4 ms·
Good. They should ban more people. They should ban whoever they feel like banning, for whatever reason or give no reason at all. They already ban you instantly
by themagician 8y ago
Good. They should ban more people. They should ban whoever they feel like banning, for whatever reason or give no reason at all. They already ban you instantly if you show a nipple.
We should stop pretending like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter et al. are some kind of public good or utility. They are private message boards. Message boards which already decide what you see by showing you an endless stream of content designed to optimize ad revenue.
- HyperTalk2 8y agoWe should stop pretending they shouldn't be regulated like some kind of public good or utility.
- nerfhammer 8y agoDonald Trump should not be allowed to regulate speech platforms of any kind.
- themagician 8y agoThey definitely shouldn't be. But if you really want to promote free speech on the Internet then you should support Net Neutrality and go a step further and support the re-nationalization of telecom as a public utility so that it gets first amendment protection.
- oh-kumudo 8y agoI didn't see how you see banning InfoWars is, for no reason. There is apparently a very grounded reason why InfoWars gets banned.
- themagician 8y agoOh no, I know. But they don't even need to give a reason.
- mikeash 8y agoYou raise a great point. Everybody is freaking out about this censorship, but these platforms have always been censored. Why is censoring sex perfectly reasonable and nobody cares, but censoring a violent nutcase is suddenly a massive free speech issue?
- unimpressive 8y agoIt's because of the violation of expectations. The expectation has been set that these platforms are a 'free-for-all' of sorts. Once you start adding new categories of people to ban, people get antsy and start wondering where it stops and who will be effected. Hence why I say in another comment in this thread that it'll cost these companies to use their moderation powers more fully. When you don't set the right expectations up front, changes in moderation policy get very very ugly.
- mikeash 8y agoThe whole point of my comment is that these platforms have never had the expectation of being a free for all. Upload a video of a penis and watch how long that lasts. And I don’t think “incites violence against actual people in the real world” is a newly banned category either.
- unimpressive 8y agoNo, I think they do have that expectation. 'Everything but porn' is a pretty widely accepted free for all category on the web. But yes, 'incites violence' is an actively illegal category; I suspect the only reason it's lasted this long is that the moderation muscles have atrophied so hard nobody seemed willing to go first in banning Jones completely.
- mikeash 8y agoEverything but porn, classified documents, personal information without the consent of the person, copyrighted works, encouragement of suicide... I could go on. You can find all of these things on the web, but they are far from widely accepted.
- dionian 8y agoeven better they should do it on all sides of the political spectrum