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I'm surprised that the general sentiment on HN right now seems to be that Facebook should act gatekeepers, something that traditionally has been one of the majo

by Kiro 6y ago

I'm surprised that the general sentiment on HN right now seems to be that Facebook should act gatekeepers, something that traditionally has been one of the major fears.

jkaplowitz 6y ago
A lot of freedom of speech policies and preferences, including US criminal law, make exceptions for speech that is likely to incite imminent violence. Look up the "true threat" doctrine. I'm not surprised that HN sentiment has a similar exception.
- belorn 6y ago
  I am pretty sure US free speech exceptions do not prohibit threats by government to deploy the military against people, even if that is the very embodiment of a true threat that is likely to incite imminent violence. But HN community is not against that. You can have a news article about Nation X declaring intention to send an army to against Y if people think Y deserve it. People in general love violence and encourage it when it is the right kind of violence against the right target.
  - jkaplowitz 6y ago
    Yeah, most speech that relates to violence is neither illegal nor necessarily opposed by HN commenters (and of course plenty of us disagree with each other on what we want to tolerate). The exceptions are a lot narrower.
  - loopz 6y ago
    Targeting own population with military is unconstitutional though, with just a few exceptions.
    - belorn 6y ago
      We can define Nation X as the US and Target Y as US citizen and go down different scenarios and see when it becomes the right kind of violence. A peaceful protest (this should be universally agreed on as a very bad target for military use). Rioters that burn cars and loot stores. White supremacists marching in the street. Exact same actions as any above but we call it terrorism. US citizens doing terrorism but which is indistinguishable from regular crime. US citizens doing terrorism, where military weapons like bombs are used (we could also split this up based on what reason the terrorist have).
      - loopz 6y ago
        X=Y Target is not people, but actions in specific time and place. Measures need to be justified and scrutinized.
        belorn 6y ago
        When people talk treating everyone equal and banning speech that incite imminent violence, they don't talk about how they want exceptions when it is justified and scrutinized to incite imminent violence. What is justified is also very subjective, an aspect which a lot of people brings up in discussions. Who get to decide when violence is justified? Is it the people, and if so, how should should we count the votes?
        loopz 6y ago
        It is not decided by direct democracy and not by dictatorship. If people involved are unable to act responsibly, they are the wrong people for the job.
- mrits 6y ago
  If we didn't allow speech that might incite violence we'd still have slaves and women wouldn't have rights.
  - jkaplowitz 6y ago
    Agreed. The true threat exception to the First Amendment, which can indeed lead to a legally and constitutionally valid criminal conviction in the US, is a lot narrower than "might incite violence".
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  People were also upset at FB for not censoring Trump's post about mail-in voting. What imminent violence was it about to cause?
  - jkaplowitz 6y ago
    I can't speak to that one. I wouldn't want that one censored.
marcinzm 6y ago
The general fear is that it will lead to an authoritarian dystopia. Which may or may not be the case. We have however seen a glimpse of what happens when you don't do it and it's an authoritarian dystopia. So gate keeping is avoiding the more certain evil.
- jacobush 6y ago
  This situation happened because FB is complicit, not because they didn't do anything. They optimize for ad revenue, not for decency or the human angle. FB is basically the Matrix and we are the ad revenue batteries powering it.
kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
A reasonable person might assume that people have some core moral axioms and their political positions flow out as logical derivations starting from those axioms. This isn't actually the case in reality. People's political positions are mostly formed via induction from the pundits of their tribe, whether it be individuals like John Oliver or Sean Hannity or newspapers like the NYT or the WSJ, which in turn form their positions through a complex calculus of tribal affiliations, but never based on axiomatic moral values. The values are only retrofit to provide a veneer of logic to the process. These positions then flow down the influencer pole until the average Joe is virtue signaling about them to his 5 friends. Not only this, there isn't any feeling of cognitive dissonance when these political stances clash, because they were never really about a logical moral system to begin with. Thus we see people saying both that: * "Freedom of Speech" is great but FB should censor individuals based on the speech fashion of the day. * We should "believe all women" but only if they can lead to the potential cancelation of Brett Kavanaugh, not Joe Biden. * You were a terrible human being for spreading COVID if you so much as left the house 2 weeks ago but now you are terrible human being if you don't go out and congregate in groups of hundreds and thousands for the protests. The mistake is assuming there is a logical thought process as opposed to mere tribal affiliation and signaling. Growing up, I was taught (not in those words, but by implication) that burning books was one of the most symbolically powerful and worst non-violent acts an oppressing regime could do. It's saddening to see that metaphorical books are still being burnt, but by a different set of people.
abathur 6y ago
This reminded me a little bit of a writing-pedagogy course I took, where we had recurring discussions about the difference between being a gate-way and a gate-keeper. These discussions circled around the power and responsibility we'd have as instructors to simultaneously help our students obtain the important credential on our side of the gate, and on the other hand to protect the value of that credential. There wasn't a one-size-fits answer to this question; the point was to make us wrestle with the values involved and come to defensible conclusions. We had to think about what was inside the gate, what was outside the gate, and when it was our responsibility to stand between them. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like many people running these platforms (not to point fingers; I was just as blind) realized something like "As a <world leader>, I want <to incite violence> so that <someone else might do crimes>." was missing from their user stories.
rsynnott 6y ago
Facebook has _always_ moderated content. Fairly substantially, much more than Twitter, say. For instance, if you want to post a picture of yourself with no clothes on on Twitter, Twitter is basically okay with that; Facebook certainly isn’t. The current controversy is over whether public figures should be treated as entirely special, or just mostly special. Look, Facebook is within its rights to ban the average person for whatever it feels like, while still letting important small-handed personages lie about elections. That’s perfectly legal. But people are certainly entitled to question their ethics over it. Of course, even the arch-censors over at Twitter allow important small-handed lying; they just reserve the right to point out that it IS a lie, and very occasionally do so. I’m kind of amazed that people are so upset about them doing the bare decent minimum. By the way, I’m not defending twitter in this; it would be better if they just applied their rules equally and deleted the accounts of important people, whatever their hand measurements, on the same basis that they delete normal accounts. But at least attaching disclaimers to lies and abominable speech is progress of a sort, I suppose.

