It really pisses me off when companies don't decide for me what information I am allowed to see. They are obviously smarter than me, and only acting in my best interest rather than their own, so it's best that they do this for me.
Bannon suggested that the White House should behead Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Chris Wray. He then suggested their severed heads be displayed on spikes, at the White House.
hy·per·bo·le - noun - exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.
But, to tone down my own snarkiness-- in just a few months we have seen a dramatic increase in moderation in what people are allowed and not allowed to say. This is not going to end well, imo. We are just going to end up with the liberal equivalent of the oppressive religious right from the 80's.
Yeah germany is doing fine I don't think American exceptionalism extends to death threats. Hiding behind hyperbole doesn't make you snarky just idiotic.
And I am not capable of judging for myself whether or not that is a bad idea, so I am grateful for the Facebook moderators and their superior judgment in making sure I don't see this!
There are plenty of officials on Twitter openly wished that Trump died when he got coronavirus. Both situations are disgusting but neither are real threats.
Passive versus active would make a huge difference here, right? Even if it’s amoral to wish someone does not recover from an ailment, there’s no act involved or even promulgated in such a statement.
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of what you're battling for or against, because it destroys the intended use of the site.
Uncool, but also political exaggeration. Burning an effigy of Donald Trump is an analogue. Nobody expects someone to catch Donald Trump on fire, and no one expects anyone to behead Anthony Fauci.
Then why did Steve Bannon's verified Facebook Page reiterate that he called for their execution without any of those caveats or counterfactuals or even the defense that it was hyperbole or parody?
I am beyond tired of people making excuses for public threats of violence from authoritarian right-wing actors. It isn't helpful to any discourse to pretend words don't mean what they mean anymore.
Here's the text of that post in case it is removed:
[BREAKING] On www [dot] PopulistPress [dot] com -
*Steve Bannon Under Massive Attack*
- Steve Bannon Under Attack
- Steve Bannon’s Twitter Account Suspended After Calling for Execution of Dr Fauci and FBI Director Wray
Get your news NOW - Bookmark www [dot] PopulistPress [dot] com
I think populist dot press might be Bannon's own site. It heavily promotes his content, his weekly live stream, and it ties in to his social media on other platforms.
Even if it's not his own, this is his official Facebook page from which Bannon hosts his weekly live stream.
I am also beyond tired about the nebulous interplay between word and deed when it comes to right-wing violence.
Bannon is "just joking" about beheading his opponents, Pompeo is "just joking" about Trump not stepping down, constant talk about jailing political opponents -- sorry, constant jokes -- and constant talk about lynching journalists (e.g. "rope, tree, journalist" t-shirts that you see at MAGA rallies, not at any others).
And the FBI eventually breaks up a ring of people who are planning to kidnap and ??? the sitting governor of Michigan, but all of the violent-yet-it's-a-joke speech continues unabated. Was the kidnapping plot a joke, too? Where does all this end?
Serious question, what's the end-game for increasingly violent, increasingly authoritarian jokes?
> Bannon suggested in a video posted on Nov. 5 that FBI Director Christopher Wray and government infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci should be beheaded, saying they had been disloyal to U.S. President Donald Trump, who last week lost his re-election bid to Biden.
So I'm not sure where you get your claim that whymauri is lying.
Stronger: Even if whymauri is incorrect, lying is a whole different level. Can you prove whymauri had intent to tell something other than the truth? I'm pretty sure you can't. And if not, site guidelines call for a charitable interpretation of what others say. Your accusation of lying is completely out of bounds.
I don't need to read any article. The video is up in multiple places and I've seen it multiple times. The word 'behead' in any of its tenses is never used.
You may have watched the video an infinite number of times. That doesn't give you any grounds whatsoever for your claim that whymauri is lying. It also doesn't make your claim any less against the site guidelines.
And I, a hapless plebe, am clearly unqualified to judge whether calling for beheading someone is reasonable. Only Facebook should be able to determine what is reasonable for the hoi polloi to hear. The general public, as we all know, are helpless infants who need Facebook and other tech companies to censor their media for them.
You are missing the point. It is not about the content.
And here you touch on the real problem. By banning extreme people from the commons you send them all to cluster together somewhere else, where their views are met with support instead of derision, thus amplifying and intensifying the extremity of their views.
Steve Bannon on Facebook gets called out and shouted down. Steve Bannon on Parlor gets praised and encouraged. People on Parlor get positive feedback and begin to think their views are mainstream and reasonable. People on Facebook get negative feedback and at least have a chance to think "Hmm, maybe if everyone says I'm wrong about this, I should rethink it".
Yes, I know many people won't rethink it, but facing some opposition at least provides the possibility of that happening. Forcing everyone into a filter bubble of only their own views provides no possibility of that happening.
I think that's too simplistic a take. But it's a fair point that we should be concerned about corporate censorship if people start to depend on private platforms for public speech.
But oft-repeated falsehoods are harmful even if we know they're not true.
No it's really not too simplistic. The only case where Facebook's censorship is a positive is if the following 2 statements are both true:
- FB's moderators posses better judgment than me as to what is and isn't true
- FB's moderators will always act in the best interest of the users and not the company when they come into conflict
I would say that the first point is very unlikely to be true, and the second is certain not to be true. I'm not sure how a lie can be harmful if it is know to be a lie.
I mostly agree with your point here. But a lie can be very harmful, even if it is known to be a lie, if enough people either don't know it's a lie, or don't care. See "Blood libel" for perhaps the most extreme example.
Facebook decides what information you see every day. They decide to promote certain messages and suppress others, not editorially but with algorhythms.
True. It doesn't bother me that companies show me what they think I want to see based on a recommendation algorithm. It does bother me that they would decline to show me something that would otherwise be recommended because they, in their infinite wisdom, have deemed it bad.
I guess I don't see that much of a difference between someone picking what are the best articles, news and videos to show by hand and someone designing an algorithm to do the same function. Their organization still has responsibility every time they choose to show some content over others.
I don't believe that when an algorithm is used, the output is suddenly not a function of human nature or human design. That suddenly no human has any responsibility for it.
if facebook gave this post a score of -infinity, such that it is literally never recommended to anyone, doesn't show up on feeds, and you can only find it by typing in the URL, that would be fine with you?
> It doesn't bother me that companies show me what they think I want to see based on a recommendation algorithm.
It isn't a great choice for users to have to decide between debunking someone's Facebook thing in their post's comments and thereby boosting engagement and promoting it to all their friends, or just leaving it be unchallenged.
Or for Youtube, do you watch a youtube video of a demagogue to prepare arguments against them, knowing that Youtube will promote it more because you watched it?
We need some kind of way to interact with this stuff while getting the choice to not promote it as a result.
Facebook does not only moderate through algorithms. There was a documentary on UK Channel 4 where subcontracted moderators were instructed to allow controversial topics [1].
Right, so we have a platform where tens of millions of posts are made every day, and we leave all of the threats of violence up for however long it takes the appropriate law enforcement agency to respond.
Why stop at companies? The government itself should decide everything for us. Can we really be trusted to think correct thoughts or do correct actions? Just look at covid - it's shown us that people don't voluntarily make the right choice at scale and that the government needs more power to force us to make correct choices so that lives can be saved.
Platforms with their corporate overlords now decide what I can and cannot see, because I'm too stupid to think for myself.
This has always been a slippery slope and won't end well. Zuckerberg as it stands today got more power than the president of the united states. He can swing any election and push any level of propaganda. I really want to see some laws around what they can censor.
That's one way to look at it. Another way is to ask how healthy it is for a society to allow such a powerful platform to be used to incite violence toward nonviolent parties.
The cries for large tech corporations to moderate their content in ways that would make them something like thought-police has always baffled me. Though I understand that it is unhealthy for society to give a platform for violent right-wing rhetoric as well. Was Bannon's comment hyperbolic or not? Did they ever come out and say so or did they double down on it?
Out of curiosity, do you believe the NYTimes should have the right to censor its own comments section? What about censorship in its op-ed section (if the Times decides to not, let’s say, publish your article in the Op-Ed). Facebook is not a public utility, so restricting how Facebook can moderate is, in fact, censorship (and potentially a violation of the prior restraint doctrine). Safe harbor is an odd work-around to this fundamental concern, in my opinion (that is, forcing a company to censor or not and otherwise holding it criminally liable for the all content, which could technically be posted maliciously by an aggrieved anonymous user).
