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Why are white people specifically targeted. As someone of an Indian background, I've seen plenty of Hindu nationalist content on Facebook, and -- despite it act

Why are white people specifically targeted. As someone of an Indian background, I've seen plenty of Hindu nationalist content on Facebook, and -- despite it actually affecting my Christian family who are still in India -- there is no ban on that content. Such nationalism has led to more violence and death than any of the white nationalism stories.

botwriter 8y ago
facebook only moderates posts in English There was plenty of videos of the NewZealand shooter still up on Brazilian facebook
gowld 8y ago
non-Hindus do not have sufficient political or economic power in India and/or Facebook's multinational context.
commandlinefan 8y ago
In fairness, they've been censoring middle-eastern terrorist content (Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc.) for quite a while now.
odorousrex 8y ago
Cynical Answer: It's affecting FB's bottom line. White nationalism is in the news and on the rise in the US/Europe and therefore spooking advertisers who only really care what the pundits in US/Europe are talking about. This soothes them over = money for FB. My hope is that the algorithms and models developed for slowing the spread of White Nationalism will also work (down the road) for things like Hindu Nationalism, Chinese, etc.
- baddox 8y ago
  Is that really cynical? The presence of hate groups on your platform being bad for your bottom line is a good thing, right?
  - odorousrex 8y ago
    > The presence of hate groups on your platform being bad for your bottom line is a good thing, right? Yes it undoubtedly is, but they only seem to care about it now. I would love to see a more proactive approach, but unfortunately proactive approaches don't often generate profit.
    - baddox 8y ago
      Sure, doing it earlier would be good, but at any point in time the only choices are to do something now or do it further in the future. So I'm glad they chose now.
NelsonMinar 8y ago
I think the benchmark here is the use of Facebook to help spread genocide in Myanmar. I'm hoping the company learned something there about how dangerous hate indeology is on their platform, including white nationalism. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
empath75 8y ago
I imagine they'll get around to it eventually.
Shekelberg 8y ago
> Why are white people specifically targeted. Facebook is run by Jews, who have a specific dislike for white people. Notice you will never see pro-Israel (Jewish nationalist) content banned.
danharaj 8y ago
Because it's in the news since the New Zealand mosque shooting. Maybe Facebook should ban Hindutva organizing on their platform. That seems a perfectly reasonable position.
- tathougies 8y ago
  My point in posting this was to point out that Facebook is not a benevolent organization policing speech that disagrees with its internal morals. Rather, it is a business that bans speech based on whether or not such speech hurts its profit margins. Those advocates of free speech should realize that Facebook is not currently a platform for speech, but rather a mass publishing company whose sole purpose is to sell adspace to marketers. We should not expect a private company to serve the public interest out of benevolence. Moreover, it is worrisome that Facebook feels okay to ban speech -- again not based on some internal moral compass -- but rather on the whims of advertisers. It's fine to cheer when those advertisers agree with you and speech you dislike is banned, but the market is fickle, so all the people cheering this action shouldn't be shocked when Facebook bans speech you think should be there because some business doesn't like it.
  - baddox 8y ago
    Shouldn’t we be glad when incentives align like this? It seems bizarre to disapprove of a company doing something bad because of profit motive and disapprove of a company doing something good because of profit motive. If you think profit motive is inherently bad regardless of any outcome, then fine, but that should be the focus of the argument.
    - tathougies 8y ago
      The alignment of incentives is as fickle as the alignment of the stars. There's no telling when the incentives will line against you; that is why it's worrisome in the general case. > If you think profit motive is inherently bad regardless of any outcome, then fine, but that should be the focus of the argument. That is not at all what I claimed. All I suggested was that we shouldn't be cheering the banning of speech based off the profit incentive since there is no clear alignment in the general case between profit and ethics.
2_listerine_pls 8y ago
You can't be non-white and nationalist. (obvious sarcasm, apparently not)
komali2 8y ago
Probably because Facebook is an American company. It sounds like you have legitimate concerns about further content that should be banned and I fully support this and further efforts to draw Facebook's attention to the issue.
anigbrowl 8y ago
Why are white people specifically targeted They're not. Why is white nationalism specifically targeted? Because there's a lot of it in the US and the anglosphere in general which is Facebook's home and primary market. I've seen plenty of Hindu nationalist content on Facebook, and [...] Well, that's something they should be addressing too and I agree it has significant negative effects. At least now you know who to address at Facebook about it. I know other people have been making that exact complaint to Facebook, such as members of the Dalit caste who have been on the receiving end of violence from Hindu extremists with very reactionary views on caste.
- tathougies 8y ago
  > Why is white nationalism specifically targeted? Because there's a lot of it in the US and the anglosphere in general which is Facebook's home and primary market. Facebook has 1 billion + users, which means the majority are necessarily not American. Now I don't know where those other users are from, but white nationalism is not the largest source of terrorism related killings worldwide, even if it is a problem in america. The fact is that white nationalism is -- for whatever reason -- seen as something worse than all the other forms of racism, and that perception is itself racist. There are two forms of such racism, either straight up dislike of white people or an infantilization of the racism of other cultures that absolves them of their own racism (well they didn't know better...)
  - simple_phrases 8y ago
    You're consuming American news media about an American company with PR problem in America concerning white nationalist extremist content hitting American eyes. Hope this helps.
    - tathougies 8y ago
      Sure, but, if that were the case, I would expect to be able to search for and find articles about similar handling of racism in other countries in media outlets from those countries. I have not, so I cannot attribute the single mindedness of facebook's decision to the news media I consume.
omegaworks 8y ago
Your assumption is that this targets white people generally. White supremacist content is spread by a tiny minority of violent extremists in hopes of recruiting others to their cause.
- mynameishere 8y ago
  How is that an assumption? The post is very clear that this is targeting white nationalism/separatism/supremacist. Black nationalism, Jewish nationalism (ie, Zionism), etc, are all perfectly okay.
  - omegaworks 8y ago
    In light of the evidence, it's a measure to target the groups that are disproportionately responsible for the majority of violent ideology-driven attacks in this country. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/12/study-shows-two-thirds-us-terrorism-tied-right-wing-extremists https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/12/study-shows-t...
Bhilai 8y ago
Banning Hindu Nationalists from its platform is a pretty reasonable position that FB should take.
tzs 8y ago
According to their statement, they have long banned for "hateful treatment of people based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity or religion", and white supremacy has long fallen under that. They also say that nationalism does not usually fall under this, with things like "American pride" or "Basque separatism" being an important part of people's identities. What they say is changing is that in the specific case of white nationalism and separatism the overlap with white supremacy is nearly total to the point that they cannot be meaningfully separated.
- tathougies 8y ago
  This comment confuses me unless the claim is that Hinduism forms a nation within India, and the existence of such a nation justifies the violence committed in its name.

