9 ms·

Facebook takes down Britain First ads

63 points by jmsflknr 8y ago

plufz 8y ago
I never think ads have been fair or 100% free speech. If I own a web site with ads I very much get to pick which organizations can use my platform for getting out their message. And they are free to start other web pages with their own content. Also if I am a billionarie I can make my voice heard a billion times louder than a poor person, how democratic is that? When Facebook bans actual accounts or pages, I think that is a bit different. You could still argue that they could start their own web page, but I think that is murkier territory when they limit non-paid free speech. Edit: Would be great to get a reply on why I'm being downvoted?
gammateam 8y ago
“Political groups have been spending increasing amounts of money on Facebook adverts” That’s because Cambridge Analytical was the instruction manual All the hearings and dockets are better free content than any marketing guru’s online course
- tossaccount123 8y ago
  give me a break, Obama's team was allowed to suck up Facebook's entire social graph and also used an app to get the data for all of the app users friends without consent https://www.fastcompany.com/40546816/obama-campaigns-targeted-share-app-also-used-facebook-data-from-millions-of-unknowing-users https://www.fastcompany.com/40546816/obama-campaigns-targete... Zuckerberg and Sandberg hosted events to raise money for Obama https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-harnessing-facebooks-social-graph/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-harnessing-facebooks-soci... The media called it genius and a good thing when obama used data and social media to win. Those dumb dinosaur conservatives were being left behind by tech savvy democrats. Now it's portrayed as evil when the reverse happened. Pure propaganda https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.htm... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-...
  - dashundchen 8y ago
    This is propaganda level whataboutism that is attempting to conflate two different things. 1. The Obama for America campaign directly asked users permission to access their friend graph, which was allowed and stated in the permissions at the time before FB reduced app permission scope. 2. The action taken on that data was to cross reference publicly available voter registration lists to suggest those most likely to respond to an invitation to join the campaign sent by the first user. No consent was missed here either. Whereas Cambridge Analytica: 1. Bought the data from a third party, who had slurped it down under the pretenses of "academic research" in a random quiz app. Already a couple layers of misdirection here. This was after FB had tightened up their data usage policy 2. Peddled the data for targeted harassment and voter manipulation with false or misleading info. The leadership pitched services such as staging blackmail by spreading rumors about an opponents sexuality, targeting them with prostitutes and then disseminating that info. https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-trump-consultant-and-cambridge-analytica-ceo-alexander-nix-offered-to-blackmail-politicians-with-prostitutes https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-trump-consultant-and-cambri... https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-campaign-use-tactics-cambridge-analytica/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-campaign-use-tactics...
  - gammateam 8y ago
    I dont think it matters? I didnt say it was evil, interestingly enough you did Cambridge Analytica is still the instruction manual Its almost like your response was on your clipboard for anytime you saw CA in a sentence How would you expect me to respond to that.. sorry that Obama’s team isnt getting credit?
keiferski 8y ago
Does anyone else remember when, circa ±2009, Zuckerberg used to frame Facebook as (in his words) a utility? What has happened since? The company grew and became more "normalized" and thus inline with the "company activist" model so prevalent today?
- vertex-four 8y ago
  Among other things, they realised that being a utility would not be as profitable. Also, many of the people who work there legitimately don't want Facebook to be used as a tool to make the world a worse place.
vorpalhex 8y ago
As always, this begs the question between hate speech and disfavored political speech. I think Britain First is doing their best to actively revert the UK back 50 years, but I struggle to see why it is they're simply hate speech and not a valid political movement.
- xfitm3 8y ago
  I agree with you here. Details of this particular issue aside - the chilling effects are likely to have a significant impact in the future. I don’t generally agree with censorship, but in cases where it’s needed I think it must be objective and not subjective. Eg. “i’ll know it when i see it”.
  - Spivak 8y ago
    This is always going to be subjective because it has everything to do with the speaker's intent, not the actual words. Determining hate speech is almost always about fishing out intent that the speaker is very protective of.
- Spivak 8y ago
  The disagreement isn't really between those two things. It's whether such speech is actually political or a proxy for hate speech. "We don't hire ethnic Muslims" vs. "We don't think you're a good culture-fit for this company."
- mc32 8y ago
  Does this mean countries with nascent independence movements will be able to declare these movements "hate speech"? I don't see much difference. Let's say Chiapas rebels or Puerto Rico or Scotts’ Independence movement want to seek independence, can the government declare that hate speech and have all that taken down? If this argument sticks, I can’t see why the above isn’t in similar vein.
  - dao- 8y ago
    Britain First is not an independence movement.
bluGill 8y ago
Regardless of content I don't want to live in a world where corporate interests censor me.
- EGreg 8y ago
  So join us in building open source alternatives.
  - naaaaak 8y ago
    > Just make your own social network. There’s more to it than open sourcing something.
