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He's right. China banned Facebook and no one is accusing Russia of hacking their elections. Clearly banning Facebook is the path forward for democracy and civil

He's right. China banned Facebook and no one is accusing Russia of hacking their elections. Clearly banning Facebook is the path forward for democracy and civil liberties. clearly.

RodgerTheGreat 7y ago
A narrative in which any punishment leveled at Facebook is construed as an assault on free speech and civil liberty is _very_ convenient for Facebook. Fining an automotive company that makes unsafe cars is not attacking personal freedom of movement. Fining hospitals that are unsanitary is not attacking your reproductive rights. Shutting down a bank that commits fraud is not an attack on free enterprise. Facebook isn't a pillar of democracy; it's a for-profit business that inserts itself as a middle-man in human communication.
- ummwhat 7y ago
  Ok fine I'll turn flippant curt mode off for a moment. I don't actually like Facebook. I don't work for them. I don't use them. But if a government is going to ban something they should have a compelling reason. It's not a freedom of speech thing it's a freedom to do what you want with your time and money as an adult thing. I don't care if the thing is drugs, porn or Facebook, it shouldn't be banned. Banning Facebook because it's inconvenient to the establishment is the path towards becoming China. That was my point. We will wake up very soon to a world of banned sites and vpns all in the name of our protection.
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  A narrative in which any punishment leveled at Facebook is construed as an assault on free speech and civil liberty is _very_ convenient for Facebook. Certainly it's convenient for Facebook. Does that prove it's not true? Fining an automotive company that makes unsafe cars is not attacking personal freedom of movement. Uh, you know publishers, even crappy publishers, have been protected historically in a different fashion than other sorts of industries. Historically, the concept of freedom of expression has generally been for the protection of what some people might consider "unsafe books". The production of an unsafe automobile isn't considered an example of "protected expression" but the production of an essay, book or other "container idea" is considered protected (with specific exceptions, of course). Facebook isn't a pillar of democracy. Free speech is seldom about protecting the expression ideas everyone likes - those usually don't need protection. Free speech is about prevent the state, in particular, from suppressing "bad", "wrong", "unpatriotic" etc ideas, because those are the targets of suppression. And the pillars of democracy are those lawyers and judges that defend free speech, not the completely random assortment of people, some terrible, who practice freedom speech. ...it's a for-profit business that inserts itself as a middle-man in human communication. Those publishers who've been sued and defend their right to publish various banned in the US (such as those of Henry Miller) were also for-profit businesses inserting themselves as middle-men in human communication. If we're living in a capitalist society, expression is going to require middle-men of one sort or another so suppressing these is going to be effectively suppressing free expression.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    > If we're living in a capitalist society, expression is going to require middle-men of one sort or another so suppressing these is going to be effectively suppressing free expression. Only because of this naive bare-minimum protocol stack of HTTP/DNS, which discourages users from owning their own identities, pushing all traffic to centralizing servers. A decade old phone has enough computing power to serve the majority of users' personal communication needs. Ultimately centralized "social media" can only turn out to be yet another populist dumpster fire, ending up in the same state as the nightly newses, nytimes, etc - overwhelming sources of straight up government propaganda . The revolution will not be televised, and this still applies even when the TV has become a javascript browser. This entire issue is essentially just debating between supporting a rock or a hard place, wherein actually they both suck. We're in this position purely because we the people allowed the surveillance companies way too much trust, and the only way out is to move past them.
