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The 'censorship' narrative is wrong and tired. FB/Meta has no obligation to carry your speech. Thank God, FB/Meta is not the government and can administer their

The 'censorship' narrative is wrong and tired. FB/Meta has no obligation to carry your speech. Thank God, FB/Meta is not the government and can administer their privately owned systems any way they want and you do not have to like that. You do not have to use FB/Meta.

JacobThreeThree 5y ago
- gpm 5y ago
  The comment you replied to seems like a direct reply to the article to me, which starts with the first quote below and goes on to quote the politician saying the second one .... > If you're tired of censorship, cancel culture, and the erosion of civil liberties subscribe to Reclaim The Net. > this is a glaring example of censorship and overreach by tech giant companies who control so much of the online space.”
  - JacobThreeThree 5y ago
    >If you're tired of censorship, cancel culture, and the erosion of civil liberties subscribe to Reclaim The Net. That's the website slogan, not part of the article. If Facebook reversed the decision, it's not censorship.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      > That's the website slogan, not part of the article. Yes. > If Facebook reversed the decision, it's not censorship. Maybe if they reversed it with a time machine.
    - swlp21 5y ago
      I'm struggling to understand your reasoning : > If Facebook reversed the decision, it's not censorship. Using a different example, I wanted to eat in a local restaurant [a privately owned company providing a public service entirely on their own terms] but I was refused entry because I am black and their "policies" [which is the reason I am given] prohibit entry to black people. I call attention to the situation by standing outside with a placard saying this restaurant treated me in a discriminatory way because I am black. The restaurant manager then comes to me and says, sorry that was a mistake caused by the 'patron classifier' [i.e. some vague entity that implies no actual person is at fault anywhere], and I can come in now. So, do I understand correctly that you would say the restaurant is not operating any type of discriminatory policy because it reversed the decision when attention was publicly drawn to it? To me, that reasoning does not seem to make sense. Being embarrassed into changing a decision does not stop your original decision being wrong in the first place. It simply means you want to stop attention being drawn to it and hope I will stop making a fuss if you make an exception for me on this occasion. You can continue making that same [wrong] decision for everyone else that is unable to complain and draw attention to their plight.
- avhon1 5y ago
  What makes you think annoyingnoob didn't read the article? The MP in the article, Mark Strahl, is quoted referring to this as "a glaring example of censorship", and annoyingnoob appears to be saying that "censorship" is not the right framework in which to criticize Facebook's actions.
  - JacobThreeThree 5y ago
    If it's a mistake that Facebook reversed, it's not censorship.
    - smsm42 5y ago
      One does not exclude the other. FB tried to censor him, but turned out it wasn't what they wanted to censor, so they removed the censorship. That happened because their censorship mechanisms are highly automated and very badly trained, so they have a huge amount of false positives.
- Stratoscope 5y ago
  Oddly enough, your comment appears word for word in the HN guidelines: > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
fsflover 5y ago
> You do not have to use FB/Meta. Unfortunately there is a so-called "network effect", which prevents quitting for many users.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kube-system 5y ago
There are laws that do impose obligations on some privately owned systems regarding speech they must or must not carry. Being "privately owned" is not an exception to these laws in the US, let alone other jurisdictions. Regardless, rightful censorship is still accurately described as such. And, this doesn't seem to be a story about censorship, IMO, because it was clearly accidental. It's a story about bad ML.
dnissley 5y ago
Yeah, but this narrative is just as wrong and tired as the 'censorship' one. Companies are not obligated to carry your speech on their platforms, but we can and should be able to have a conversation about whether or not their methods of moderation are sound / reasonable.
- _yoqn 5y ago
  No you're wrong. Section 230 determines a publisher from a platform based on what they host on their service. If they pick and choose what goes on their service they are a publisher and lose their section 230 immunity. So it's not true that they can "do whatever they want." And they do engage in censorship. See "Laptop from Hell" by Miranda Devine
  - dnissley 5y ago
    re: section 230, it appears you've been corrected by others here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667397 As far as whether or not these companies engage in censorship, I agree that they certainly do. It's just that it's not illegal/unconstitutional, as per the 'censorship narrative' alluded to.
