15 ms·

> What do you think would happen if these "private companies" with such deep hooks into our communication infrastructure suddenly decided to remove all data ass

• hcurtiss 8y ago
  Are you sure? Do we even know, for sure, what "white nationalist" means? I'm white, and I favor a government that's principally oriented toward advancing this nation's interests. Am I a white nationalist?
  • jpkiser 8y ago
    Banned.
  • 0xbadcafebee 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nationalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nationalism
  • Veraticus 8y ago
    Words have meaning, and people know what those meanings are. "White nationalist" does not mean "white people who like their country" and it's disingenuous to pretend it does.
    • atmosx 8y ago
      There is an infinite number of definitions for “like their country”. Nazis in Greece like their country or what they perceive as “their country”.
    • fastball 8y ago
      It's much more disingenuous to pretend that words and phrases have universal meanings.
      • azernik 8y ago
        Universal isn't necessary. Well-understood in the American political context is sufficient.
    • CarlSchmitt 8y ago
      Not really...members of the MSM and random Twitter blue checkmarks had no issues calling Polish Nationalists "Nazis" and "White nationalists"...it is a legitimate political view to keep Poland Polish or Hungary Hungarian...are these "White nationalist" views or something different?
      • yawaramin 8y ago
        That depends. When you say 'Keep Poland Polish', what exactly do you mean?
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    • jakeogh 8y ago
      Wrong. It's a deliberate attempt to language engineer the idea that loving your country is bad. This is not new, the power structures that benefit from centralization (correctly) see national sovereignty as an obstacle. Note how you will never hear the term "ethnic supremacists" used by conventional media. It's too accurate and does not push the borderless agenda.
      • codyb 8y ago
        I don’t think anyone’s mentioned policing patriotism. You can be as patriotic as you want. America’s great, I love our nation, it’s people, culture, and ideals. That’s different from saying things like “get that Spanish off the menu, this is America”, “go home foreigners”, and “immigrants are criminals”. I’m sure you can see the difference.
        • jakeogh 8y ago
          There will always be some junk quotes people can find (or make up!) to support their agenda. I don't really care what FB does, I prefer it to have all the rope it needs, but this normalization of taking and modifying the meaning of terms to fit the anti-borders narrative is dishonest and manipulative. Again, it's not even remotely a new thing, the anti-borders crowd has been gunning against nationalism time eternal.
          • Veraticus 8y ago
            "Loving your country" is not "white nationalism." You're the one trying to redefine terms if you believe it is.
            • jakeogh 8y ago
              It's an inherently dishonest frame. I cant imagine running around talking about "(insert color) nationalists" when actually referring to people promoting segregation of citizens.
              • 8y ago
  • clucas 8y ago
    You're right that some of these terms have ambiguity, but your example is silly - it's well-accepted that the term "white nationalist" stands on its own and means something different from "white and a nationalist." But even setting aside your specific example, I don't believe that ambiguity should paralyze us into inaction. I think it's fair to say "OK, we'll ban anyone who advocates distributing political power based on race, with the white 'race' getting the most power... when people cross that line won't always be clear, but we'll do our best." For private action especially, we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
    • cat199 8y ago
      > it's well-accepted that the term "white nationalist" stands on its own and means something different from "white and a nationalist." Is it? Or is this a deliberately conflated term promoted as an 'official' label in public discourse in order to dissuade association with those favoring the more benign meaning? Agreed that ambiguity shouldn't create inaction - but it just as well shouldn't promote incorrect action either
      • speedplane 8y ago
        > Or is this a deliberately conflated term promoted as an 'official' label in public discourse in order to dissuade association with those favoring the more benign meaning? Why would you use the term white and nationalist together? Being white has very little to do with being a nationalist unless you believe it has everything to do with it, in which case you would be racist.
        • cat199 8y ago
          Maybe you wouldn't, but if you happen to be white, and taking an (inclusive, not race based) nationalist ideology, you can now conveniently be smeared by describing these two facts.. Oh her? don't listen to her, shes a 'white nationalist'. Also, if, assuming this confusion to be true, having the term 'white nationalist' existing in the discourse as a negative, those who are not aware of the nuances between 'whites who happen to be nationalist' and 'those promoting a white nation' are pre-biased via faulty discourse to discount the words of 'whites who happen to be nationalist'. Any popular terminology which deliberately overlooks subtlety and dismisses it when it is pointed out in the discourse is problematic. It's effectively a subtle smear campaign against the non-problematic nuances. See also the strangely similar situation with the term 'skinhead' - Initially this was a mostly apolitical working class subculture, most listened to soul music and smoked pot and listened to reggae, and many were apolitical or left/socialist leaning. Genearlly mildly populist, mostly white, but yes somewhat 'dangerous' in that it was a popular social movement of unconventional rowdy people of all stripes. (much like the 'disenfranchised trumpians' that the media is happy to highlight as contributing to the rise of the so-called 'white nationalism' we're talking about here) Cue one politically motivated overtly racist subgroup acting up and stealing all the headlines, and now the entire term/culture is essentially taboo.. One can argue that this group just got the press and 'messed up the term', but at some point editorial bias is a factor. For god sakes this is 'hacker news' I shouldn't need to explain this.