If, for example, the NY Times hosted their website on AWS, do you think Amazon should be able to shut off their servers if the NY Times publishes something Amazon doesn't like?
This where we have to ask whether we want Facebook to be a publisher or a platform. Is Facebook responsible for Steve Bannon's speech, or is Steve Bannon?
Actually, yes. This is entirely reasonable. Hosting companies decided they didn't want 4chan or Stormfront or other hives of white supremacy and that's okay. Publishers are allowed to not publish a book. Fox News and CNN get to decide what guests are on their talking heads shows.
Facebook is not a public utility. It is not a dot gov. They can allow whatever content they want so long as it doesn't break the law.
Conversely, should every user of a platform get to dictate terms? No.
In both cases you and a provider enter into a mutually agreeable relation under some terms of service. And you both can terminate that relationship up to terms of service.
No, actually, I don't think Terms of Service get to override antitrust laws. We recognize there's a value in having a diverse set of options that compete with each other when it comes to business.
We also recognize there's a value in having a diverse set of opinions presented so people can decide on them based on their merits and the best ones can rise to the top. This does mean that sometimes bad opinions are presented, just like sometimes companies that turn out to be bad ideas get started. The solution is not place all authority in the hands of some central dictator who picks the winners and losers beforehand. There is no person or organization capable of reliably filling that role.
>I don't think Terms of Service get to override antitrust laws.
I suspect most people agree on this fwiw. But it'd only apply when antitrust laws are invoked successfully - the vast majority of companies and situations do not fall into that category, as viable alternatives exist. E.g. Amazon is most certainly not the only / impossibly-dominant storefront or CDN.
Yes. And they prevent many kinds of programs on their operating system, e.g. anything trying to access DRM material.
The same goes for OSX and iOS and Android. There are lots of things that can't be run. They're under no obligation to allow them, however much we might want them to.
>Out of curiosity, do you believe the NYTimes should have the right to censor its own comments section?
No, no I don't, not as a "comments section," anyway.
To an extent, NYT is riding on users' past experiences with uncensored comment sections in other contexts. It's the violation of expectations (both of commenters and readers) that grinds.
Were NYT to put up a disclaimer to the effect that "This is our damn site and we'll delete whatever we want," I think they'd actually get some respect for it. The ire comes because they want it both ways---they want the engagement metrics, without the freedom that engagement requires.
What's needed is a rule of law, such that users can predict beforehand what the outcome of an action will be.
Do you think private contractors that provide public utilities should be able to decide who gets to use electricity?
Do you think private companies should be able to provide weapons to the enemy in times of war?
Societies provide rules, regulations and protections around private property to harmonize private and public interests. Facebook is not NYTimes and there is no reason to treat them the same way. Laws and regulations should be pragmatic.
Agent Smith said it well, once the machines started doing the thinking for humans, it really became their world.
Zuckerberg is a glorified newspaper salesman. He depends on soaking up negative narratives to appear powerful. Nobody is more powerful than the government, they can only impose costs on the gov, the government will resolve all conflicts.
I would be ashamed to work as an engineer at Facebook today; they empower the proliferation of lies that undermine democracy and our common health, hiding behind the "oh we're just a platform" pretense.
Yes, I know free speech. However, there's a responsibility here that needs to be filled when the information is so carefully crafted (actual facts be damned) towards people who haven't got the education to understand the manipulation that is happening.
The problem with takes like this is that they don’t acknowledge the equally serious issue of misinformation and propaganda in social networks. Of course it’s worrisome to let Zuckerberg decide what people see or don’t see. It’s also serious to do nothing while Zuckerberg’s platform amplifies misinformation. That stuff has serious consequences. A good chunk of the country thinks Biden stole the election based on claims that have no merit. These people are pushing the health of the American democracy to its limits and yet so many comments on HN seem to be solely preoccupied about censorship.
Rupert Murdoch has been defining election outcomes for decades. Murdoch won't be around much longer, and it seems like a natural progression for Zuckerberg. Quite the progression from FaceMash.
Trump has proven that a shockingly large percentage of the US IS in fact too stupid to think for themselves and just let Fox News and the like tell them what to think.
It's just more of the same (overly-)simplistic debate.
Yes, Facebook is private property and can do what it wants.
And yes, the rest of us are free to criticize Facebook whenever it attempts to play the role of thought-police (a role I think few of us actually want social media platforms to play).
FB may be considered private property today, but we may, through our elected officials, declare the private property as a place where the first amendment rights must still be upheld. There is precedent for this (malls and housing provided to employees)
Then someone posts that the real issue is the lack of robust anti-trust legislation leading to the absence of a free market for online media platforms; in a truly free market someone should be able to start their own competing platform whose defining characteristic is absolute free speech (or not), and people can choose to join it (or not) depending on their personal preference.
Then someone else responds that network effects in social media make a truly free market impossible even with strong anti-trust legislation, and we’re back to square one.
Doesn’t this exist with Parler, Voat and maybe Mastodon? With Voat, at least, the lack of moderation caused the site to become a cesspool and quickly abandoned. I would argue the network effect is only one reason that unmoderated social networks have not reached mainstream.
I think network effects are much less pronounced with microblog platforms like Twitter, Parler, and Mastodon — most people sign up for these platforms to follow a few big accounts with orders of magnitude more followers than the average account. There’s no detriment to flipping between a Twitter and Mastondon/Parler account depending on which big accounts you want to read.
Contrariwise, people sign up for Facebook to socialize with their friend group as a whole. An alternative platform with only a handful of your friends would be pretty useless. Worse, having your friend group split between platforms would completely prevent being able to socialize as a group, defeating the whole point of the platform.
I don’t understand how they still hire talented people (who have plenty of employment options). I will think very carefully before hiring someone who previously worked at FB.
Do we all really believe that Bannon was actually, literally saying he would be-head these people and put their heads on spikes...or as adults do we realize he was using hyperbole?
How many times have you said something along the lines of "I will kill you if you put that picture of me on Instagram!"
Do we all really believe that if you or I said this, rather than a famous white nationalist, that Facebook would give us the benefit of the doubt? Or would our accounts be immediately banned, no questions asked, please do not attempt to contact a human being for an appeal?
How many followers do you have that will listen to you when you make that statement?
People like Bannon and Trump have lots of followers and someone of them do end up doing things like attempting to kill politicians or trying to kidnap them.
> or as adults do we realize he was using hyperbole
or as adults Bannon and Trump should realize that their words have consequences and some of their followers wont know if its hyperbole. You can still make your point without the violent language.
A friend saying "I'll kill you" to your face is slightly different than a person saying "I'll kill these specific high-profile government officials" to an audience of millions.
If your boss says in a meeting "We need to get this done or heads are gonna roll" do you think he literally means he will cut off people's heads and bowl them down the hallway of the office?
It would be inappropriate if the boss said "Susan Williams and Mark Goldwyn, if you don't get this done I'm going to cut your heads off and mount them on the main entrance as a warning to the other employees".
Notice how my example has similarities to what Bannon actually said, and therefore sounds far more inappropriate.
Let's also keep in mind that this hypothetical "boss" is probably not linked to various groups known for frequently making death threats and engaging in political violence.
Regress in social norms doesn't require actual time travel, and that happening through normalization of political violence is a real thing, which has happened lots of places, and which Bannon is overtly calling for here, pointing to the mere firing he expects from the President as inadequate. (Making it clear that the call was not a metaphor for firing.)
We have laws against violence, and we have a justice system and law enforcement to enforce the laws. If they believe there is a credible threat, they should investigate, that is their purpose. We can hold them accountable via voting and their actions should ideally be transparent to the public. If Bannon is part of a real, literal plot to place Fauci's head on a pike at the White House, that is the avenue through which it should be prosecuted, not via some intern at Facebook looking at a couple of posts and making a unilateral decision with no public accountability.
Bannon isn't making any threats. He is calling for the laws to be changed so he can legally execute people for thought crime, and not holding the party line.
Essentially, he wants dictatorship.
It's not illegal to promote dictatorship but it is gross, and he should be publicly shunned for it.
> We have laws against violence, and we have a justice system and law enforcement to enforce the laws.
We do. That doesn't conflict with platforms having standards that prohibit advocacy of violence.
> If they believe there is a credible threat, they should investigate, that is their purpose.
