5 ms·

Is it safe to say censorship, deplatforming, shadowbans, unbanking, watchlisting, and unpersoning is pretty much normalized, and now everyone can just say, "it

Is it safe to say censorship, deplatforming, shadowbans, unbanking, watchlisting, and unpersoning is pretty much normalized, and now everyone can just say, "it is what it is," and imagine they aren't going to be caught up in the next wave?

pengaru 5y ago
These kinds of practices have always been normalized in the context of internet web forums. They're privately owned and operated sites whose "members" amount to volunteer content contributors with zero legal right to be published via or given access to said site. Facebook is no different. There's a serious computer and internet literacy problem when the general public believes otherwise. Hell, doesn't SomethingAwful let users ban others for a fee?
- fnord77 5y ago
  > Hell, doesn't SomethingAwful let users ban others for a fee? that's kinda brilliant
- imgabe 5y ago
  There are lots of things that can be normalized at a small scale that don't work at a large scale. If you're a 3 person startup with your 2 best friends you can work in your living room, keep whatever weird hours you want, call each other rude nicknames, and joke around. When you're a 1000 person company with an HR department you need to have some clear procedures because there's lots of different people that can't all know and trust each other the way three people do. Likewise, a small niche forum with an insular community can police itself pretty much however it likes. A global communication network that has become telecom infrastructure for all intents and purpose has do a little more justification before it cuts someone off from what is becoming a vital service.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    > A global communication network that has become telecom infrastructure for all intents and purpose has do a little more justification before it cuts someone off from what is becoming a vital service. Until the Facebooks and Twitters of the world become legally classified as such, you're making the same mistake of expecting as much from what is legally absolutely no different from the SomethingAwfuls of the world.
    - imgabe 5y ago
      I’m saying those laws should be made. I get that that is not the case presently. Pretending that a network with 2 billion people and the ability to influence national elections is the exact same thing as the phpBB for your Dungeons and Dragons group and it’s fine if there’s no difference in the way they’re regulated is either naive or disingenuous. Laws are not immutable facts of nature that we have no control over. We can create or change them as needed when something new arises that is harming society.
      - FiggyPudding 5y ago
        With wacked US politics lately business regulations are just turned on and off as the parties trade control. Laws will probably make it harder to kick off foreign influencers and bots with plausible deniability if it's protecting regular a-holes
    - Brian_K_White 5y ago
      He's not making a mistake, he's making an argument.
  - midev 5y ago
    > before it cuts someone off from what is becoming a vital service Facebook is not a vital service. Popularity doesn't determine what is and is-not vital, nor does it remove the rights of a private business.
    - imgabe 5y ago
      We regulate private businesses all the time when their actions are harmful to the public. Labor laws, environmental laws, workplace safety, discrimination, and on and on. "Private business" is not a magic phrase that means you get to do whatever you want with no regard for the rest of society.
      - secondaryacct 5y ago
        If the State wants a fully regulated communication system, it can put facebook under the same umbrella as the telcos. Interestingly, it will surely be what you dislike so what is your point? If facebook becomes public utility I want to be able to regulate speech on it with my tax money. If it's private, I dont care if it tries to regulate harmful speech the way it wants as long as it doesnt impact where my tax money is going (so I dont want to pay for girls empowerement to have facebook massively undermining it by letting sheikhs explain the youth how to beat their unruly wives)
        imgabe 5y ago
        > If facebook becomes public utility I want to be able to regulate speech on it with my tax money. What makes you think you should be able to do that? Do you get to cut off someone's water utility if they say something you don't like?
        guerrilla 5y ago
