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> It would really help if both Facebook and Twitter would be far more pro-active in shutting down these fountains of nonsense. When I see this, especially from

> It would really help if both Facebook and Twitter would be far more pro-active in shutting down these fountains of nonsense. When I see this, especially from someone who bills themselves as > "Professionally I get paid to separate fact from fiction" it horrifies me. What they're saying is that the existing draconian control of speech that is implemented on the social media networks is not enough, that we need to hire even more people to do moderation, that free speech needs to die even harder, because we can't trust poor stupid people to make their own decisions, read what they want to read, and say what they want to say. What a bunch of elitist bullshit. Small wonder that people are increasingly finding people like Jacques Mattheij to be unpalatable, nanny-state toadies that are to be routed around at best and attacked argumentatively when needed. Yes, there's bullshit about COVID and chemtrails and aliens all over the internet. Why do you care so much? You're so worried that people are going to make their own choices, live their own lives, make mistakes that impact others? This shows me that people have not learned what free speech is, what it is for, and why it was a hard-fought right that continues to need fervent defense. Mattheij can't conceive of a world where his draconian moderation system could possibly backfire. Mattheij hasn't looked at what's happening in Belarus, in India/Pakistan, and what happened during the Arab Spring when governments decided to use the power at their disposal to shut down on the people's ability to freely converse with one another, even about Unapproved Topics, even with Officially Illegal Opinions. Mattheij either didn't read any of the excellent 20th century dystopian science fiction, or thought it was a user's manual for how to create an idealized totalitarian state. Because of course, gigantic corporations and the government are going to choose what's in everyone's best interests. Of course, it is inconceivable that they would have any agenda of their own, or would want to make cultural changes at scale without the full consent of society. It's never been tried, anywhere, right? Never ends badly? Ahh, but it's to save us from ourselves, right?