- cr0sh 7y ago
  > Fining hospitals that are unsanitary is not attacking your reproductive rights. That would be perfectly acceptable if there were more than one service provider of these services, but in the case of MO - there isn't. There's a single Planned Parenthood clinic for the entire state, and they are being forced to shut down. There used to be plenty, but thanks to other onerous laws their legislature put in place with the aim of making abortion defacto unavailable, those other clinics all had to shut down, leaving the single provider. And now it looks like they'll have none to provide those services, which was their goal all along. How anyone can argue that isn't an attack on reproductive rights is beyond me. If it were such that it was simple for another organization to come in and do what PP did, while abiding by all of those extra laws, it would have happened already. The fact that it didn't, and the fact that PP couldn't do it themselves (it hasn't helped that their federal funding has been basically slashed to nothing for grandstanding reasons that were false to begin with), shows that those laws are working as intended, to make those seeking such care second-class citizens. It essentially makes it impossible for women and men to get proper low-cost reproductive health care in the state. But they can still say "Well, it's all constitutional, so too bad!" as they thumb their nose to everyone else, especially their opposition. Their citizens voted for this, though - I hope they enjoy their face without a nose; it's only going to get worse from here on out for them. All on the backs of disadvantaged women, of course.
- mindslight 7y ago
  In general, this is the standard playbook all the surveillance valley companies have been branding themselves with - setting themselves up as middlemen for some type of person-to-person interaction, taking credit for the interaction itself as if they're a necessary part of it, but absolving their responsibility for any downsides by passing the buck to their users. It's effectively a motte and bailey - the motte is the organic interaction, the bailey is the imposition of their opinionated business practices. Business practices which include optimizing for engagement (aka time wasted), building comprehensive surveillance profiles, marketing themselves as coherent service providers to recruit new peers, and charging hefty transaction fees.
- chr1 7y ago
  Sure developing laws that would protect people and not allow monopolies is the job of lawmakers. If they were suggesting laws about users being able to take out their information, crossposting from competing platform, finding out why an add is shown and who have paid for it, all the power to them. But if they are suggesting to ban one particular site it shows their incompetence as lawmakers, and breaks regulations that have been applied on lawmakers themselves by constitution.
kbenson 7y ago
It doesn't necessarily need to be to solve the problem, it can be to force movement on the problem by both forcing awareness of the issue to users and impacting service overall, which is felt by the service provider. China is not a good example because China both had many reasons for blocking Facebook and already has it blocked, so it's not doing anything new.
arcticbull 7y ago
You know China doesn't have elections right? Well, outside of Hong Kong.
jchook 7y ago
China is, however, accused of aggressive and unethical censorship.
rchaud 7y ago
It's very telling that you used an obvious strawman like China and didn't see fit to mention Myanmar. Despite complaints, FB left up numerous pages run by the Myanmar military that spread hate and disinformation against the Rohingya people, of whom thousands have been murdered, and hundreds of thousands have been made refugees. Facebook "eventually" deleted these pages, but well after the damage was done.[0] [0] https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/facebook-un-myanmar-genocide.php https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/facebook-un-myanmar-geno...