  - js8 8y ago
    I am curious - which open source alternative to Facebook (and Google) has currently the most traction?
    - EGreg 8y ago
      I am curious as well!
pointillistic 8y ago
Anyone remembers how the internet was going to liberate the expression, instead we got two, three bottlenecks manned (or is it personed?) by censors actively supported by the MSM and virtually the entire university system.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- porphyrogene 8y ago
  Facebook is a private entity and they can do with their software what they want. If that drives away users then that’s their problem. You can set up a server or a static page and disseminate your opinions more easily now than ever. No one ever promised the ability to say whatever you want without response or repurcusion from individuals, corporations, charities, political parties or interest groups. Facebook executives are disrespectful and duplicitous but this is hardly an existential contradiction of the concept of the free and open web. If people choose a corporate platform with corporate censorship then the real problem is that no one is offering a better alternative.
- naaaaak 8y ago
  Also censored by payment processors and Big Tech collusion. Collusion met with indefensibly weak arguments of “just build your own”. Build your own = shovel, lay cable, and found a bank before you get to your project, because Big Tech and Big Payment will cut you down if you say something they don’t like.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ben_w 8y ago
  > manned (or is it personed?) “Staffed”
- freehunter 8y ago
  That is absolutely not the fault of the Internet and entirely the fault of the people using the Internet. Every time I hear this complaint on a forum other than Facebook or Reddit or Twitter I laugh because if it was true, HN wouldn't exist. The millions of independent phpBB forums wouldn't exist. I wouldn't be allowed to write my own HTML and Javascript if this was true. Some people willingly put themselves into buckets, yes. It's always been that, it will always be that way. But don't pretend for a second that this is the death of the Internet or a lack of free expression or censorship or any of that nonsense until you can't buy an IP address and host a web server on your own hardware. The web is free and open, and the existence of non-free and non-open parts of the Internet does not negate that in any way.
gwbas1c 8y ago
Maybe it's time to realize that it's very hard to be objective and neutral. In this case, being objective and neutral is just giving the extremes a platform to promote themselves. Maybe sites like Facebook should try taking a "no politics" policy, or a policy where a political ad is always placed next to a free ad from the opposing side?
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Then you have to come up with a definition of what is and isn't politics - is a poll about whether you do or do not want a mosque built political? Is paying for an advertisement to sign a petition (about not building a mosque) political?
- pjc50 8y ago
  > a political ad is always placed next to a free ad from the opposing side? This is obviously a disaster, as it gives free rein to put lies on the same footing as truth. But adopting local rules on electoral advertising is a really good idea - UK print political adverts must have an imprint saying who's paid for them, for example.
- ramblerman 8y ago
  Agreed, but Facebook can't solve this. They have created the biggest echo chamber that has ever existed. The algorithms designed to show people more of what they like combined with political discourse has given rise to something ugly. To undo all that partisanship and try to pull people out of their comfortable bubbles would hurt FB's bottom line. They are simply not incentivized.
mabbo 8y ago
It is concerning that Britain First exist and have the support they do. It's also concerning that Facebook has the power to decide who is right and wrong when it comes to the most popular form of free speech we have in the world today. These aren't mutually exclusive facts- they can both be true or false and you can agree or disagree with them to different levels. And I don't have an answer. I'm not even sure any answer the majority would agree with exists. This is the great problem our generation must answer as a society, or destroy everything great we have achieved for having not solved it.
- digianarchist 8y ago
  Britain First have about as much support as Islam4UK which is to say not much. The EDL was the real worry with membership peaking at 184,000 but today virtually none existent. The majority of both groups appears to have merged into UKIP.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Which in turn has merged into the Conservative Party. Occasionally an MP or councillor is found posting in a hate group. https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zm8zb3/tory-mp-with-history-of-islamophobia-was-a-member-of-racist-facebook-groups https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zm8zb3/tory-mp-with-histo... (Sometimes people claim they were added to the group without their knowledge or consent, which FB lets you do - this is a massive misfeature of the system!)
lewisflude 8y ago
I feel like this corporate censorship is awful for free speech. Specifically, because dividing people by beliefs/demographics increases tribalistic behaviour and the spread of misinformation. I foresee a situation where we have multiple social networks, each with radically different social/political slants. Similar to what we've seen with things like Reddit and Voat.
- robertAngst 8y ago
  It seems like this is the first time non millennials had to deal with 'shitty mods'. They are new and don't understand- Its time to move off facebook. Same reason I'm here instead of reddit.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    HN is great partly because it has excellent mods, and removes quite a lot of stuff between moderation and flagging. Perhaps a bit overzealous on flagging sometimes though.
