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> This suggest the problem is my lack of ability to understand, when the problem is there is no longer a common definition. The only misunderstanding seems to

> This suggest the problem is my lack of ability to understand, when the problem is there is no longer a common definition. The only misunderstanding seems to be yours. We can clearly identify white nationalists as actual Nazis, no redefinition required. > Censorship can be conducted by a government, private institutions, and corporations. No one is saying that corporations can't censor things. I am saying that this is not censorship. Facebook deplatforming you is not the same as censoring you. > maybe the principle is race after all? The only thing we're discussing here is the deplatforming of white nationalist content from Facebook. Bringing other races or religions and their extremism in is totally tangential at best, and actively disingenuous at worst. > Are you well read on the topic, or is this just a casual opinion that sounds about right? There are many examples in the news recently. Here's one I read just the other day: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/trumps-rhetoric-does-inspire-more-hate-crimes/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/trumps-rh... White nationalist speech creates hate crimes; the correlation appears clear to me. Of course, it also seems logical to me without any sources, so sources are just a nice bonus. > Can you think of any possible undesirable reactions (regardless of the soundness of the logic underlying the motivation) to this type of policy? Essentially your argument seems to boil down to: we shouldn't create good policies because crazy extremists might have bad reactions to them. But crazy extremists have bad reactions to everything. We should be trying to deplatform and deconvert extremists instead of catering to their sensitive tastes. If that offends them and causes them to lash out, that is unfortunate, but they'll do that anyway. At least if they do it to this there might be less of them in the future. > If everything is random, why even bother with policies like this, or any at all? While you can't control how people react to what you do, you can do what you believe is right and hope it has a good outcome in the future. Facebook apparently agrees with me.

mistermann 8y ago
> The only misunderstanding seems to be yours. We can clearly identify white nationalists as actual Nazis, no redefinition required. a) With no standard definition of the phrases? b) Some people may be able to, but can Facebook accurately and fairly (despite no standard accepted meaning of many terms) police speech (remember, we're not dealing with people wearing white hats at a rally, we're dealing with speech, which is subtle), at scale? Sure everyone can agree at the extremes, but when it's close to the middle, then it's complicated. It's like "I know pornography when I see it." > No one is saying that corporations can't censor things. I am saying that this is not censorship. Facebook deplatforming you is not the same as censoring you. https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/03/standing-against-hate/ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/03/standing-against-hate/ "Today we’re announcing a ban on praise, support and representation of white nationalism and white separatism on Facebook and Instagram, which we’ll start enforcing next week." I'm not saying they don't have a right to do this, it is their platform after all. I'm not even saying that it is necessarily or certainly a bad idea. You and I disagreeing on this is fine and healthy. But how can you interpret "you can't say <x>" as not censorship? I asked you earlier for the definition of the word you're using, and you didn't reply. I ask again: please tell me the definition you're using for "censorship", with a link to the source. > The only thing we're discussing here is the deplatforming of white nationalist content from Facebook. Bringing other races or religions and their extremism in is totally tangential at best, and actively disingenuous at worst. No, that's the only thing the article is discussing. The HN discussion, and our thread in particular, are discussing broader principles of free speech and fairness, possible downsides of these types of decisions, etc. >>> I believe that social media is helping incite these incidents, so I do legitimately believe the amount of people participating in hate crimes will be reduced as a result of this. >> A perfectly reasonable theory, what evidence of this do you have? Are you well read on the topic, or is this just a casual opinion that sounds about right? > There are many examples in the news recently. Here's one I read just the other day: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/trumps-rh.. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/trumps-rh.... White nationalist speech creates hate crimes; the correlation appears clear to me. "To test this, we aggregated hate-crime incident data and Trump rally data (a different variable than our topic of conversation, but again, no need to bother ourselves with precision or details) to the county level and then used statistical tools to estimate a rally’s impact. We included controls for factors such as the county’s crime rates, its number of active hate groups, its minority populations, its percentage with college educations, its location in the country and the month when the rallies occurred. We found that counties that had hosted a 2016 Trump campaign rally saw a 226 percent increase in reported hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host such a rally. Of course, our analysis cannot be certain it was Trump’s campaign rally rhetoric that caused people to commit more hate crimes in the host county." You can find a correlation in data for anything you want to support, see: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations Now, stating that doesn't prove your claim is wrong, I'm just pointing out the one piece of evidence you finally provided is little more than an op-ed piece. We should be collecting more and better data on these things if they're important, so we can set evidence-based policy. Erring on the side of caution (as Facebook is doing) is fine, but there's no need to tell lies in the process as far as I can see. > Of course, it also seems logical to me without any sources, so sources are just a nice bonus. This sentence explains this conversation, as well as the general state of political conversation in 2019: facts and evidence are considered completely optional. > Essentially your argument seems to boil down to: we shouldn't create good policies because crazy extremists might have bad reactions to them. No, that is one small point of my overall concerns (my "argument", if any, is that you won't provide any evidence for your claims, or assert that none is necessary when curtailing general free speech), and it's an important point. People are becoming incredibly politically polarized to the degree that it is causing strange behavior. Some people lose the ability to engage in logic & evidence based conversations on particular topics, others shoot up churches. Shit is pretty seriously fucked up and doesn't seem to be getting better. Being cautious and thoughtful about non-obvious risks seems like a good idea to me, not something to avoid.

