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Some comments are calling this move intolerant censorship, when it is not. Tolerance is accepting that another person has a different view. But the people who
by iambateman 6y ago
Some comments are calling this move intolerant censorship, when it is not.
Tolerance is accepting that another person has a different view. But the people who are pushing lies about the Holocaust or a flat earth don’t have a different opinion, they are lying about well-known, verifiable facts. Now, some may say that censors often hide behind “facts” to suppress ideas they don’t like. The difference is that the Holocaust was a global tragedy and the earth is round and other “points of view” are both harmful and nonsense.
Censorship is a dangerous tool but not a tool which ought never be used.
The essential problem is _how_ these curation decisions get made. At present, Facebook is making free speech decisions much like a government, despite not having representation from “the people.” While Zuck may be a benevolent ruler, his successor may not be. We need government-like separation of powers and popular representation in order to maintain social platforms for many generations. Otherwise, we risk digital despotism.
- bjourne 6y agoThe slope is incredibly slippery. It starts with Holocaust denial, then pedophilia advocacy, then saying blacks are racially inferior to whites, then to plain old anti-Semitism, then to saying men have higher iq than women, then to militant vegans ("meat is murder you say, incitement!"), then to people wishing that Trump will die in Covid, then to people arguing that U.S. soldiers should be drone-striked. Two weeks ago Facebook banned a seminar arranged by a U.S. university because one of the speakers was Leila Khaled. A 76-year-old lady who hijacked two planes 50 years ago. How can what she had to say be so "dangerous" that Facebook had to ban her? Sooner or later, this censorship will encroach on what you have to say too.
- one2know 6y agoWe are already well down the slope moving at warp speed. Facebook is obviously selectively choosing what is hate speech according to their leftist political stance. They don't remove hate speech that is anti-police and inciting violence against police (BLM) despite dozens of police having been attacked and maybe half a dozen killings.
- bjourne 6y agoFacebook has already shutdown numerous left-wing groups. https://theintercept.com/2020/08/20/facebook-bans-antifascist-pages/ https://theintercept.com/2020/08/20/facebook-bans-antifascis...
- one2know 6y agoThey have shut down BLM pages? BLM irrefutably spreads hate, especially towards cops, even black cops, and their actions have gotten lots of cops killed. Many of them openly spread racial hate directed towards whites including the Dallas BLM shooter who killed 5 cops and said he wanted to kill white people and white cops in particular. If they shut down a vague classification of people like holocaust deniers, which is like shutting down flat earthers, then clearly they should shut down an organized hate group.
- one2know 6y agoSee... you've downvoted this because you've decided BLM is "your team" because of politics and that is a problem. You can't think objectively about what political actors are actually doing in the real world, and that is very dangerous.
- bjourne 6y agoHN doesn't allow you to down vote replies to your own comments so that was someone else. Rather than accusing me of hypocrisy, you could read my other comments on this article to know my position on free speech.