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How is this not foreign political interference? The UK media has been preaching to us about dangers of Russian election interference for years at this point, b
by kypro 6y ago
How is this not foreign political interference?
The UK media has been preaching to us about dangers of Russian election interference for years at this point, but simultaneously they seem completely unconcerned that a handful of wealthy Americans how the power to censor popular media outlets, entire political movements and political activists at a whim.
The SWP is massive. I don't know for sure, but I suspect they had millions of followers on Facebook. This isn't some fringe, extremist group by any sane interpretation of those terms.
It seems we're now quickly moving on from just censoring those with extremist political views to simply censoring anyone who who dares express a non-establishment political view online.
- ssakamoto 6y agoFacebook is a private company and can do whatever they want.
- pasquinelli 6y agothat can change. what's the cost and the benefit of doing so?
- SV_BubbleTime 6y agoThat’s been said mockingly and seriously so many times in the last few weeks; it’s literally impossible to tell which this is. Bravo on ambiguity.
- herostratus101 6y agoSure, they can. Should they? And should they be allowed to looking forward, or are they now an active threat to democracy? By the way, I say this speaking as a conservative who opposes basically everything the Socialist Workers Party stands for, but who is more threatened by autocratic tech censorship than by opposing ideas.
- SllX 6y agoThere isn’t a shortage of means to socialize and communicate digitally. Facebook rises and falls on its own merits and if your speech depends on Facebook, that’s a personal problem, and reflects your own personal choices. 20 years ago Facebook didn’t exist. Now we have Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr, WordPress (both the service and the software), YouTube, SoundCloud, the Fediverse, Twitch, Slack, Discord, iMessage groups, whatever the 3 Google messengers of the day are, XMPP clients and servers, IRC (which is admittedly more than 20 years old), countless dating sites, Reddit, and countless other “social networks”. When the bars re-open, we’ll have those too, and that is an ancient institution. And for what it’s worth, there’s also the comments section of NRO and The Dispatch. Oh, and the forum we’re talking on.
- throwaway45349 6y agoI mean, that's fine, but I take issue with one party having this massive megaphone to the world, with the other side having theirs completely snuffed. Either ban them all, or ban none of them.
- bostonsre 6y agoSure, there isn't a shortage of digital communication, but they are responsible for a large proportion of that communication and they hold the power of tilting democracies by choice of those in charge of the company or by seemingly random bearucratic decisions made by their employees. They are a medium of information distribution. If certain phone companies decide to not put through calls years ago in an effort to sway democracies, would that have been acceptable? They are a for profit business ruled by one individual that has extraordinary power. As a society, are we really supposed to just let them do whatever they want just because there are less popular alternatives?
- SllX 6y agoThere was an argument to be made to treat phone companies like common carriers, I’m not entirely sure that was the best way to handle them, but it happened, and it was a good argument nonetheless, or at least well argued. Social media isn’t like that at all. Social media proliferates and in different forms and it does so internationally with popular and unpopular opinions easily spreading like wildfire. I have no problem with the Facebooks and the Twitters of the world running their servers with the carte blanche of the private property owners that they are because what you and others perceive as a lack of options and alternatives looks more to me like there’s not a lot of options today compared to how many there will be 20 years from now. Go look back at the history of the web, here’s an incomplete and not comprehensive list of sites and internet services which have existed, do exist, ceased to exist, got gobbled up by bigger fish and spawned smaller