4 ms·

That is slipperiest of slopes if I ever heard one.

by NewOrderNow 6y ago

duxup 6y ago
Can you explain how that is a slippery slope?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tolbish 6y ago
  I think they are referring to Zuckerberg using "Facebook should not be the arbiter of truth" as justification for not taking action in the past.
- pfortuny 6y ago
  Who defines unreasonable? Should Newton stop being explained beacause he is flawed? Or do we need a disclaimer in every single video about mechanics? What about photons as small pieces of matter? Ehat about the existence of God?
  - klyrs 6y ago
    Sorry, but Newtonian physics, the particle nature of photons, and the simple existence of god are not examples of intolerance. If censorship on the basis of intolerance is, in fact, a slippery slope that is connected to these benign topics, you'll need to show how they're actually connected Edit: oh, I see. You're one of several responders who have latched onto OC's use of the word "reasonable" and are disengenuously attacking that word outside of the actual context. Excellent example of attacking the weakest form of somebody's argument and applying the slippery-slope fallacy from there. We can do better than this, folks.
  - latch 6y ago
    Well, if you believe in the First Amendment, then Facebook itself gets the freedom to decide what does and doesn't go on its platform. If you want something more generic, you could start with hate speech laws in Australia, Belgium, Canada...Spain, Switzerland, the UK, etc. Or even more generally, the UN's International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. So, there's plenty of established frameworks to base your work off of and they've been around long enough that we can measure what the impact is.
    - verdverm 6y ago
      Facebook could be considered a public square, where they would be required to protect it's users free speech and lose their own ability to censor by choice. This would be similar to the central area of a mall or when companies provided housing to workers to prevent unionization efforts. Both places were upheld as places where the First Amendment must be upheld, despite private ownership.
    - cm2187 6y ago
      Having the right to do something doesn’t make it a good idea. The issue here isn’t about Facebook having the right to do it.
      - latch 6y ago
        The question was: "Who defines unreasonable"? As a matter of fact, the answer is: Facebook. That _does_ seem like the issue to me. I think that you're moving the goalpost from "who decides" to "is it a good idea". To which I've already answered: yes, it has a proven track record.
- zests 6y ago
  Assuming you support facebook's move to remove this content, would you not also support the removal of similar content that you also consider objectionable? Do you not hope that this leads to more content removal or is this the only piece of content that you consider necessary to remove? By my estimation -- and there are certain individuals where this might not be true -- if you support this you likely _want_ this to be a continued effort to remove objectionable content.
  - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    Surely, you can see how objectionable things can be different? I find most religious content to be objectionable. But for the most part, it is benign. In general, someone's religious beliefs don't affect me. Once it starts to call for the ill treatment of others, though, I think it should be removed. So religion-based anti-LGBTQ content should be removed (for example). Holocaust denial stems from a long history of anti semitism, which in itself tends to advocate the poor treatment of others and enbraces a certain amount of dehumanizing language. All for something they cannot help and doesn't actually affect others. We know that hate groups embrace this. We also know it happened - we have pictures. It is simply lies to get folks to treat others badly. So, removal.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  I'll make a principled stab at it. If you ban Holocaust deniers, then you're in the business of drawing lines, proclaiming what is truth. This is a powerful position and many will wish to use it for more than just the Holocaust. They will initially do so by presenting a variety of outrageous content which maybe should be banned, applying public pressure, and their initial targets will be reasonable. But the outrage industry is big these days, and its targets are many. I shall present some recent evidence of its working. Consider a figure like, say, Bruce Gilley, who I was just reading about this past week: he's an academic who says non-mean things about colonialism. A public outrage drive, started by Maoist philosopher Joshua Moufawad-Paul (author of "The Communist Necessity") got his publisher to cancel a biography of Sir Alan Burns; similar outrage drives have previously attempted to see his doctorate revoked. I have not read his scholarship and have no reason to suppose his work to be excellent; however, I should prefer that academic degrees are not revoked after the fact for failing to conform to any particular orthodoxy. Yet these are the times that we live in: we are increasingly censored by the mob. Facebook content moderation is an obvious target and there is no doubt will be targeted. The categories will expand. Facebook's resistance to such measures will either be heroic, or profoundly inadequate. So consider: Is the Republican party under Donald Trump a hate group? Is it legitimate for them to have Facebook operations? Surely if you work in Silicon Valley you know someone who considers it a hate group, and believes it should not be permitted a Facebook presence. That is where this ends up. It is not a long and tortuous path. And as hateful as Holocaust denial is, it is possible that Facebook might make the world a better place in the end by allowing it, that they may say, "We are not the content police. No one is."
  - hef19898 6y ago
    There is such a thing as factual truth. That we, as a society, have reached a point where we lost the basic concensus of that is very troubling. Denying the Holocaust is like denying gravity. Both things, the Holocaust and gravity, are factually true. We have to be able to call people out for denying that. And while denying gravity is just stupid, denying the holocaust is outright dangerous. Taking steps against that are thus justified.
    - 6y ago
latch 6y ago
This is a logical fallacy, and a bad one as it generally doesn't bear out how you're implying in the real world.
- zests 6y ago
  The labeling of "slippery slope" as a "logical fallacy" versus a "consequentialist logical device" is becoming quite the political statement. Check out the history and the talk page of the wikipedia article for slippery slope. For the record, I disagree that it is a logical fallacy in all cases.
  - andybak 6y ago
    > For the record, I disagree that it is a logical fallacy in all cases. Isn't that ambiguous? You could mean: > It is not a logical fallacy ever. or > It is not always a logical fallacy. I suspect you mean the latter but some might intepret you as meaning the former.
    - zests 6y ago
      Yes, I can see how the wording could be confusing. I mean the second interpretation as you suggest.

