The title of this article is pretty awful, Zuckerbergs position on the topic actually seems pretty reasonable - they don't ban controvertial opinions/falsehoods, they just limit their distribution through the news feed, unless they are actually advocating violence against a group (i.e. hate speech).
"Facebook will continue to offer a platform to Holocaust deniers, Infowars, and other publishers of hoaxes on the assumption that they are sincere in their beliefs, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said."
Isn't this analogous to how internet service providers, water companies and electric companies operate? If there is an organization which is operating lawfully why should we shun them, unless there are special circumstances?
Or should we ask the domain registrar of infowars.com to shut down their site and revoke their HTTPS certificate?
> Isn't this analogous to how internet service providers, water companies and electric companies operate?
If you mean, as a neutral common carrier (POTS telephone service in the US is a better example), then, no: Facebook is actively fighting certain legal political content because it is judged by FB to be harmful (there was a fairly active thread on HN on this in the last couple of days.) It's just decided that the listed content doesn't meet the criteria for what is being targeted.
They are still fighting against the listed content, just not banning it. Just like, afaik, they don't ban political content, just make it spread less quickly.
5 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 26.6 ms ] threadIsn't this analogous to how internet service providers, water companies and electric companies operate? If there is an organization which is operating lawfully why should we shun them, unless there are special circumstances?
Or should we ask the domain registrar of infowars.com to shut down their site and revoke their HTTPS certificate?
If you mean, as a neutral common carrier (POTS telephone service in the US is a better example), then, no: Facebook is actively fighting certain legal political content because it is judged by FB to be harmful (there was a fairly active thread on HN on this in the last couple of days.) It's just decided that the listed content doesn't meet the criteria for what is being targeted.