botwriter 8y ago

facebook only moderates posts in English There was plenty of videos of the NewZealand shooter still up on Brazilian facebook

gowld 8y ago

non-Hindus do not have sufficient political or economic power in India and/or Facebook's multinational context.

commandlinefan 8y ago

In fairness, they've been censoring middle-eastern terrorist content (Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc.) for quite a while now.

odorousrex 8y ago

Cynical Answer: It's affecting FB's bottom line. White nationalism is in the news and on the rise in the US/Europe and therefore spooking advertisers who only really care what the pundits in US/Europe are talking about. This soothes them over = money for FB. My hope is that the algorithms and models developed for slowing the spread of White Nationalism will also work (down the road) for things like Hindu Nationalism, Chinese, etc.

baddox 8y ago
Is that really cynical? The presence of hate groups on your platform being bad for your bottom line is a good thing, right?
- odorousrex 8y ago
  > The presence of hate groups on your platform being bad for your bottom line is a good thing, right? Yes it undoubtedly is, but they only seem to care about it now. I would love to see a more proactive approach, but unfortunately proactive approaches don't often generate profit.
  - baddox 8y ago
    Sure, doing it earlier would be good, but at any point in time the only choices are to do something now or do it further in the future. So I'm glad they chose now.

NelsonMinar 8y ago

I think the benchmark here is the use of Facebook to help spread genocide in Myanmar. I'm hoping the company learned something there about how dangerous hate indeology is on their platform, including white nationalism. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

empath75 8y ago

I imagine they'll get around to it eventually.