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    Shitty mods have existed far longer than millenials.
  - lewisflude 8y ago
    I think the fact that I've not encountered an "evergreen" community (i.e. one that doesn't go the way of Digg, Reddit eventually) gives me a lot of anxiety with regards to my day to day online community usage. Online communities often feel ephemeral, but maybe that's healthy in the grand scheme of the internet? I'm really thankful that we have good mods here on HN.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      Metafilter has been around for almost 20 years with a small, stable, gatekept community. I think a certain amount of churn is unavoidable in this accelerated 21st century life, sadly.
- 8y ago
EGreg 8y ago
I've seen Britain First ads. While I disagree with their fearmongering, I think they went to great lengths to portray things in a nonviolent and "we Christians just want to make sure our children can still practice Christianity" way. Really, though, this is beside the point. Just like whether the Internet should be regulated under Title I or Title II was beside the point. The point is that, when you're at a point where it's one or the other one-size-fits-all policy, it's a symptom of too much consolidation: the telcos / banks / platforms / whatever have become too big. It's a cartel. Look, Facebook is becoming something much different than college social networks, or a "utility". Isn't it time for open source software that we can all move to, like the Web instead of AOL, or like Wordpress instead of Blogger.com ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI Why are we, in 2018, still relying on giant centralized corporations to connect us and "allow" us to have our own (shocker) chatroom on their servers?
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  > Why are we, in 2018, still relying on giant centralized corporations to connect us and "allow" us to have our own (shocker) chatroom on their servers? We're not though, but why are you posting this in a centralized, censored / managed comment section while you could go to one of the decentralized open source alternatives currently being worked on? It's not about options, it's about what everyone wants - engagement, being where the crowds are, being heard, reading other people's opinions. As long as they align enough with your own, of course.
  - EGreg 8y ago
    Actually HN built their own software for their own forum, and I think even released it. They aren't hosted on some huge centralized site. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Would you also say "it's not about options" in other areas like net neutrality, telcos or banking?
skilled 8y ago
> "We thank the BBC.." And why is BBC trying to portray that a canned email response is an official statement? I don't doubt the matter at hand, but this is very sloppy journalism.
- pjc50 8y ago
  That is the official statement Facebook gave to the BBC, and it's proper journalism to report what they said when asked.
  - skilled 8y ago
    It's not. And I actually feel insulted to have you counter my initial statement. Go read the article again and tell me how is it an official response.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 8y ago
> The ads were first spotted and reported to Facebook as hate speech by user [real name!] on 2 January and he received a standard response from Facebook saying that the page in question did not "go against one of our specific community standards". They published the real name of the person who made the complaint! That's just asking for him to get death threats. This is one of those moments where "normal journalism" covers things which would be banned from most forums, in this case as "doxxing". > A day later, when the BBC got in touch, it had changed its mind. This happens a lot. They'll routinely leave terrible violent rhetoric up while censoring anything that looks like a female-presenting nipple.
spaginal 8y ago
The question is, how would Facebook treat reverse bigotry that aligns with their personal biases and values? Would it recieve the same hate speech designation, or does “hate speech” end where your own personal politics begin? That’s my issue with corporations and media playing speech cop. Free speech wasn’t supposed to have carve outs. As long as you are not committing an actual crime, and not just a thought crime, put every vile idea out in the public and let people discuss it. Censorship is never a sound policy, the scales slide, when old ideas are squashed, what happens when the victors of censorship disagree with eachother? Is their first impulse to actually debate or just continue designating more ideas as hate speech?
- ABCLAW 8y ago
  >Free speech wasn’t supposed to have carve outs. Sorry to be a stickler, but what exactly are you referring to here? This statement is demonstrably false at the principle level, even in Mills' work, let alone in the enabling constitutional, legislative, or treaty-based implementations of Free Speech. We can have a sound discussion about the optimal place a society should land upon on the more restrictions vs. less restrictions spectrum, but to pretend that the only way the system works is at precisely zero limits warps the conversation and prevents us from taking a deep look into the issue.
dep_b 8y ago
OK so let's assume for a moment that those people neither have a problem with the religious part of Islam nor the fact that it's usually practiced by foreigners but only have a problem with the political part. Then let's apply it to something else to see how it feels: "Facebook removes petition against Communist youth center" It has a kind of 1950's ring to it and it still doesn't totally remove the smell of stupidity, but this once was a very common stance not only in the US but in most western countries. "We want Britain to stay capitalist" is absolutely not a strange slogan. I still think anybody should be able to be a Communist in a free society, as long as they don't plan a violent guerrilla or want to overthrow democracy with some kind of idealistic planned economy dictatorship.