    - _yoqn 5y ago
      Platform censorship is barely legal per my view of section 230 which I have studied thoroughly. It's also highly immoral for them to craft their own narrative out of user generated content which was never the intention of 230. The crafting of a narrative of available information and the presentation thereof is called opinion which is the province of publishers.
  - dumbass99 5y ago
TheFreim 5y ago
It clearly is censorship, it just happens to be legal censorship.
- erik_seaberg 5y ago
  Ironically, one of the most important American values is that government must not have the power to compel us to uphold good American values.
bpodgursky 5y ago
1) It's still censorship, even if it's not government censorship. The word applies. 2) It's perfectly fair, and a good idea, to call out a thing as bad even if it's legal.
- dheera 5y ago
  Exactly this. Starting about a month ago FB changed all their algorithms and a lot of independent artists are seeing 50%+ reductions in engagement across Instagram and Facebook. I have artistic hobby pursuits and can confirm. Many times I'll post a piece of work and my friends won't even see it in their feeds because FB is gatekeeping content between artists and voluntary followers now, in favor of "influencer" content from cash-cow accounts that don't produce any art of their own. It's sickening to say the least. Yes it's legal as of now but we should really be having a discussion about whether it should be okay to have a non-transparent gatekeeping algorithm between people who mutually chose to follow each other. Personally I'd prefer that if if someone voluntarily follows someone, they should have a legal obligation to not hinder any communication. That person chose to subscribe, and they can choose to unsubscribe at any time. What they are doing is tantamount to the USPS paging through your magazine subscriptions and trashing some of them as the mailman feels that day.
  - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    It's crappy clearly, but I guess I am skeptical that it'd be easy to fix with regulation, at least it'd certainly take some very careful legislating to reign in. I suspect it would founder on pretty much the same problem we started with, FB's lawyers would say "we need to make money off this circus Your Honor, so of course we stacked the deck; if these rubes don't like it, they can always switch to Ello, it's a free country."
    - _yoqn 5y ago
      Might be easier if we repeal their section 230 protections and then put the top FB/Meta brass in jail for fraud. It would never happen but imposing this kind of accountability will definitely make the power drunk tech elites think twice.
cblconfederate 5y ago
The job of roman Censors was to supervise public morality. The term censorship is appropriate
BitwiseFool 5y ago
>"FB/Meta has no obligation to carry your speech" Why not? I believe it should, given its size. The phone company has an obligation to carry my speech. Net Neutrality would require ISPs to carry speech. There are a whole host of things the government can compel "privately owned" systems/companies to do. In these kinds of discussions, scale matters. There is a big difference between compelling a company with a billion+ users to act as a platform and forcing a small business to do the same.
dahfizz 5y ago
To be pedantic, Facebook definitely does have the capability of censorship: > Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional.[1] Facebook has enough power over communication at large to effectively suppress speech should they choose. Censorship does not have to be perpetrated by governments. Hence the terms self-censorship and corporate-censorship[2]. What people really mean when they talk about censorship is first amendment rights. Here, you are correct. The first amendment protects against government censorship only - nothing Facebook does could infringe your first amendment rights. [1] https://www.aclu.org/other/what-censorship https://www.aclu.org/other/what-censorship [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_censorship
- BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
  > What people really mean when they talk about censorship is first amendment rights. I don't agree. The snarky and smug "nuh uh, cuz it wasn't the government" responses [often maliciously] assume that complaints about censorship are talking about the first amendment, but I think people are generally aware that censorship can come from corporations too and their concerns are not limited to apparent violations of the first amendment specifically but are concerned with the more general principle of free speech (which predates the first amendment.)
  - donny2018 5y ago
    I’m curious what happens when a number of public speech monopolies align their interests with certain political group and implicitly blend with the government. I guess this theoretical situation is totally legal, doesn’t break any amendments, but it kind of smells strange.
