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Political censorship cleverly wrapped in a much more palatable package delivered to you for your acceptance.

Brakenshire 10y ago
Yes, in the same way that not inviting a neo-nazi or an anarcho-syndicalist, or a vegan, to talk on your radio programme is political censorship. Private people and organizations are well within their rights to set their own rules. If you want no moderation that's your choice, go to 4chan or a similar site.
- anonnyj 10y ago
  There's moderation (bans for being off topic, bating, coordinated websit raiding, NSFW in the wrong place, etc) But yeah, there's less in the way of censorship. The odd moderator with an agenda still sneaks in, but they seem to get outed.
- drdaeman 10y ago
  [Edit: parent was edited, I was replying to a house example] Not exactly. The comparision doesn't account for scale, and in case of largest platforms (like Facebook) it's more like "leave our country bloc"... except for such comparisions are probably a bad idea, because there are always too many differences that break them. ----- But parent comment has a point anyway. Political censorship had (ab)used moderation systems in that way, at the very least in some countries. It's not unheard of cases of censorship slipping under disguise of "protecting from bad/unhealthy things". I can think of a few examples from Russia.
  - Brakenshire 10y ago
    Yes, apologies for that, I changed it a few minutes after posting to be more constructive/reasonable, the original comment was flamebait on reflection. Facebook shouldn't be some kind of universal substrate on the internet anyway. Alternatives should be encouraged, and people can make their own choice about the kind of environment they want to spend their time in. If you're saying that's impossible, and facebook is some sort of utility, or common carrier, then you can have rights which are enforced upon the space. Ultimately, either it is a public space (which needs public rights analogous to what exists in the real world, enforced through constitutional or democratic means) or it is a private space, and the owners are free to regulate as they wish, and customers are free to make their own decisions, where to visit and where to spend their time.
    - mindslight 10y ago
      > Facebook shouldn't be some kind of universal substrate on the internet anyway. Alternatives should be encouraged, and people can make their own choice about the kind of environment they want to spend their time in. Wholeheartedly agree that this is the ultimate resolution, but in order to actually get to that point we need a fundamentally different software architecture than the current centralized approach of "the web". > Private people and organizations are well within their rights to set their own rules Sure, but that does not imply that it isn't censorship. It's just within their rights to censor. > If you're saying that's impossible, and facebook is some sort of utility, or common carrier, then you can have rights which are enforced upon the space. It's not impossible, but it is Facebook's goal to have this level of necessity in people's lives. So, by their own framework, it does make sense to talk about rights on their service. The purpose of this isn't to incite government action of enforcing such rights, but to keep users' and devs' perspectives clear about the lack of freedom on centralized platforms.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Private people and organizations are well within their rights to set their own rules. Aren't we tired of saying this by now? That's fine, everyone can express her own views on Facebook, unless one is a Kurd who would like to say something about Kemal Atatürk? Should the Kurds have to create their own Facebook? Who's next, Trump voters? Do we really want them to sink further into their filter bubble? At some point a service offered to the public must actually serve the public. We don't allow bakeries to choose which weddings they will cater. If you'll bake a wedding cake for $200, then you have to get baking, even if the happy couple with $200 are two dudes or whatever.
  - lacampbell 10y ago
    We don't allow bakeries to choose which weddings they will cater I think it's incredibly entitled to want the government to punish private businesses for refusing to do a job. Not everyone has to agree with your ideas or provide you a service. Getting the state involved to literally force a small business to make a cake is an insane, authoritarian over-reaction. The fact that it seems OK to you because you have no problem with gay marriage (neither do I, btw) is really besides the point. By all means - boycott the bakery. Call them stupid for the bad PR and lack of work they'll get for not making the cake. But coercing them under the threat of force to do a job they don't want to do? Absolutely insane, and I can't agree to it.
    - wallace_f 10y ago
      I agree with you. I don't know why or how it came to be that diversity is the greatest virtue in Western society and every White Western country is being forced to take in so many that Whites will be a minority. Meanwhile an educated Chinese or Japanese citizen has an incredibly difficult challenge in legally migrating to America or Western Europe. What the fuck is going on here? I don't like bigotry, but this just doesn't seem right.
      - up_so_floating 10y ago
        When you criminalize a certain pattern of thought, it seems that its inverse will eventually get taken to the most extreme position.
village-idiot 10y ago
The original theories of free speech included basically no censorship on the theory that the marketplace of ideas (along with backlash for non-anonymous awful statements) would lead us in the direction of the truth, or at least stability. It appears that the anonymity of the Internet combined with the echo chamber effect has pretty much completely ruined that.
- donatj 10y ago
  I don't think it's ruined it at all. I think naive people just like living in a bubble and deplore the truth.
- ManFromUranus 10y ago
  I use the internet and don't often encounter things I didn't expect. Usually what I see on a board, or forum, or sub-reddit etc is the material I expect to see there. Occasionally I see spam or something. Generally the community is probably capable of policing itself on most boards if you give them the tools, downvoting / flagging or something like that. The crux of the problem is, if the internet remains free then it is also free to "fail". If you can only post lollipops and cat pictures guaranteed not to offend then the internet would contain almost nothing. Comments on such an internet would be so milquetoast as to be not worth reading in the first place. You can already filter out almost 90% of the content you don't want to see by simply going to certain websites / forums and not others.
vivekd 10y ago
Label it what you want, I'm glad that steps are taken to get rid of videos of girls being raped and murdered, there are limits to free speech, both legally speaking as well as philosophically speaking as well as in terms of values. Neither the founding fathers nor any of the early proponents intended free speech to be a free for all of any kind of content that some advocate for today.

