6 ms·

Finally - they may one day realize the is a difference between freedom of speech and freedom to spread lies.

whenchamenia 7y ago
Lies are free speech, and protected as such. Only threats and statements made to intimidate are 'nor free speech'. Censorship is censorship, even when the recipient is an unrepentant asshole.
- lawlessone 7y ago
  The likes of Tommy Robinson isn't free speech, it's grifting for cash and stochastic terrorism.
  - threwawasy1228 7y ago
    Regardless of what you think of him, I think that the press has a right to know about trials that are going on. There should not be press blackouts and media bans on reporting ongoing trials that are underway. I do think he is a racist, but in the US, the thing that rocketed him to recent fame would never have happened. In the US we are allowed to know about trials and the media is allowed report on them when they are happening.
    - lawlessone 7y ago
      Tommy nearly caused the trial to collapse and for those rapists to get away.
      - threwawasy1228 7y ago
        I don't see how the act of one man filming the outside of a courthouse from the street can cause a trial to collapse. And nothing I see online backs up that claim. In the US there is no danger of a trial collapsing if I film a courthouse from the sidewalk outside of it, it is my absolute right to do so.
        lawlessone 7y ago
        > In the US there is no danger Well it's the UK isn't it? They're a little ahead of you.
  - trumpanomics 7y ago
    Still speech. Silencing him just streisand effects him anyways so it's pretty pointless. You turn controversial ideas into forbidden knowledge. Alex Jones is probably more powerful now to his followers due to the fact that he's contraband
    - lawlessone 7y ago
      of course... 5 minute old account named trumpanomics..
      - Bjartr 7y ago
        If he's wrong, he's wrong regardless of his name or the age of his account.
        lawlessone 7y ago
        Thank you. He is also wrong.
        AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        Could you supply a bit more reason and/or argument than just "he's wrong" and "the account is five minutes old, with a name that seems fishy to me". So far you have said exactly nothing that looks even remotely persuasive.
      - bsagdiyev 7y ago
        My account isn't 5 minutes old, but I still agree with what parent post said. Making something taboo makes it coveted or people more interested in it than if it wasn't. Pull the straw man out and try another argument please.
    - bsamuels 7y ago
      I look forward to Alex Jones becoming the kind of forbidden knowledge that the flat earthers had to distribute using flyers & home-printed tabloids in the pre-internet days.
- chrismeller 7y ago
  And who defines “hate speech” and how do we know we’ll still agree with them tomorrow? I realize that this is specifically talking about UK groups and that even in the US the 1st only applies to the government and not to any private person or entity, but it amazes me how many people complain about the massive amount of information Facebook has about them, complain about how Facebook has misused or sold that data, and then complain that Facebook hasn’t banned someone they find offensive. Communication has become insanely centralized in recent years. Facebook can’t be trusted to have or use your information, but you’re fine with them being the free speech police?
  - lawlessone 7y ago
    >Communication has become insanely centralized in recent years. Facebook can’t be trusted to have or use your information, but you’re fine with them being the free speech police? I talked with some friends at the weekend over pints. We didn't need facebook to act as a middleman. I don't need facebook to stand on soapbox either. This hasn't changed.
    - chrismeller 7y ago
      Absolutely. Unfortunately the rest of the world has and now I’m a million miles away from my friends in a country that doesn’t speak the same language and there’s this great thing called the internet that makes it feel like I’m not so far away anymore... This is why the internet was invented and why there were free and open protocols invented to communicate using it. Unfortunately then AOL and AIM started and it was downhill after that... now we all rely on Facebook or Google or Twitter to relay our messages and that’s not great for anyone.
  - iron0013 7y ago
    They're not the "free speech police", they're the "speech on their own platform which they own and operate" police. Why are you pretending not to understand the difference?
    - Shivetya 7y ago
- airstrike 7y ago
  Free speech doesn't imply absolute freedom. There are limits to every right, and freedom of speech isn't an exception
- bsamuels 7y ago
  The internet is not a protected platform, you do not have a right to free speech on other people's websites. The 'safe harbor' excuse that Cloudflare is known for using isn't going to cut it, and Facebook sees the writing on the wall. If you think deleting viral lies on the internet is censorship, then you're really not going to like how social media is going to develop over the next 5 years.
  - JasonFruit 7y ago
    To be fair, it is literally censorship. It isn't government censorship, but it is a body of people making decisions about what topics and ideas are not allowable. I see a danger in that, and you are right — I'm not going to like the direction social media and communication in general seem likely to go.
- gambiting 7y ago
  I disagree - some lies shouldn't be protected speech. Where I'm from it's illegal to say that Holocaust didn't happen and for a good reason.
  - vixen99 7y ago
    According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#cite_note-13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#... Noam Chomsky has this to say: "It seems to me something of a scandal that it is even necessary to debate these issues two centuries after Voltaire defended the right of free expression for views he detested. It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers."
- sinemetu11 7y ago
  Indeed, see The Misguided Attacks on ACLU for Defending Neo-Nazis’ Free Speech Rights: https://theintercept.com/2017/08/13/the-misguided-attacks-on-aclu-for-defending-neo-nazis-free-speech-rights-in-charlottesville/ https://theintercept.com/2017/08/13/the-misguided-attacks-on...