    - throwoutway 5y ago
      And this is what is slowly happening
tomohawk 5y ago
In the 1960s, certain restaurants and other establishments argued that they were private, and could choose who was allowed to enter and do business there. They were making the same mistake you are - arguing that they were not obligated to be even handed and non-discriminatory in the services they offered.
vorpalhex 5y ago
And you don't have to read our comments where we share our anger at Facebook/Meta. Surely you don't think corporations can't be criticised?
- annoyingnoob 5y ago
  Criticize all you want. But be prepared for criticism of your own argument too. FB is completely within the law to manage their own platform. If you don't like the law then change it. Maybe your comments are misplaced.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    Nobody is saying what Facebook did is illegal. We are simply saying that this is an obvious case of bad censorship, in a long line of facebook being a subpar censor, and that you should re-evaluate if you as a person want to do business with facebook because they will simply take down your posts wrongfully with no real appeals process unless you are famous.
    - annoyingnoob 5y ago
      I don't use Facebook, which is maybe why I don't care how they manage their service and also why it seems clear to me that there are other social media platforms, other web sites, I could make my own web site, hell I could send letters in the mail. Suffice to say a single message being deleted on Facebook is not censorship of the individual that had this issue.
      - seryoiupfurds 5y ago
        It seems that you do care a lot about other people choosing to discuss how Facebook manages their service, though.
LocalH 5y ago
It is censorship, though. Not government censorship, but don't you think that one day in the future, once these non-government censorship systems are in place, that a corrupt or evil government could abuse those systems and make them defacto government censorship systems (we're already partway down the slope with things like CSAM and copyright monitoring, although the former is especially heinous and so censorship of that type of content is desired). Not every provider of user-generated content should have to abide by these rules, because the damage that can be done by a relatively small forum or website is usually minimal (although see sites like Kiwi Farms that may not technically directly encourage harassment but where it is nonetheless often perpetrated by sadistic individuals who participate in their forums), whereas the damage that can be done by a Facebook or a Google is much, much greater.
themaninthedark 5y ago
>Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions and other controlling bodies. Governments and private organizations may engage in censorship. There is nothing that presupposes that the entity has the obligation to carry your message. Just that the entity removes your message on the grounds that they do not like the material. This comes up every time someone mentions that X(a private party) censors something. Yes, X is not the government. Yes, it is still censorship. If undertaken by the entity on it's own, it may not be illegal. If the entity had government influence in it's decision, than it may be. There are some here that argue that the status quo is fine and others that argue that we need to change our laws and regulations to protect individuals from more privet enterprise censorship. That is where the debate is, not whether or not censorship exists.
authed 5y ago
> The 'censorship' narrative is wrong and tired. FB/Meta has no obligation to carry your speech. they should when they become a mega-corp
- krapp 5y ago
  >they should when they become a mega-corp "mega-corp" is a term from dystopian cyberpunk fiction people just started applying to real life. "mega-corps" aren't a real thing (at least not until they become semi-autonomous states with their own currencies and private armies,) nor is "mega-corp" well enough defined that one can use it as a means to remove free speech and association rights. If those rights even worked that way, which they don't. Nor should they. You may as well just say "any company I don't like," it means practically the same thing.
  - authed 5y ago
    > "mega-corp" is a term from dystopian cyberpunk I just meant companies worth exorbitant amounts of money... like $1T+ ... not sure on the amount though... Do you work for them or the government?
    - krapp 5y ago
      >I just meant companies worth exorbitant amounts of money... like $1T+ ... not sure on the amount though.. Yeah, no potential for a slippery slope there at all. Nope, none. >Do you work for them or the government? Neither. I just think setting arbitrary, ill defined lines for denying fundamental rights is dangerously authoritarian. Although, noting your beliefs in this regard and now your paranoia, I truly hope you never sit in a position of actual power.
      - authed 5y ago
        > I truly hope you never sit in a position of actual power. same < and now your paranoia, oh, we are getting into it, lol

