4 ms·

To the people who will say that Facebook is a private company, the first amendment doesn't apply, etc: I get it, you're right. These affronts to freedom of exp

To the people who will say that Facebook is a private company, the first amendment doesn't apply, etc: I get it, you're right. These affronts to freedom of expression are concerning. It's important to allow Holocaust deniers, Sandy hook deniers, 9/11 truthers, anti-vaxxers, Christian Scientists, flat earthers, etc to have a platform, for them and for us. You can't protected people from stupid ideas, and more and more we are just forcing these people into echo chambers. Ideas need to see the light of day, especially bad ones. The more discourse and dialog (and not insults) we share, the more quickly misaligned beliefs will fade.

UncleMeat 8y ago
If we truly have a marketplace of ideas then shitty ideas should be able to fail in the market. Denialism has already seen the light of day. Why must we enforce that it continues to see the light of day forever?
- debacle 8y ago
  Because we are a great, enlightened, quickly broadening and quickly advancing society that is inoculated from the chattering of small minds.
- dwaltrip 8y ago
  The usual argument is: The process that decides what should be censored might easily be used to squash valuable and important minority dissent in the future.
- krapp 8y ago
  >If we truly have a marketplace of ideas then shitty ideas should be able to fail in the market. This implies that the marketplace of ideas optimizes for truth, which may not be the case. >Why must we enforce that it continues to see the light of day forever? Either it lives in the shadows forever, or the light of day forever, but it never goes away. With each succeeding generation as history becomes more abstract, denialism and revisionism becomes easier to justify and accept. After all, why are there more people who believe the Moon landing was a hoax, now, than believed it when the event was recent, living memory? Because it's no more real to modern people than fiction. The same effect applies to the Holocaust. History becomes myth, myth becomes farce. We forget the lessons of the past and we're doomed to repeat them. The only thing the suppression of shitty ideas does is make the wheel turn faster.
commandlinefan 8y ago
To me, it's more like Facebook (and Twitter, and Apple, etc.) are more like "TV channels" and these posts are sort of like their "shows". Just like advocacy groups used to put pressure on advertisers to have "objectionable" shows taken off the air, advocacy groups here are pushing to get "objectionable" posts removed from specific web sites. So, like an old TV station, the web sites have to decide if the revenue that the posts are bringing in offsets the potential loss of revenue associated with being seen to condone the content. I'm a lot more concerned when they talk about removing "objectionable" content from the internet completely (which includes trying to force Google to censor search results).
Broken_Hippo 8y ago
I disagree. No, we can't protect folks from stupid ideas. But you can stop them from spreading as quickly and try to protect people against actively harmful ideas and ones whose very intention is to spread hate or harm or divisions in peoples. Anti-vaxxers, for example. This is actively harmful to people. This group of folks can kill innocent folks simply by refusing to vaccinate. Christian scientists? There are reasons to suspicious of some science, sure, but these folks are using the "science" bit to try to make folks believe in religion and discredit actual science. Holocaust deniers? Racists or stupidity. The actual message doesn't matter - it is knowingly offensive to groups of people. Sandy hook deniers have harassed victims. Flat earth can be a fun theoretical topic to discuss so long as everyone is of the understanding that the earth isn't actually flat. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. As far as their echo chamber is concerned, they already have it. Having mainstream sources cater to their views just increases the echo chamber. We already know folks have it. It also makes it easier to recruit others into that echo chamber. We can't stop it, but we can surely make it more difficult to create one, make it more difficult to convince folks, and so on.

UncleMeat 8y ago

If we truly have a marketplace of ideas then shitty ideas should be able to fail in the market. Denialism has already seen the light of day. Why must we enforce that it continues to see the light of day forever?

debacle 8y ago
Because we are a great, enlightened, quickly broadening and quickly advancing society that is inoculated from the chattering of small minds.
dwaltrip 8y ago
The usual argument is: The process that decides what should be censored might easily be used to squash valuable and important minority dissent in the future.
krapp 8y ago
>If we truly have a marketplace of ideas then shitty ideas should be able to fail in the market. This implies that the marketplace of ideas optimizes for truth, which may not be the case. >Why must we enforce that it continues to see the light of day forever? Either it lives in the shadows forever, or the light of day forever, but it never goes away. With each succeeding generation as history becomes more abstract, denialism and revisionism becomes easier to justify and accept. After all, why are there more people who believe the Moon landing was a hoax, now, than believed it when the event was recent, living memory? Because it's no more real to modern people than fiction. The same effect applies to the Holocaust. History becomes myth, myth becomes farce. We forget the lessons of the past and we're doomed to repeat them. The only thing the suppression of shitty ideas does is make the wheel turn faster.

commandlinefan 8y ago

To me, it's more like Facebook (and Twitter, and Apple, etc.) are more like "TV channels" and these posts are sort of like their "shows". Just like advocacy groups used to put pressure on advertisers to have "objectionable" shows taken off the air, advocacy groups here are pushing to get "objectionable" posts removed from specific web sites. So, like an old TV station, the web sites have to decide if the revenue that the posts are bringing in offsets the potential loss of revenue associated with being seen to condone the content. I'm a lot more concerned when they talk about removing "objectionable" content from the internet completely (which includes trying to force Google to censor search results).

Broken_Hippo 8y ago

I disagree. No, we can't protect folks from stupid ideas. But you can stop them from spreading as quickly and try to protect people against actively harmful ideas and ones whose very intention is to spread hate or harm or divisions in peoples. Anti-vaxxers, for example. This is actively harmful to people. This group of folks can kill innocent folks simply by refusing to vaccinate. Christian scientists? There are reasons to suspicious of some science, sure, but these folks are using the "science" bit to try to make folks believe in religion and discredit actual science. Holocaust deniers? Racists or stupidity. The actual message doesn't matter - it is knowingly offensive to groups of people. Sandy hook deniers have harassed victims. Flat earth can be a fun theoretical topic to discuss so long as everyone is of the understanding that the earth isn't actually flat. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. As far as their echo chamber is concerned, they already have it. Having mainstream sources cater to their views just increases the echo chamber. We already know folks have it. It also makes it easier to recruit others into that echo chamber. We can't stop it, but we can surely make it more difficult to create one, make it more difficult to convince folks, and so on.