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> Facebook isn't selling knives. The bits in Facebook's database are not killing anyone. The people doing the lynching are. The knife isn't killing Bob, Alice

> Facebook isn't selling knives. The bits in Facebook's database are not killing anyone. The people doing the lynching are. The knife isn't killing Bob, Alice is! The point being, both the knife-seller in the analogy and Facebook in real life bear a nonzero amount of responsibility for known consequences of their actions. We can actually make this analogy a little clearer: would you sell a knife to someone knowing they planned to stab you, because it's the government's job to prevent stabbings? And obviously Facebook isn't prohibited from allowing these posts, or we wouldn't be having this discussion. The claim is that they have a moral obligation to take down this content, any legal obligations notwithstanding. Regarding your Presidential campaigns analogy, it's not that Facebook (or any entity) should censor speech they disagree with. They should prevent behavior they disagree with, in a moral sense; those can be the same or different. It's not incoherent to believe that political discourse is valuable even when you disagree with the ideas, and that hate speech falls outside the bounds of acceptable discourse.

imgabe 8y ago
It's not like people are approaching Facebook and asking "Please may I make a post to organize a murder". Facebook doesn't learn about the content of the posts until after the fact, so the analogy with the knife seller is not really valid. > We can actually make this analogy a little clearer: would you sell a knife to someone knowing they planned to stab you Absolutely. This would be an excellent opportunity to sell them a fake knife. Also, now I'm aware that someone is trying to kill me, so I can do something about it. Kind of a best case scenario for me. > They should prevent behavior they disagree with Voting for a particular candidate would be an example of behavior that Facebook might try to prevent. I find it highly disturbing that anyone would want to assign Facebook the power of controlling our behavior. That is a power we grant to governments, and then reluctantly, and only with appropriate checks and balances. Not something we should hand out to private companies with no accountability.

imgabe 8y ago

It's not like people are approaching Facebook and asking "Please may I make a post to organize a murder". Facebook doesn't learn about the content of the posts until after the fact, so the analogy with the knife seller is not really valid. > We can actually make this analogy a little clearer: would you sell a knife to someone knowing they planned to stab you Absolutely. This would be an excellent opportunity to sell them a fake knife. Also, now I'm aware that someone is trying to kill me, so I can do something about it. Kind of a best case scenario for me. > They should prevent behavior they disagree with Voting for a particular candidate would be an example of behavior that Facebook might try to prevent. I find it highly disturbing that anyone would want to assign Facebook the power of controlling our behavior. That is a power we grant to governments, and then reluctantly, and only with appropriate checks and balances. Not something we should hand out to private companies with no accountability.