JacobThreeThree 5y ago

gpm 5y ago
The comment you replied to seems like a direct reply to the article to me, which starts with the first quote below and goes on to quote the politician saying the second one .... > If you're tired of censorship, cancel culture, and the erosion of civil liberties subscribe to Reclaim The Net. > this is a glaring example of censorship and overreach by tech giant companies who control so much of the online space.”
- JacobThreeThree 5y ago
  >If you're tired of censorship, cancel culture, and the erosion of civil liberties subscribe to Reclaim The Net. That's the website slogan, not part of the article. If Facebook reversed the decision, it's not censorship.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > That's the website slogan, not part of the article. Yes. > If Facebook reversed the decision, it's not censorship. Maybe if they reversed it with a time machine.
  - swlp21 5y ago
    I'm struggling to understand your reasoning : > If Facebook reversed the decision, it's not censorship. Using a different example, I wanted to eat in a local restaurant [a privately owned company providing a public service entirely on their own terms] but I was refused entry because I am black and their "policies" [which is the reason I am given] prohibit entry to black people. I call attention to the situation by standing outside with a placard saying this restaurant treated me in a discriminatory way because I am black. The restaurant manager then comes to me and says, sorry that was a mistake caused by the 'patron classifier' [i.e. some vague entity that implies no actual person is at fault anywhere], and I can come in now. So, do I understand correctly that you would say the restaurant is not operating any type of discriminatory policy because it reversed the decision when attention was publicly drawn to it? To me, that reasoning does not seem to make sense. Being embarrassed into changing a decision does not stop your original decision being wrong in the first place. It simply means you want to stop attention being drawn to it and hope I will stop making a fuss if you make an exception for me on this occasion. You can continue making that same [wrong] decision for everyone else that is unable to complain and draw attention to their plight.
avhon1 5y ago
What makes you think annoyingnoob didn't read the article? The MP in the article, Mark Strahl, is quoted referring to this as "a glaring example of censorship", and annoyingnoob appears to be saying that "censorship" is not the right framework in which to criticize Facebook's actions.
- JacobThreeThree 5y ago
  If it's a mistake that Facebook reversed, it's not censorship.
  - smsm42 5y ago
    One does not exclude the other. FB tried to censor him, but turned out it wasn't what they wanted to censor, so they removed the censorship. That happened because their censorship mechanisms are highly automated and very badly trained, so they have a huge amount of false positives.
Stratoscope 5y ago
Oddly enough, your comment appears word for word in the HN guidelines: > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

fsflover 5y ago

> You do not have to use FB/Meta. Unfortunately there is a so-called "network effect", which prevents quitting for many users.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

kube-system 5y ago

There are laws that do impose obligations on some privately owned systems regarding speech they must or must not carry. Being "privately owned" is not an exception to these laws in the US, let alone other jurisdictions. Regardless, rightful censorship is still accurately described as such. And, this doesn't seem to be a story about censorship, IMO, because it was clearly accidental. It's a story about bad ML.

dnissley 5y ago

Yeah, but this narrative is just as wrong and tired as the 'censorship' one. Companies are not obligated to carry your speech on their platforms, but we can and should be able to have a conversation about whether or not their methods of moderation are sound / reasonable.