networks of their own and probably in some small way contributed to the political conscience of most Americans alive today and definitely not concerning ourselves with all of the countless web forums, Usenet groups, and mailing lists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_serv... Classmates.com: 1995 GameFAQs: 1995 Newgrounds: 1995 ICQ: 1996 AIM: 1997 CaringBridge: 1997 Slashdot: 1997 Penny Arcade: 1998 Yahoo Messenger: 1998 BlackPlanet: 1999 Blogger: 1999 Fark: 1999 Kiwibox: 1999 LiveJournal: 1999 Metafilter: 1999 Neopets: 1999 Something Awful: 1999 Xanga: 1999 CrossFit: 2000 DeviantArt: 2000 Radio UserLand: 2000 Wikipedia: 2001 YTMND: 2001 Yahoo Groups: 2001 last.fm: 2002 Meetup: 2002 4chan: 2003 Gaia Online: 2003 LinkedIn: 2003 MEETin: 2003 MySpace: 2003 Second Life: 2003 Steam: 2003 WordPress: 2003 Digg: 2004 Facebook: 2004 Flickr: 2004 hi5: 2004 IMVU: 2004 PatientsLikeMe: 2004 RoosterTeeth Forums: 2004 TV Tropes: 2004 World of Warcraft: 2004 Yelp: 2004 Vimeo: 2004 Dailymotion: 2005 Google Talk: 2005 LibraryThing: 2005 Ning: 2005 Reddit: 2005 YouTube: 2005 CafeMom: 2006 Flixster: 2006 Goodreads: 2006 iLike: 2006 ReverbNation: 2006 Twitter: 2006 Chess.com: 2007 Italki: 2007 SoundCloud: 2007 Tumblr: 2007 Hacker News: 2007 Justin.tv: 2007 Academia.edu: 2008 GovLoop: 2008 identi.ca: 2008 Nextdoor: 2008 Formspring: 2009 Foursquare: 2009 Grindr: 2009 Pinterest: 2009 Quora: 2009 WhatsApp: 2009 Friendica: 2010 Instagram: 2010 Untappd: 2010 Duolingo: 2011 Fishbrain: 2011 I Had Cancer: 2011 Letterboxd: 2011 Twitch: 2011 Whisper: 2012 Google Hangouts: 2013 Slack: 2013 Vine: 2013 Voat: 2014 Yo: 2014 Discord: 2015 Periscope: 2015 Gab: 2016 Houseparty: 2016 Mastodon: 2016 Peach: 2016 micro.blog: 2017 Parler: 2018 So let’s break this down. > Sure, there isn't a shortage of digital communication, but they are responsible for a large proportion of that communication and they hold the power of tilting democracies by choice of those in charge of the company or by seemingly random bearucratic decisions made by their employees. No. We are responsible for our own communications and when we don’t trust the messenger, we encode our messages or we use a different messenger. We are also the ones responsible for the upkeep of our own democracy and the upkeep of the institutions which maintain it because it’s ours and our responsibility. Corporations, as it turns out, as organizations which represent the aggregate interests of their owners and employees, are also actors in aggregate within the framework of our democracy, much like name a group of three or more people. How ten thousand people voted in one place or fifty-thousand voted in another isn’t Facebook’s responsibility, or Twitter’s, or Reddit’s, or Slack’s. It’s the responsibility of every single person who cast their own vote, which should be all of the people who cast votes in every election. > They are a medium of information distribution. They are a handful out of the millions of ways that exist to distribute information. > They are a for profit business ruled by one individual that has extraordinary power. As a society, are we really supposed to just let them do whatever they want just because there are less popular alternatives? They are dust. If our free speech depended on the whims of one Mark Zuckerberg and one Jack Dorsey, then we didn’t have free speech to begin with. Facebook and Twitter are critters of the last 20 years, there have been others, and there will be more like them, but also entirely unlike them. The way people talk about social media companies today they make it sound like we need some sort of Social Media Public Commission to control the moderation policies and enforce the publication of government speech. We don’t, because we have what we need: competition and the many many technologies that enable it and a free flow of cash and labor and capital. It’s disgusting to me how freely conspiracy theorists, socialists, PRC apologists and neo-Nazis can easily congregate and talk themselves up into a furor about seizing the means of killing the Jews before Bill Gates takes over the world and prevents Chairman Winnie the Pooh from leading us into glorious revolution, but that’s the mark of a free society that they can find a way and will always find a way. So is being able to tell the President and anyone else to get off your lawn and/or servers.
