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This is such a tiring argument. Corporations are the stewards of their domains. If someone wants to exercise their own freedom of speech, they’re welcome to s

This is such a tiring argument. Corporations are the stewards of their domains. If someone wants to exercise their own freedom of speech, they’re welcome to start their own self hosted blog. It won’t have the same reach, and it won’t be as visible, but it will be just as free as freedom of speech ever was. If someone started posting their un-cited drivel, racist rants, and society harming misinformation on my hard drive, I’d want it purged. It’s my responsible as a citizen to maintain the health of my system and maintain reasonable discourse with those I disagree with. Is it “oppression” or an “infringement of our rights” or the “nanny state” when a HackerNews mod deleted a racist post or personal attack on another community member? I think not...

ajsnigrutin 6y ago
So, why so much outrage, when some non-US country bans LGBT groups on some of their platforms? Or trans groups? Or pro-choice (abortion) groups? Or pro Hong Kong groups? All of them are welcome to start their self hosted blogs, aren't they? You either have free speech, and host stuff you personally disagree with, or just call it 'moderation with political bias' (or some other kind of bias), if you only leave stuff you personally agree with. You never know, when you'll be the one facebook disagrees with, and then it's too late.
- Tainnor 6y ago
  Because being anti-LGBT is morally wrong, that's why. It has nothing to do with legality or with freedom of expression. I really don't understand how we can start equating LGBT rights with outright hate speech.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Who gets to decide what definition of morals Facebook should use to answer these questions? Why should Facebook choose your particular moral framework to work with? Yeah, I know, you're right. Everybody else is sure that their moral framework is right, too. So why does yours get to rule? What is your basis for saying that yours is right and theirs is wrong? You may in fact be able to give a defense of your moral framework. That defense seems right to you, and to those who agree with you. But defenders of other moral frameworks can do that, too. Which self-consistent and defensible (per the adherents) moral framework should be the one to rule Facebook, and why?
    - Tainnor 6y ago
      This is moral relativism. You can't build anything on moral relativism. By that same logic, there is no moral justification to freedom of speech either. (also we're talking about outrage here, not about lawsuits.)
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        That totally fails to answer my question. You said being anti-LGBT is morally wrong. Here's some guy in Teheran. He's not a moral relativist. He's very much a moral absolutist, and he's dead certain that LGBT itself is what's morally wrong. Why do we believe you instead of the other guy? Why does Facebook believe you instead of the other guy? Because Facebook is in the US instead of Iran? Here's my position: I am a moral absolutist. Still, I don't want a moral absolutist deciding what Facebook thinks is appropriate content. There's too many systems of absolute morality, and too many of them differ from my own in important ways - ways that I'd like to be able to talk about.
        Tainnor 6y ago
        Wait, I didn't say that I get to legally dictate what Facebook is allowed to do. However, I get to be morally outraged at their actions whenever it pleases me, and I get to get others to be outraged too and if we're enough people we may convince them to change course. In that sense, I don't care one bit about the guy in Teheran who thinks being LGBT is wrong and I don't have to.
        AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        OK. I pretty much agree with that. I'm still worried about the guy who does get to dictate what Facebook will carry (namely, somebody at Facebook). I don't want that person to be very morally absolutist, and I worry that they are becoming increasingly so as time goes by.
        Tainnor 6y ago
  - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