It wasn't a threat, it was advocacy /incitement, which is a different thing.
> We can hold them accountable via voting and their actions should ideally be transparent to the public.
Their actions, by law, are not transparent to the public, and instead are subject to among the broadest exceptions of any public agencies (beyond defense/intelligence) to transparency laws. Not that your fantasies about law enforcement transparency, even if true, have any relevance to Bannon's incitement.
> If Bannon is part of a real, literal plot to place Fauci's head on a pike at the White House, that is the avenue through which it should be prosecuted.
A plot/conspiracy is a third thing, different from both a threat and incitement.
And no one is talking about prosecution.
Facebook isn't a public utility that is somehow obligated to relay and promote all speech equally without filtering with the only controls being after-the-fact actions by law enforcement. You are free to create a service with those terms of use and try to compete with Facebook, if you wish, but that's not what Facebook users have signed up for. And, while I've certainly seen examples of Facebook being overzealous in enforcing their “Community Standards”, this particular case doesn't come close to that.
> Facebook isn't a public utility that is somehow obligated to relay and promote all speech equally
I understand what Facebook is and isn't obligated to do. I'm not saying they are obligated to be neutral. They are not obligated to play the role of speech police either. I am saying it would be better for society as a whole if they leave adults to make up their own minds about speech. Speech should not be controlled by corporations.
Yes, they can impose whatever limits they want. That doesn't meant that it's good or that we should be happy about it or that we are not allowed to question whatever limits they impose.
And sure you can argue "just don't use Facebook". That is fine, for now. Facebook is a large, but not completely necessary part of society. What happens when it becomes larger and more necessary (or another company does) and we've already imbued them with the power to decide what people are and are not allowed to say? Do you think then they'll just give that power up?
Have you seen that episode of Black Mirror where you can literally ghost people? I forget exactly, but there was some way to punish people by making them physically invisible and inaudible, so they had could barely interact with the world. I guess they could still eat, but they couldn't talk to or be acknowledged by anyone.
Obviously, getting banned from Facebook is not that, but it's maybe Version 0.01 of that, and I get the distinct impression that people here would be perfectly fine with that as long as it happens to people they don't like.
If my boss said "we need to finish this or I'm going to put heads on a pike, one on this corner of the office and one on that corner" I think there would be repercussions, but keep making your false equivalence.
> If your boss says in a meeting "We need to get this done or heads are gonna roll"
That's, again, not analogous to what Bannon said.
What Bannon said was, after having suggested that Trump’s second term would start with firing of Wray and Fauci, "Now I actually want to go a step farther, but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I'd put the heads on pikes, right, I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you're gone – time to stop playing games."
He's not using heads on pikes as a metaphor for firing, because firing was the prediction of what the President as a “kind-hearted man” would do, while Bannon wanted more.
Then when Biden said he wants to take Trump behind the bleachers and knock him out, we should construe that as a threat of violence against the President,right? It can only mean that he really intends to physically assault Trump.
People never, ever use hyperbole for effect and only speak 100% literally.
> Then when Biden said he wants to take Trump behind the bleachers and knock him out, we should construe that as a threat of violence against the President,right?
No, just like I never said Bannon's statement should be taken as a threat.
> People never, ever use hyperbole for effect
I never said that. What effect so you think Bannon was going for? I've explained what I think, and that that the statement was a neither literal nor hyperbolic.
If you want a productive dialog, you need to respond to what people actually say, rather than fantasies of what you'd like them to have said because it is convenient to argue against.
So far you've said his statement is not literal, hyperbolic, or metaphorical. That doesn't really leave a whole lot of options. So what exactly do you think his statement was? All you seem to be doing is repeating the statement and gesturing wildly at it going "See? See????? Bad!"
To me it sounds like Bannon is just a pompous blowhard who's making outrageous claims he will never, in a million years, be able to back up.
But that's not my point. My point is that I get to read his words myself and make up my own mind about them. I can decide he's a pompous blowhard or a serious threat to democracy and direct my own actions accordingly. I don't have to get a secondhand account from Facebook who tells me what to think about Bannon. Do you see the difference?
If you read Bannon's word and decide he's a threat then you can go around warning people about him if you like, or starting some counter-advocacy movement, or whatever (legal) action you want to take. If you have to rely on Facebook telling you which people are threats and which people are not, that gives them a power to direct the public discourse to their whims. The public needs to have the ability to view primary sources and make up their own minds about them.
I'm not concerned about the specific details of this one piece of speech, I'm concerned about the general principle of where the power to decide which speech is appropriate lies.
I agree with your side of the thread, this looks like a lack of comprehension on the part of the people trying to interpret 10 seconds of throwaway commentary as somehow meaningful. Bannon is trying to express frustration with the culture of the bureaucrats and his opponents are suffering a suspiciously strategic total failure of imagination.
But as a tip, 'All you seem to be doing is repeating the statement and gesturing wildly at it going "See? See????? Bad!"' is horrifyingly bad technique when responding to someone who just said 'you need to respond to what people actually say, rather than fantasies of what you'd like them to have said'. gp is literally correct now. When someone says that you'll get much better results with literal quotes rather than unfair characterisations. You've got a good point, you can afford to be gentle.
> How many times have you said something along the lines of “I will kill you if you put that picture of me on Instagram!”
But his threat was much more graphic and specific. How many times have you e.g. emailed your friend’s whole family with a message along the lines of “If you post that picture online I will eviscerate you and then hang you from your mother’s dining room ceiling by your intestines as a warning.”
That is not normal friendly exaggerated banter, and would be pretty hard to play off as a joke.
“Heads on pikes” is used as a hyperbolic shorthand for any kind of public shaming, especially when someone is fired.
But “Mount their heads on pikes at the corners of the White House as a warning the way they used to do to traitors in Tudor England” is nothing close to a common expression.
Well, that depends, how many times did those people follow up and clarify that they were, quote "Calling for Execution of Dr Fauci and FBI Director Wray".
How many times and in how many ways is one allowed to intimate that they believe someone should be murdered before it's unacceptable to you?
Call for the assassination of the President on your verified, highly followed Twitter account and, when the Secret Service calls you up, ask them if they really believe you were literally saying it or if, as adults you can realize you were being hyperbolic.
There are some things we don’t give the benefit of the doubt for. Murdering public officials is one of them.
> Do we all really believe that Bannon was actually, literally saying he would be-head these people and put their heads on spikes...or as adults do we realize he was using hyperbole?
Book reading has been in decline for a long time, and the loss of high level literacy and the ability to sense nuance and figurative language is a sign of that.
A lot of people indeed can't understand how the quote could have other meanings besides the literal one, because they've rarely encountered such use of language before.
> Do we all really believe that Bannon was actually, literally saying he would be-head these people and put their heads on spikes...
I believe Bannon was genuinely attempting to fuel the escalation of both disorganized and, through normalization, top-down political violence and intimidation against people insufficiently adherent to his vision; I don't think the statement had either literal or figurative, hyperbolic or otherwise, meaning beyond that intended effect.
Discussing “meaning” of a speech act assumes that the acts intended to operate on a certain rational level, which I don't think actually applies here. But, inasmuch as an interpretation of the intended effect centered around meaning is appropriate at all, I think the literal meaning is the closest.
> How many times have you said something along the lines of "I will kill you if you put that picture of me on Instagram!"
That's not even remotely analogous to what Bannon did here. He wasn't personally and privately addressing the person who was the subject in a context (whether immediate or through a preexisting relationship) that undermined the literal meaning of the expression. His act differed on literally every meaningful aspect from that.
Stop making excuses for scum. It's time we held people like Bannon to account for what they say. Hyperbole has no place in public political discourse. When you say something make sure you mean it. We only need one spark to cause a civil war. This isn't funny.
Are you seriously trying to make the argument that it's ok to threaten to decapitate someone as long as you do it in the good old fashioned European way, rather than like ISIS?
If that's the case, then I'm honestly curious what point you were trying to make, because I see no other way to interpret it. How is saying "put the heads on pikes" substantially different than "should be beheaded"? Are you suggesting that there's some way to "put them at the two corners of the White House" without any beheading?
Is this really an example of the "fake news" you love to demonize, or are you just arguing in bad faith because the truth makes you look bad?
Look, you obtuse jackass, since you seem to be so concerned with the actual words that were said, let's put them right out here and break them down.