  • justatdotin 8y ago
    will neo-nazis be able to side-step appropriate regulation by framing hate statements as questions?
  • just_passing_by 8y ago
    Can a person from Eastern Europe adamantly sure their ancestors up to 5th generation were never involved in colonialist slave trade be considered a white supremacist for not embracing the white man stigma of the naval post-colonial societies?
  • mch82 8y ago
    We know, for sure, the dictionary definition. Consider looking it up & assessing whether you wish to apply the label to yourself.
    • remarkEon 8y ago
      >Consider looking it up & assessing whether you wish to apply the label to yourself. But this isn't what will happen. Expressing skepticism about immigration - a fairly normal and mainstream opinion in the 1990s and early 2000s - can easily be construed today as "white nationalism" by many on the political left. It's not you who gets to define what your views are on these platforms, it's the "moderators".
      • KozmoNau7 8y ago
        Openly questioning the validity of the capitalist system has been construed as hardcore hunger and famine bread lines planned economy USSR-style communism for decades. Welcome to not having a safe space anymore.
        • roenxi 8y ago
          Openly questioning the validity of the capitalist system is fine. Facebook shouldn't be banning people who don't like capitalism from their platform either.
        • sisu2019 8y ago
          you are a complaining about your ideology being ridiculed because its bad and leads to awful results, your interlocutor complains about not being able to voice his opinion without actual persecution.
          • deleted 8y ago
            [deleted]
  • seventytwo 8y ago
    Yes. Because history demonstrates our ability to do that - not to allow factions like the KKK to triumph. We’ve done this kind of thing before, and we’ll do it again. Facebook responding like this IS the marketplace of ideas reacting.
    • KozmoNau7 8y ago
      I've noticed this tendency among a lot of right wingers. Lately I've seen it a lot in metalhead circles, particularly black metal, which does have a bit of a nazi problem in some parts. They'll crow and gloat about how the scene isn't a safe space, that it's founded in hate and intolerance. But as soon as well-known nazi/NSBM-related bands or members of the scene are deplatformed and antagonized for their views, the tone goes straight to "get these leftists out, this is a right wing scene! This is censorship!" and so on. Apparently only right wing radicals should be allowed to have safe spaces... /s
  • tibbydudeza 8y ago
    In Sweden perhaps not since white and nation is analogous but in US you are going have a problem.
  • kingkawn 8y ago
    Yeah it means neo-Nazis who believe in the innate supremacy of the white race. If you’re one of them I want you to be deplatformed immediately and without sentimental hand-wringing about liberal platitudes. This will be an ongoing project and will require constant tweaking and adjustment, but I’m all for their removal from the public sphere. There are underlying economic and social issues leading to the reemergence of this worldview that need to be dealt with urgently and with peacemaking intention. Still, in the meantime this kind of thought if unchecked leads to genocide and must be stopped.
• zobzu 8y ago
  you think so? republican stuff is already regularly banned from various platforms, mainly because tech companies lean left. i dont consider myself republican, but the slippery slope seems all too real in this case.
  • amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    I'm curious, which platforms ban Republicans?
    • Brendinooo 8y ago
      OP said "Republican stuff", which if he meant that various conservative/Republican leaning stuff has been censored on Facebook, that's definitely true. Search around; most cases typically range from "persecution complex/not actually censorship" to "automated processes have implicit bias" to "neutral on the surface but always seem to hurt conservative causes". With FB you tend to see automated things catch conservative stuff, then get overturned on appeal rather than permabanning people. Facebook banning outside ads for the Ireland abortion referendum comes to mind, as well as the case where a Christian satire site was threatened with a ban for spreading false information because Snopes had fact-checked one of their articles as false. Susan B. Anthony List had a bunch of pro-life ads banned; I think most of them were restored. https://stream.org/328684-2/ https://stream.org/328684-2/ this is a more recent case that follows a familiar pattern: Flagged, rejected appeal, then mysteriously overturned appeal some days later.