    Many, many religions find pro-LGBT to be morally wrong. Even evolutionary, everything that doesnt create more kids is useless. But we, as a western society usually stand by the rights to let adults do whatever they want (consentually), and don't care about it, if it doesnt affect us directly. And what does 'morally' even mean? We, as a western society, support kids seeing and sucking on boobs, until they're 1yo or 2 (or whatever), then for the next 10-12 years we hide (images of, and real) boobs from them, as if they were radioactive, and they don't know why, then they (approximately half of them) want to look at (real and images of) boobs, but we find that "wrong", a few years later we legally let them pay to see boobs (or find them online for free), and somewhere in the meantime, start bothering then, when are they going to find someone with boobs. Meanwhile mens boobs are ok. In some other cultures, women of all ages don't even cover their boobs in public. So basically something, that is a normal everyday thing in some cultures, for people of all ages, becomes morally wrong in our culture, and we censor it online, we also lock up people if those boobs are owned by a person younger than some arbitrary age, and even have wikipedia pages about that ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XXXVIII_halftime_show_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XXXVIII_halftime_sh... ). So basically, for some other culture, what we do is morally wrong, but we, as a majority, get to ignore their morality and impose our own (even if it's stupid). TLDR: we (as a group) support social networks deleting photos of female nipples, because showing and seeing those is morally wrong in our culture, even though it's an issue that affects a lot more people than LGBT stuff.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Many, many religions find pro-LGBT to be morally wrong So? They are as free to express and act on their opinion of private actors expressing pro-LGBT messages as people who believe otherwise are to express the opposite. > Even evolutionary, everything that doesnt create more kids is useless. Obviously false or such traits would be quickly weeded of it wherever they arise, and they are not.
      - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
        >So? They are as free to express and act on their opinion of private actors expressing pro-LGBT messages as people who believe otherwise are to express the opposite. The last time someone didn't want to bake a cake, they had to fight their way to supreme court... so yeah, expressing your beliefs is not an easy task to do. The problem with beliefs is, that they're arbitrary, and a tiny variable can make a good thing a bad thing. Rape in a movie? Bad thing. Crime, thriller, etc. Rape jokes, bad. But wait, if you just change the gender of the rape victim to a male, you've got a hollywood "satirical erotic romantic comedy" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40_Days_and_40_Nights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40_Days_and_40_Nights ). So, rape jokes are bad, and deleted ( https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-15641998 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-15641998 -here facebook even stood with free speech, but bent down soon after), but if the victim is a man, you can shoot a comedy and make $95M. And it's far from being the only movie with such cntent ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nheskbsU5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nheskbsU5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc6QxD2_yQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc6QxD2_yQw ). Why is one (morally) ok, and the other isn't? Who decides that? If we censor one, shouldnt we also censor the other? Or if we let one online, why not let the other? Is it just a personal choice of a trigger happy moderator? Or is there a written, official moderation rule, where content with rape is ok, if the victim is a man?
- logikomaha 6y ago
  Moral absolutism on freedom of speech is a sympathetic position to take, but not one what’s all that practical... If I exercised my right to freedom of speech to sock puppet thousands of Twitter bots as Facebook accounts to discuss your alleged sexual deviancy, flooded the channel with creative via photoshop, then claimed “ma rights.” would you seriously feel the same way? Facebook is going to stumble through this hard. They’re going to get it wrong, often. They’re at least starting to show how they’re doing content filtering in this article. There’s a world outside of Facebook called the real world where we can meet in person and protest their stupidity if it goes off the rails. Equating Facebook’s wall post feature to the comprehensive number of other ways you can more effectively use your voice... I’m not all the concerned. If Facebook disappeared due to a hardware failure tomorrow, freedom of speech would still be alive and well...
  - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
    But the problem here is the political bias in censorship. If facebook existed 100 years ago, you could say the same thing as now, just the 'good' and the 'bad' groups would be a lot different. And you don't have to wait a 100 years, in my country, if we overly applied the same rules, at the start of the first covid wave, facebook would censor all the science-deniers, and crazy preppers for using masks (because "masks don't help" - our doctors, depending on where you live, probably yours too). Then one random saturday, our government decided you need a mask and gloves to enter any indoor public place (stores,...), and facebook would censor the anti-mask people. We also live in a culture, where we have a few "protected groups", where we censor anything (even jokes) about that (eg. rape jokes), but even those rules, we apply very arbitrarily.... in movies, rape bad, rape jokes bad, unless the person raped is a man, then it's not a crime/thriller, but a "satirical erotic romantic comedy" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40_Days_and_40_Nights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40_Days_and_40_Nights ). Again, rape jokes are censorship worthy, unless you change one tiny variable, and that makes it all ok. Today atleast.
    - logikomaha 6y ago
      The source of the voice is the only thing that I honestly care about. Again, sympathetic but not practical. Banning a Facebook nut job with a hobby and banning the peer reviewed work of epidemiologists are not equal things. I don’t weigh all speech as equal. By the extension of your logic, all speech has equal value. It doesn’t.
- triceratops 6y ago
  > So, why so much outrage, Outrage is also free speech. You're saying if you agree with moderating some things, you should never be allowed to complain about other types of moderation? That's even more antithetical to free speech.
  - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
    If you support a system with moderation (censorship) based on peoples beliefs, then you should not complain when the system you supported is used (with one tiny variable changed - belief). It's like supporting (eg.) warrantless surveilance (because pedos and terrorists), and then complaining when it's used against you. You supported the system, now shut up and deal with it.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      I support moderation by private companies on private platforms on the basis of property rights, and the right of free speech for those companies. I support criticism of moderation decisions on the basis of freedom of speech for individuals. You're allowed to say whatever you want, but if you insist on using my property and resources to say it, that's an infringement on my freedom. These positions aren't inconsistent. > If you support a system with moderation (censorship) based on peoples beliefs, then you should not complain when the system you supported is used Again, now you're arguing against free speech. I'd never tell someone they shouldn't complain about something because they said something I didn't like. They're free to complain all they like.
commandlinefan 6y ago
> they’re welcome to start their own self hosted blog. Until the same activists who wore down Facebook start going after the domain-name registrar of that same self-hosted blog, anyway.
rosmax_1337 6y ago
> they’re welcome to start their own self hosted blog. > racist rants They can then post racist rants until CloudFlare terminates their account on their platform. Like you know, that thing that actually happened to a specific racist ranting platform? (remrotSyliaD) But I suppose those guys should have just made their own CloudFlare alternative... Either way, I don't think corporations should do anything to censor speech, other than that which they are specifically ordered to "censor" by the government. For example child pornography, etc. Perhaps corporations that handle water and electricity in Myanmar should shut down the water and electricity supply to those who advocate hate? (And arguably, water and electricity is easy to get hold of on your own. Easier than your own publishing platform for sure, due to the natural monopoly of that business)