- yters 7y ago
  Ironically, there are vast swaths of threats and intimidation made on social media that are not censored.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    True, but... do you approve of that? Do you think people should be free to use social media for threats and intimidation? Facebook is shutting down what it considers the most prominent, aggressive, and dangerous of those who do such things. That is not, in itself, bad. If they proceed to shut down the right but not the left, if they start deciding that mainstream right positions are "hate speech", that's going to be a problem. But if they have kind of a threshold, and anybody else who crosses that threshold (no matter what their position) gets shut down, that's a good thing. (The threshold may be higher than many of us like. That's probably also a good thing.)
    - yters 7y ago
      Yes, if they could establish an objective threshold that'd be great. Probably simplest is to restrict to actual threats. But, someone saying transgenderism might be a mental disorder is not a threat, so should not be banned. Likewise saying capitalism has led to overpopulation, environmental destruction and cultural imperialism is not a threat and should not be banned, regardless of whether it is true or not. I also think some sort of enforcement of etiquette that is content agnostic would be great, but that's a bit trickier to draw the line.
vorpalhex 7y ago
"Obviously the media portrayal of Tiananmen square is a lie. Tank man never happened, protesters were never harmed or killed. Anyone who posts this is spreading lies!"
- lkrubner 7y ago
  You use quote marks, but what you've written does not appear in the article and does not appear to be a quote.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    Open your favorite grammar book and read the full usage of quotation marks which includes a usage as so called scare quotes or shudder quotes which indicates the author is using words in a way not genuinely intended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes
- lordCarbonFiber 7y ago
  So we've got to make private industry (facebook has never and will never have the obligation to enforce first amendment rights on their platform, that's for the government) harbor any and all hate groups because if we don't ? happens and suddenly we live in the PRC? Assuming we all support capitalism here, it should be a pretty simple calculus for Facebook. Does having (neo)Nazis on their site represent more users than they lose for having them.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    What if your ISP doesn't care for security researchers or journalists, and therefore would like to terminate their internet access? Can a telephone company do the same? What about the electric company - they are often times privately owned after all. What if they don't care for people who are gay, or from a specific country? Could Facebook say, choose to ban all Christians or anyone who believes in a two state solution in the middle east?
    - 7y ago
lohszvu 7y ago
Are you serious? Lies are and should be protected under free speech. There was a time that the scientific community believed the earth was flat and the sun revolved around the earth. People with different opinions should not be forcefully silenced. The government should not be able to decide which ideas are "lies." In this case, Facebook can ban anyone they want, but that has nothing to do with free speech.
- gambiting 7y ago
  >>Are you serious? Lies are and should be protected under free speech. Certain lies definitely shouldn't. Denying holocaust happened is illegal where I'm from and it should be.
  - shittyadmin 7y ago
    Why exactly should that be illegal? The government should not be the decider of truths. At least if private entities implement this kind of thing, those who wish can still discuss it someplace else. Though pushing these things under the rug doesn't have the best reputation (see recent 8chan tied shooting).
    - gambiting 7y ago
      Because our country has lost 6 million people in WW2 and the holocaust, estimated 1/5th of total population. Saying that it hasn't happened is more than just a lie - it's attacking the core being of our identity and denying the atrocities that were done against us. It should be illegal and luckily it is. Like - imagine if US was attacked and the attacker killed 60 million Americans. I can almost guarantee that no matter how strongly Americans believe in the 1st amendment, saying that it hasn't happened would be made illegal.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - shittyadmin 7y ago
trumpanomics 7y ago
So oblivious. Lots of things that were deemed to be lies have been proven true. We don't allow the government or privately owned platforms to be the arbitrator of truth. We have a free marketplace of ideas and let everyone decide on their own.
- toofy 7y ago
  > We don’t allow...privately owned platforms to be the arbitrator of truth. Sure we do, we allow every other privately ran website on the planet to pick and choose what or who it allows, why should this be different for YouTube or Facebook or whatever other website bans racists next. The most prominent racist forum on the internet doesn’t have a hosting space for left media, we don’t expect fox news to give unfettered and free streaming on their website to every liberal protest group in the country, the very forum we’re posting on right now has moderation, they don’t let random trolls spew whatever they want here. Sites care about their reputation and who/what they’re associated with, why is this suddenly a bad thing? Sites and forums have branding to be concerned about, they have reputations they’re trying to curate, all of them. Facebook has become widely known as a misinformation hellsite, who in their right mind can blame them for trying to clear that reputation? In my opinion it’s probably too late, but I certainly can’t blame them for trying..
voltrone 7y ago
says who? they are people that no one voted for that decide for us what's hate speech and what is not.
- iron0013 7y ago
  Only if you decide to use their platform, which you're perfectly free not to do...