> Bannon: "Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci. Now I actually want to go a step farther, but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I’d put the heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you’re gone – time to stop playing games. Blow it all up, put Ric Grenell today as the interim head of the FBI, that’ll light them up, right."
> Maxey: "You know what, Steve, just yesterday there was the anniversary of the hanging of two Tories in Philadelphia, these were Quaker businessmen who had cohabitated, if you will, with the British while they were occupying Philadelphia. These people were hung. This is what we used to do to traitors."
> Bannon: "That’s how you won the revolution. No one wants to talk about it. The [American] revolution wasn’t some sort of garden party, right? It was a civil war. It was a civil war."
This is clearly WAY beyond offhandedly using the phrase "heads on pikes" as a colloquialism, and veers into discussing the necessity and morality of executing political opponents.
Point 1: Firing isn't good enough. They are traitors and need to be punished with death.
Point 2: Clear evidence of their execution needs to be on display to intimidate everyone else into falling in line.
Point 3: These executions are justified when carried out on people who are seen as traitors in the midst of a war.
So when you come in here trying to whitewash everything as if the big bad fake news media put words into Bannon's mouth, well, you can fuck right off.
At issue is that Steve Bannon used the Facebook platform to call for the execution and public display of the corpses of two public officials, NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Chris Wray.
This is unambiguously true, Steve Bannon's Facebook page reiterated the claims the same day, and may this cursed, bad-faith argument about whether he meant what he said be over and done with. Steve Bannon knows what words he said, he used the Facebook platform to repeat those words, and he is not a nobody but an individual who rose to prominence and is a former senior White House official, in fact, he was among the most senior one can be, on par with the chief of staff with privileged access to the President and the National Security Council. Whatever you think of him and how he may have fallen, he has a platform and he speaks to many millions of people and his words carry weight.
I am reminded yet again of a Jean-Paul Sartre quote from Anti-Semite and Jew:
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play.
"They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
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[BREAKING] On www [dot] PopulistPress [dot] com -
*Steve Bannon Under Massive Attack*
- Steve Bannon Under Attack
- Steve Bannon’s Twitter Account Suspended After Calling for Execution of Dr Fauci and FBI Director Wray
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Yes, the right to play, great point. That’s similar to yesterday when Pompeo made the “joke” that there’d be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration. “Just joking” for me but not for thee.
America’s big problem is lack of consequences for stuff like this. The First Amendment has long outlived its utility when you compare the US to any other well-established democracy, and yet Americans take it on faith that it’s somehow the key to everything good about America.
Edit: and 30s later this comment is at -2. It’s bizarre to me that so many Americans simply cannot entertain that the First Amendment might not be a net positive for the country.
We don't need to tear down the First Amendment, but our society does somewhat depend on civil society rejecting and not amplifying dangerous, uncivil, undemocratic ideas.
I think the freedom of speech Bannon has is fine. He's welcome to make whatever calls he wants - though I do wonder if he may have strayed from merely "uncivil" into "incitement".
But Facebook, Twitter, the New York Times... they don't need to amplify it. He is not entitled to their audiences too.
The amplifying point has been spreading in discussions.
Facebook, twitter must not amplify one content over another or it loses it's neutral status. If it begins make decisions based on what it prefers content wise it would lose a common carrier status and should be regulated like those other entities and not be treated as neutrual platform.
The New York Times is a newspaper and doesn't belong.
Even if their algorithms threaten to destabilize society by amplification? Bear in mind these platforms come with many forms of moderation already.
So I believe we're mostly talking about a spectrum of what mechanisms there are and their consequences. Ie. is it OK for the entire planet to bully anyone in public until they lose everything? This is actually hard to prevent, if no mechanisms to do so are in place, while communication is as "free" as possible.
Ultimately, if a platform is big enough that its policies have society-destabilizing consequences, I would much prefer to see it broken up than reined in. Benevolent dictators are still dictators.
> If it begins make decisions based on what it prefers content wise it would lose a common carrier status
It can't lose what it never had to begin with. Information services post Section 230 have 0 obligation to be "neutral". You should read the law instead of listening to Internet commentators' fantasies and wishlists of "neutrality" and "censorship makes you a publisher". This is all bullcrap.
If there was any serious discussion in the US about the utility of 1FA I would be willing to believe Americans were able to entertain it. What weaknesses with it did you come up with when you entertained it?
What weaknesses? You know, look around. It's pretty clear that the First Amendment is having some negative effects.
But my position is that not having the First Amendment also has negative effects, and those effects are worse. Such as, for example, creating a world where your post could be deleted merely for suggesting that the Constitution had a weakness.
I'm going to say stuff. Some of it will go against the prevailing narrative. I want to be able to say it anyway. Sometimes, I'll even be right. I think the right to do so is important.
Because it's pretty obvious. You're trying to score some cheap rhetorical points, and I decline to give them to you.
> Protections of free speech are much weaker in most of the rest of the free and rich world. Why don’t those negative effects show up there?
They don't at the moment show up strongly in most of the rest of the free and rich world. They show up in, for example, China. (Though negative effects show up in England from their libel laws, for example. They just aren't as flagrant as what you see in China.)
To put the burden of proof on the other foot: Is there any reason to think that the absence of FA-type free speech guarantees is making things better in the rest of the free and rich world? If not, I'll keep the guarantee, because I really like being able to say what I please.
But I suspect that some of the exact same negatives were showing up in Britain during Brexit, for example. (Can't say for sure, since I wasn't there and didn't see what the local conditions were.)
And I note with some amusement that you are now the one unwilling to specify. Sauce for the goose...
Anyway, in short, I'm sure (and I mean this) you're a smart and well-read guy or gal, but from your entirely circular arguments here I don't think you've ever seriously spent time considering what the alternatives to the first amendment are. Everything you've claimed to like about it is just as true in other free, rich countries, and the negatives you repeatedly decline to mention are largely absent. You've brought in libel as an example, which of course is _not_ protected by 1FA. The importance of 1FA at this point is a national religion.
Did you actually read the article before reposting it? It's been illegal there since 1981. The article simply says it's been extended to include new groups.
Yes, I absolutely think hate speech should be restricted, and the laws of most countries agree with that, with the USA being a notable exception:
> A majority of developed democracies have laws that restrict hate speech, including Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom
Do I think hate speech in private should be restricted? I think _probably_ not, but I think this is for the elected legislature to decide, not an idea that is edict from several hundred years ago.
> Do I think hate speech in private should be restricted? I think _probably_ not, but I think this is for the elected legislature to decide, not an idea that is edict from several hundred years ago.
So you _probably_ agree with me? This is the exact point. Many people that might agree that some public speech should be outlawed would recoil at the idea of private speech being similarly restricted. Yet this has been the case in Norway for 40 years. Now you might reply that it has caused no harm yet. And I admit I don't know the number of convictions for this type of private speech, but this is the very definition of chilling effect. Criminalization of private speech has been normalized. When the ratchet is tightened there will be no room to complain.
I’m not sure what you think we’re arguing here. Yes, as I clearly stated, my instincts are against the criminalisation of non-public hate speech.
Freedom of speech is complicated and subtle, and that’s why a several hundred year law that binds the hands of the legislature to refine and update laws around it is a bad idea.
I would agree with the parent poster that the downvotes represent a lack of entertaining the idea, because instead of engaging and arguing against it, it's merely immediately downvoted.
Look how often constitutional ammendments were proposed in the past compared to today. We're fossilizing the idea of our country into a religion instead of continuing to have useful debate on why today isn't like yesterday and on what updates we need to make now.
>"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."[1]
But to address your key point, I'd bet a lot of people are down-voting the grandparent's superior/condescending tone, as exemplified by the following fragments:
>"America’s big problem... yet Americans take it on faith... Americans simply cannot entertain"
Lots of comments are downvoted quickly without replies, I don't think you can infer that much from it.
I also don't think the rate at which amendments are proposed is a good indication of how healthy our country is. Shouldn't things stabilize and require less revision eventually?
> I also don't think the rate at which amendments are proposed is a good indication of how healthy our country is. Shouldn't things stabilize and require less revision eventually?
I don't think that's obvious at all, especially given changes in population, technology, and international situations over the same timeframe as that nation's institutional stagnation.
The two party system is outdated. While Democrats fight for unlimited abortion up to birth, republicans fight to end the world. There's no sane middle ground. There is political room for a third middle party.
