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Facebook's Oversight Board rule that Facebook did nothing wrong - imagine my surprise. Even if they always honestly judge each case, we can never fully trust th

by bArray 5y ago

Facebook's Oversight Board rule that Facebook did nothing wrong - imagine my surprise. Even if they always honestly judge each case, we can never fully trust they act independently. The fact that Facebook themselves have recognized the need for such an entity surely points towards the requirement for government oversight. > But it is the "indefinite" part of the ban that it took issue with because that is not within its own rules. I think the wording is careful here - they have a problem with indefinite banning, not because of moral concerns but simply because of an inconsistency with their current rules. Expect a TOS update soon to amend that... Bare in mind also that technically 99 years wouldn't be indefinite, but can clearly be considered a lifetime ban. Personally I think it's crazy that indefinite bans are allowed. Even murderers and pedophiles eventually are allowed to re-enter society, and yet, apparently a message on Facebook can carry a life sentence.

klodolph 5y ago
To give counterexamples, you can be banned for life from owning a gun if you commit a felony. Likewise you can be banned from voting, banned from living near a school or church, and there are tons of other lifetime bans more serious than a ban from Facebook.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  All of those are extremely contentious. Disenfranchisement upon conviction combined with selective enforcement allows government to, at scale, affect voter demographics in a specific way. It also directly impedes criminal justice reform because the people who experience the consequences of a broken system are all systematically prohibited from voting to reform it. Firearms are so contentious that I'm not even going to describe the argument to avoid this being derailed into a flame war. Schools are in substantially every residential neighborhood, because that's where they keep the students. So people prohibited from living "near a school" are prohibited from living pretty much everywhere. But the most important distinction between this and those things is that they only come after a criminal conviction proved beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law by a government subject to the constitutional constraints in the Bill of Rights.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    I think the main issue here--getting banned from Facebook--is contentious, so it's not surprising that the points of comparison are contentious. The points of comparison aren't very good anyway--this is new territory. Facebook operates in some new regime which is quasi-public and quasi-private. Maybe the closest comparison is public-access television.
- marcusverus 5y ago
  You seem to be attempting to normalize this by comparing it to the US legal system, which strikes me as odd given the huge difference between the two. The US government couldn't give Trump a parking ticket without affording him the opportunity to challenge the citation before an independent judiciary (or, if he were to press the issue, before a jury of his peers). But Mark Zuckerburg can ban him from (the modern day equivalent of) the public square with a snap of his fingers! There is nothing normal about it.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    To clarify, I'm not attempting to normalize it.
tadfisher 5y ago
This is a social media site. The fact that it seems to be an indispensable service that deprivation of such causes irreparable harm is more of a cause for concern than their ability to discriminate.

by bArray 5y ago

klodolph 5y ago

To give counterexamples, you can be banned for life from owning a gun if you commit a felony. Likewise you can be banned from voting, banned from living near a school or church, and there are tons of other lifetime bans more serious than a ban from Facebook.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
All of those are extremely contentious. Disenfranchisement upon conviction combined with selective enforcement allows government to, at scale, affect voter demographics in a specific way. It also directly impedes criminal justice reform because the people who experience the consequences of a broken system are all systematically prohibited from voting to reform it. Firearms are so contentious that I'm not even going to describe the argument to avoid this being derailed into a flame war. Schools are in substantially every residential neighborhood, because that's where they keep the students. So people prohibited from living "near a school" are prohibited from living pretty much everywhere. But the most important distinction between this and those things is that they only come after a criminal conviction proved beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law by a government subject to the constitutional constraints in the Bill of Rights.
- klodolph 5y ago
  I think the main issue here--getting banned from Facebook--is contentious, so it's not surprising that the points of comparison are contentious. The points of comparison aren't very good anyway--this is new territory. Facebook operates in some new regime which is quasi-public and quasi-private. Maybe the closest comparison is public-access television.
marcusverus 5y ago
You seem to be attempting to normalize this by comparing it to the US legal system, which strikes me as odd given the huge difference between the two. The US government couldn't give Trump a parking ticket without affording him the opportunity to challenge the citation before an independent judiciary (or, if he were to press the issue, before a jury of his peers). But Mark Zuckerburg can ban him from (the modern day equivalent of) the public square with a snap of his fingers! There is nothing normal about it.
- klodolph 5y ago
  To clarify, I'm not attempting to normalize it.

tadfisher 5y ago

This is a social media site. The fact that it seems to be an indispensable service that deprivation of such causes irreparable harm is more of a cause for concern than their ability to discriminate.