Lies are free speech, and protected as such. Only threats and statements made to intimidate are 'nor free speech'. Censorship is censorship, even when the recipient is an unrepentant asshole.

lawlessone 7y ago
The likes of Tommy Robinson isn't free speech, it's grifting for cash and stochastic terrorism.
- threwawasy1228 7y ago
  Regardless of what you think of him, I think that the press has a right to know about trials that are going on. There should not be press blackouts and media bans on reporting ongoing trials that are underway. I do think he is a racist, but in the US, the thing that rocketed him to recent fame would never have happened. In the US we are allowed to know about trials and the media is allowed report on them when they are happening.
  - lawlessone 7y ago
    Tommy nearly caused the trial to collapse and for those rapists to get away.
    - threwawasy1228 7y ago
      I don't see how the act of one man filming the outside of a courthouse from the street can cause a trial to collapse. And nothing I see online backs up that claim. In the US there is no danger of a trial collapsing if I film a courthouse from the sidewalk outside of it, it is my absolute right to do so.
      - lawlessone 7y ago
        > In the US there is no danger Well it's the UK isn't it? They're a little ahead of you.
- trumpanomics 7y ago
  Still speech. Silencing him just streisand effects him anyways so it's pretty pointless. You turn controversial ideas into forbidden knowledge. Alex Jones is probably more powerful now to his followers due to the fact that he's contraband
  - lawlessone 7y ago
    of course... 5 minute old account named trumpanomics..
    - Bjartr 7y ago
      If he's wrong, he's wrong regardless of his name or the age of his account.
      - lawlessone 7y ago
        Thank you. He is also wrong.
        AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        Could you supply a bit more reason and/or argument than just "he's wrong" and "the account is five minutes old, with a name that seems fishy to me". So far you have said exactly nothing that looks even remotely persuasive.
    - bsagdiyev 7y ago
      My account isn't 5 minutes old, but I still agree with what parent post said. Making something taboo makes it coveted or people more interested in it than if it wasn't. Pull the straw man out and try another argument please.
  - bsamuels 7y ago
    I look forward to Alex Jones becoming the kind of forbidden knowledge that the flat earthers had to distribute using flyers & home-printed tabloids in the pre-internet days.
chrismeller 7y ago
And who defines “hate speech” and how do we know we’ll still agree with them tomorrow? I realize that this is specifically talking about UK groups and that even in the US the 1st only applies to the government and not to any private person or entity, but it amazes me how many people complain about the massive amount of information Facebook has about them, complain about how Facebook has misused or sold that data, and then complain that Facebook hasn’t banned someone they find offensive. Communication has become insanely centralized in recent years. Facebook can’t be trusted to have or use your information, but you’re fine with them being the free speech police?
- lawlessone 7y ago
  >Communication has become insanely centralized in recent years. Facebook can’t be trusted to have or use your information, but you’re fine with them being the free speech police? I talked with some friends at the weekend over pints. We didn't need facebook to act as a middleman. I don't need facebook to stand on soapbox either. This hasn't changed.
  - chrismeller 7y ago
