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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 po

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.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  It is factually true! And yet there are many disputes over the facts in our world, and the "Fact Check" is an entire genre of opinion journalism these days, and Facebook is already applying censorship based on these opinions. Take, for instance, this overtly right-wing partisan here, John Stossel, also writing within the past week: https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2020/10/07/fake-fact-checking-n1011737 https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2020/10/07/fake-fac... I have little traffick with John Stossel's work, and will not attest to any specific claims about wildfires, but Facebook's idea of "fact checking" this specific video involves groups like Climate Feedback, who are apparently empowered to lie about Professor Stefan Doerr of Swansea University reviewing his video. This is not about Stossel, whose work I will not condone here. This how much you should trust Facebook to be an effective arbiter of Factual Truth, which should be very near zero. And there's a word for enforcing the "Factual Truth" like this: it's called Orthodoxy.
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    I am being downvoted by the enforcers of orthodox opinion here. Which brings me to the real reason that you shouldn't worry about a slippery slope from Facebook becoming the arbiter of Fact: Because you actually want the slippery slope to happen! You are confident that they will use their power to censor your political enemies and enforce your orthodoxies on the world. <3
- netsharc 6y ago
  The fact that this post is grey depresses me that HN is full of Holocaust-denying, or more likely, libertrarian Ayn Rand-fetishizing jerk-offs... Might as well vehemently argue that the earth is flat, if you think the Holocaust was faked.
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    I am confident that none of the people who downvoted such a comment believe the Holocaust was faked.

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.

fennecfoxen 6y ago
It is factually true! And yet there are many disputes over the facts in our world, and the "Fact Check" is an entire genre of opinion journalism these days, and Facebook is already applying censorship based on these opinions. Take, for instance, this overtly right-wing partisan here, John Stossel, also writing within the past week: https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2020/10/07/fake-fact-checking-n1011737 https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2020/10/07/fake-fac... I have little traffick with John Stossel's work, and will not attest to any specific claims about wildfires, but Facebook's idea of "fact checking" this specific video involves groups like Climate Feedback, who are apparently empowered to lie about Professor Stefan Doerr of Swansea University reviewing his video. This is not about Stossel, whose work I will not condone here. This how much you should trust Facebook to be an effective arbiter of Factual Truth, which should be very near zero. And there's a word for enforcing the "Factual Truth" like this: it's called Orthodoxy.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  I am being downvoted by the enforcers of orthodox opinion here. Which brings me to the real reason that you shouldn't worry about a slippery slope from Facebook becoming the arbiter of Fact: Because you actually want the slippery slope to happen! You are confident that they will use their power to censor your political enemies and enforce your orthodoxies on the world. <3
netsharc 6y ago
The fact that this post is grey depresses me that HN is full of Holocaust-denying, or more likely, libertrarian Ayn Rand-fetishizing jerk-offs... Might as well vehemently argue that the earth is flat, if you think the Holocaust was faked.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  I am confident that none of the people who downvoted such a comment believe the Holocaust was faked.