      • laughinghan 8y ago
        I'm sure that tons of conservative/Republican leaning stuff has been censored on Facebook then overturned on appeal. Hopefully, you also don't doubt that there are also many examples of Facebook censoring liberal/left/non-Republican whatever stuff, and then overturning on appeal, many times mysteriously so, after initially rejecting the appeal. (This post presents like a dozen examples in the genre of black activists being banned for discussion of racism, such as uploading screenshots of racist and sexist harassment they received. You might also want a warning that these examples are interspersed with the author's strongly opinionated and bellicose comments. https://medium.com/@thedididelgado/mark-zuckerberg-hates-black-people-ae65426e3d2a https://medium.com/@thedididelgado/mark-zuckerberg-hates-bla... ) Due to their scale and the shittiness of their algorithms and processes at this kind of thing, surely you're not surprised there are tons of examples on every side. (This article documents more examples on all sides, including exemptions for a prominent Republican: https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-hate-speech-censorship-internal-documents-algorithms https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-hate-speech-cens... ) What reason do you have to believe these mistakes always seems to hurt conservative causes or that you tend to see conservative stuff get caught, disproportionately more than non-conservative stuff?
• gormo2 8y ago
  >They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry. Somehow saying "yes, these multinational corporation could exert undue influence over a political system, but they just wouldn't" does not seem sufficient. I feel that such an attitude is like saying "The US government would not spy on its on citizens -- they wouldn't do that, just imagine the public outcry!" Perhaps that is a bad analogy, but the issue here is that we are nearing the point where "oh, they wouldn't do such a thing" becomes untenable. The CFO of Google said, in the leaked video[1] of the TGIF immediately following Trump's election, that they would use "the great strength and resources and reach we have to continue to advance really important values." Going by the reactions of everyone in that meeting, their efforts are certainly not impartial or apolitical. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRf9UxsM-NE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRf9UxsM-NE
  • CathedralBorrow 8y ago
    What's the alternative? Governments dictating what kind of speech private communications platforms can and cannot allow? Is that better?
• antt 8y ago
  >They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry. Luckily, as moral agents, we humans are capable of differentiating "general political party" from "white nationalists", and can target the latter and not the former. Why white? The CCP is running concentration camps for hundreds of thousands of Muslims right now, yet I see no ban on the only party that can be called National Socialist today, just because the nation they are supporting is yellow.
  • yawaramin 8y ago
    Which banned party (on Facebook) are you talking about? You said, '... yet I see no ban on the only party that...'. Which banned party are you comparing it to?
    • coldtea 8y ago
      The CCP obviously (Chinese Communist Party, aka CPC), which he already mentioned. Not sure if CCP has a FB page, but that far is obvious.
      • jsutton 8y ago
        This discussion is about FB and, more broadly, speech on private platforms. Not the Chinese Communist Party or any governments.
      • yawaramin 8y ago
        Is it though? I can't find anything that explicitly says that Facebook has banned the CCP. Could you provide any sources which say this? Also, the post I was replying to said: > The CCP is running concentration camps for hundreds of thousands of Muslims right now, yet I see no ban on the only party that can be called National Socialist today, just because the nation they are supporting is yellow. I don't see any way to infer this as saying that Facebook has banned the CCP–what am I missing here? Also, if Facebook has indeed banned the CCP, well, turnabout is just fair play–after all, the CCP has banned Facebook from China.
  • AsyncAwait 8y ago
• colordrops 8y ago
  > Luckily, as moral agents, we humans are capable of differentiating "general political party" from "white nationalists", and can target the latter and not the former. This is highly debatable. There are plenty of examples of benign movements and opinions that have been stifled violently by society and the state. You can find with little effort plenty of people today calling for censoring or even being violent towards harmless liberal or conservative people because they are "communists" or "fascists". People are not good judgement and measured response.
  • yawaramin 8y ago
    Luckily, in civilized societies we have a system of checks and balances in place to ensure that doesn't happen.
    • remarkEon 8y ago
      Do we anymore? Facebook and Twitter have become a digital public commons for discourse today. The check and balance is "what Facebook decides". That doesn't exactly seem like an adversarial check and balance system to me.
      • toofy 8y ago
        > Facebook and Twitter have become a digital public commons for discourse today Absolutely correct, however, they aren’t the only places for public discourse. People have never been able to demand a newspaper print their article or that a magazine must include their story—people have always had the choice to start their own newspaper or their own magazine and build their own audience and this is still true today, in fact it’s much easier than it’s ever been. People who’s business is access to human inputs, whether they are newspapers, music venues, theaters, magazines, etc.. have almost always had the freedom to set their own standards and it isn’t clear to me why business owners shouldn’t have this freedom anymore.