>The First Amendment has long outlived its utility when you compare the US to any other well-established democracy
What could you possibly mean by this? Can you provide any examples of how other nations have codified freedom of speech, expression, religion and peaceful assembly and in some different and superior way?
You are free to full throatedly criticise the government in any Western democracy while unlimited political dark money and pharmaceutical advertising so pervasive it literally stops testing against placebos working is largely banned.
First we need to remember that this isn't a binary question of freedom versus no freedom. It is a question of where to place the line on a spectrum. Or perhaps more specifically where does the line exist between your rights and my rights.
Does your right to spout hate speech about my religion infringe on my right to freely and safely practice my religion?
Does your right to spend $1B on amplifying your political speech drown out my political speech and effectively nullify it?
Other countries have answered yes to those questions while the US has answered no.
> Does your right to spend a $1B on political advertising drown out my political speech?
On this specific one, it’s not a matter of drowning you out, it’s being able to compete with someone else spending $1B endorsing the opposite opinion. Or more importantly, being able to pay for your message to be distributed rather than having to own a media empire to get it published.
If it weren’t for the Citizens United decision being decided in the correct direction, you’d be a the media landscape would be a slave to whoever owns it. People or organizations that make their money elsewhere would be stifled from expressing their opinions through advertising purchases.
Are you saying that the result of Citizens United is that instead of being a slave to the people or organizations that own the media landscape we are slaves to simply the richest people or organizations. How is that any better? That is trading one devil for another. I don't want a good guy with $1B battling a bad guy with a $1B. That doesn't fix anything. I want everyone's political speech to be on a more even playing field. That currently can't happen due to the First Amendment and the interpretation that says money is equal to speech.
> Are you saying that the result of Citizens United is that instead of being a slave to the people or organizations that own the media landscape we are slaves to simply the richest people or organizations. How is that any better?
The alternative is that only billionaires that control media empires get to pick what messages you hear.
More importantly, the CU ruling was that groups of non-billionaires (ex: a union or PAC) could pool their resources together in order to amplify their combined message.
> That is trading one devil for another. I don't want a good guy with $1B battling a bad guy with a $1B. That doesn't fix anything.
It sounds like you just want to silence voices that may be louder than your own.
> I want everyone's political speech to be on a more even playing field. That currently can't happen due to the First Amendment and the interpretation that says money is equal to speech.
If I spend my time making and selling widgets but feel strongly about a political issue or candidate, why can I not spend the money I earned (and paid taxes on!) to promote that issue or candidate? Must I purchase a TV network or a newspaper in order to push my agenda? That's what CU addresses.
>The alternative is that only billionaires that control media empires get to pick what messages you hear.
That outcome is one alternative, it is not the only alternative. We can put laws in place to regulate how the media talks about political issues. We used to have the fairness doctrine for example. I wouldn't necessarily want that reintroduced exactly how it existed, but something along those lines would help the US political system.
>More importantly, the CU ruling was that groups of non-billionaires (ex: a union or PAC) could pool their resources together in order to amplify their combined message.
So what? These organizations are free to advise their people how to voice their opinion and they can even facilitate doing so through internal programs such as voter registration drives or petition drives. We don't have to allow them to pool money to voice their opinion to the general public.
>It sounds like you just want to silence voices that may be louder than your own.
"When you're accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression." I want voices to be equal. The people who have the loudest voices will probably feel like I want them silenced.
>If I spend my time making and selling widgets but feel strongly about a political issue or candidate, why can I not spend the money I earned (and paid taxes on!) to promote that issue or candidate? Must I purchase a TV network or a newspaper in order to push my agenda? That's what CU addresses.
You can still promote your issue or candidate. I just want the medium of exchange to be your time and not your money. That would help even out the balance of power. Why should the people with more money be able to spread their message further than people without it?
> "When you're accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression." I want voices to be equal. The people who have the loudest voices will probably feel like I want them silenced.
It is equality of opportunity. What you seem to want is equality of outcome.
Nothing stops you or your politically minded allies from pooling your own resources.
> You can still promote your issue or candidate. I just want the medium of exchange to be your time and not your money. That would help even out the balance of power. Why should the people with more money be able to spread their message further than people without it?
Why should the unemployed or those on the dole, with all the time in the world, have an advantage over the employed?
> Does your right to spout hate speech about my religion infringe on my right to freely and safely practice my religion?
Does your right to criticize my religion infringe on my right to freely and safely practice my religion? No. Even if the criticism is harsh, even hateful. I find this a particularly curious example, because there's a long history of criticism of religion, from Nietzsche to Dawkins, much of it harsh, even hateful. I'm not aware of any countries that ban these writers, though apparently Dawkins got cancelled for also applying his criticism to islam. And what if your religion itself entails beliefs that makes other people, such as women or homosexuals, fear for their rights? Then they are not allowed to hate on your religion, because that makes you fear for your freedom of religion?
We aren't talking about "criticism". I am not asking for laws on blasphemy. I am asking for laws on hate speech.
It is legal in the US to say that all Muslims are terrorists that deserve to be shot with bullets dipped in pig's blood. How would you feel hearing that if you were a Muslim? Would you feel that you could safely and openly practice your religion?
> We aren't talking about "criticism". I am not asking for laws on blasphemy. I am asking for laws on hate speech.
You say this as if these are clearly defined categories. Take the charlie hebdo cartoons: Criticism, blasphemy or hate speech? At any rate, your argument applies even to criticism. Criticism can lead people to infringe on your freedom of religion.
What is the line between criticism and slander? Why can we draw that line when dealing with individuals but it is impossible to define categories when dealing with groups of people?
>Can you provide any examples of how other nations have codified freedom of speech, expression, religion and peaceful assembly and in some different and superior way?
Not the OP but here in Germany the guiding principle of all lawmaking and action of the state is human dignity, as laid out in the first article of the basic law.
Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.
and freedom of expression while enjoying numerous protections reaches its limitations when that dignity is under attack (article 5):
(1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.
(2) These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons and in the right to personal honour.
There is a pretty long list of Americans who've faced consequences for what they've said. Calling it "America's big problem" is hyperbole, and certainly not justification for overturning a founding principle of the country.
Civil rights protestors were beaten, attacked by dogs, sprayed with firehoses, and put in jail. MLK had his phones tapped and his mail read. Where was the First Amendment for them?
> I am reminded yet again of a Jean-Paul Sartre quote from Anti-Semite and Jew.
Yeah, I'm also reminded of this quote whenever someone on the internet disagrees with me. Clearly they must be aware of "the absurdity of their replies".
Edit: Getting downvoted just reminds of that quote again. Clearly people are trying to "intimidate and disconcert me".
When I read a comment starting with "just to clarify" I'm already mentally prepared to read something with no relation whatsoever to anything I said, but even so I was caught off guard this time. No, I'm not an anti-semite. What the fuck about my comment is anti-semitic?
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN? You've been doing it quite a bit and we ban that sort of account because we're trying for something different here.
> I actually want to go a step farther, but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I'd put the heads on pikes, I'd put them on the two corners of the White House, as a warning to Federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program, or you're gone.
If the conversation ended there, in it's most favorable light Bannon could be assumed to be using "heads on pikes" as a euphemism for "getting tough / serious".
However, immediately after this quote, the other speaker and Bannon discuss historical political hangings and how the death penalty for treason is necessary during a civil war.
> Steve Bannon Under Massive Attack
> - Steve Bannon’s Twitter Account Suspended After Calling for Execution of Dr Fauci and FBI Director Wray
Regardless of where you come down on the free speech side of calling for a public figure's execution, Bannon seems to concede that he meant what he said.
>> "Steve Bannon’s Twitter Account Suspended After Calling for Execution of Dr Fauci and FBI Director Wray"
Considering Bannon claimed: "Steve Bannon Under Massive Attack", and the next line (...After Calling for Execution...) is identical to that used on populist.press, and he included a link to the site (which seems to be broken), this interpretation (that he is quoting populist.press, as opposed to doubling down) doesn't seem too far fetched to me.
If, for the sake of argument (and I mean that very literally), he was actually quoting them (and therefore not doubling down), could Bannon, as you said, "...be assumed to be using "heads on pikes" as a euphemism for "getting tough / serious"?