63 points by jmsflknr 8y ago

I never think ads have been fair or 100% free speech. If I own a web site with ads I very much get to pick which organizations can use my platform for getting out their message. And they are free to start other web pages with their own content. Also if I am a billionarie I can make my voice heard a billion times louder than a poor person, how democratic is that? When Facebook bans actual accounts or pages, I think that is a bit different. You could still argue that they could start their own web page, but I think that is murkier territory when they limit non-paid free speech. Edit: Would be great to get a reply on why I'm being downvoted?

gammateam 8y ago

“Political groups have been spending increasing amounts of money on Facebook adverts” That’s because Cambridge Analytical was the instruction manual All the hearings and dockets are better free content than any marketing guru’s online course

tossaccount123 8y ago
give me a break, Obama's team was allowed to suck up Facebook's entire social graph and also used an app to get the data for all of the app users friends without consent https://www.fastcompany.com/40546816/obama-campaigns-targeted-share-app-also-used-facebook-data-from-millions-of-unknowing-users https://www.fastcompany.com/40546816/obama-campaigns-targete... Zuckerberg and Sandberg hosted events to raise money for Obama https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-harnessing-facebooks-social-graph/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-harnessing-facebooks-soci... The media called it genius and a good thing when obama used data and social media to win. Those dumb dinosaur conservatives were being left behind by tech savvy democrats. Now it's portrayed as evil when the reverse happened. Pure propaganda https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.htm... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-...
- dashundchen 8y ago
  This is propaganda level whataboutism that is attempting to conflate two different things. 1. The Obama for America campaign directly asked users permission to access their friend graph, which was allowed and stated in the permissions at the time before FB reduced app permission scope. 2. The action taken on that data was to cross reference publicly available voter registration lists to suggest those most likely to respond to an invitation to join the campaign sent by the first user. No consent was missed here either. Whereas Cambridge Analytica: 1. Bought the data from a third party, who had slurped it down under the pretenses of "academic research" in a random quiz app. Already a couple layers of misdirection here. This was after FB had tightened up their data usage policy 2. Peddled the data for targeted harassment and voter manipulation with false or misleading info. The leadership pitched services such as staging blackmail by spreading rumors about an opponents sexuality, targeting them with prostitutes and then disseminating that info. https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-trump-consultant-and-cambridge-analytica-ceo-alexander-nix-offered-to-blackmail-politicians-with-prostitutes https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-trump-consultant-and-cambri... https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-campaign-use-tactics-cambridge-analytica/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-campaign-use-tactics...
- gammateam 8y ago
  I dont think it matters? I didnt say it was evil, interestingly enough you did Cambridge Analytica is still the instruction manual Its almost like your response was on your clipboard for anytime you saw CA in a sentence How would you expect me to respond to that.. sorry that Obama’s team isnt getting credit?