He's right. China banned Facebook and no one is accusing Russia of hacking their elections. Clearly banning Facebook is the path forward for democracy and civil liberties. clearly.

RodgerTheGreat 7y ago

A narrative in which any punishment leveled at Facebook is construed as an assault on free speech and civil liberty is _very_ convenient for Facebook. Fining an automotive company that makes unsafe cars is not attacking personal freedom of movement. Fining hospitals that are unsanitary is not attacking your reproductive rights. Shutting down a bank that commits fraud is not an attack on free enterprise. Facebook isn't a pillar of democracy; it's a for-profit business that inserts itself as a middle-man in human communication.

ummwhat 7y ago
Ok fine I'll turn flippant curt mode off for a moment. I don't actually like Facebook. I don't work for them. I don't use them. But if a government is going to ban something they should have a compelling reason. It's not a freedom of speech thing it's a freedom to do what you want with your time and money as an adult thing. I don't care if the thing is drugs, porn or Facebook, it shouldn't be banned. Banning Facebook because it's inconvenient to the establishment is the path towards becoming China. That was my point. We will wake up very soon to a world of banned sites and vpns all in the name of our protection.
joe_the_user 7y ago
A narrative in which any punishment leveled at Facebook is construed as an assault on free speech and civil liberty is _very_ convenient for Facebook. Certainly it's convenient for Facebook. Does that prove it's not true? Fining an automotive company that makes unsafe cars is not attacking personal freedom of movement. Uh, you know publishers, even crappy publishers, have been protected historically in a different fashion than other sorts of industries. Historically, the concept of freedom of expression has generally been for the protection of what some people might consider "unsafe books". The production of an unsafe automobile isn't considered an example of "protected expression" but the production of an essay, book or other "container idea" is considered protected (with specific exceptions, of course). Facebook isn't a pillar of democracy. Free speech is seldom about protecting the expression ideas everyone likes - those usually don't need protection. Free speech is about prevent the state, in particular, from suppressing "bad", "wrong", "unpatriotic" etc ideas, because those are the targets of suppression. And the pillars of democracy are those lawyers and judges that defend free speech, not the completely random assortment of people, some terrible, who practice freedom speech. ...it's a for-profit business that inserts itself as a middle-man in human communication. Those publishers who've been sued and defend their right to publish various banned in the US (such as those of Henry Miller) were also for-profit businesses inserting themselves as middle-men in human communication. If we're living in a capitalist society, expression is going to require middle-men of one sort or another so suppressing these is going to be effectively suppressing free expression.
- mindslight 7y ago
  > If we're living in a capitalist society, expression is going to require middle-men of one sort or another so suppressing these is going to be effectively suppressing free expression. Only because of this naive bare-minimum protocol stack of HTTP/DNS, which discourages users from owning their own identities, pushing all traffic to centralizing servers. A decade old phone has enough computing power to serve the majority of users' personal communication needs. Ultimately centralized "social media" can only turn out to be yet another populist dumpster fire, ending up in the same state as the nightly newses, nytimes, etc - overwhelming sources of straight up government propaganda . The revolution will not be televised, and this still applies even when the TV has become a javascript browser. This entire issue is essentially just debating between supporting a rock or a hard place, wherein actually they both suck. We're in this position purely because we the people allowed the surveillance companies way too much trust, and the only way out is to move past them.
cr0sh 7y ago
> Fining hospitals that are unsanitary is not attacking your reproductive rights. That would be perfectly acceptable if there were more than one service provider of these services, but in the case of MO - there isn't. There's a single Planned Parenthood clinic for the entire state, and they are being forced to shut down. There used to be plenty, but thanks to other onerous laws their legislature put in place with the aim of making abortion defacto unavailable, those other clinics all had to shut down, leaving the single provider. And now it looks like they'll have none to provide those services, which was their goal all along. How anyone can argue that isn't an attack on reproductive rights is beyond me. If it were such that it was simple for another organization to come in and do what PP did, while abiding by all of those extra laws, it would have happened already. The fact that it didn't, and the fact that PP couldn't do it themselves (it hasn't helped that their federal funding has been basically slashed to nothing for grandstanding reasons that were false to begin with), shows that those laws are working as intended, to make those seeking such care second-class citizens. It essentially makes it impossible for women and men to get proper low-cost reproductive health care in the state. But they can still say "Well, it's all constitutional, so too bad!" as they thumb their nose to everyone else, especially their opposition. Their citizens voted for this, though - I hope they enjoy their face without a nose; it's only going to get worse from here on out for them. All on the backs of disadvantaged women, of course.
mindslight 7y ago
In general, this is the standard playbook all the surveillance valley companies have been branding themselves with - setting themselves up as middlemen for some type of person-to-person interaction, taking credit for the interaction itself as if they're a necessary part of it, but absolving their responsibility for any downsides by passing the buck to their users. It's effectively a motte and bailey - the motte is the organic interaction, the bailey is the imposition of their opinionated business practices. Business practices which include optimizing for engagement (aka time wasted), building comprehensive surveillance profiles, marketing themselves as coherent service providers to recruit new peers, and charging hefty transaction fees.
chr1 7y ago
Sure developing laws that would protect people and not allow monopolies is the job of lawmakers. If they were suggesting laws about users being able to take out their information, crossposting from competing platform, finding out why an add is shown and who have paid for it, all the power to them. But if they are suggesting to ban one particular site it shows their incompetence as lawmakers, and breaks regulations that have been applied on lawmakers themselves by constitution.

kbenson 7y ago

It doesn't necessarily need to be to solve the problem, it can be to force movement on the problem by both forcing awareness of the issue to users and impacting service overall, which is felt by the service provider. China is not a good example because China both had many reasons for blocking Facebook and already has it blocked, so it's not doing anything new.

arcticbull 7y ago

You know China doesn't have elections right? Well, outside of Hong Kong.

jchook 7y ago

China is, however, accused of aggressive and unethical censorship.

rchaud 7y ago

It's very telling that you used an obvious strawman like China and didn't see fit to mention Myanmar. Despite complaints, FB left up numerous pages run by the Myanmar military that spread hate and disinformation against the Rohingya people, of whom thousands have been murdered, and hundreds of thousands have been made refugees. Facebook "eventually" deleted these pages, but well after the damage was done.[0] [0] https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/facebook-un-myanmar-genocide.php https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/facebook-un-myanmar-geno...