For more clarity on what actually occurred, here is the link to the full story, and the relevant text and quotes:
>> In the episode, posted Thursday morning, Bannon was discussing a hypothetical second Trump term. After advocating that among Trump’s first second term orders of business should be firing both Wray and Fauci, Bannon said, “I actually want to go a step farther but the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put the heads on pikes, right? I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats, you either get with the program or you’re gone.”
>> Shortly after, Steve Bannon and his co-host Jack Maxey offered some additional thoughts on the matter that certainly suggested they might actually be serious.
>> “Just yesterday, there was the anniversary of the hanging of two Tories in Philadelphia,” Maxey said. “These were Quaker businessmen who had cohabitated, if you will, with the British while they were occupying Philadelphia. These people were hung. This is what we used to do to traitors.”
>> “That’s how you won the revolution. No one wants to talk about it. The revolution wasn’t some sort of garden party, right? It was a civil war. It was a civil war,” Bannon replied.
Regardless, he quoted it as a call to action for supporters to come to his defense, so it's reasonable to assume he felt it accurately captured the fact that he called for the execution of two public officials.
I think it's less in doubt what he did and more in doubt what social media should do in response. Twitter took one approach and FB another.
> Regardless, he quoted it as a call to action for supporters to come to his defense, so it's reasonable to assume he felt it accurately captured the fact that he called for the execution of two public officials.
This is an interesting sentence, particularly the one word: fact.
This word seems to have some sort of a strange quality to it - very mysterious, almost magical.
It's a popular word, people use it all the time. And they seem to really enjoy using it, almost like it has a kind of...reverence to it, for them.
But if you ever talk about how they use it (like, the context they are using it in, and various details related to that), everyone seems to start acting....weird. Like, the passion and interest that was just there 5 seconds ago, kind of vanishes into thin air. There one moment, gone the next. Kind of like cherry blossoms in the spring, or that first crush you have as a teenager (no Mom, it's love, you just don't get it!!!) - so fleeting.
Oh well, it's probably nothing..."just my mind playing tricks on me!" lol
A fact check would diminish the statement as hypothetical. But the damage is already done when rabid gunslingers already ingested the idea that might makes right. These people are dangerous for stable democracy and fair chances for everybody.
Oh yes, there's no doubt about that. Bannon can say things, and who knows what person already near the edge for whatever reason might fly off the handle and do something crazy. It's more than just "a legitimate concern".
But that's obvious. Seeing the risk inherent in people like Bannon doesn't even require effort. Thinking like that (and only that) is kind of the equivalent of "phoning it in" [1].
Reality is very complex. Infinity complex, some people say. Managing it skilfully is a hard problem. There is risk, and problems, everywhere. Attributing it all to cartoon evil characters like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump is pretty low effort thinking. Not even trying to be correct(!) (as opposed to "right").
My point is, why make this problem (just as one example - it is a recurring theme if one pays close attention) even harder by talking about it inaccurately &/or imprecisely? I think most of us wouldn't dare to write software at our day jobs this way, for all the obvious reasons, so then why do we accept it (or sometimes even insist upon it) when it comes to a far more complex problem, which is arguably more important than what we do from 9 to 5?
I am "on the spectrum" (in case it wasn't obvious). I do not understand why people behave like this - in general, but especially programmer types, who possess logical and systems analysis capabilities far beyond what general public can even imagine.
Why do people do this? Human behavior seems completely counter-intuitive to me. Like, backwards from what it should be. Can you explain it to me in some way that might make sense, to someone like me?
He says things he's going to do then does exactly that, without any basis in truth, facts or consequences. That's the problem. People don't believe he would be so inclined. However, there's no sign of him not meaning what he says, even when it's to troll for attention. The risk there is him going through with what he says, and not standing up for principles but rather tearing them down. Why? His agenda is simply to satisfy his own infinite craving for attention and likes. Though where are the limits to the means for attaining such a goal? They seem to diminish in time, which is pathological.
Such populists play on the fears and anger of the people. There is real inequality in USA, but the masses bet on the wrong horses again and again. Why? Because the privatization of media assures that billionaires set the agenda every day.
It seems high time for a third party, a middle ground, to be made. Because Democrats are too wide, too divided, and thus end up being too extreme. Ie. their stance of unlimited abortion until birth, is extremist in any country. But with the failed two party "system", they end up alienating most of the republican voter base.
This is all frustration playing out due to failed two party political system and the billionaires that ensures the status quo on both sides. The problem is when people become too frustrated, but it is a hard problem who to turn to for aid.
This is what I do not understand about the culture on HN, and mainstream "right thinking" culture in general: if your ideas really are so proper and correct, then why is there so much dishonesty in your words? If your case is sound, why not just stick to facts? Why can you not reply to direct questions, but instead act as if you did not read them?
Why do people do this? I mean, the text is right here on the page. Do neuro-typical people not feel embarrassment or shame, or is that kind of offset by the feeling of security that comes with being a member of the majority, a kind of "normie privilege" I guess you could say? The lack of self-awareness seems stark to me, but maybe I'm the only one that sees it.
> But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. [...] "They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert."
This is exactly the mechanism of people who don't _really_ want to discuss anything. They throw badly compiled thoughts at you, and laugh at you if you struggle to explain why they are foolish.
-- the claim that "Steve Bannon used the Facebook platform to call for the execution and public display of the corpses of two public officials" and "This is unambiguously true, Steve Bannon's Facebook page reiterated the claims the same day..."
...combined with...
-- "...for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play."
...when what Bannon wrote on Facebook was a direct quotation of what was said about him, here:
I'm not supporting what Bannon has said here by any means, but it boggles my mind why there seems to be this recurring pattern over the last several years where rather than simply using the actual, already more than bad enough words of Trump and his gang to criticize him, instead people seem to need to hyperbole-it-up for added effect. Claiming that Bannon was unambiguously not using a provocative/hyperbolic figure of speech, but rather was literally calling for someone's execution...seems a bit like cutting off your nose to spite your face (note: I am using that expression figuratively - I do not mean that people here or elsewhere are literally cutting their noses off).
To me, much of Western civilization seems like the Movie Lord of the Flies [1].
Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality.
Except in our case, I don't think there are going to be any adults showing up on the scene to stop us from killing each other. Sadly, real life is often not rescued at the last moment as it often is in the movies, as anyone who has read history would well know.
The word you're lacking is accountability, in case someone takes it on as a great idea. Then, the speech is not protected, but can be considered conspiracy. So reaction to it must come, even if it sinks everyone to the scum's level.
Ok I see now (if someone was to act "due to" speech like this, it might be used as "justification" for more censorship - if I'm not misunderstanding).
But I don't see what that has to do with what I wrote, which was regarding the pattern of "dishonesty" when it comes to the discussion of reality.
I consider this to be a very dangerous break from our cultural history. There are many examples in history of where this road can lead, but not only are we not exhibiting caution, the overwhelming sense I get is enthusiasm at this development. One probably shouldn't judge the general public in this regard too harshly, but thinking is what the HN crowd is supposed to be good at.
History has examples of previous times when populists flirted with the idea of abolishing democracy and using violence as means for "might makes right". Taking it lightly or in defense of free speech blindly, is not prudent. I don't believe we can or should ban divergent speech either, but maybe such people should make their own platform. Trying to make a rational argument when all they do is ridicule, insult and make hyperboles, making policy on feelings like abuse and threats, doesn't lead to anything positive.
Democracy need a balance and spectrum, otherwise there'll be a One Party System, and people will be rationalizing that too.
History shows us what happens when these sentiments leap out of control.
It's interesting how you keep replying as if you are reading text other than what I actually write.
What I wrote was primarily:
> But I don't see what that has to do with what I wrote, which was regarding the pattern of "dishonesty" when it comes to the discussion of reality.
It is especially interesting when done while accusing someone else of doing the very same thing (the fascinating pink elephant situation in this thread).
Perhaps your goal is to help by even further illustrating this pattern on HN? If so, thanks!
Bannon has admitted that this is a strategy he uses. Although with his eloquence he coined a different phrase for the practice: "flood the zone with shit"[1].
It's hard for me to believe that someone can watch that and think that Bannon is literally suggesting we put Fauci's head on a pike, when it's clearly intended to be a metaphor.
If I get exasperated with this conversation and say something like "kill me now," I guess you'd call the suicide hotline?
It was not a metaphor, it was hyperbole. “I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put their heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats, you either get with the program or you’re gone.”
