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Facebook used for ethnic cleansing? I'm not sure you should criticise others for hiding the ball or being dishonest when phrasing it like that. Facebook is a

Facebook used for ethnic cleansing? I'm not sure you should criticise others for hiding the ball or being dishonest when phrasing it like that. Facebook is a website, a pretty trivial one at that. It isn't attached to flying weapons platforms, it doesn't command an army. It cannot be used for ethnic cleansing in any sensible use of English, no more than paper and ink or radio can be "used for ethnic cleansing". So yes - your sarcastic statement is correct. If some African warlord goes nuts and starts mass killing his ethnic rivals, Facebook has sweet FA to do that with that, even if lots of his supporters are posting on Facebook. The problem lies with the people pulling the trigger, the people command them to pull the trigger. Don't try and spread it to Zuckerberg because unlike most genocidal ethnic cleansers, he happens to be a meek American you think you can influence. We must remedy the damage done with speech using ideas and methods that aren't related to speech, somehow. Yes, exactly. Speech doesn't damage things. People damage things. The conflation of speech with physical violence is exactly how you legitimise thuggery on campus, where crazed students are engaging in actual physical violence against people who are just presenting their opinion. And it's never, never, never acceptable to shoot someone who is merely presenting their opinion. This seems to me like someone claiming that we can't do anything about drunk driving because "people need to drive to work." This is a strawman argument nobody ever makes. Drunk driving is a precisely definable and measurable condition with precisely understood outcomes and is trivially avoided. "Bad speech" has no definition at all and thus can't be trivially avoided, as the ever-expanding horizon of what counts as offensive so neatly demonstrates.

9935c101ab17a66 7y ago
> Facebook is a website, a pretty trivial one at that. I mean this is so objectively false that I hardly know where to start. Facebook in its very early stages may have been “trivial”, but it isn’t know. Not even close.
aeturnum 7y ago
I suppose I could respond in a point-by-point way, but I think that we're engaging from very different frames and so it might help to establish some shared ground. What sources of knowledge do you generally trust for finding methods to approach problems that you don't know how to solve? Do you believe that "harm reduction" approaches (i.e. making bad outcomes less likely though still possible) are useful? >I'm not sure you should criticise others for hiding the ball or being dishonest when phrasing it like that. I did not say anyone was being dishonest and if you think I am being dishonest I would appreciate you pointing out how I am being so. I suppose I do want to say that paper and ink and radio have all been used for ethnic cleansing and the US treats the sale of military radio equipment as the sale of weapons[0]. There is a lot of history of sanctioning those who provide groups engaged in immoral acts with mundane equipment. If a warlord is using Facebook to help execute a genocide I do think it's a good idea to pressure Facebook to kick them off Facebook. I'm kind of surprised you think it isn't? Though I could be misreading what you've said. If that is the case I apologize. [0] https://www.nknews.org/2017/03/what-the-glocom-scandal-tells-us-about-the-n-korean-militarys-new-capabilities/ https://www.nknews.org/2017/03/what-the-glocom-scandal-tells...
jakelazaroff 7y ago
> Facebook is a website, a pretty trivial one at that. It isn't attached to flying weapons platforms, it doesn't command an army. It cannot be used for ethnic cleansing in any sensible use of English, no more than paper and ink or radio can be "used for ethnic cleansing". This is logic that can be used to exculpate any accessory to a crime. Facebook may have known people were using its website to incite violence, but people are the ones who damage things. IBM was aware Nazis were using their technology to identify people to murder in the Holocaust, but they can sleep easy — it’s not like punchcards can be “used for ethnic cleansing”! This logic only works, of course, if you completely ignore the capability of technology to amplify human capabilities. As with the sibling commenter, if you don’t believe communication mediums can be used as tools of genocide, I encourage you to learn about Joseph Goebbels and the radio’s impact on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

9935c101ab17a66 7y ago

> Facebook is a website, a pretty trivial one at that. I mean this is so objectively false that I hardly know where to start. Facebook in its very early stages may have been “trivial”, but it isn’t know. Not even close.

aeturnum 7y ago

I suppose I could respond in a point-by-point way, but I think that we're engaging from very different frames and so it might help to establish some shared ground. What sources of knowledge do you generally trust for finding methods to approach problems that you don't know how to solve? Do you believe that "harm reduction" approaches (i.e. making bad outcomes less likely though still possible) are useful? >I'm not sure you should criticise others for hiding the ball or being dishonest when phrasing it like that. I did not say anyone was being dishonest and if you think I am being dishonest I would appreciate you pointing out how I am being so. I suppose I do want to say that paper and ink and radio have all been used for ethnic cleansing and the US treats the sale of military radio equipment as the sale of weapons[0]. There is a lot of history of sanctioning those who provide groups engaged in immoral acts with mundane equipment. If a warlord is using Facebook to help execute a genocide I do think it's a good idea to pressure Facebook to kick them off Facebook. I'm kind of surprised you think it isn't? Though I could be misreading what you've said. If that is the case I apologize. [0] https://www.nknews.org/2017/03/what-the-glocom-scandal-tells-us-about-the-n-korean-militarys-new-capabilities/ https://www.nknews.org/2017/03/what-the-glocom-scandal-tells...

jakelazaroff 7y ago

> Facebook is a website, a pretty trivial one at that. It isn't attached to flying weapons platforms, it doesn't command an army. It cannot be used for ethnic cleansing in any sensible use of English, no more than paper and ink or radio can be "used for ethnic cleansing". This is logic that can be used to exculpate any accessory to a crime. Facebook may have known people were using its website to incite violence, but people are the ones who damage things. IBM was aware Nazis were using their technology to identify people to murder in the Holocaust, but they can sleep easy — it’s not like punchcards can be “used for ethnic cleansing”! This logic only works, of course, if you completely ignore the capability of technology to amplify human capabilities. As with the sibling commenter, if you don’t believe communication mediums can be used as tools of genocide, I encourage you to learn about Joseph Goebbels and the radio’s impact on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.