keiferski 8y ago

Does anyone else remember when, circa ±2009, Zuckerberg used to frame Facebook as (in his words) a utility? What has happened since? The company grew and became more "normalized" and thus inline with the "company activist" model so prevalent today?

vertex-four 8y ago
Among other things, they realised that being a utility would not be as profitable. Also, many of the people who work there legitimately don't want Facebook to be used as a tool to make the world a worse place.

vorpalhex 8y ago

As always, this begs the question between hate speech and disfavored political speech. I think Britain First is doing their best to actively revert the UK back 50 years, but I struggle to see why it is they're simply hate speech and not a valid political movement.

xfitm3 8y ago
I agree with you here. Details of this particular issue aside - the chilling effects are likely to have a significant impact in the future. I don’t generally agree with censorship, but in cases where it’s needed I think it must be objective and not subjective. Eg. “i’ll know it when i see it”.
- Spivak 8y ago
  This is always going to be subjective because it has everything to do with the speaker's intent, not the actual words. Determining hate speech is almost always about fishing out intent that the speaker is very protective of.
Spivak 8y ago
The disagreement isn't really between those two things. It's whether such speech is actually political or a proxy for hate speech. "We don't hire ethnic Muslims" vs. "We don't think you're a good culture-fit for this company."
mc32 8y ago
Does this mean countries with nascent independence movements will be able to declare these movements "hate speech"? I don't see much difference. Let's say Chiapas rebels or Puerto Rico or Scotts’ Independence movement want to seek independence, can the government declare that hate speech and have all that taken down? If this argument sticks, I can’t see why the above isn’t in similar vein.
- dao- 8y ago
  Britain First is not an independence movement.

bluGill 8y ago

Regardless of content I don't want to live in a world where corporate interests censor me.

EGreg 8y ago
So join us in building open source alternatives.
- naaaaak 8y ago
  > Just make your own social network. There’s more to it than open sourcing something.
- js8 8y ago
  I am curious - which open source alternative to Facebook (and Google) has currently the most traction?
  - EGreg 8y ago
    I am curious as well!

pointillistic 8y ago

Anyone remembers how the internet was going to liberate the expression, instead we got two, three bottlenecks manned (or is it personed?) by censors actively supported by the MSM and virtually the entire university system.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
porphyrogene 8y ago
Facebook is a private entity and they can do with their software what they want. If that drives away users then that’s their problem. You can set up a server or a static page and disseminate your opinions more easily now than ever. No one ever promised the ability to say whatever you want without response or repurcusion from individuals, corporations, charities, political parties or interest groups. Facebook executives are disrespectful and duplicitous but this is hardly an existential contradiction of the concept of the free and open web. If people choose a corporate platform with corporate censorship then the real problem is that no one is offering a better alternative.
naaaaak 8y ago
Also censored by payment processors and Big Tech collusion. Collusion met with indefensibly weak arguments of “just build your own”. Build your own = shovel, lay cable, and found a bank before you get to your project, because Big Tech and Big Payment will cut you down if you say something they don’t like.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ben_w 8y ago
> manned (or is it personed?) “Staffed”
freehunter 8y ago
That is absolutely not the fault of the Internet and entirely the fault of the people using the Internet. Every time I hear this complaint on a forum other than Facebook or Reddit or Twitter I laugh because if it was true, HN wouldn't exist. The millions of independent phpBB forums wouldn't exist. I wouldn't be allowed to write my own HTML and Javascript if this was true. Some people willingly put themselves into buckets, yes. It's always been that, it will always be that way. But don't pretend for a second that this is the death of the Internet or a lack of free expression or censorship or any of that nonsense until you can't buy an IP address and host a web server on your own hardware. The web is free and open, and the existence of non-free and non-open parts of the Internet does not negate that in any way.