by Kiro 6y ago

I'm surprised that the general sentiment on HN right now seems to be that Facebook should act gatekeepers, something that traditionally has been one of the major fears.

jkaplowitz 6y ago

A lot of freedom of speech policies and preferences, including US criminal law, make exceptions for speech that is likely to incite imminent violence. Look up the "true threat" doctrine. I'm not surprised that HN sentiment has a similar exception.

belorn 6y ago
I am pretty sure US free speech exceptions do not prohibit threats by government to deploy the military against people, even if that is the very embodiment of a true threat that is likely to incite imminent violence. But HN community is not against that. You can have a news article about Nation X declaring intention to send an army to against Y if people think Y deserve it. People in general love violence and encourage it when it is the right kind of violence against the right target.
- jkaplowitz 6y ago
  Yeah, most speech that relates to violence is neither illegal nor necessarily opposed by HN commenters (and of course plenty of us disagree with each other on what we want to tolerate). The exceptions are a lot narrower.
- loopz 6y ago
  Targeting own population with military is unconstitutional though, with just a few exceptions.
  - belorn 6y ago
    We can define Nation X as the US and Target Y as US citizen and go down different scenarios and see when it becomes the right kind of violence. A peaceful protest (this should be universally agreed on as a very bad target for military use). Rioters that burn cars and loot stores. White supremacists marching in the street. Exact same actions as any above but we call it terrorism. US citizens doing terrorism but which is indistinguishable from regular crime. US citizens doing terrorism, where military weapons like bombs are used (we could also split this up based on what reason the terrorist have).
    - loopz 6y ago
      X=Y Target is not people, but actions in specific time and place. Measures need to be justified and scrutinized.
      - belorn 6y ago
        When people talk treating everyone equal and banning speech that incite imminent violence, they don't talk about how they want exceptions when it is justified and scrutinized to incite imminent violence. What is justified is also very subjective, an aspect which a lot of people brings up in discussions. Who get to decide when violence is justified? Is it the people, and if so, how should should we count the votes?
        loopz 6y ago
        It is not decided by direct democracy and not by dictatorship. If people involved are unable to act responsibly, they are the wrong people for the job.
mrits 6y ago
If we didn't allow speech that might incite violence we'd still have slaves and women wouldn't have rights.
- jkaplowitz 6y ago
  Agreed. The true threat exception to the First Amendment, which can indeed lead to a legally and constitutionally valid criminal conviction in the US, is a lot narrower than "might incite violence".
kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
People were also upset at FB for not censoring Trump's post about mail-in voting. What imminent violence was it about to cause?
- jkaplowitz 6y ago
  I can't speak to that one. I wouldn't want that one censored.