Shekelberg 8y ago

> Why are white people specifically targeted. Facebook is run by Jews, who have a specific dislike for white people. Notice you will never see pro-Israel (Jewish nationalist) content banned.

danharaj 8y ago

Because it's in the news since the New Zealand mosque shooting. Maybe Facebook should ban Hindutva organizing on their platform. That seems a perfectly reasonable position.

tathougies 8y ago
My point in posting this was to point out that Facebook is not a benevolent organization policing speech that disagrees with its internal morals. Rather, it is a business that bans speech based on whether or not such speech hurts its profit margins. Those advocates of free speech should realize that Facebook is not currently a platform for speech, but rather a mass publishing company whose sole purpose is to sell adspace to marketers. We should not expect a private company to serve the public interest out of benevolence. Moreover, it is worrisome that Facebook feels okay to ban speech -- again not based on some internal moral compass -- but rather on the whims of advertisers. It's fine to cheer when those advertisers agree with you and speech you dislike is banned, but the market is fickle, so all the people cheering this action shouldn't be shocked when Facebook bans speech you think should be there because some business doesn't like it.
- baddox 8y ago
  Shouldn’t we be glad when incentives align like this? It seems bizarre to disapprove of a company doing something bad because of profit motive and disapprove of a company doing something good because of profit motive. If you think profit motive is inherently bad regardless of any outcome, then fine, but that should be the focus of the argument.
  - tathougies 8y ago
    The alignment of incentives is as fickle as the alignment of the stars. There's no telling when the incentives will line against you; that is why it's worrisome in the general case. > If you think profit motive is inherently bad regardless of any outcome, then fine, but that should be the focus of the argument. That is not at all what I claimed. All I suggested was that we shouldn't be cheering the banning of speech based off the profit incentive since there is no clear alignment in the general case between profit and ethics.

2_listerine_pls 8y ago

You can't be non-white and nationalist. (obvious sarcasm, apparently not)

komali2 8y ago

Probably because Facebook is an American company. It sounds like you have legitimate concerns about further content that should be banned and I fully support this and further efforts to draw Facebook's attention to the issue.

anigbrowl 8y ago

Why are white people specifically targeted They're not. Why is white nationalism specifically targeted? Because there's a lot of it in the US and the anglosphere in general which is Facebook's home and primary market. I've seen plenty of Hindu nationalist content on Facebook, and [...] Well, that's something they should be addressing too and I agree it has significant negative effects. At least now you know who to address at Facebook about it. I know other people have been making that exact complaint to Facebook, such as members of the Dalit caste who have been on the receiving end of violence from Hindu extremists with very reactionary views on caste.

tathougies 8y ago
> Why is white nationalism specifically targeted? Because there's a lot of it in the US and the anglosphere in general which is Facebook's home and primary market. Facebook has 1 billion + users, which means the majority are necessarily not American. Now I don't know where those other users are from, but white nationalism is not the largest source of terrorism related killings worldwide, even if it is a problem in america. The fact is that white nationalism is -- for whatever reason -- seen as something worse than all the other forms of racism, and that perception is itself racist. There are two forms of such racism, either straight up dislike of white people or an infantilization of the racism of other cultures that absolves them of their own racism (well they didn't know better...)
- simple_phrases 8y ago
  You're consuming American news media about an American company with PR problem in America concerning white nationalist extremist content hitting American eyes. Hope this helps.
  - tathougies 8y ago
    Sure, but, if that were the case, I would expect to be able to search for and find articles about similar handling of racism in other countries in media outlets from those countries. I have not, so I cannot attribute the single mindedness of facebook's decision to the news media I consume.

omegaworks 8y ago

Your assumption is that this targets white people generally. White supremacist content is spread by a tiny minority of violent extremists in hopes of recruiting others to their cause.

mynameishere 8y ago
How is that an assumption? The post is very clear that this is targeting white nationalism/separatism/supremacist. Black nationalism, Jewish nationalism (ie, Zionism), etc, are all perfectly okay.
- omegaworks 8y ago
  In light of the evidence, it's a measure to target the groups that are disproportionately responsible for the majority of violent ideology-driven attacks in this country. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/12/study-shows-two-thirds-us-terrorism-tied-right-wing-extremists https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/12/study-shows-t...

Bhilai 8y ago

Banning Hindu Nationalists from its platform is a pretty reasonable position that FB should take.

tzs 8y ago

According to their statement, they have long banned for "hateful treatment of people based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity or religion", and white supremacy has long fallen under that. They also say that nationalism does not usually fall under this, with things like "American pride" or "Basque separatism" being an important part of people's identities. What they say is changing is that in the specific case of white nationalism and separatism the overlap with white supremacy is nearly total to the point that they cannot be meaningfully separated.

tathougies 8y ago
This comment confuses me unless the claim is that Hinduism forms a nation within India, and the existence of such a nation justifies the violence committed in its name.