mistermann 8y ago

> The only misunderstanding seems to be yours. We can clearly identify white nationalists as actual Nazis, no redefinition required. a) With no standard definition of the phrases? b) Some people may be able to, but can Facebook accurately and fairly (despite no standard accepted meaning of many terms) police speech (remember, we're not dealing with people wearing white hats at a rally, we're dealing with speech, which is subtle), at scale? Sure everyone can agree at the extremes, but when it's close to the middle, then it's complicated. It's like "I know pornography when I see it." > No one is saying that corporations can't censor things. I am saying that this is not censorship. Facebook deplatforming you is not the same as censoring you. https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/03/standing-against-hate/ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/03/standing-against-hate/ "Today we’re announcing a ban on praise, support and representation of white nationalism and white separatism on Facebook and Instagram, which we’ll start enforcing next week." I'm not saying they don't have a right to do this, it is their platform after all. I'm not even saying that it is necessarily or certainly a bad idea. You and I disagreeing on this is fine and healthy. But how can you interpret "you can't say <x>" as not censorship? I asked you earlier for the definition of the word you're using, and you didn't reply. I ask again: please tell me the definition you're using for "censorship", with a link to the source. > The only thing we're discussing here is the deplatforming of white nationalist content from Facebook. Bringing other races or religions and their extremism in is totally tangential at best, and actively disingenuous at worst. No, that's the only thing the article is discussing. The HN discussion, and our thread in particular, are discussing broader principles of free speech and fairness, possible downsides of these types of decisions, etc. >>> I believe that social media is helping incite these incidents, so I do legitimately believe the amount of people participating in hate crimes will be reduced as a result of this. >> A perfectly reasonable theory, what evidence of this do you have? Are you well read on the topic, or is this just a casual opinion that sounds about right? > There are many examples in the news recently. Here's one I read just the other day: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/trumps-rh.. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/trumps-rh.... White nationalist speech creates hate crimes; the correlation appears clear to me. "To test this, we aggregated hate-crime incident data and Trump rally data (a different variable than our topic of conversation, but again, no need to bother ourselves with precision or details) to the county level and then used statistical tools to estimate a rally’s impact. We included controls for factors such as the county’s crime rates, its number of active hate groups, its minority populations, its percentage with college educations, its location in the country and the month when the rallies occurred. We found that counties that had hosted a 2016 Trump campaign rally saw a 226 percent increase in reported hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host such a rally. Of course, our analysis cannot be certain it was Trump’s campaign rally rhetoric that caused people to commit more hate crimes in the host county." You can find a correlation in data for anything you want to support, see: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations Now, stating that doesn't prove your claim is wrong, I'm just pointing out the one piece of evidence you finally provided is little more than an op-ed piece. We should be collecting more and better data on these things if they're important, so we can set evidence-based policy. Erring on the side of caution (as Facebook is doing) is fine, but there's no need to tell lies in the process as far as I can see. > Of course, it also seems logical to me without any sources, so sources are just a nice bonus. This sentence explains this conversation, as well as the general state of political conversation in 2019: facts and evidence are considered completely optional. > Essentially your argument seems to boil down to: we shouldn't create good policies because crazy extremists might have bad reactions to them. No, that is one small point of my overall concerns (my "argument", if any, is that you won't provide any evidence for your claims, or assert that none is necessary when curtailing general free speech), and it's an important point. People are becoming incredibly politically polarized to the degree that it is causing strange behavior. Some people lose the ability to engage in logic & evidence based conversations on particular topics, others shoot up churches. Shit is pretty seriously fucked up and doesn't seem to be getting better. Being cautious and thoughtful about non-obvious risks seems like a good idea to me, not something to avoid.