It is a call to violence. He is saying that these people deserved to be killed for what they have done to Trump. That in his estimation, the world would be a better place if someone were to kill Fauci and Wray as examples to the rest of Washington.
Sure, he's not really suggesting that he would actually do it, but he is certainly asking someone to.
Labelling yourself a Nazi is confessing to conspiracy to commit genocide. This is a crime, whereas being disloyal to the president is explicitly not a crime.
I'm not a fan of vigilante justice in general, but at least the targets in the "punch a nazi" case have confessed, and the punishment called for isn't death.
However, I do not believe that posting "punch a nazi" is a conservative enough position given that the standard of evidence for labelling someone a nazi, in practice, is that they disagree with you on the internet.
> Steve Bannon’s Twitter Account Suspended After Calling for Execution of Dr Fauci and FBI Director Wray
For god's sake just look at that post. It's obviously something generated by a bot. This is what you take as the basis of accusing anyone who interprets Bannon's words differently then you of bad faith?
You do know that "heads on a pike" is a figure of speech? Colbert depicts Stephen Miller's head on pike in one of his shows[0]. Are you going to have the speech police cancel him too? I doubt it. You just don't like ideas you disagree with and you're just looking for an excuse to get rid of them.
I've seen as nauseum posts accusing Drumpf and his cohorts of treason, for which the penalty is death, not to mention more recently scads of Twitterers gleefully posting photos of the mutilated corpse of Mussolini and expressing desire for the same to happen to the president and his "collaborators".
It's getting to the point where AOC's recent calls for lists of said collaborators be compiled for harassment and ostracization seem reasonable, as at least she's not calling for their execution.
We could have seen this coming several years ago with calls for violence against "Nazis" (and btw a Nazi is anyone who disagrees with me politically) but big tech looked the other way because they support it.
I'd expect more cogent analysis from the top intellects if HN, but apparently the stereotype is true: "It's acceptable when our side does it".
You do know that "heads on a pike" is a figure of speech?
The phrase can be used in two contexts, one as a figure of speech. The figure of speech context does NOT have any threats involved.
Now, here is Bannon's statement:
"I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I’d put the heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you’re gone – time to stop playing games."
In this context, Bannon does not seem to use it as a figure of speech, it is a threat - maybe not literally - but a threat nonetheless. That's what's wrong, and why people are angry. Not because they don't like his "ideas".
Tudor England was a nasty place. Henry VIII and Liz I were murderous despots persecuting Catholics and pursuing genocide in Ireland. Suspect Bannock likes that 'directly approach to opponents.
> “I’d put the heads on pikes. Right. I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you are gone,” Bannon said in the video.
Zuckerberg's argument appears to be that Bannon didn't say the head-on-a-pike stuff enough to trigger suspension.
What Zuckerberg isn't considering is Bannon's past. He's not just some sleazy media wannabe - he's a former staff member of the Executive Office of the President.
Nor is this the only thing. Consider Charlotsville:
If a former high-ranking member of the president's staff calls for heads on pikes and and that's not enough to trigger suspension, I can only conclude that the process is more or less arbitrary, or completely borked.
Less of individual message and more about total number of violations. Given this has been his day job, e.g., he ran breitbart, that says a lot about how tolerant facebook is to abusive community members.
He and his audience make facebook employees a lot of money and give them air cover in DC, and are a public bellweather for facebook, so not surprising to see the CEO+employees keep giving a free pass. Advertisers only protested for ~1 month and Biden needs to focus on basics like COVID death rate, so I'm not expecting externally-triggered change for 2021.
Every single one of these fuckers is corrupt to the core. Really makes me think twice about following laws I don't like. I have started truly not caring.
> We have specific rules around how many times you need to violate certain policies before we will deactivate your account completely
That is pretty hilarious if you look at that next to the reports of people who have had their FB accounts permanently banned without recourse after trying to link it to their Oculus account for "violating community standards"
I think the best thing that American civil society could do is force some changes legislatively at Facebook so that Zuckerberg isn't shielded from answering to a Board of Directors and share-holders. He's just another example of why dictatorial personalities with no accountability are deeply problematic for a free and more decent American society for the rest of us.
> I’d put the heads on pikes. Right. I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you are gone.
It’s silly to summarize this as Bannon urging Fauci to literally be beheaded. To “put [someone’s] head on a pike” is a figure of speech meaning to punish someone publicly as a warning to others, and the next line corroborates that intent.
Which part of the sentence "Calling for Execution of Dr Fauci and FBI Director Wray" is a silly figure of speech? That's how Steve Bannon's Facebook page reported on his banning. That's a verbatim quote.
Which part of the words "Calling for Execution" is a playful, fun idiom that former White House officials get to use?
It's not the middle ages any more, no one puts heads on a pike, literally. It's a figure of speech. Just like "getting the axe" is a figure of speech for getting fired.
Do we rely on Bannon's account (which is available, and different from these three words that keep being repeated, as stated by others), or the choice of words of a click-baity editorial summary of the Fan Page, or Reuters' alternative choice: "urged beheading"?
EDIT: As noticed below, I have edited this comment to include Reuters.
A Facebook Fan Page is a business page that behaves similarly to a Facebook Profile. In this case, it is a verified Facebook Fan Page that represents and hosts content by Stephen K. Bannon.
It is equivalent to an official YouTube channel or Twitter account. It is not a "fan page" in the sense that you mean.
Edit: It looks like you may have edited your comment. I think it's important to emphasize that this isn't some random Facebook "fan page", but the official page of Steve Bannon, and it's a verified business page.
It's hyperbole. Right now, people in government don't really face a lot of consequences for the things they mess up. In fact, the worse thing that seems to happen to them is they get reassigned to some other branch in the bureaucracy, maybe a slightly less prestigious title. A lot of people have that kind of frustration and express it in that way.
I'm guessing that Bannon's facebook page reported that this is what facebook gave as justification for banning him, not that that's what he actually meant.
The original post starts with the phrase "I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England." before getting into the beheading bit. Do you believe Bannon is actually pining for a time machine as well?
> Do you believe Bannon is actually pining for a time machine as well?
No, I think Bannon is actually pining for (and has, in fact, had notable success in producing, though not to the extent he clearly prefers) a regression of social norms in the area of politics, including and especially around political violence.
What do you think should be done with the activists who erected a guillotine in front of Jeff Bezos' house in DC? Should they be put in jail for attempted murder? The only possible interpretation is that they literally intend to drag Bezos from his house and publicly behead him.
How about Kathy Griffin, who posted a video of herself beheading Trump in effigy? She still has a Facebook account as far as I can tell.
US citizens have broad rights to public free speech.
Corporations have broad rights to self-regulate their platforms.
No one is saying Bannon broke the law. It's just interesting how Twitter and FB are making different decisions about the kind of platforms they want to have.
In your estimation, if Facebook doesn't censor this speech, then that makes them a certain "kind" of platform? It means that Facebook is pro-beheading?
So how come if the US government doesn't censor it, it doesn't make the US a pro-beheading country? Empirically, compared to other countries the US manages to be pretty anti-beheading despite tolerating speech about beheading.
Do you think that any failure to censor speech constitutes an endorsement of that speech? Is it not possible to allow speech you disagree with? Does Facebook the company have to endorse every opinion someone posts on it?
I didn't attempt to answer any of those questions, but instead simply tried to illustrate that Bannon went beyond metaphor in his words.
I don't like censorship and I don't like public speech that encourages violence. Unfortunately, those two stances are at odds sometimes and there are warnings from history on both sides.
>What do you think should be done with the activists who erected a guillotine in front of Jeff Bezos' house in DC? Should they be put in jail for attempted murder?
Are you equating being suspended off Twitter to being thrown in Jail? For the record, people commonly do get suspended for harassments for sending death threats to public figures. Unfortunately they aren't as high profile as bannon, so they don't get op-ed's written about them.
>How about Kathy Griffin, who posted a video of herself beheading Trump in effigy?
Why would you bring up Kathy Griffin when she got Twitter account suspended as well for that stunt? The answer to your question is "no I don't think Bannon should get better treatment then Kathy Griffin".
> Are you equating being suspended off Twitter to being thrown in Jail? For the record, people commonly do get suspended for harassments for sending death threats to public figures.
My point here is that people on one end of the political spectrum are given the benefit of the doubt when they make statements like this that they are not meant to be taken literally. Meanwhile, people on the other end of the political spectrum are treated as though they actually intend to carry them out.
