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The amount of harm these platforms have caused is at this point much larger than any positive value they provide. That is something for which you real

The amount of harm these platforms have caused is at this point much larger than any positive value they provide. That is something for which you really need to provide some proof. In addition I do not believe that someone watching that video is in any danger of any sort. These calls for censorship are just taking advantage of an emotional situtation to impose very dangerous state control on information.

deogeo 8y ago
> The amount of harm these platforms have caused is at this point much larger than any positive value they provide. You want proof of this, but I think the standard should be higher - to prove that platforms like these cause greater harm than state censorship would. Censorship that has, even in the US, been used to criminalize anti-war activism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
- frabbit 8y ago
  That's a stronger argument for sure.
orbifold 8y ago
Well it is undisputed that ISIS used Twitter and Facebook very effectively to recruit and spread propaganda. Whatever you think of the outcome of the last presidential election in the US and the Brexit vote it can not be a good thing for democracy to fracture opinions and reinforce beliefs by optimising for engagement in the way the Facebook and Twitter algorithm seem to do. Plus the way they work as AD platforms is also fundamentally different compared to traditional campaign advertisement, because not the same ads are shown to everyone. This is not about censorship and this kind of content is not information. I don't object to this footage being available in an archive and that it can be retrieved by anyone free of charge if they explicitly asked for it. I do not even object to it being freely available somewhere on the internet. What I object to is that Facebook and Youtube can get away with pretending they are passive conduits of information, while they in fact curate and profit directly from the content they host. They should be held to the same standards as traditional media companies, which they are in the process of displacing. A traditional media company would never have been allowed to show uncontextualized and extremely violent content such as this. If the algorithm does not catch this, that is not an excuse. They should be held accountable, as they should be held accountable for allowing ISIS to use their platforms.

deogeo 8y ago

> The amount of harm these platforms have caused is at this point much larger than any positive value they provide. You want proof of this, but I think the standard should be higher - to prove that platforms like these cause greater harm than state censorship would. Censorship that has, even in the US, been used to criminalize anti-war activism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

frabbit 8y ago
That's a stronger argument for sure.

orbifold 8y ago

Well it is undisputed that ISIS used Twitter and Facebook very effectively to recruit and spread propaganda. Whatever you think of the outcome of the last presidential election in the US and the Brexit vote it can not be a good thing for democracy to fracture opinions and reinforce beliefs by optimising for engagement in the way the Facebook and Twitter algorithm seem to do. Plus the way they work as AD platforms is also fundamentally different compared to traditional campaign advertisement, because not the same ads are shown to everyone. This is not about censorship and this kind of content is not information. I don't object to this footage being available in an archive and that it can be retrieved by anyone free of charge if they explicitly asked for it. I do not even object to it being freely available somewhere on the internet. What I object to is that Facebook and Youtube can get away with pretending they are passive conduits of information, while they in fact curate and profit directly from the content they host. They should be held to the same standards as traditional media companies, which they are in the process of displacing. A traditional media company would never have been allowed to show uncontextualized and extremely violent content such as this. If the algorithm does not catch this, that is not an excuse. They should be held accountable, as they should be held accountable for allowing ISIS to use their platforms.