ajsnigrutin 6y ago

So, why so much outrage, when some non-US country bans LGBT groups on some of their platforms? Or trans groups? Or pro-choice (abortion) groups? Or pro Hong Kong groups? All of them are welcome to start their self hosted blogs, aren't they? You either have free speech, and host stuff you personally disagree with, or just call it 'moderation with political bias' (or some other kind of bias), if you only leave stuff you personally agree with. You never know, when you'll be the one facebook disagrees with, and then it's too late.

Tainnor 6y ago
Because being anti-LGBT is morally wrong, that's why. It has nothing to do with legality or with freedom of expression. I really don't understand how we can start equating LGBT rights with outright hate speech.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Who gets to decide what definition of morals Facebook should use to answer these questions? Why should Facebook choose your particular moral framework to work with? Yeah, I know, you're right. Everybody else is sure that their moral framework is right, too. So why does yours get to rule? What is your basis for saying that yours is right and theirs is wrong? You may in fact be able to give a defense of your moral framework. That defense seems right to you, and to those who agree with you. But defenders of other moral frameworks can do that, too. Which self-consistent and defensible (per the adherents) moral framework should be the one to rule Facebook, and why?
  - Tainnor 6y ago
    This is moral relativism. You can't build anything on moral relativism. By that same logic, there is no moral justification to freedom of speech either. (also we're talking about outrage here, not about lawsuits.)
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      That totally fails to answer my question. You said being anti-LGBT is morally wrong. Here's some guy in Teheran. He's not a moral relativist. He's very much a moral absolutist, and he's dead certain that LGBT itself is what's morally wrong. Why do we believe you instead of the other guy? Why does Facebook believe you instead of the other guy? Because Facebook is in the US instead of Iran? Here's my position: I am a moral absolutist. Still, I don't want a moral absolutist deciding what Facebook thinks is appropriate content. There's too many systems of absolute morality, and too many of them differ from my own in important ways - ways that I'd like to be able to talk about.
      - Tainnor 6y ago
        Wait, I didn't say that I get to legally dictate what Facebook is allowed to do. However, I get to be morally outraged at their actions whenever it pleases me, and I get to get others to be outraged too and if we're enough people we may convince them to change course. In that sense, I don't care one bit about the guy in Teheran who thinks being LGBT is wrong and I don't have to.
        AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        OK. I pretty much agree with that. I'm still worried about the guy who does get to dictate what Facebook will carry (namely, somebody at Facebook). I don't want that person to be very morally absolutist, and I worry that they are becoming increasingly so as time goes by.
        Tainnor 6y ago
- ajsnigrutin 6y ago
  Many, many religions find pro-LGBT to be morally wrong. Even evolutionary, everything that doesnt create more kids is useless. But we, as a western society usually stand by the rights to let adults do whatever they want (consentually), and don't care about it, if it doesnt affect us directly. And what does 'morally' even mean? We, as a western society, support kids seeing and sucking on boobs, until they're 1yo or 2 (or whatever), then for the next 10-12 years we hide (images of, and real) boobs from them, as if they were radioactive, and they don't know why, then they (approximately half of them) want to look at (real and images of) boobs, but we find that "wrong", a few years later we legally let them pay to see boobs (or find them online for free), and somewhere in the meantime, start bothering then, when are they going to find someone with boobs. Meanwhile mens boobs are ok. In some other cultures, women of all ages don't even cover their boobs in public. So basically something, that is a normal everyday thing in some cultures, for people of all ages, becomes morally wrong in our culture, and we censor it online, we also lock up people if those boobs are owned by a person younger than some arbitrary age, and even have wikipedia pages about that ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XXXVIII_halftime_show_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XXXVIII_halftime_sh... ). So basically, for some other culture, what we do is morally wrong, but we, as a majority, get to ignore their morality and impose our own (even if it's stupid). TLDR: we (as a group) support social networks deleting photos of female nipples, because showing and seeing those is morally wrong in our culture, even though it's an issue that affects a lot more people than LGBT stuff.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Many, many religions find pro-LGBT to be morally wrong So? They are as free to express and act on their opinion of private actors expressing pro-LGBT messages as people who believe otherwise are to express the opposite. > Even evolutionary, everything that doesnt create more kids is useless. Obviously false or such traits would be quickly weeded of it wherever they arise, and they are not.
    - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
