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It's weird how normalized censorship has become in just one year. Yeah, yeah, I know Facebook is a "private entity, and they can do what they want with their p

by brink 6y ago

It's weird how normalized censorship has become in just one year. Yeah, yeah, I know Facebook is a "private entity, and they can do what they want with their platform", spare me. Facebook is a social media monopoly. We need to protect free speech on these "private" monolith social media platforms before it's too late.

thegrim33 6y ago
It's even stranger to me that the censorship is applauded and cheered on because people believe it's "for a good reason". But that doesn't change the fact that it's still just blatant political censorship on a massive level. Every evil regime in history has done evil things under the guise of convincing the citizens that it's OK because it's "for a good reason" or directed against "bad people", but that doesn't change the fact that it's still evil. No matter how much political propaganda they push about why the censorship is good, it's still massively partisan censorship and suppression.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  And yet you can go to Parler, and they will happily censor pro-left / Democrat / liberal posts and positions. And openly do so. And have the people there stating it as their right (which it is). So these right leaning people absolutely do have a platform. Is it as popular? No. Maybe that's because their perspective is less popular. You don't have the right to an audience to your speech and it's not suppression to choose not to use my [or Facebook] resources to amplify your words, nor is it my problem that your platform doesn't have the same audience and reach.
- jfrunyon 6y ago
  > it's still just blatant political censorship on a massive level Uhhh... no, banning lies and hate speech is not "political censorship". That implies that lies and hate speech are legitimate political views.
Quarrelsome 6y ago
> It's weird how normalized censorship has become in just one year. I feel like its people trying to deal with the discord of this new breed of politicians that brazenly lie so often that its impossible to know what's real anymore. Politicians used to be masters of selective information and leaving key information out while still not technically lying. Now they say whatever the fuck they want with scant attention to reality and facts. That's what's causing this IMO because the amount of attention they receive means that they strongly impact the narrative. As a non-US example; Boris Johnson yesterday stated that it was "very likely" that Britain will leave the EU without a deal, despite coming to power on an election campaign where he stated he had "an oven ready deal with the EU". If you were taking the British government's word at faith then yesterday's statement would have been a massive shock to you because for four years no government minister has stated that this outcome will happen.
SamReidHughes 6y ago
Yep, and, it really kicked off in March with Coronavirus. You could see it happening organically on HN with a lot of abuse of comment flagging. I'm expecting at some point for global warming argumentation to be banned on social media.
- gentleman11 6y ago
  I have seen just about every election related post flagged and then unflagged in the last few months. Does not include downvotes against people who disagree with each other. The community is being resilient to this behaviour and it’s going back to normal but it was a weird few months
ThoreauBred 6y ago
Nah that’s illogical thinking. We need to protect free speech. Protecting private power is anti-democratic. Where it suits Facebook they control speech on their platform. Believing Zuckerberg to be beyond the reach of mortal emotions such as avarice and being willfully ignorant is dangerous. Technical people can conjure a replacement anytime. Facebook is ultimately just a legal ownership construct. There are number of solutions available. I use k8s + kilo hosted privately on Rpi sent to friend and family. Look, free software and speech! SV is has been mesmerizing the world with big data tricks. To be certain, there are very important uses for that in science and engineering. Most of social media though is nothing special. I learn more emailing academics than I do ogling Instagram models, and zoning out to COD soldiers on Twitch.
driverdan 6y ago
> We need to protect free speech on these "private" monolith social media platforms before it's too late. You have no free speech on private platforms. All platforms have content moderation or else they'd have a 100 to 1 ratio of spam to real posts. Too late for what exactly?
umvi 6y ago
Indeed - Facebook, Twitter, and now YouTube have all aggressively ramped up censorship in 2020 alone in the name of election integrity.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
What are you talking about? "Censorship" by corporations has an extremely long history. This is in no way new.
jfrunyon 6y ago
No, what we need to do is stop using closed, centralized platforms which are controlled by someone whose interests are wildly different from our own. (And I don't care who you are, your interests are wildly different from Zuckerberg's.) The solution is not taking away legitimate rights from someone else, it's taking control back from them.
danijelb 6y ago
I might be wrong because I'm not an American, but the way I understand the free speech is that it guarantees the government can't punish you for saying something. It doesn't guarantee your speech a right to have instant reach to millions of people. Facebook "censoring" someone is no different than a newspaper in the 20th century deciding to not publish your letter, or a book publisher refusing to publish your book, or a store owner removing your graffiti from their window. You had a right in 20th century to say anything you want to whomever you wanted. If you wanted to reach a ton of people at the same time, you either built that reach manually or you had to convince someone (TV, radio, book publisher) to help you. And it is the same today. You can say whatever you want to a friend, coworker, family member. And you can also say whatever you want to every citizen in the USA. But you're not guaranteed a right of any company to help you in that endeavor. If Facebook, Youtube, Amazon, Paypal don't want to help you in reaching people it is their right to do so. Youtube blocked you? Make your own website. Amazon doesn't want to sell your book? Print it yourself. Claiming that Facebook or Twitter deleting someone's content is censorship because you have a right for your speech to have a huge reach would mean that there was no free speech anytime in history, except for a brief period of time when social media appeared before they started "censoring"

by brink 6y ago

thegrim33 6y ago

It's even stranger to me that the censorship is applauded and cheered on because people believe it's "for a good reason". But that doesn't change the fact that it's still just blatant political censorship on a massive level. Every evil regime in history has done evil things under the guise of convincing the citizens that it's OK because it's "for a good reason" or directed against "bad people", but that doesn't change the fact that it's still evil. No matter how much political propaganda they push about why the censorship is good, it's still massively partisan censorship and suppression.