_yoqn 5y ago
No you're wrong. Section 230 determines a publisher from a platform based on what they host on their service. If they pick and choose what goes on their service they are a publisher and lose their section 230 immunity. So it's not true that they can "do whatever they want." And they do engage in censorship. See "Laptop from Hell" by Miranda Devine
- dnissley 5y ago
  re: section 230, it appears you've been corrected by others here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667397 As far as whether or not these companies engage in censorship, I agree that they certainly do. It's just that it's not illegal/unconstitutional, as per the 'censorship narrative' alluded to.
  - _yoqn 5y ago
    Platform censorship is barely legal per my view of section 230 which I have studied thoroughly. It's also highly immoral for them to craft their own narrative out of user generated content which was never the intention of 230. The crafting of a narrative of available information and the presentation thereof is called opinion which is the province of publishers.
- dumbass99 5y ago

TheFreim 5y ago

It clearly is censorship, it just happens to be legal censorship.

erik_seaberg 5y ago
Ironically, one of the most important American values is that government must not have the power to compel us to uphold good American values.

bpodgursky 5y ago

1) It's still censorship, even if it's not government censorship. The word applies. 2) It's perfectly fair, and a good idea, to call out a thing as bad even if it's legal.

dheera 5y ago
Exactly this. Starting about a month ago FB changed all their algorithms and a lot of independent artists are seeing 50%+ reductions in engagement across Instagram and Facebook. I have artistic hobby pursuits and can confirm. Many times I'll post a piece of work and my friends won't even see it in their feeds because FB is gatekeeping content between artists and voluntary followers now, in favor of "influencer" content from cash-cow accounts that don't produce any art of their own. It's sickening to say the least. Yes it's legal as of now but we should really be having a discussion about whether it should be okay to have a non-transparent gatekeeping algorithm between people who mutually chose to follow each other. Personally I'd prefer that if if someone voluntarily follows someone, they should have a legal obligation to not hinder any communication. That person chose to subscribe, and they can choose to unsubscribe at any time. What they are doing is tantamount to the USPS paging through your magazine subscriptions and trashing some of them as the mailman feels that day.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  It's crappy clearly, but I guess I am skeptical that it'd be easy to fix with regulation, at least it'd certainly take some very careful legislating to reign in. I suspect it would founder on pretty much the same problem we started with, FB's lawyers would say "we need to make money off this circus Your Honor, so of course we stacked the deck; if these rubes don't like it, they can always switch to Ello, it's a free country."
  - _yoqn 5y ago
    Might be easier if we repeal their section 230 protections and then put the top FB/Meta brass in jail for fraud. It would never happen but imposing this kind of accountability will definitely make the power drunk tech elites think twice.

cblconfederate 5y ago

The job of roman Censors was to supervise public morality. The term censorship is appropriate

BitwiseFool 5y ago

>"FB/Meta has no obligation to carry your speech" Why not? I believe it should, given its size. The phone company has an obligation to carry my speech. Net Neutrality would require ISPs to carry speech. There are a whole host of things the government can compel "privately owned" systems/companies to do. In these kinds of discussions, scale matters. There is a big difference between compelling a company with a billion+ users to act as a platform and forcing a small business to do the same.

dahfizz 5y ago

To be pedantic, Facebook definitely does have the capability of censorship: > Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional.[1] Facebook has enough power over communication at large to effectively suppress speech should they choose. Censorship does not have to be perpetrated by governments. Hence the terms self-censorship and corporate-censorship[2]. What people really mean when they talk about censorship is first amendment rights. Here, you are correct. The first amendment protects against government censorship only - nothing Facebook does could infringe your first amendment rights. [1] https://www.aclu.org/other/what-censorship https://www.aclu.org/other/what-censorship [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_censorship

BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
> What people really mean when they talk about censorship is first amendment rights. I don't agree. The snarky and smug "nuh uh, cuz it wasn't the government" responses [often maliciously] assume that complaints about censorship are talking about the first amendment, but I think people are generally aware that censorship can come from corporations too and their concerns are not limited to apparent violations of the first amendment specifically but are concerned with the more general principle of free speech (which predates the first amendment.)
- donny2018 5y ago
  I’m curious what happens when a number of public speech monopolies align their interests with certain political group and implicitly blend with the government. I guess this theoretical situation is totally legal, doesn’t break any amendments, but it kind of smells strange.
  - throwoutway 5y ago
    And this is what is slowly happening

tomohawk 5y ago

In the 1960s, certain restaurants and other establishments argued that they were private, and could choose who was allowed to enter and do business there. They were making the same mistake you are - arguing that they were not obligated to be even handed and non-discriminatory in the services they offered.