marcinzm 6y ago

The general fear is that it will lead to an authoritarian dystopia. Which may or may not be the case. We have however seen a glimpse of what happens when you don't do it and it's an authoritarian dystopia. So gate keeping is avoiding the more certain evil.

jacobush 6y ago
This situation happened because FB is complicit, not because they didn't do anything. They optimize for ad revenue, not for decency or the human angle. FB is basically the Matrix and we are the ad revenue batteries powering it.

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago

A reasonable person might assume that people have some core moral axioms and their political positions flow out as logical derivations starting from those axioms. This isn't actually the case in reality. People's political positions are mostly formed via induction from the pundits of their tribe, whether it be individuals like John Oliver or Sean Hannity or newspapers like the NYT or the WSJ, which in turn form their positions through a complex calculus of tribal affiliations, but never based on axiomatic moral values. The values are only retrofit to provide a veneer of logic to the process. These positions then flow down the influencer pole until the average Joe is virtue signaling about them to his 5 friends. Not only this, there isn't any feeling of cognitive dissonance when these political stances clash, because they were never really about a logical moral system to begin with. Thus we see people saying both that: * "Freedom of Speech" is great but FB should censor individuals based on the speech fashion of the day. * We should "believe all women" but only if they can lead to the potential cancelation of Brett Kavanaugh, not Joe Biden. * You were a terrible human being for spreading COVID if you so much as left the house 2 weeks ago but now you are terrible human being if you don't go out and congregate in groups of hundreds and thousands for the protests. The mistake is assuming there is a logical thought process as opposed to mere tribal affiliation and signaling. Growing up, I was taught (not in those words, but by implication) that burning books was one of the most symbolically powerful and worst non-violent acts an oppressing regime could do. It's saddening to see that metaphorical books are still being burnt, but by a different set of people.

abathur 6y ago

This reminded me a little bit of a writing-pedagogy course I took, where we had recurring discussions about the difference between being a gate-way and a gate-keeper. These discussions circled around the power and responsibility we'd have as instructors to simultaneously help our students obtain the important credential on our side of the gate, and on the other hand to protect the value of that credential. There wasn't a one-size-fits answer to this question; the point was to make us wrestle with the values involved and come to defensible conclusions. We had to think about what was inside the gate, what was outside the gate, and when it was our responsibility to stand between them. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like many people running these platforms (not to point fingers; I was just as blind) realized something like "As a <world leader>, I want <to incite violence> so that <someone else might do crimes>." was missing from their user stories.

rsynnott 6y ago

Facebook has _always_ moderated content. Fairly substantially, much more than Twitter, say. For instance, if you want to post a picture of yourself with no clothes on on Twitter, Twitter is basically okay with that; Facebook certainly isn’t. The current controversy is over whether public figures should be treated as entirely special, or just mostly special. Look, Facebook is within its rights to ban the average person for whatever it feels like, while still letting important small-handed personages lie about elections. That’s perfectly legal. But people are certainly entitled to question their ethics over it. Of course, even the arch-censors over at Twitter allow important small-handed lying; they just reserve the right to point out that it IS a lie, and very occasionally do so. I’m kind of amazed that people are so upset about them doing the bare decent minimum. By the way, I’m not defending twitter in this; it would be better if they just applied their rules equally and deleted the accounts of important people, whatever their hand measurements, on the same basis that they delete normal accounts. But at least attaching disclaimers to lies and abominable speech is progress of a sort, I suppose.