FireBeyond 6y ago
And yet you can go to Parler, and they will happily censor pro-left / Democrat / liberal posts and positions. And openly do so. And have the people there stating it as their right (which it is). So these right leaning people absolutely do have a platform. Is it as popular? No. Maybe that's because their perspective is less popular. You don't have the right to an audience to your speech and it's not suppression to choose not to use my [or Facebook] resources to amplify your words, nor is it my problem that your platform doesn't have the same audience and reach.
jfrunyon 6y ago
> it's still just blatant political censorship on a massive level Uhhh... no, banning lies and hate speech is not "political censorship". That implies that lies and hate speech are legitimate political views.

Quarrelsome 6y ago

> It's weird how normalized censorship has become in just one year. I feel like its people trying to deal with the discord of this new breed of politicians that brazenly lie so often that its impossible to know what's real anymore. Politicians used to be masters of selective information and leaving key information out while still not technically lying. Now they say whatever the fuck they want with scant attention to reality and facts. That's what's causing this IMO because the amount of attention they receive means that they strongly impact the narrative. As a non-US example; Boris Johnson yesterday stated that it was "very likely" that Britain will leave the EU without a deal, despite coming to power on an election campaign where he stated he had "an oven ready deal with the EU". If you were taking the British government's word at faith then yesterday's statement would have been a massive shock to you because for four years no government minister has stated that this outcome will happen.

SamReidHughes 6y ago

Yep, and, it really kicked off in March with Coronavirus. You could see it happening organically on HN with a lot of abuse of comment flagging. I'm expecting at some point for global warming argumentation to be banned on social media.

gentleman11 6y ago
I have seen just about every election related post flagged and then unflagged in the last few months. Does not include downvotes against people who disagree with each other. The community is being resilient to this behaviour and it’s going back to normal but it was a weird few months

ThoreauBred 6y ago

Nah that’s illogical thinking. We need to protect free speech. Protecting private power is anti-democratic. Where it suits Facebook they control speech on their platform. Believing Zuckerberg to be beyond the reach of mortal emotions such as avarice and being willfully ignorant is dangerous. Technical people can conjure a replacement anytime. Facebook is ultimately just a legal ownership construct. There are number of solutions available. I use k8s + kilo hosted privately on Rpi sent to friend and family. Look, free software and speech! SV is has been mesmerizing the world with big data tricks. To be certain, there are very important uses for that in science and engineering. Most of social media though is nothing special. I learn more emailing academics than I do ogling Instagram models, and zoning out to COD soldiers on Twitch.

driverdan 6y ago

> We need to protect free speech on these "private" monolith social media platforms before it's too late. You have no free speech on private platforms. All platforms have content moderation or else they'd have a 100 to 1 ratio of spam to real posts. Too late for what exactly?

umvi 6y ago

Indeed - Facebook, Twitter, and now YouTube have all aggressively ramped up censorship in 2020 alone in the name of election integrity.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

What are you talking about? "Censorship" by corporations has an extremely long history. This is in no way new.

jfrunyon 6y ago

No, what we need to do is stop using closed, centralized platforms which are controlled by someone whose interests are wildly different from our own. (And I don't care who you are, your interests are wildly different from Zuckerberg's.) The solution is not taking away legitimate rights from someone else, it's taking control back from them.

danijelb 6y ago

I might be wrong because I'm not an American, but the way I understand the free speech is that it guarantees the government can't punish you for saying something. It doesn't guarantee your speech a right to have instant reach to millions of people. Facebook "censoring" someone is no different than a newspaper in the 20th century deciding to not publish your letter, or a book publisher refusing to publish your book, or a store owner removing your graffiti from their window. You had a right in 20th century to say anything you want to whomever you wanted. If you wanted to reach a ton of people at the same time, you either built that reach manually or you had to convince someone (TV, radio, book publisher) to help you. And it is the same today. You can say whatever you want to a friend, coworker, family member. And you can also say whatever you want to every citizen in the USA. But you're not guaranteed a right of any company to help you in that endeavor. If Facebook, Youtube, Amazon, Paypal don't want to help you in reaching people it is their right to do so. Youtube blocked you? Make your own website. Amazon doesn't want to sell your book? Print it yourself. Claiming that Facebook or Twitter deleting someone's content is censorship because you have a right for your speech to have a huge reach would mean that there was no free speech anytime in history, except for a brief period of time when social media appeared before they started "censoring"