chrisco255 6y ago
There's nothing inevitable about freedom of speech. China is 4000 years old, and they still don't have it. It WAS hard fought for. Speaking and thinking are the same thing. A society that cannot speak without fear of censorship is one that cannot think. It cannot ask difficult questions. It cannot speak truth to power. It is as much a cultural value as a legal one. It should be promoted and celebrated.
- chillacy 6y ago
  Promoted, celebrated, and continued to be fought for. If you tautologically define "freedom of speech" as the compromise we have in the US, then that's true that we "have freedom of speech", but if you think at an objective measure of absolute freedom of speech (which would include any combination of words you could say, including what we would call libel, hate speech, copyright infringement, etc), then freedom of speech doesn't really exist anywhere. There are just variations of restricted speech, some more than others, but also some different than others.
dvt 6y ago
Man, it's sad that HN is going down the reddit rabbit hole, spam downvoting these kinds of well-though-out posts that (admittedly) go against the zeitgeist of SV "know-better-than-thou" elitist mentality -- with absolutely zero discussion or counter-arguments. The arguments here are sound: - Free speech is a virtue worth striving for - Disinformation -- to the detriment of the public -- is a price we're willing to pay (barring some narrow cases) - The alternative is draconian authoritarianism As Juvenal asked almost two millenia ago: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? I'm sick of programmers that never picked up a philosophy or political science book in their lives think they just solved the world's problems by giving Google or Facebook carte blanche to censor as they see fit (because you happen to agree with the outcome today).
- tyrust 6y ago
  I'm guessing that it was down-voted for the vitriol and personal attacks which aren't relevant to the arguments.
  - throwsadlfksjdf 6y ago
    The personal attacks were warranted, he said exactly how I felt reading that article.
- Analemma_ 6y ago
  It is not a well-thought-out post. It uses a bunch of emotionally-loaded but content-free trigger phrases like "elitist bullshit" and "nanny-state toadies" rather than well-supported arguments, and is being spam-downvoted for that reason.
  - dvt 6y ago
    It definitionally is elitist bullshit though -- Mattheij's entire post implies that he knows better. Sure the term might trigger you, but that doesn't make it any less true. To wit, I personally would've been much more scathing: I mean, has he even heard of John Stewart Mill? There's been a lot of trial and error here, and the blog post conveniently ignores it all.
actuator 6y ago
I am mostly a free speech absolutist but let me take one of the example you gave, India. Only yesterday, there was a FB post which said something negative about Islam. This led to people from that community rioting in Bangalore in which 3 have died and parts of city have burnt. [1] This is not the first time a social media post has caused this over there. I would say the issue is very nuanced specially in areas where the social fabric is not that strong and if some amount of moderation can help, be it. But as always, who will watch the watchmen. [1]: Warning: Cancerous ads: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/riot-hit-areas-of-bengalurus-pulakeshinagar-resemble-war-zone/articleshow/77502311.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/riot-hit-...
- throwaway45349 6y ago
  I think you can stay absolutist (albeit, being a bit cold about the situation). The principle of free speech is that it's paid for in blood because it's the least worst choice. Edit: I personally think the reasonable limit is calling for violence or organizing genocide. But those have never really been protected in common law.
  - not2b 6y ago
    Easy for you to say, because you aren't a Rohingya and don't have to worry about people organizing your genocide on WhatsApp. We have to be able to criticize the government and debate polices, but when blood is involved (trying to get people killed) there has to be a line.
    - themacguffinman 6y ago
      If people are organizing your genocide on WhatsApp, WhatsApp is not the problem.
  - actuator 6y ago
    But how do you reconcile with things like this. Free speech is better, but how much blood is worth it. Again, going with the current example. Indian subcontinent has had a tumultuous history mostly in the last millenium. It has been ravaged by conquests involving destruction of a lot of things that the pagan culture(now referred as a religion) held dear. Even though now the part of the subcontinent that is India now is majority that religion. There is resentment for/from every religion that came from outside. There are still unresolved things which can cause things to flare up easily. We have seen this flare up in US, say LA riots. Imagine a culture which has had issues about their identity and injustices in the past for far longer. Imagine people allowed to build narratives that incite violence freely and spread them like wildfire. It can turn deadly fast and has in the past.
bleepblorp 6y ago
> Yes, there's bullshit about COVID and chemtrails and aliens all over the internet. Why do you care so much? You're so worried that people are going to make their own choices, live their own lives, make mistakes that impact others? Umm, yes? People are extremely vulnerable to misinformation distributed by platforms and people they trust, even if that misinformation will harm themselves or people near them. Facebook-propagated lies about COVID-19 risks and fake treatments kill both the people who believe them and the people believers are exposed to. Facebook was essential in embedding false information into the minds of informationally vulnerable people in order to create the dual democratic disasters of 2016: Trump and Brexit. Feeding seniors a constant misinformation diet of 'vote Brexit or your country will be overrun with Syrian terrorists' until they vote to destroy their children's economic future causes real harm. Reporting on Facebook's failure to act in response to its platform being used to incite the Rohingya genocide[0] should also put to rest any thought that Facebook, as it is currently operated, is compatible with human rights. Making people believe in UFOs and bigfoot is harmless; spreading propaganda that incites people to destroy their own democracy (pro-Trump), destroy their children's futures (pro-Brexit), or kill their neighbors (anti-Rohingya) is not. If Facebook won't do anything about their platform being used for these purposes, then Facebook should be shut down. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
- core-questions 6y ago
  > Umm, yes? So patronizing. Okay, people are "vulnerable" to misinformation; there's an unstated implication here that you've ascended to some higher level by virtue of consuming your daily dose of establishment media, and that you're no longer personally susceptible to this, and that there's no chance that any of your institutionally approved sources could ever misinform you. > Facebook-propagated lies about COVID-19 risks and fake treatments kill both the people who believe them and the people believers are exposed to. Well, that's tough, isn't it? If you're so afraid of that, maybe you should get a proper respirator, and only emerge into public to buy groceries, and then just live in full lockdown for the rest of your life. Sounds like you don't trust people to consume the information they want and to make their own risk judgements; too bad you're not in control of their actions. What a utopia that would be, eh? I'm sure you'd never misinform anyone, or say something and then have to walk it back a week later, or anything else. Blaming Facebook for this is like blaming your municipality, or your car dealership, when you get into a car accident. Yeah, they built the roads, they sold you the car, but it's on you - it's your risk, ultimately, because it's your life. Yes, you can do risky things; yes, you can even do things that increase risks for others. That's life. It's all part of the fabric of living in a free society. You can only actually protect yourself, and even then, only partially. Controlling what other people can say or think isn't actually going to afford you that much more security. > Reporting on Facebook's failure to act in response to its platform being used to incite the Rohingya genocide As if these things wouldn't take place without Facebook; as though there wouldn't be some other way for people who are already morally in the position of wanting to kill others for their differences wouldn't just find some other way to kick it off. Again, you're blaming the medium for the message, and you have the misguided idea that somehow, if the right censoring moderators clamped down on discussion just a little bit more, that event wouldn't have happened. Of all the small-souled bugman mentalities, this is truly the worst. > spreading propaganda that incites people to destroy their own democracy (pro-Trump) I'm not an American, and so I have no real dog in the fight, but as far as I can tell being in favour of an establishment political party is kind of bread-and-butter democracy, isn't it? How is someone being in favour of your democratically elected president "destroying democracy", and how is acting like that's the case not in and of itself just as anti-democracy a thing to do? Maybe, just maybe, you Yanks could stop frothing at the mouth about Orange Man Bad for ten minutes, and _use_ your freedom of speech to actually engage with people and find out what motivates them, what their fears are, why they've arrived at their conclusions, and maybe build some common ground so you can actually start to understand the underlying economic problems that have put you in the position you're in. The things that destroyed small-town Main Street are not too far off the things that destroyed the inner city, really.... > If Facebook won't do anything about their platform being used for these purposes, then Facebook should be shut down. How about this: if Facebook won't do anything about your personal bugaboos, you should follow my lead and just delete your Facebook account and move on with your fucking life. Why do you feel this intense need to enforce your own personal qualms about what people say onto others? It's so easy, bro, just click that big X and go outside for a couple minutes. Get some perspective. Because otherwise, you're asking for one of the most important freedoms ever won to be thrown away just so you won't be uncomfortable for a couple moments here and there. I can't imagine being so fragile.
wruza 6y ago
You're basically saying that we-all-together are a pile of unfixable trash (sorry if this summary is inexact). And yes, that aligns well with what I think about "us". But that's only when you look at it in stasis. This force that tfa represents is one of the forces that glues everything together. If not this "elitist bullshit", who would gonna go and prevent minds from leading into the opposite bullshit? It is easy to blame an apple for falling on your head, but had you turn off gravity, you'd left with not much time to regret. I'm not even sympathetic to that hn jacquesm if that's him, but it's in our nature to fall into another bullshit pit right after someone pulls us from one. Discussing and questioning methods for balancing between the bullshits is important. You're just conflating that with an actual totalitarianism, because two vectors appear to be aligned atm. Humanity has to make true information accessible (not only technically, but psychologically accessible, filtering out a complete bullshit noise that overscreams a signal). It's only ten+ years since we found ourselves in this mess,it's not an old thing. People were fed with wrong/insane ideas before, but it never was a world-wide self-sustainable viral phenomenon that no one really controls (as in tv). You're all for people doing their business and leaving them alone, but now many have no basis to rest on, and if that's not a problem for you right now, chances are it will quickly become one.
balfirevic 6y ago
> Mattheij hasn't looked at what's happening in Belarus, in India/Pakistan, and what happened during the Arab Spring when governments decided to use the power at their disposal to shut down on the people's ability to freely converse with one another, even about Unapproved Topics, even with Officially Illegal Opinions. For an example that's less dramatic but closer to the western world, take a look at the Croatian (an EU country) authorities arresting a journalist over some tweets: https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/38478-duhacek-journalist-index-hr-arrested https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/38478-duhacek-jo... Journalists are also regularly getting sued and fined on the count of "hurting someone's honor and reputation", mostly by politicians and (seriously) court judges.
claytoneast 6y ago
I don't think anywhere in this post talks about whether or not Mattheij has looked at those events, read those books, thought those thoughts, and what his opinions are on them as related to Free Speech. Assuming the worst of your intellectual opponent is extremely uncharitable and doesn't reflect well.