    Absolutely. Unfortunately the rest of the world has and now I’m a million miles away from my friends in a country that doesn’t speak the same language and there’s this great thing called the internet that makes it feel like I’m not so far away anymore... This is why the internet was invented and why there were free and open protocols invented to communicate using it. Unfortunately then AOL and AIM started and it was downhill after that... now we all rely on Facebook or Google or Twitter to relay our messages and that’s not great for anyone.
- iron0013 7y ago
  They're not the "free speech police", they're the "speech on their own platform which they own and operate" police. Why are you pretending not to understand the difference?
  - Shivetya 7y ago
airstrike 7y ago
Free speech doesn't imply absolute freedom. There are limits to every right, and freedom of speech isn't an exception
bsamuels 7y ago
The internet is not a protected platform, you do not have a right to free speech on other people's websites. The 'safe harbor' excuse that Cloudflare is known for using isn't going to cut it, and Facebook sees the writing on the wall. If you think deleting viral lies on the internet is censorship, then you're really not going to like how social media is going to develop over the next 5 years.
- JasonFruit 7y ago
  To be fair, it is literally censorship. It isn't government censorship, but it is a body of people making decisions about what topics and ideas are not allowable. I see a danger in that, and you are right — I'm not going to like the direction social media and communication in general seem likely to go.
gambiting 7y ago
I disagree - some lies shouldn't be protected speech. Where I'm from it's illegal to say that Holocaust didn't happen and for a good reason.
- vixen99 7y ago
  According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#cite_note-13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#... Noam Chomsky has this to say: "It seems to me something of a scandal that it is even necessary to debate these issues two centuries after Voltaire defended the right of free expression for views he detested. It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers."
sinemetu11 7y ago
Indeed, see The Misguided Attacks on ACLU for Defending Neo-Nazis’ Free Speech Rights: https://theintercept.com/2017/08/13/the-misguided-attacks-on-aclu-for-defending-neo-nazis-free-speech-rights-in-charlottesville/ https://theintercept.com/2017/08/13/the-misguided-attacks-on...
yters 7y ago
Ironically, there are vast swaths of threats and intimidation made on social media that are not censored.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  True, but... do you approve of that? Do you think people should be free to use social media for threats and intimidation? Facebook is shutting down what it considers the most prominent, aggressive, and dangerous of those who do such things. That is not, in itself, bad. If they proceed to shut down the right but not the left, if they start deciding that mainstream right positions are "hate speech", that's going to be a problem. But if they have kind of a threshold, and anybody else who crosses that threshold (no matter what their position) gets shut down, that's a good thing. (The threshold may be higher than many of us like. That's probably also a good thing.)
  - yters 7y ago
    Yes, if they could establish an objective threshold that'd be great. Probably simplest is to restrict to actual threats. But, someone saying transgenderism might be a mental disorder is not a threat, so should not be banned. Likewise saying capitalism has led to overpopulation, environmental destruction and cultural imperialism is not a threat and should not be banned, regardless of whether it is true or not. I also think some sort of enforcement of etiquette that is content agnostic would be great, but that's a bit trickier to draw the line.

