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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 reasona

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.
    - baddox 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. That can be true. But any other concept that influences decision-making can also be fickle, e.g. "what the company thinks is moral." In fact, I would be more concerned if I saw a company doing something that seemed bad for their bottom line but was motivated by what the company's supposed moral values, because I know that the bottom line is always by definition an existential concern of the company, whereas its supposed moral values are not.

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.
  - baddox 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. That can be true. But any other concept that influences decision-making can also be fickle, e.g. "what the company thinks is moral." In fact, I would be more concerned if I saw a company doing something that seemed bad for their bottom line but was motivated by what the company's supposed moral values, because I know that the bottom line is always by definition an existential concern of the company, whereas its supposed moral values are not.