chrisco255 6y ago

There's nothing inevitable about freedom of speech. China is 4000 years old, and they still don't have it. It WAS hard fought for. Speaking and thinking are the same thing. A society that cannot speak without fear of censorship is one that cannot think. It cannot ask difficult questions. It cannot speak truth to power. It is as much a cultural value as a legal one. It should be promoted and celebrated.

chillacy 6y ago
Promoted, celebrated, and continued to be fought for. If you tautologically define "freedom of speech" as the compromise we have in the US, then that's true that we "have freedom of speech", but if you think at an objective measure of absolute freedom of speech (which would include any combination of words you could say, including what we would call libel, hate speech, copyright infringement, etc), then freedom of speech doesn't really exist anywhere. There are just variations of restricted speech, some more than others, but also some different than others.

dvt 6y ago

Man, it's sad that HN is going down the reddit rabbit hole, spam downvoting these kinds of well-though-out posts that (admittedly) go against the zeitgeist of SV "know-better-than-thou" elitist mentality -- with absolutely zero discussion or counter-arguments. The arguments here are sound: - Free speech is a virtue worth striving for - Disinformation -- to the detriment of the public -- is a price we're willing to pay (barring some narrow cases) - The alternative is draconian authoritarianism As Juvenal asked almost two millenia ago: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? I'm sick of programmers that never picked up a philosophy or political science book in their lives think they just solved the world's problems by giving Google or Facebook carte blanche to censor as they see fit (because you happen to agree with the outcome today).