Yes, in the same way that not inviting a neo-nazi or an anarcho-syndicalist, or a vegan, to talk on your radio programme is political censorship. Private people and organizations are well within their rights to set their own rules. If you want no moderation that's your choice, go to 4chan or a similar site.

anonnyj 10y ago
There's moderation (bans for being off topic, bating, coordinated websit raiding, NSFW in the wrong place, etc) But yeah, there's less in the way of censorship. The odd moderator with an agenda still sneaks in, but they seem to get outed.
drdaeman 10y ago
[Edit: parent was edited, I was replying to a house example] Not exactly. The comparision doesn't account for scale, and in case of largest platforms (like Facebook) it's more like "leave our country bloc"... except for such comparisions are probably a bad idea, because there are always too many differences that break them. ----- But parent comment has a point anyway. Political censorship had (ab)used moderation systems in that way, at the very least in some countries. It's not unheard of cases of censorship slipping under disguise of "protecting from bad/unhealthy things". I can think of a few examples from Russia.
- Brakenshire 10y ago
  Yes, apologies for that, I changed it a few minutes after posting to be more constructive/reasonable, the original comment was flamebait on reflection. Facebook shouldn't be some kind of universal substrate on the internet anyway. Alternatives should be encouraged, and people can make their own choice about the kind of environment they want to spend their time in. If you're saying that's impossible, and facebook is some sort of utility, or common carrier, then you can have rights which are enforced upon the space. Ultimately, either it is a public space (which needs public rights analogous to what exists in the real world, enforced through constitutional or democratic means) or it is a private space, and the owners are free to regulate as they wish, and customers are free to make their own decisions, where to visit and where to spend their time.
  - mindslight 10y ago
    > Facebook shouldn't be some kind of universal substrate on the internet anyway. Alternatives should be encouraged, and people can make their own choice about the kind of environment they want to spend their time in. Wholeheartedly agree that this is the ultimate resolution, but in order to actually get to that point we need a fundamentally different software architecture than the current centralized approach of "the web". > Private people and organizations are well within their rights to set their own rules Sure, but that does not imply that it isn't censorship. It's just within their rights to censor. > If you're saying that's impossible, and facebook is some sort of utility, or common carrier, then you can have rights which are enforced upon the space. It's not impossible, but it is Facebook's goal to have this level of necessity in people's lives. So, by their own framework, it does make sense to talk about rights on their service. The purpose of this isn't to incite government action of enforcing such rights, but to keep users' and devs' perspectives clear about the lack of freedom on centralized platforms.
jessaustin 10y ago
Private people and organizations are well within their rights to set their own rules. Aren't we tired of saying this by now? That's fine, everyone can express her own views on Facebook, unless one is a Kurd who would like to say something about Kemal Atatürk? Should the Kurds have to create their own Facebook? Who's next, Trump voters? Do we really want them to sink further into their filter bubble? At some point a service offered to the public must actually serve the public. We don't allow bakeries to choose which weddings they will cater. If you'll bake a wedding cake for $200, then you have to get baking, even if the happy couple with $200 are two dudes or whatever.
- lacampbell 10y ago
  We don't allow bakeries to choose which weddings they will cater I think it's incredibly entitled to want the government to punish private businesses for refusing to do a job. Not everyone has to agree with your ideas or provide you a service. Getting the state involved to literally force a small business to make a cake is an insane, authoritarian over-reaction. The fact that it seems OK to you because you have no problem with gay marriage (neither do I, btw) is really besides the point. By all means - boycott the bakery. Call them stupid for the bad PR and lack of work they'll get for not making the cake. But coercing them under the threat of force to do a job they don't want to do? Absolutely insane, and I can't agree to it.
  - wallace_f 10y ago
    I agree with you. I don't know why or how it came to be that diversity is the greatest virtue in Western society and every White Western country is being forced to take in so many that Whites will be a minority. Meanwhile an educated Chinese or Japanese citizen has an incredibly difficult challenge in legally migrating to America or Western Europe. What the fuck is going on here? I don't like bigotry, but this just doesn't seem right.
    - up_so_floating 10y ago
      When you criminalize a certain pattern of thought, it seems that its inverse will eventually get taken to the most extreme position.

village-idiot 10y ago

The original theories of free speech included basically no censorship on the theory that the marketplace of ideas (along with backlash for non-anonymous awful statements) would lead us in the direction of the truth, or at least stability. It appears that the anonymity of the Internet combined with the echo chamber effect has pretty much completely ruined that.

donatj 10y ago
I don't think it's ruined it at all. I think naive people just like living in a bubble and deplore the truth.
ManFromUranus 10y ago
I use the internet and don't often encounter things I didn't expect. Usually what I see on a board, or forum, or sub-reddit etc is the material I expect to see there. Occasionally I see spam or something. Generally the community is probably capable of policing itself on most boards if you give them the tools, downvoting / flagging or something like that. The crux of the problem is, if the internet remains free then it is also free to "fail". If you can only post lollipops and cat pictures guaranteed not to offend then the internet would contain almost nothing. Comments on such an internet would be so milquetoast as to be not worth reading in the first place. You can already filter out almost 90% of the content you don't want to see by simply going to certain websites / forums and not others.

vivekd 10y ago

Label it what you want, I'm glad that steps are taken to get rid of videos of girls being raped and murdered, there are limits to free speech, both legally speaking as well as philosophically speaking as well as in terms of values. Neither the founding fathers nor any of the early proponents intended free speech to be a free for all of any kind of content that some advocate for today.