disprove my claim by pointing to a relevant piece of legislation.
• smsm42 10y ago
  If you measure everything purely by effect, there are more efficient ways of restricting media organizations from doing certain things. E.g., many news organizations avoided republishing the famous Muhammad cartoons, not because their parliaments were prohibiting it, but because they were afraid of violent retaliation. If you are OK with abandoning morals, you can be very efficient in preventing people from doing things. Mafia can be very efficient in preventing witnesses from talking, for example. Now, you can say, employing threat of government-mediated violence through congressional law is not the same as employing the threat of direct violence. But the only real difference I can see is that you can claim "it's all for common good". Oh, wait, they do the same too...
• jayess 10y ago
  For sure. A few dozen bureaucrats should be dictating what is and what isn't acceptable content and the punishment for not adhering to their sense of appropriateness.