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The problem is that the speech that these people want censored isn't illegal. We have a strong constitutional prohibition against censorship. Many activists wo

The problem is that the speech that these people want censored isn't illegal. We have a strong constitutional prohibition against censorship. Many activists would prefer that we didn't have this prohibition, but they don't have the political clout to get it repealed --- rightly so, because despite everything that's happened, explicit censorship is very unpopular. Because the activists can't get the state to censor the public, activists have used increasingly underhanded tactics to get tech companies to censor the public. They've been very successful so far, but there's a growing resistance to their antics.

ergocoder 6y ago
I can understand some random activists doing this. But Warren is a senate and former lawyer. Even she didn't want to go the legal route. It's pretty disappointing. Instead, she pulled a stunt with fake news facebook ads stuff. > The problem is that the speech that these people want censored isn't illegal. Please excuse my little legal knowledge. But I thought hate speech and fake news were illegal.
- quotemstr 6y ago
  > But Warren is a senate and former lawyer. Even she didn't want to go the legal route. It's pretty disappointing. She doesn't want to go the legal route because she knows she'd lose. Free speech protections in the United States are ironclad. In other jurisdictions, e.g., Germany, they're not so strong and activists in those countries have succeeded in making the state compel tech companies to censor. This approach will not work in the United States. > Please excuse my little legal knowledge. But I thought hate speech and fake news were illegal. One of the most infuriating habits of the authoritarian activist types is their way of pretending that whatever they don't like is de jure illegal. That they've convinced people that there's some law against "hate speech" is sad. No, hate speech and fake news are not illegal, nor should they be: any prohibited category of ideas invariably expands to encompass whatever it is that the people defining the category dislike. The strict American prohibition of censorship is the product of centuries of experience in England with exactly this sort of creeping totalitarianism. Humanity has not changed since then. Power still corrupts. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/06/19/supreme-court-unanimously-reaffirms-there-is-no-hate-speech-exception-to-the-first-amendment/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
  - ergocoder 6y ago
    Wait a min, hate speech isn't illegal?
    - thejynxed 6y ago
      Not in the USA. It's been firmly ruled protected by SCOTUS, with the same caveats tied to it as other speech. In other words, direct call to harm is not protected, saying you hate them or a subset of their characteristics is absolutely protected.
    - savingsPossible 6y ago
      Not in the USA, no
paulgb 6y ago
One of the most successful PR strategies Facebook has used throughout this is to position it as a free speech issue and the boycott as calling on them to censor speech. It's been so successful that I've seen it repeated a number of times on HN. To the extent that they can make the argument free speech vs. not free speech, of course they win hearts and minds, because as you say, censorship isn't very popular. The problem is that by making this all about censorship, they can ignore any responsibility they for harm they create in other ways. For example, creating incentives for publishers to create divisive content for the sake of enraging people, or recommending people join white supremacy groups. As far as I can tell, it was these sorts of measures that the boycott organizers called for. The cynicism of Facebook's PR “free speech” stance is especially annoying given their arbitrary and non-transparent block of Dreamwith a few weeks ago[2] 1. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-employee-leaks-show-they-feel-betrayed https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-employ... 2. https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/3861716.html https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/3861716.html
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Among the organizers' 10 headline demands (https://www.stophateforprofit.org/productrecommendations https://www.stophateforprofit.org/productrecommendations) are: 4. Find and remove public and private groups focused on white supremacy, militia, antisemitism, violent conspiracies, Holocaust denialism, vaccine misinformation, and climate denialism. 6. Stop recommending or otherwise amplifying groups or content from groups associated with hate, misinformation or conspiracies to users. 7. Create an internal mechanism to automatically flag hateful content in private groups for human review. Private groups are not small gatherings of friends - but can be hundreds of thousands of people large, which many hateful groups are. So while they do want other things as well, the censorship seems like a pretty central part of the platform.
  - paulgb 6y ago
    Fair point, I'd agree that 4 and 7 verge on censorship (I'm less convinced about 6 -- I draw a line between functions that Facebook performs as a content transmitter and as a discovery platform. I would argue that disrupting content transmission constitutes censorship, but curating the discovery platform does not.) Still, it gets to my point that 7 or (arguably) 8 of the 10 demands do not directly call for censorship.
commandlinefan 6y ago
> the speech that these people want censored isn't illegal. Nor, 99% of the time, particularly hateful.