        • coldtea 8y ago
          >Absolutely correct, however, they aren’t the only places for public discourse Small comfort if they are the main places for public discourse - so cutting people and ideas there essentially means relegating them to far less reach. Strange how when some foreign state censors FB or Twitter it's an outrage, but when FB or Twitter sensor people directly "there are other places". Not to mention the monetary deplatforming (e.g. Mastercard, PayPal, Patreon and co not allowing funding), in which case there are no "other places" (not many in any way, and not reputable for someone to go pay there). >People have never been able to demand a newspaper print their article or that a magazine must include their story Which is irrelevant, since newspapers and magazines where always top-down affairs, written and curated by a specific team. Social media and platforms were supposed to be open to society (hence "social"), not only for a select team of journalists to have an account there.
• int_19h 8y ago
  By definition, this arrangement favors viewpoints that generate more public outcry, which sets up any marginalized group for being steamrolled. Do you seriously think that's going to be restricted to white nationalism? I mean, there's already plenty of other stuff that Facebook is censoring that the same people who are cheering these news have pushed back against before. https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/internet-speech/facebook-shouldnt-censor-offensive-speech https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/internet-speech/facebo...
  • mike10010100 8y ago
    ...and yet white nationalists are still free to set their own social network up or use networks that don't care, like Voat for example. That's called freedom of association: the right for an organization or individual to not wish to associate with someone.
    • repolfx 8y ago
      The same Voat that just got banned in New Zealand for hosting stuff the government didn't approve of whilst Facebook, which also hosted it, was left alone? That Voat? Somehow I'm skeptical this is a viable approach short of Torrifying the entire internet.
      • mike10010100 8y ago
        > The same Voat that just got banned in New Zealand for hosting stuff the government didn't approve of whilst Facebook, which also hosted it, was left alone? Take it up with New Zealand, which has very strong laws about hate speech and promoting extremist communities. > whilst Facebook, which also hosted it, was left alone? That content makes up a microscopic amount of the content on Facebook, and it was removed when reported. That content makes up the vast majority of the traffic on Voat, however. It seems like you're moving the goalposts here, though. We're not talking about governments banning websites, we're talking about the government forcing websites to host content that they don't want to host. That's what's at play here. And the fact is that you are free to start a public or Tor-based community of your own, unless you're in countries where Tor is blocked, in which case I think you're in far deeper shit than this discussion is focused on.
• ryandrake 8y ago
  > They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry. If Facebook and Twitter suddenly decided to de-platform and ban any discussion praising, defending, or favoring a political party, where would the outcry happen? On Facebook? Sorry, it’s banned!
  • KozmoNau7 8y ago
    Traditional media, competing social media, forums, blogs, posters, demonstrations, sticker campaigns. Journalists would be absolutely salivating at the thought of writing about Facebook's new policy, especially if it was that blatant. FB and Twitter are not the entire world. It's good praxis to be involved with people in the real world.
    • mike10010100 8y ago
      I love how people have downvoted you with no response when you're right.
    • repolfx 8y ago
      No they wouldn't, because this already happens and you hear nothing. For instance in the UK Facebook banned the pages of a political party and very little was said because the same kinds of people who control Facebook also control the mainstream media, so they're almost always in agreement, except that journalists would really love Facebook to ban even more stuff to achieve the 'right outcomes', as they see it. https://www.pcmag.com/news/359847/facebook-bans-far-right-uk-political-party-over-hate-speech https://www.pcmag.com/news/359847/facebook-bans-far-right-uk...
      • mike10010100 8y ago
        > the same kinds of people who control Facebook also control the mainstream media There's that conspiracy language again! And then you go on to link a piece of "mainstream media" that writes extensively about it! Did you mean to prove yourself wrong?
• naasking 8y ago
  > They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry. This is an argument for mob rule. I'm not sure that's as comforting as you intended.
• BurningFrog 8y ago
  > They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry Where would the outcry happen? There aren't that many public platforms with any reach, and they're all adopting similar policies. In [blocked] no one can hear you scream!
  • javajosh 8y ago
    You have misused a slippery slope argument to turn the other position into a strawman. There are risks to this FB ban, but silencing outcry about the ban is not one of them. In practice, the distinction between banning a subject and banning a conversation about a subject ban, is easy to make. For example, Germany bans racist speech, but does not ban speech about whether racist speech ban should continue (and this particular debate is definitely alive and well in Germany). Even in the US we've banned certain words from broadcast TV for many years, but this never limited people from discussing whether the ban should continue!