vorpalhex 7y ago

"Obviously the media portrayal of Tiananmen square is a lie. Tank man never happened, protesters were never harmed or killed. Anyone who posts this is spreading lies!"

lkrubner 7y ago
You use quote marks, but what you've written does not appear in the article and does not appear to be a quote.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  Open your favorite grammar book and read the full usage of quotation marks which includes a usage as so called scare quotes or shudder quotes which indicates the author is using words in a way not genuinely intended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes
lordCarbonFiber 7y ago
So we've got to make private industry (facebook has never and will never have the obligation to enforce first amendment rights on their platform, that's for the government) harbor any and all hate groups because if we don't ? happens and suddenly we live in the PRC? Assuming we all support capitalism here, it should be a pretty simple calculus for Facebook. Does having (neo)Nazis on their site represent more users than they lose for having them.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  What if your ISP doesn't care for security researchers or journalists, and therefore would like to terminate their internet access? Can a telephone company do the same? What about the electric company - they are often times privately owned after all. What if they don't care for people who are gay, or from a specific country? Could Facebook say, choose to ban all Christians or anyone who believes in a two state solution in the middle east?
  - 7y ago

lohszvu 7y ago

Are you serious? Lies are and should be protected under free speech. There was a time that the scientific community believed the earth was flat and the sun revolved around the earth. People with different opinions should not be forcefully silenced. The government should not be able to decide which ideas are "lies." In this case, Facebook can ban anyone they want, but that has nothing to do with free speech.

gambiting 7y ago
>>Are you serious? Lies are and should be protected under free speech. Certain lies definitely shouldn't. Denying holocaust happened is illegal where I'm from and it should be.
- shittyadmin 7y ago
  Why exactly should that be illegal? The government should not be the decider of truths. At least if private entities implement this kind of thing, those who wish can still discuss it someplace else. Though pushing these things under the rug doesn't have the best reputation (see recent 8chan tied shooting).
  - gambiting 7y ago
    Because our country has lost 6 million people in WW2 and the holocaust, estimated 1/5th of total population. Saying that it hasn't happened is more than just a lie - it's attacking the core being of our identity and denying the atrocities that were done against us. It should be illegal and luckily it is. Like - imagine if US was attacked and the attacker killed 60 million Americans. I can almost guarantee that no matter how strongly Americans believe in the 1st amendment, saying that it hasn't happened would be made illegal.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - shittyadmin 7y ago

trumpanomics 7y ago

So oblivious. Lots of things that were deemed to be lies have been proven true. We don't allow the government or privately owned platforms to be the arbitrator of truth. We have a free marketplace of ideas and let everyone decide on their own.

toofy 7y ago
> We don’t allow...privately owned platforms to be the arbitrator of truth. Sure we do, we allow every other privately ran website on the planet to pick and choose what or who it allows, why should this be different for YouTube or Facebook or whatever other website bans racists next. The most prominent racist forum on the internet doesn’t have a hosting space for left media, we don’t expect fox news to give unfettered and free streaming on their website to every liberal protest group in the country, the very forum we’re posting on right now has moderation, they don’t let random trolls spew whatever they want here. Sites care about their reputation and who/what they’re associated with, why is this suddenly a bad thing? Sites and forums have branding to be concerned about, they have reputations they’re trying to curate, all of them. Facebook has become widely known as a misinformation hellsite, who in their right mind can blame them for trying to clear that reputation? In my opinion it’s probably too late, but I certainly can’t blame them for trying..

voltrone 7y ago

says who? they are people that no one voted for that decide for us what's hate speech and what is not.

iron0013 7y ago
Only if you decide to use their platform, which you're perfectly free not to do...