gwbas1c 8y ago

Maybe it's time to realize that it's very hard to be objective and neutral. In this case, being objective and neutral is just giving the extremes a platform to promote themselves. Maybe sites like Facebook should try taking a "no politics" policy, or a policy where a political ad is always placed next to a free ad from the opposing side?

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
Then you have to come up with a definition of what is and isn't politics - is a poll about whether you do or do not want a mosque built political? Is paying for an advertisement to sign a petition (about not building a mosque) political?
pjc50 8y ago
> a political ad is always placed next to a free ad from the opposing side? This is obviously a disaster, as it gives free rein to put lies on the same footing as truth. But adopting local rules on electoral advertising is a really good idea - UK print political adverts must have an imprint saying who's paid for them, for example.
ramblerman 8y ago
Agreed, but Facebook can't solve this. They have created the biggest echo chamber that has ever existed. The algorithms designed to show people more of what they like combined with political discourse has given rise to something ugly. To undo all that partisanship and try to pull people out of their comfortable bubbles would hurt FB's bottom line. They are simply not incentivized.

mabbo 8y ago

It is concerning that Britain First exist and have the support they do. It's also concerning that Facebook has the power to decide who is right and wrong when it comes to the most popular form of free speech we have in the world today. These aren't mutually exclusive facts- they can both be true or false and you can agree or disagree with them to different levels. And I don't have an answer. I'm not even sure any answer the majority would agree with exists. This is the great problem our generation must answer as a society, or destroy everything great we have achieved for having not solved it.

digianarchist 8y ago
Britain First have about as much support as Islam4UK which is to say not much. The EDL was the real worry with membership peaking at 184,000 but today virtually none existent. The majority of both groups appears to have merged into UKIP.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Which in turn has merged into the Conservative Party. Occasionally an MP or councillor is found posting in a hate group. https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zm8zb3/tory-mp-with-history-of-islamophobia-was-a-member-of-racist-facebook-groups https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zm8zb3/tory-mp-with-histo... (Sometimes people claim they were added to the group without their knowledge or consent, which FB lets you do - this is a massive misfeature of the system!)

lewisflude 8y ago

I feel like this corporate censorship is awful for free speech. Specifically, because dividing people by beliefs/demographics increases tribalistic behaviour and the spread of misinformation. I foresee a situation where we have multiple social networks, each with radically different social/political slants. Similar to what we've seen with things like Reddit and Voat.

robertAngst 8y ago
It seems like this is the first time non millennials had to deal with 'shitty mods'. They are new and don't understand- Its time to move off facebook. Same reason I'm here instead of reddit.
- pjc50 8y ago
  HN is great partly because it has excellent mods, and removes quite a lot of stuff between moderation and flagging. Perhaps a bit overzealous on flagging sometimes though.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  Shitty mods have existed far longer than millenials.
- lewisflude 8y ago
  I think the fact that I've not encountered an "evergreen" community (i.e. one that doesn't go the way of Digg, Reddit eventually) gives me a lot of anxiety with regards to my day to day online community usage. Online communities often feel ephemeral, but maybe that's healthy in the grand scheme of the internet? I'm really thankful that we have good mods here on HN.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Metafilter has been around for almost 20 years with a small, stable, gatekept community. I think a certain amount of churn is unavoidable in this accelerated 21st century life, sadly.
8y ago