ergocoder 6y ago

I can understand some random activists doing this. But Warren is a senate and former lawyer. Even she didn't want to go the legal route. It's pretty disappointing. Instead, she pulled a stunt with fake news facebook ads stuff. > The problem is that the speech that these people want censored isn't illegal. Please excuse my little legal knowledge. But I thought hate speech and fake news were illegal.

quotemstr 6y ago
> But Warren is a senate and former lawyer. Even she didn't want to go the legal route. It's pretty disappointing. She doesn't want to go the legal route because she knows she'd lose. Free speech protections in the United States are ironclad. In other jurisdictions, e.g., Germany, they're not so strong and activists in those countries have succeeded in making the state compel tech companies to censor. This approach will not work in the United States. > Please excuse my little legal knowledge. But I thought hate speech and fake news were illegal. One of the most infuriating habits of the authoritarian activist types is their way of pretending that whatever they don't like is de jure illegal. That they've convinced people that there's some law against "hate speech" is sad. No, hate speech and fake news are not illegal, nor should they be: any prohibited category of ideas invariably expands to encompass whatever it is that the people defining the category dislike. The strict American prohibition of censorship is the product of centuries of experience in England with exactly this sort of creeping totalitarianism. Humanity has not changed since then. Power still corrupts. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/06/19/supreme-court-unanimously-reaffirms-there-is-no-hate-speech-exception-to-the-first-amendment/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
- ergocoder 6y ago
  Wait a min, hate speech isn't illegal?
  - thejynxed 6y ago
    Not in the USA. It's been firmly ruled protected by SCOTUS, with the same caveats tied to it as other speech. In other words, direct call to harm is not protected, saying you hate them or a subset of their characteristics is absolutely protected.
  - savingsPossible 6y ago
    Not in the USA, no

paulgb 6y ago

One of the most successful PR strategies Facebook has used throughout this is to position it as a free speech issue and the boycott as calling on them to censor speech. It's been so successful that I've seen it repeated a number of times on HN. To the extent that they can make the argument free speech vs. not free speech, of course they win hearts and minds, because as you say, censorship isn't very popular. The problem is that by making this all about censorship, they can ignore any responsibility they for harm they create in other ways. For example, creating incentives for publishers to create divisive content for the sake of enraging people, or recommending people join white supremacy groups. As far as I can tell, it was these sorts of measures that the boycott organizers called for. The cynicism of Facebook's PR “free speech” stance is especially annoying given their arbitrary and non-transparent block of Dreamwith a few weeks ago[2] 1. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-employee-leaks-show-they-feel-betrayed https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-employ... 2. https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/3861716.html https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/3861716.html

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Among the organizers' 10 headline demands (https://www.stophateforprofit.org/productrecommendations https://www.stophateforprofit.org/productrecommendations) are: 4. Find and remove public and private groups focused on white supremacy, militia, antisemitism, violent conspiracies, Holocaust denialism, vaccine misinformation, and climate denialism. 6. Stop recommending or otherwise amplifying groups or content from groups associated with hate, misinformation or conspiracies to users. 7. Create an internal mechanism to automatically flag hateful content in private groups for human review. Private groups are not small gatherings of friends - but can be hundreds of thousands of people large, which many hateful groups are. So while they do want other things as well, the censorship seems like a pretty central part of the platform.
- paulgb 6y ago
  Fair point, I'd agree that 4 and 7 verge on censorship (I'm less convinced about 6 -- I draw a line between functions that Facebook performs as a content transmitter and as a discovery platform. I would argue that disrupting content transmission constitutes censorship, but curating the discovery platform does not.) Still, it gets to my point that 7 or (arguably) 8 of the 10 demands do not directly call for censorship.

commandlinefan 6y ago

> the speech that these people want censored isn't illegal. Nor, 99% of the time, particularly hateful.