- golemiprague 6y agoThey can do whatever they are allowed by law, nobody argue about the legality but rather about the existing legislation. It seems like we need to change our laws if we don't want SV companies, which we don't vote for, to control our lives and govern what we can or can't do.
- NumberCruncher 6y agoSounds good, until the next bail out comes and private companies and their investors has to be saved.
- cudgy 6y agoSo true, but next bailout? The bailout is continuous so long as the Fed keeps rates near zero, delaying the inevitable adjustments to asset prices and allowing large hedge funds with access to these extremely low rates to gobble up even more with little worry about the downside. Current Stock market is a primary example of this.
- petre 6y agoFacebook is not critical infrastructure like banks. Instead of bailing them out they can be simply let to go bankrupt.
- roenxi 6y agoThat statement is neither true, wise nor a rebuttal. (1) They have to obey a whole bunch of laws. Including laws on political interference. (2) If there is a corporate exception to foreign interference, foreigners will found corporations to interfere. If founding an LLC lets someone interfere without hinderance then the world would soon be contending with the NSA, LLC and GRU Pty. Ltd. and Guoanbu Inc. (3) Any US billionaire, Zuckerberg included, is a potential presidential candidate. They are all politically connected. Facebook will also cooperate with US intelligence which has a long proud history of overthrowing or suppressing various leftist movements. Facebook is absolutely a source of foreign political interference.
- Marinus 6y agoWeird how that statement was 'true' when it was Trump&pals getting kicked of, but now that radical leftists get kicked of, it's not true anymore.
- JustinVx 6y agoI think it’s mostly liberals that have been spreading this statement. If you take a look at for instance Glenn Greenwald’s latest tweets or statements from the ACLU you’ll be hearing something very different.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- EliRivers 6y agoAre they not a public company? Sure are publicly traded.
- Strongylodon 6y ago> and can do whatever they want. That's not quite correct - they need to follow the laws of the state they are headquartered in.
- friedman23 6y agowait, we don't like corporate censorship now?
- nimchimpsky 6y agoWould have been better making that point if it was actually a response to someone. Maybe you could enlighten us on where you stand on corporate censorship ?
- boomboomsubban 6y ago>How is this not foreign political interference? America doesn't "interfere" in elections, it gently persuades people to follow the true democratic path. Truthfully, it is nothing more than American exceptionalism. Even as our nation spent years outraged over Russian interference, we continued both private and public interference in elections worldwide.
- adventured 6y ago> Even as our nation spent years outraged over Russian interference Only a minority of the country was (supposedly) outraged about the mostly non-existent Russian interference. Most of the US knew it was bullshit the entire time, the Russians had near zero impact on the prior election (amazing how they didn't somehow swing this latest election, given their apparent god-like powers, despite how close it was). Trump's vast popularity showed up again in this latest election, they couldn't even try to hide it behind fake Russian interference. It was nothing more than a politcal ruse, a frame to hold Trump in, which the media almost universally played along with (and simultaneously they won't tag Biden as being controlled by China despite Biden having far closer ties to China than Trump does to Russia). It's the exact same thing they did to Tulsi Gabbard when she dared to go against their agenda. We're all owned by the all-powerful, magical Russians if we go off the acceptable message.
- pjc50 6y agoPeople went to jail over it. At least until they were pardoned by the president.
- cm2187 6y agoFor tax fraud and falling into perjury traps. Not for colluding with Russia.
- Taniwha 6y agono one "falls into a perjury trap" - what one does is commit perjury - lie under oath, there's no trap there, all you have to do is tell the truth when you should and you don't get indicted .... in the US you even have the option of pleading the 5th
- lenkite 6y agoMe-thinks that their automated procedure for banning right-wing actors removed large swathes of left-wing actors too. Not surprising really. After all, the SWP describes itself as "revolutionary" and that has got a bad name in recent days. Looks like they will need to make special "permit-list" for the language of left wing parties.
- spartanatreyu 6y agoWhy would you think they would make a permit list for political pages?