EGreg 8y ago

I've seen Britain First ads. While I disagree with their fearmongering, I think they went to great lengths to portray things in a nonviolent and "we Christians just want to make sure our children can still practice Christianity" way. Really, though, this is beside the point. Just like whether the Internet should be regulated under Title I or Title II was beside the point. The point is that, when you're at a point where it's one or the other one-size-fits-all policy, it's a symptom of too much consolidation: the telcos / banks / platforms / whatever have become too big. It's a cartel. Look, Facebook is becoming something much different than college social networks, or a "utility". Isn't it time for open source software that we can all move to, like the Web instead of AOL, or like Wordpress instead of Blogger.com ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI Why are we, in 2018, still relying on giant centralized corporations to connect us and "allow" us to have our own (shocker) chatroom on their servers?

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
> Why are we, in 2018, still relying on giant centralized corporations to connect us and "allow" us to have our own (shocker) chatroom on their servers? We're not though, but why are you posting this in a centralized, censored / managed comment section while you could go to one of the decentralized open source alternatives currently being worked on? It's not about options, it's about what everyone wants - engagement, being where the crowds are, being heard, reading other people's opinions. As long as they align enough with your own, of course.
- EGreg 8y ago
  Actually HN built their own software for their own forum, and I think even released it. They aren't hosted on some huge centralized site. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Would you also say "it's not about options" in other areas like net neutrality, telcos or banking?

skilled 8y ago

> "We thank the BBC.." And why is BBC trying to portray that a canned email response is an official statement? I don't doubt the matter at hand, but this is very sloppy journalism.

pjc50 8y ago
That is the official statement Facebook gave to the BBC, and it's proper journalism to report what they said when asked.
- skilled 8y ago
  It's not. And I actually feel insulted to have you counter my initial statement. Go read the article again and tell me how is it an official response.

deleted 8y ago

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pjc50 8y ago

> The ads were first spotted and reported to Facebook as hate speech by user [real name!] on 2 January and he received a standard response from Facebook saying that the page in question did not "go against one of our specific community standards". They published the real name of the person who made the complaint! That's just asking for him to get death threats. This is one of those moments where "normal journalism" covers things which would be banned from most forums, in this case as "doxxing". > A day later, when the BBC got in touch, it had changed its mind. This happens a lot. They'll routinely leave terrible violent rhetoric up while censoring anything that looks like a female-presenting nipple.

spaginal 8y ago

The question is, how would Facebook treat reverse bigotry that aligns with their personal biases and values? Would it recieve the same hate speech designation, or does “hate speech” end where your own personal politics begin? That’s my issue with corporations and media playing speech cop. Free speech wasn’t supposed to have carve outs. As long as you are not committing an actual crime, and not just a thought crime, put every vile idea out in the public and let people discuss it. Censorship is never a sound policy, the scales slide, when old ideas are squashed, what happens when the victors of censorship disagree with eachother? Is their first impulse to actually debate or just continue designating more ideas as hate speech?

ABCLAW 8y ago
>Free speech wasn’t supposed to have carve outs. Sorry to be a stickler, but what exactly are you referring to here? This statement is demonstrably false at the principle level, even in Mills' work, let alone in the enabling constitutional, legislative, or treaty-based implementations of Free Speech. We can have a sound discussion about the optimal place a society should land upon on the more restrictions vs. less restrictions spectrum, but to pretend that the only way the system works is at precisely zero limits warps the conversation and prevents us from taking a deep look into the issue.

dep_b 8y ago

OK so let's assume for a moment that those people neither have a problem with the religious part of Islam nor the fact that it's usually practiced by foreigners but only have a problem with the political part. Then let's apply it to something else to see how it feels: "Facebook removes petition against Communist youth center" It has a kind of 1950's ring to it and it still doesn't totally remove the smell of stupidity, but this once was a very common stance not only in the US but in most western countries. "We want Britain to stay capitalist" is absolutely not a strange slogan. I still think anybody should be able to be a Communist in a free society, as long as they don't plan a violent guerrilla or want to overthrow democracy with some kind of idealistic planned economy dictatorship.