tyrust 6y ago
I'm guessing that it was down-voted for the vitriol and personal attacks which aren't relevant to the arguments.
- throwsadlfksjdf 6y ago
  The personal attacks were warranted, he said exactly how I felt reading that article.
Analemma_ 6y ago
It is not a well-thought-out post. It uses a bunch of emotionally-loaded but content-free trigger phrases like "elitist bullshit" and "nanny-state toadies" rather than well-supported arguments, and is being spam-downvoted for that reason.
- dvt 6y ago
  It definitionally is elitist bullshit though -- Mattheij's entire post implies that he knows better. Sure the term might trigger you, but that doesn't make it any less true. To wit, I personally would've been much more scathing: I mean, has he even heard of John Stewart Mill? There's been a lot of trial and error here, and the blog post conveniently ignores it all.

actuator 6y ago

I am mostly a free speech absolutist but let me take one of the example you gave, India. Only yesterday, there was a FB post which said something negative about Islam. This led to people from that community rioting in Bangalore in which 3 have died and parts of city have burnt. [1] This is not the first time a social media post has caused this over there. I would say the issue is very nuanced specially in areas where the social fabric is not that strong and if some amount of moderation can help, be it. But as always, who will watch the watchmen. [1]: Warning: Cancerous ads: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/riot-hit-areas-of-bengalurus-pulakeshinagar-resemble-war-zone/articleshow/77502311.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/riot-hit-...

throwaway45349 6y ago
I think you can stay absolutist (albeit, being a bit cold about the situation). The principle of free speech is that it's paid for in blood because it's the least worst choice. Edit: I personally think the reasonable limit is calling for violence or organizing genocide. But those have never really been protected in common law.
- not2b 6y ago
  Easy for you to say, because you aren't a Rohingya and don't have to worry about people organizing your genocide on WhatsApp. We have to be able to criticize the government and debate polices, but when blood is involved (trying to get people killed) there has to be a line.
  - themacguffinman 6y ago
    If people are organizing your genocide on WhatsApp, WhatsApp is not the problem.
- actuator 6y ago
  But how do you reconcile with things like this. Free speech is better, but how much blood is worth it. Again, going with the current example. Indian subcontinent has had a tumultuous history mostly in the last millenium. It has been ravaged by conquests involving destruction of a lot of things that the pagan culture(now referred as a religion) held dear. Even though now the part of the subcontinent that is India now is majority that religion. There is resentment for/from every religion that came from outside. There are still unresolved things which can cause things to flare up easily. We have seen this flare up in US, say LA riots. Imagine a culture which has had issues about their identity and injustices in the past for far longer. Imagine people allowed to build narratives that incite violence freely and spread them like wildfire. It can turn deadly fast and has in the past.

bleepblorp 6y ago

> Yes, there's bullshit about COVID and chemtrails and aliens all over the internet. Why do you care so much? You're so worried that people are going to make their own choices, live their own lives, make mistakes that impact others? Umm, yes? People are extremely vulnerable to misinformation distributed by platforms and people they trust, even if that misinformation will harm themselves or people near them. Facebook-propagated lies about COVID-19 risks and fake treatments kill both the people who believe them and the people believers are exposed to. Facebook was essential in embedding false information into the minds of informationally vulnerable people in order to create the dual democratic disasters of 2016: Trump and Brexit. Feeding seniors a constant misinformation diet of 'vote Brexit or your country will be overrun with Syrian terrorists' until they vote to destroy their children's economic future causes real harm. Reporting on Facebook's failure to act in response to its platform being used to incite the Rohingya genocide[0] should also put to rest any thought that Facebook, as it is currently operated, is compatible with human rights. Making people believe in UFOs and bigfoot is harmless; spreading propaganda that incites people to destroy their own democracy (pro-Trump), destroy their children's futures (pro-Brexit), or kill their neighbors (anti-Rohingya) is not. If Facebook won't do anything about their platform being used for these purposes, then Facebook should be shut down. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