vorpalhex 5y ago

And you don't have to read our comments where we share our anger at Facebook/Meta. Surely you don't think corporations can't be criticised?

annoyingnoob 5y ago
Criticize all you want. But be prepared for criticism of your own argument too. FB is completely within the law to manage their own platform. If you don't like the law then change it. Maybe your comments are misplaced.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  Nobody is saying what Facebook did is illegal. We are simply saying that this is an obvious case of bad censorship, in a long line of facebook being a subpar censor, and that you should re-evaluate if you as a person want to do business with facebook because they will simply take down your posts wrongfully with no real appeals process unless you are famous.
  - annoyingnoob 5y ago
    I don't use Facebook, which is maybe why I don't care how they manage their service and also why it seems clear to me that there are other social media platforms, other web sites, I could make my own web site, hell I could send letters in the mail. Suffice to say a single message being deleted on Facebook is not censorship of the individual that had this issue.
    - seryoiupfurds 5y ago
      It seems that you do care a lot about other people choosing to discuss how Facebook manages their service, though.

LocalH 5y ago

It is censorship, though. Not government censorship, but don't you think that one day in the future, once these non-government censorship systems are in place, that a corrupt or evil government could abuse those systems and make them defacto government censorship systems (we're already partway down the slope with things like CSAM and copyright monitoring, although the former is especially heinous and so censorship of that type of content is desired). Not every provider of user-generated content should have to abide by these rules, because the damage that can be done by a relatively small forum or website is usually minimal (although see sites like Kiwi Farms that may not technically directly encourage harassment but where it is nonetheless often perpetrated by sadistic individuals who participate in their forums), whereas the damage that can be done by a Facebook or a Google is much, much greater.

themaninthedark 5y ago

>Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions and other controlling bodies. Governments and private organizations may engage in censorship. There is nothing that presupposes that the entity has the obligation to carry your message. Just that the entity removes your message on the grounds that they do not like the material. This comes up every time someone mentions that X(a private party) censors something. Yes, X is not the government. Yes, it is still censorship. If undertaken by the entity on it's own, it may not be illegal. If the entity had government influence in it's decision, than it may be. There are some here that argue that the status quo is fine and others that argue that we need to change our laws and regulations to protect individuals from more privet enterprise censorship. That is where the debate is, not whether or not censorship exists.

authed 5y ago

> The 'censorship' narrative is wrong and tired. FB/Meta has no obligation to carry your speech. they should when they become a mega-corp

krapp 5y ago
>they should when they become a mega-corp "mega-corp" is a term from dystopian cyberpunk fiction people just started applying to real life. "mega-corps" aren't a real thing (at least not until they become semi-autonomous states with their own currencies and private armies,) nor is "mega-corp" well enough defined that one can use it as a means to remove free speech and association rights. If those rights even worked that way, which they don't. Nor should they. You may as well just say "any company I don't like," it means practically the same thing.
- authed 5y ago
  > "mega-corp" is a term from dystopian cyberpunk I just meant companies worth exorbitant amounts of money... like $1T+ ... not sure on the amount though... Do you work for them or the government?
  - krapp 5y ago
    >I just meant companies worth exorbitant amounts of money... like $1T+ ... not sure on the amount though.. Yeah, no potential for a slippery slope there at all. Nope, none. >Do you work for them or the government? Neither. I just think setting arbitrary, ill defined lines for denying fundamental rights is dangerously authoritarian. Although, noting your beliefs in this regard and now your paranoia, I truly hope you never sit in a position of actual power.
    - authed 5y ago
      > I truly hope you never sit in a position of actual power. same < and now your paranoia, oh, we are getting into it, lol