    • vsl 8y ago
      > In practice, the distinction between banning a subject and banning a conversation about a subject ban, is easy to make Apparently not for Facebook’s moderators/censors workforce. Just they other day: https://mobile.twitter.com/OzraeliAvi/status/1110400928790675456 https://mobile.twitter.com/OzraeliAvi/status/111040092879067... The day before that they banned a local satirical comics and this keeps popping up regularly.
    • coldtea 8y ago
      >In practice, the distinction between banning a subject and banning a conversation about a subject ban, is easy to make And equally easy to abuse, something which has happened time and again: Complain about the "ban of X"? Discussion shut down as supporting X.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    • BurningFrog 8y ago
• josteink 8y ago
  > we humans are capable of differentiating "general political party" from "white nationalists", and can target the latter and not the former. We’re also good at being boiled slowly, like frogs.
  • joesb 8y ago
    Which is debunked.
    • coldtea 8y ago
      Regarding frogs, maybe. Regarding people, it has never been debunked, and it has been proven time and again to be exactly right.
      • magduf 8y ago
        This is correct. Frogs just aren't that dumb; it's been proven. Humans, on the other hand...
• sisu2019 8y ago
  you say that as if we didn't just have two years of progressives and media smearing people they disagree with as alt-right. Doesn't matter what they believe or say: Sam Harris? Alt-right. Tim Poole? Alt-right. Jordan Peterson? Alt-right. David Rubin? Alt-right. And that's just the leftists!
• raxxorrax 8y ago
  I can give you hundreds of examples of people being accused of being a white nationalist without any merit to it. To such a degree that this word almost lost its meaning. edit: Tim Pool for example was already accused. It will clearly be used to shut down unwelcome dissent.
  • AsyncAwait 8y ago
    Before we make this into 'conservatives being silenced', it's worth pointing out that the censorship problem also exists for leftists outlets that are left of the neoliberal centrist view of the D.C. Democratic Party.
    • raxxorrax 8y ago
      Taking a stand against content moderation was a fundamental leftist position some years ago... That said, I absolutely agree that leftist positions do get censored. Even if I currently like to underline my dissociation with its authoritarian excesses and general dishonesty on certain subjects, the problem is a general one.
      • pas 8y ago
        Unrestricted free speech was always a strange issue. Hitchens' very eloquently presented how control of speech was used to suppress a lot of groups, and he knew about the dangers of radicalization, incitement, hate speech, but considered those negatives acceptable. However not everyone thinks that it's so great. I don't know, and it's probably not something we can just settle easily. It's usually true, that a society cannot simply rely on "laws" to save it, and when the power imbalance get too extreme, then laws won't save anyone anyway. Though it seems having some kind of policy and publicly agreed way to stop serial inciters is not a bad idea. After all information censorship generally happens through claims of potential national security hazards and other gag orders, not by a too wide interpretation of hate speech laws. (But of course human creativity is pretty limitless when it comes to suppressing others.)
    • mike10010100 8y ago
• coldtea 8y ago
  >Luckily, as moral agents, we humans are capable of differentiating "general political party" from "white nationalists", and can target the latter and not the former. Really? How about plain nationalists? How about communists? How about separatists? How about traditionalists? How about "Occupy Wall Street"? How about "nationalists" in e.g Iceland, a country where nationalists would be predominantly if not exclusively white in the first place? If your idea of "general political party" is Democrats and Republicans and the occasional third candidate, ie. the bland two-party consensus that agrees on almost everything (foreign policy, more money to big money, etc), but disagrees on token issues (and that increasingly less), then sure. But the movements and parties that change things up historically were never welcomed as "general political parties" by the establishment and the "good people" of the 10%. I'm from a generally center-left-leaning country, where e.g. Reagan would be considered the epitome of nationalist and/or imperialist. Would it be OK for Facebook to censor Reagan (or some modern politician with the same ideas) on those grounds?
  • mike10010100 8y ago
    > Really? How about plain nationalists? How about communists? How about separatists? How about traditionalists? How about "Occupy Wall Street"? How about "nationalists" in e.g Iceland, a country where nationalists would be predominantly if not exclusively white in the first place? Are they talking about racial genocide? No? Then they're a-okay. I don't know why this is such a difficult concept for people to understand: If you're advocating genocide or violence against a people, you're gonna get banned. Pure and simple.
• firexcy 8y ago
  Yes, they wouldn’t do that. But no, checks and balances can not be based on something that would or would not happen.