core-questions 6y ago
> Umm, yes? So patronizing. Okay, people are "vulnerable" to misinformation; there's an unstated implication here that you've ascended to some higher level by virtue of consuming your daily dose of establishment media, and that you're no longer personally susceptible to this, and that there's no chance that any of your institutionally approved sources could ever misinform you. > Facebook-propagated lies about COVID-19 risks and fake treatments kill both the people who believe them and the people believers are exposed to. Well, that's tough, isn't it? If you're so afraid of that, maybe you should get a proper respirator, and only emerge into public to buy groceries, and then just live in full lockdown for the rest of your life. Sounds like you don't trust people to consume the information they want and to make their own risk judgements; too bad you're not in control of their actions. What a utopia that would be, eh? I'm sure you'd never misinform anyone, or say something and then have to walk it back a week later, or anything else. Blaming Facebook for this is like blaming your municipality, or your car dealership, when you get into a car accident. Yeah, they built the roads, they sold you the car, but it's on you - it's your risk, ultimately, because it's your life. Yes, you can do risky things; yes, you can even do things that increase risks for others. That's life. It's all part of the fabric of living in a free society. You can only actually protect yourself, and even then, only partially. Controlling what other people can say or think isn't actually going to afford you that much more security. > Reporting on Facebook's failure to act in response to its platform being used to incite the Rohingya genocide As if these things wouldn't take place without Facebook; as though there wouldn't be some other way for people who are already morally in the position of wanting to kill others for their differences wouldn't just find some other way to kick it off. Again, you're blaming the medium for the message, and you have the misguided idea that somehow, if the right censoring moderators clamped down on discussion just a little bit more, that event wouldn't have happened. Of all the small-souled bugman mentalities, this is truly the worst. > spreading propaganda that incites people to destroy their own democracy (pro-Trump) I'm not an American, and so I have no real dog in the fight, but as far as I can tell being in favour of an establishment political party is kind of bread-and-butter democracy, isn't it? How is someone being in favour of your democratically elected president "destroying democracy", and how is acting like that's the case not in and of itself just as anti-democracy a thing to do? Maybe, just maybe, you Yanks could stop frothing at the mouth about Orange Man Bad for ten minutes, and _use_ your freedom of speech to actually engage with people and find out what motivates them, what their fears are, why they've arrived at their conclusions, and maybe build some common ground so you can actually start to understand the underlying economic problems that have put you in the position you're in. The things that destroyed small-town Main Street are not too far off the things that destroyed the inner city, really.... > If Facebook won't do anything about their platform being used for these purposes, then Facebook should be shut down. How about this: if Facebook won't do anything about your personal bugaboos, you should follow my lead and just delete your Facebook account and move on with your fucking life. Why do you feel this intense need to enforce your own personal qualms about what people say onto others? It's so easy, bro, just click that big X and go outside for a couple minutes. Get some perspective. Because otherwise, you're asking for one of the most important freedoms ever won to be thrown away just so you won't be uncomfortable for a couple moments here and there. I can't imagine being so fragile.

wruza 6y ago

You're basically saying that we-all-together are a pile of unfixable trash (sorry if this summary is inexact). And yes, that aligns well with what I think about "us". But that's only when you look at it in stasis. This force that tfa represents is one of the forces that glues everything together. If not this "elitist bullshit", who would gonna go and prevent minds from leading into the opposite bullshit? It is easy to blame an apple for falling on your head, but had you turn off gravity, you'd left with not much time to regret. I'm not even sympathetic to that hn jacquesm if that's him, but it's in our nature to fall into another bullshit pit right after someone pulls us from one. Discussing and questioning methods for balancing between the bullshits is important. You're just conflating that with an actual totalitarianism, because two vectors appear to be aligned atm. Humanity has to make true information accessible (not only technically, but psychologically accessible, filtering out a complete bullshit noise that overscreams a signal). It's only ten+ years since we found ourselves in this mess,it's not an old thing. People were fed with wrong/insane ideas before, but it never was a world-wide self-sustainable viral phenomenon that no one really controls (as in tv). You're all for people doing their business and leaving them alone, but now many have no basis to rest on, and if that's not a problem for you right now, chances are it will quickly become one.

balfirevic 6y ago

> Mattheij hasn't looked at what's happening in Belarus, in India/Pakistan, and what happened during the Arab Spring when governments decided to use the power at their disposal to shut down on the people's ability to freely converse with one another, even about Unapproved Topics, even with Officially Illegal Opinions. For an example that's less dramatic but closer to the western world, take a look at the Croatian (an EU country) authorities arresting a journalist over some tweets: https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/38478-duhacek-journalist-index-hr-arrested https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/38478-duhacek-jo... Journalists are also regularly getting sued and fined on the count of "hurting someone's honor and reputation", mostly by politicians and (seriously) court judges.

claytoneast 6y ago

I don't think anywhere in this post talks about whether or not Mattheij has looked at those events, read those books, thought those thoughts, and what his opinions are on them as related to Free Speech. Assuming the worst of your intellectual opponent is extremely uncharitable and doesn't reflect well.