        > Do you get to cut off someone's water utility if they say something you don't like? Coming soon to a Hell on Earth near you.
    - pope_meat 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
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- robocat 5y ago
  > Hell, doesn't SomethingAwful let users ban others for a fee? I couldn’t find anything that said that. You could buy your way out of a ban[1]. You might be thinking of “Another brilliant monetization not mentioned in the article: you could pay to customize your own user image and title. For twice the price, another user could pay to anonymously choose their own title/image for you, usually to insult. Want to change your appearance back? Pay again.” as per philipkglass https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14122169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14122169 [1] “When Rich put the paywall in effect, it kept idiots out to an enormous degree. It was probably the smartest decision he ever made in regards to the website. You have to put in a little investment if you want to participate and if you're a real shithead you're going to end up paying Rich like $150 because you keep buying accounts, which is good for the site and it's also kind of funny to watch really, really bad people shell out a lot of money.” - https://www.vice.com/en/article/nzg4yw/fuck-you-and-die-an-oral-history-of-something-awful https://www.vice.com/en/article/nzg4yw/fuck-you-and-die-an-o...
- jterrys 5y ago
  There is a somewhat strange level of mental dissonance that occurs when people approach the policing of 'the internet' and 'social media platforms'. Internet forums have existed for a long time, and for an equivalent period their moderation policies sufficed. If you disagreed with one forum, there were plenty others to take its place. However, we've now approached a reality in which these forums have dwindled or become centralized. A much larger audience participates, and these forums have now expanded to be parts of multimedia service conglomerate megacorporations. There are no other choices, and these organizations are spread into aspects of life that would cause being banned to be quite inconvenient. For example, getting your Google account banned could in theory result in loss of access to most of everything here: https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/products/ https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/products/. It gets worse when you consider that google could be your internet provider. And of course google insists everything be forced through their accounts. Loss of access to your account could mean loss of access to the internet. Hell, you'd lose access to your god damn Nest thermostat.
  - FiggyPudding 5y ago
    It's not super hard to resist using your primary Google account to tell people to kill themselves, or that you are going to kill them, or tell others in general to attack people or places. If you own a Nest Thermostat you probably own your residence or rent relative luxury and therefore should have your life together enough to not be a dick on the internet or have an anonymous profile for your rage/hate projection. I guess it's a problem if your ISP is truly policing you directly and you can't just vpn/proxy for whatever reason, poverty/security
- deleted 5y ago
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- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Forums? There used to be so many of them. They're about niche stuff, not a public space for all humanity. If they ban someone, what does it matter? It's literally an entertainment site, a hobby. People can always just make a new account if they really want to. Social media is huge and centralized. Government officials post in there. Not having an account can cost people their jobs. It causes people to be isolated from friends and family. At some point, the social media platform's freedom must be reduced lest they perpetrate far worse injustices upon individuals.
- motohagiography 5y ago
  > These kinds of practices have always been normalized Yes, surely we have always been at war with right-wing disinformation. But hey, it is what it is.
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rvz 5y ago
> now everyone can just say, "it is what it is," Yes. Using the famous private platform argument here, if anything is in violation of their ToS, they can censor, deplatform, shadowban, unbank, etc whoever they want. Whether if you are Gab using AWS, Onlyfans using the payment processors or Element on Google Play, the whole point is that it can happen to anyone. Doesn't matter if you scream, protest, throw a tantrum about it, etc. They have that right to do it.