That is slipperiest of slopes if I ever heard one.

duxup 6y ago

Can you explain how that is a slippery slope?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tolbish 6y ago
I think they are referring to Zuckerberg using "Facebook should not be the arbiter of truth" as justification for not taking action in the past.
pfortuny 6y ago
Who defines unreasonable? Should Newton stop being explained beacause he is flawed? Or do we need a disclaimer in every single video about mechanics? What about photons as small pieces of matter? Ehat about the existence of God?
- klyrs 6y ago
  Sorry, but Newtonian physics, the particle nature of photons, and the simple existence of god are not examples of intolerance. If censorship on the basis of intolerance is, in fact, a slippery slope that is connected to these benign topics, you'll need to show how they're actually connected Edit: oh, I see. You're one of several responders who have latched onto OC's use of the word "reasonable" and are disengenuously attacking that word outside of the actual context. Excellent example of attacking the weakest form of somebody's argument and applying the slippery-slope fallacy from there. We can do better than this, folks.
- latch 6y ago
  Well, if you believe in the First Amendment, then Facebook itself gets the freedom to decide what does and doesn't go on its platform. If you want something more generic, you could start with hate speech laws in Australia, Belgium, Canada...Spain, Switzerland, the UK, etc. Or even more generally, the UN's International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. So, there's plenty of established frameworks to base your work off of and they've been around long enough that we can measure what the impact is.
  - verdverm 6y ago
    Facebook could be considered a public square, where they would be required to protect it's users free speech and lose their own ability to censor by choice. This would be similar to the central area of a mall or when companies provided housing to workers to prevent unionization efforts. Both places were upheld as places where the First Amendment must be upheld, despite private ownership.
  - cm2187 6y ago
    Having the right to do something doesn’t make it a good idea. The issue here isn’t about Facebook having the right to do it.
    - latch 6y ago
      The question was: "Who defines unreasonable"? As a matter of fact, the answer is: Facebook. That _does_ seem like the issue to me. I think that you're moving the goalpost from "who decides" to "is it a good idea". To which I've already answered: yes, it has a proven track record.
zests 6y ago
Assuming you support facebook's move to remove this content, would you not also support the removal of similar content that you also consider objectionable? Do you not hope that this leads to more content removal or is this the only piece of content that you consider necessary to remove? By my estimation -- and there are certain individuals where this might not be true -- if you support this you likely _want_ this to be a continued effort to remove objectionable content.
- Broken_Hippo 6y ago
  Surely, you can see how objectionable things can be different? I find most religious content to be objectionable. But for the most part, it is benign. In general, someone's religious beliefs don't affect me. Once it starts to call for the ill treatment of others, though, I think it should be removed. So religion-based anti-LGBTQ content should be removed (for example). Holocaust denial stems from a long history of anti semitism, which in itself tends to advocate the poor treatment of others and enbraces a certain amount of dehumanizing language. All for something they cannot help and doesn't actually affect others. We know that hate groups embrace this. We also know it happened - we have pictures. It is simply lies to get folks to treat others badly. So, removal.
fennecfoxen 6y ago
I'll make a principled stab at it. If you ban Holocaust deniers, then you're in the business of drawing lines, proclaiming what is truth. This is a powerful position and many will wish to use it for more than just the Holocaust. They will initially do so by presenting a variety of outrageous content which maybe should be banned, applying public pressure, and their initial targets will be reasonable. But the outrage industry is big these days, and its targets are many. I shall present some recent evidence of its working. Consider a figure like, say, Bruce Gilley, who I was just reading about this past week: he's an academic who says non-mean things about colonialism. A public outrage drive, started by Maoist philosopher Joshua Moufawad-Paul (author of "The Communist Necessity") got his publisher to cancel a biography of Sir Alan Burns; similar outrage drives have previously attempted to see his doctorate revoked. I have not read his scholarship and have no reason to suppose his work to be excellent; however, I should prefer that academic degrees are not revoked after the fact for failing to conform to any particular orthodoxy. Yet these are the times that we live in: we are increasingly censored by the mob. Facebook content moderation is an obvious target and there is no doubt will be targeted. The categories will expand. Facebook's resistance to such measures will either be heroic, or profoundly inadequate. So consider: Is the Republican party under Donald Trump a hate group? Is it legitimate for them to have Facebook operations? Surely if you work in Silicon Valley you know someone who considers it a hate group, and believes it should not be permitted a Facebook presence. That is where this ends up. It is not a long and tortuous path. And as hateful as Holocaust denial is, it is possible that Facebook might make the world a better place in the end by allowing it, that they may say, "We are not the content police. No one is."
- hef19898 6y ago
  There is such a thing as factual truth. That we, as a society, have reached a point where we lost the basic concensus of that is very troubling. Denying the Holocaust is like denying gravity. Both things, the Holocaust and gravity, are factually true. We have to be able to call people out for denying that. And while denying gravity is just stupid, denying the holocaust is outright dangerous. Taking steps against that are thus justified.
  - 6y ago

latch 6y ago

This is a logical fallacy, and a bad one as it generally doesn't bear out how you're implying in the real world.

zests 6y ago
The labeling of "slippery slope" as a "logical fallacy" versus a "consequentialist logical device" is becoming quite the political statement. Check out the history and the talk page of the wikipedia article for slippery slope. For the record, I disagree that it is a logical fallacy in all cases.
- andybak 6y ago
  > For the record, I disagree that it is a logical fallacy in all cases. Isn't that ambiguous? You could mean: > It is not a logical fallacy ever. or > It is not always a logical fallacy. I suspect you mean the latter but some might intepret you as meaning the former.
  - zests 6y ago
    Yes, I can see how the wording could be confusing. I mean the second interpretation as you suggest.