      >So? They are as free to express and act on their opinion of private actors expressing pro-LGBT messages as people who believe otherwise are to express the opposite. The last time someone didn't want to bake a cake, they had to fight their way to supreme court... so yeah, expressing your beliefs is not an easy task to do. The problem with beliefs is, that they're arbitrary, and a tiny variable can make a good thing a bad thing. Rape in a movie? Bad thing. Crime, thriller, etc. Rape jokes, bad. But wait, if you just change the gender of the rape victim to a male, you've got a hollywood "satirical erotic romantic comedy" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40_Days_and_40_Nights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40_Days_and_40_Nights ). So, rape jokes are bad, and deleted ( https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-15641998 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-15641998 -here facebook even stood with free speech, but bent down soon after), but if the victim is a man, you can shoot a comedy and make $95M. And it's far from being the only movie with such cntent ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nheskbsU5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nheskbsU5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc6QxD2_yQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc6QxD2_yQw ). Why is one (morally) ok, and the other isn't? Who decides that? If we censor one, shouldnt we also censor the other? Or if we let one online, why not let the other? Is it just a personal choice of a trigger happy moderator? Or is there a written, official moderation rule, where content with rape is ok, if the victim is a man?
logikomaha 6y ago
Moral absolutism on freedom of speech is a sympathetic position to take, but not one what’s all that practical... If I exercised my right to freedom of speech to sock puppet thousands of Twitter bots as Facebook accounts to discuss your alleged sexual deviancy, flooded the channel with creative via photoshop, then claimed “ma rights.” would you seriously feel the same way? Facebook is going to stumble through this hard. They’re going to get it wrong, often. They’re at least starting to show how they’re doing content filtering in this article. There’s a world outside of Facebook called the real world where we can meet in person and protest their stupidity if it goes off the rails. Equating Facebook’s wall post feature to the comprehensive number of other ways you can more effectively use your voice... I’m not all the concerned. If Facebook disappeared due to a hardware failure tomorrow, freedom of speech would still be alive and well...
- ajsnigrutin 6y ago
  But the problem here is the political bias in censorship. If facebook existed 100 years ago, you could say the same thing as now, just the 'good' and the 'bad' groups would be a lot different. And you don't have to wait a 100 years, in my country, if we overly applied the same rules, at the start of the first covid wave, facebook would censor all the science-deniers, and crazy preppers for using masks (because "masks don't help" - our doctors, depending on where you live, probably yours too). Then one random saturday, our government decided you need a mask and gloves to enter any indoor public place (stores,...), and facebook would censor the anti-mask people. We also live in a culture, where we have a few "protected groups", where we censor anything (even jokes) about that (eg. rape jokes), but even those rules, we apply very arbitrarily.... in movies, rape bad, rape jokes bad, unless the person raped is a man, then it's not a crime/thriller, but a "satirical erotic romantic comedy" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40_Days_and_40_Nights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40_Days_and_40_Nights ). Again, rape jokes are censorship worthy, unless you change one tiny variable, and that makes it all ok. Today atleast.
  - logikomaha 6y ago
    The source of the voice is the only thing that I honestly care about. Again, sympathetic but not practical. Banning a Facebook nut job with a hobby and banning the peer reviewed work of epidemiologists are not equal things. I don’t weigh all speech as equal. By the extension of your logic, all speech has equal value. It doesn’t.
triceratops 6y ago
> So, why so much outrage, Outrage is also free speech. You're saying if you agree with moderating some things, you should never be allowed to complain about other types of moderation? That's even more antithetical to free speech.
- ajsnigrutin 6y ago
  If you support a system with moderation (censorship) based on peoples beliefs, then you should not complain when the system you supported is used (with one tiny variable changed - belief). It's like supporting (eg.) warrantless surveilance (because pedos and terrorists), and then complaining when it's used against you. You supported the system, now shut up and deal with it.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    I support moderation by private companies on private platforms on the basis of property rights, and the right of free speech for those companies. I support criticism of moderation decisions on the basis of freedom of speech for individuals. You're allowed to say whatever you want, but if you insist on using my property and resources to say it, that's an infringement on my freedom. These positions aren't inconsistent. > If you support a system with moderation (censorship) based on peoples beliefs, then you should not complain when the system you supported is used Again, now you're arguing against free speech. I'd never tell someone they shouldn't complain about something because they said something I didn't like. They're free to complain all they like.

commandlinefan 6y ago

> they’re welcome to start their own self hosted blog. Until the same activists who wore down Facebook start going after the domain-name registrar of that same self-hosted blog, anyway.

rosmax_1337 6y ago

> they’re welcome to start their own self hosted blog. > racist rants They can then post racist rants until CloudFlare terminates their account on their platform. Like you know, that thing that actually happened to a specific racist ranting platform? (remrotSyliaD) But I suppose those guys should have just made their own CloudFlare alternative... Either way, I don't think corporations should do anything to censor speech, other than that which they are specifically ordered to "censor" by the government. For example child pornography, etc. Perhaps corporations that handle water and electricity in Myanmar should shut down the water and electricity supply to those who advocate hate? (And arguably, water and electricity is easy to get hold of on your own. Easier than your own publishing platform for sure, due to the natural monopoly of that business)