pengaru 5y ago

These kinds of practices have always been normalized in the context of internet web forums. They're privately owned and operated sites whose "members" amount to volunteer content contributors with zero legal right to be published via or given access to said site. Facebook is no different. There's a serious computer and internet literacy problem when the general public believes otherwise. Hell, doesn't SomethingAwful let users ban others for a fee?

fnord77 5y ago
> Hell, doesn't SomethingAwful let users ban others for a fee? that's kinda brilliant
imgabe 5y ago
There are lots of things that can be normalized at a small scale that don't work at a large scale. If you're a 3 person startup with your 2 best friends you can work in your living room, keep whatever weird hours you want, call each other rude nicknames, and joke around. When you're a 1000 person company with an HR department you need to have some clear procedures because there's lots of different people that can't all know and trust each other the way three people do. Likewise, a small niche forum with an insular community can police itself pretty much however it likes. A global communication network that has become telecom infrastructure for all intents and purpose has do a little more justification before it cuts someone off from what is becoming a vital service.
- pengaru 5y ago
  > A global communication network that has become telecom infrastructure for all intents and purpose has do a little more justification before it cuts someone off from what is becoming a vital service. Until the Facebooks and Twitters of the world become legally classified as such, you're making the same mistake of expecting as much from what is legally absolutely no different from the SomethingAwfuls of the world.
  - imgabe 5y ago
    I’m saying those laws should be made. I get that that is not the case presently. Pretending that a network with 2 billion people and the ability to influence national elections is the exact same thing as the phpBB for your Dungeons and Dragons group and it’s fine if there’s no difference in the way they’re regulated is either naive or disingenuous. Laws are not immutable facts of nature that we have no control over. We can create or change them as needed when something new arises that is harming society.
    - FiggyPudding 5y ago
      With wacked US politics lately business regulations are just turned on and off as the parties trade control. Laws will probably make it harder to kick off foreign influencers and bots with plausible deniability if it's protecting regular a-holes
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
    He's not making a mistake, he's making an argument.
- midev 5y ago
  > before it cuts someone off from what is becoming a vital service Facebook is not a vital service. Popularity doesn't determine what is and is-not vital, nor does it remove the rights of a private business.
  - imgabe 5y ago
    We regulate private businesses all the time when their actions are harmful to the public. Labor laws, environmental laws, workplace safety, discrimination, and on and on. "Private business" is not a magic phrase that means you get to do whatever you want with no regard for the rest of society.
    - secondaryacct 5y ago
      If the State wants a fully regulated communication system, it can put facebook under the same umbrella as the telcos. Interestingly, it will surely be what you dislike so what is your point? If facebook becomes public utility I want to be able to regulate speech on it with my tax money. If it's private, I dont care if it tries to regulate harmful speech the way it wants as long as it doesnt impact where my tax money is going (so I dont want to pay for girls empowerement to have facebook massively undermining it by letting sheikhs explain the youth how to beat their unruly wives)
      - imgabe 5y ago
        > If facebook becomes public utility I want to be able to regulate speech on it with my tax money. What makes you think you should be able to do that? Do you get to cut off someone's water utility if they say something you don't like?
        guerrilla 5y ago
        > Do you get to cut off someone's water utility if they say something you don't like? Coming soon to a Hell on Earth near you.
  - pope_meat 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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robocat 5y ago
> Hell, doesn't SomethingAwful let users ban others for a fee? I couldn’t find anything that said that. You could buy your way out of a ban[1]. You might be thinking of “Another brilliant monetization not mentioned in the article: you could pay to customize your own user image and title. For twice the price, another user could pay to anonymously choose their own title/image for you, usually to insult. Want to change your appearance back? Pay again.” as per philipkglass https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14122169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14122169 [1] “When Rich put the paywall in effect, it kept idiots out to an enormous degree. It was probably the smartest decision he ever made in regards to the website. You have to put in a little investment if you want to participate and if you're a real shithead you're going to end up paying Rich like $150 because you keep buying accounts, which is good for the site and it's also kind of funny to watch really, really bad people shell out a lot of money.” - https://www.vice.com/en/article/nzg4yw/fuck-you-and-die-an-oral-history-of-something-awful https://www.vice.com/en/article/nzg4yw/fuck-you-and-die-an-o...
jterrys 5y ago
There is a somewhat strange level of mental dissonance that occurs when people approach the policing of 'the internet' and 'social media platforms'. Internet forums have existed for a long time, and for an equivalent period their moderation policies sufficed. If you disagreed with one forum, there were plenty others to take its place. However, we've now approached a reality in which these forums have dwindled or become centralized. A much larger audience participates, and these forums have now expanded to be parts of multimedia service conglomerate megacorporations. There are no other choices, and these organizations are spread into aspects of life that would cause being banned to be quite inconvenient. For example, getting your Google account banned could in theory result in loss of access to most of everything here: https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/products/ https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/products/. It gets worse when you consider that google could be your internet provider. And of course google insists everything be forced through their accounts. Loss of access to your account could mean loss of access to the internet. Hell, you'd lose access to your god damn Nest thermostat.
- FiggyPudding 5y ago
  It's not super hard to resist using your primary Google account to tell people to kill themselves, or that you are going to kill them, or tell others in general to attack people or places. If you own a Nest Thermostat you probably own your residence or rent relative luxury and therefore should have your life together enough to not be a dick on the internet or have an anonymous profile for your rage/hate projection. I guess it's a problem if your ISP is truly policing you directly and you can't just vpn/proxy for whatever reason, poverty/security
deleted 5y ago
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matheusmoreira 5y ago
Forums? There used to be so many of them. They're about niche stuff, not a public space for all humanity. If they ban someone, what does it matter? It's literally an entertainment site, a hobby. People can always just make a new account if they really want to. Social media is huge and centralized. Government officials post in there. Not having an account can cost people their jobs. It causes people to be isolated from friends and family. At some point, the social media platform's freedom must be reduced lest they perpetrate far worse injustices upon individuals.
motohagiography 5y ago
> These kinds of practices have always been normalized Yes, surely we have always been at war with right-wing disinformation. But hey, it is what it is.

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rvz 5y ago

> now everyone can just say, "it is what it is," Yes. Using the famous private platform argument here, if anything is in violation of their ToS, they can censor, deplatform, shadowban, unbank, etc whoever they want. Whether if you are Gab using AWS, Onlyfans using the payment processors or Element on Google Play, the whole point is that it can happen to anyone. Doesn't matter if you scream, protest, throw a tantrum about it, etc. They have that right to do it.