- Marinus 6y agoWhy should onky left wing parties get special protection?
- radiator 6y agoGP did not say they should, they just mentioned the fact that they do.
- waheoo 6y agoUh trump was kicked off Twitter a week ago. The bans of non fringe, left leaning libertarian liberals have been getting kicked off Twitter for months labeled alt right for having such scary ideas like they should be allowed to use the words they choose.
- jariel 6y agoBecause it's not an attempt to interfere in politics and they are assuredly not being banned due to their political views. Facebook bans groups and people all the time, it does not imply that it's political. It seems FB has no given their reasoning for the ban, which is rather odd given the significance, I suggest we'll either hear from them forthcoming with evidence of 'violence' or they'll walk back their mistake. My hunch was that this was a mistake ... And the bit about 'no explanation' is a bit outrageous, I mean, how blatantly unfair is that.
- freeone3000 6y agoThe bit about "no explanation" is completely fair. That's how bans on Facebook work -- nobody gets an explanation, so it's inherently fair.
- hanspeter 6y agoActually Facebook always gives an explanation by referring to a particular breach of terms. It may not feel sufficient or fair to the banned, but you do get a reason for why you are banned.
- xupybd 6y agoIt's political interference if it was intentional or not. It's not the intent but the outcome that's the problem here..
- jariel 6y agoThat's irrelevant if the group is breaking the rules. If they are causing violence (though I doubt this) then they are going to get banned and that's that. It's very well within reason.
- whatever1 6y agoAustralian Rupert Murdoch says hi from his American Fox empire.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cm2187 6y agoHa ha. Time to regurgitate all the “private suppression of information isn’t censorship”, “facebook is a private company free of kicking anyone out of their platform”, “facebook shouldn’t be compelled to carry speech it dislikes”, etc.
- ganafagol 6y agoAnd that's why it was wrong to kick off Trump, just as it's now wrong to kick off the SWP. A slippery slope was started and now the genie is out of the bottle and can't be contained anymore.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoI mean... yes? I can't speak for others but my opinion on the matter remains unchanged despite who the target is. I may disagree that it was a good move, but it is, in my opinion, Facebook's right to ban anyone it wants. It'd be like if dang decided he'd had enough of me bitching about package management, bad UIs, and software bloat and banned me. I wouldn't like it, but I also don't believe I am entitled to force HN to host my rants. I believe the right way to handle this, if you are upset about how Facebook does things, is to stop using Facebook and tell other people why you don't use Facebook.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoThe SWP is not massive. It's never been massive. Current paid-up membership is maybe four figures. It's considered eccentric, comically cliched, ineffectual, and frankly irrelevant by virtually everyone on the British left. It's the very definition of fringe. Which is why banning the SWP sets a very bad example. Especially when there are far more dangerous organisations on the British far right which Facebook seems happy to host.
- chiefalchemist 6y agoSo then it would seem, this is a great "beta test" for FB & Co. That is, pick a fringe meaningless group - but one with enough name recognition - and ban them to grease the skids of societal expectations. The group is small and fringe so few will feel the relevance which makes it a fitting target for FB and its ilk to normalize banning.
- ianai 6y agoOr it’s the smallish act that reveals FBs true pro-far right bias.
- washadjeffmad 6y agoFB skews conservative in content because that's who uses and invests in it, not who staffs it (primarily coastal, urban elites). There have been numerous stories about FB employees lifting their noses at the platform's contents and users only to be reminded by Zuck that those are their users, and they serve them no matter who they are.
- icebraining 6y agoThe Facebook PAC also funds politicians like Andy Biggs, Michael Burgess, Mike Kelly, Tom Emmer and many others, so it's not just about the user base.
- egwor 6y agoAnother view is that they're banning it to show that banning organisations according to some policy isn't effective and therefore they shouldn't be policing it 'because, how could they?'.
- collyw 6y agoThat is a valid point, but then every one of my friends in Europe posting anti-Trump stuff, encouraging Americans to vote for Biden could be considered election interference as well, no?