>My point here is that people on one end of the political spectrum are given the benefit of the doubt
By your own example this isn’t true. Kathy was suspended from Twitter for what she did. Most targeted calls for violence lands you a suspension on Twitter.
The reason you feel like one side is given the benefit of the doubt isn’t rooted in reality, at least on Twitter - it’s just far more likely for the other side of the political spectrum to whip up a media frenzy about free speech. And your point about one side being more likely to carry acts of violence out also seems ignorant of what’s happening today. There is only one political leaning that has resulted in people showing up armed to pizza places or trying to kidnap a governor.
It’s difficult to understand why you bend over so hard to make excuses for Bannon, when the guy who he was “joking” about has had to literally hire bodyguards for much of the past year.
You can read the comments right here to see the difference in treatment. When Kathy Griffin did her thing, the response was generally "Gee, Kathy you went a little too far, tone it down"
Here people are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to "prove" what Bannon really meant. "You see he mentioned Tudor England so therefore that conclusively proves that this was not a figure of speech..."
I don't care about Bannon, I care about a free and open exchange of ideas. We can't have that if some parties appoint themselves the arbiters of permissible speech.
>I don't care about Bannon, I care about a free and open exchange of ideas. We can't have that if some parties appoint themselves the arbiters of permissible speech.
Are you a free speech absolutist? So calls for violence isn’t a line you are willing to draw in the sand? If Bannon was distributing child pornography should Facebook allow that too, or should Zuckerberg not appoint himself as an arbiter is that situation? This is an insane premise, so I’m not sure what to say to this. Even the current law doesn’t let you recklessly abuse free speech like this (e.g. fire in a movie theater). You do realize Fauci and his family doesn’t even feel safe anymore leaving their home without security detail? Why should someone like Bannon be afforded such great benefit of the doubt given Fauci’s situation. Someone like Bannon would and has cried about “cancel culture” but in this case he’s free to essentially force a man into hiding.
Try to stick to the topic at hand. This is not child pornography. We don't have to worry about Zuckerberg appointing himself the arbiter of child pornography because we have actual laws, arrived at via a democratic process, that define what that is. See how that works? We didn't just leave it up to companies to call something "child pornography" whenever it suits their interests to do so.
This is not fire in a crowded theater either. Bannon made a clearly hyperbolic statement about something he would do in some hypothetical fantasy scenario where he is in the White House and it is some kind of alternate reality where putting someone's head on a pike is a real thing that could actually happen.
Bannon is not in the White House. It is very unlikely that he will ever again be in the White House. Trump fired him over two years ago. Even if he were in the White House, I can't believe I have to explain this, putting someone's head on a pike out in front of the White House is not a real thing that even has the slightest, remotest possibility of happening. Even if Bannon were President, that is not something he could do. Do you understand that? He may as well have said "I'd incinerate Fauci with laser blasts from my eyes" that is about as realistic.
Fauci is a highly visible figure in the midst of a global crisis. It is unfortunate, but not surprising, that he needs security. Even minor celebrities get stalkers and death threats. At some point you become known by enough people that it is a statistical certainty that some of them will have a form of mental illness that may cause them to unhealthily fixate on you. That will happen regardless of anything Bannon says.
> There is only one political leaning that has resulted in people showing up armed to pizza places or trying to kidnap a governor.
Hold on a second here. Am I the only one that remembers this summer? There is also a party that excused, if not encouraged, arson, rioting, dragging people out their cars and beating them in the street, and one outright murder that was explicitly predicated on the victim being of the opposing political party:
> I’d put them at the two corners of the White House
How do we interpret this next sentence as a continuation of the figure of speech? I can't seem to wrap my head around it sounding anything other than explicit.
The "two corners of the White House" part is totally in line with the "heads on pikes". It is all part of the same figure of speech.
The part everybody is missing is "I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England", which provides the context to understand the stuff people is having a meltdown about. This is not "heads on pikes" by a bunch of salvages; it is "heads on pikes" as part of the official policy of an absolutist State.
The way I read it, Bannon said: "I would have them face the death penalty, if there was a legal way to do so. And I would use their cases as deterrence from other would be traitors."
I don't see it as a call to have civilian supporters attempting against the lives of those two high ranking officials; but could be interpreted as a declaration of intent to pursue and extend draconian powers for the (Executive Branch of the) US Government. I will let you decide which of the two interpretation is gravest.
Also, the equivalent would be “Heads should roll. Just right onto the carpet of the Oval Office, as a warning to federal bureaucrats.” When you elaborate graphically, it becomes much more of an actual call for violence. At the very least it’s in poorer taste than the idiom usually is...
Not supporting Bannon at all here but I knew what “head on a pike” meant immediately: “to be made an example by those in power”. So did my 13 year old, so it’s not generational. He also mentioned something about a Harry Potter reference.
It’s not an uncommon phrase at the very least. I know I’ve heard people use it in business settings, just like folks sometimes use phrase “heads will roll” in otherwise polite conversation.
There's plenty of figurative or suggestive speech that's not literally "I will kill so-and-so" or "Someone should kill so-and-so". As other commenters have noted, Bannon's actions and other statements suggest he's intentionally dancing around the issue.
While Kadyrov has a more established history of following through on his threats than Bannon, I don't think it's unreasonable to come to the conclusion that Facebook does have a double standard: if you or I post "<prominent government official>'s head should be on a spike", do you think their moderation team would apply the same leniency?
I wager they would not: what we see here is part of an established pattern where Facebook's executives, and Zuckerberg in particular, do not want to be seen as biased against the right wing sentiment, because remaining in the good graces of those with political power is more important than actually upholding their supposed community standards.
>I think I would of agreed if I hadn't read a larger quote giving the actual context here. It's very hard to brush it off in the same way:
BANNON: Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci. Now, I actually want to go a step farther, but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I'd put the heads on pikes, right, I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you're gone -- time to stop playing games. blow it all up, put Ric Grenell today as the interim head of the FBI, that'll light them up, right.
JACK MAXEY (CO-HOST): You know what Steve, just yesterday there was the anniversary of the hanging of two Tories in Philadelphia, these were Quaker businessmen who had cohabitated if you will with the British while they were occupying Philadelphia. These people were hung. This is what we used to do to traitors.
BANNON: That's how you won the revolution. No one wants to talk about it. The revolution wasn't some sort of garden party, right? It was a civil war. It was a civil war.
>The call to replicate actual specific events in the American Revolution really makes it feel real, along with the mention of a civil war being on.
Thanks — I agree that’s a bit worse. But it’s still pretty clear he’s speaking in the context of what the President should do, and obviously the President can’t have his enemies’ heads displayed Tudor-style on the White House fence. He’s not bringing up Tudors as a sincere suggestion, he’s arguing that any (realistic) punishment would be mild by historical standards.
So he’s calling for the president to murder a person and your defending his position by saying “obviously the president can’t have people murdered”.
Let’s say someone was calling for the gassing of Jews, would you also defend their position with a sentiment of: “ but that’s ok, because obviously a state can’t just start rounding up Jews and gassing them”?
Or perhaps his speech should be judged on his stated intent ?
He's also clamouring for civil war, in addition to dreaming for murder, instead of just firing everyone not licking their boots. This is a direct threat to civil discourse, democracy and fairness. It is evil.
In the Twitter video (https://twitter.com/FrankFigliuzzi1/status/13244858190427054...), Bannon immediately goes on to talk about executing traitors and justifying it with historical examples. So, he's not just talking about "putting heads on pikes" metaphorically, but also doubling down on why execution is a viable tool historically. And Bannon knows that these comments come with the context of Fauci needing 24/7 security after receiving multiple death threats.
You might come down on either side of the censorship / free speech argument, but Bannon knows exactly what he's doing with his words here, and it went beyond a one-off bad-taste metaphor.
So what do we do about folks who chanted "fry 'em like bacon", and "death to America" in the streets just a few weeks ago? Any punitive measures there, or nah?
Like you said, they said those reprehensible words in the streets, where the First Amendment applies. If they do it on your property, you're free to kick them out.
This is a strawman and you know it. There's plenty of such rhetoric on Twitter and Facebook. What's different is the group of people against which it is targeted.
Is it? Are you sure you know what a strawman is? I'm literally using your own words. You didn't say anything about people inciting violence on TwitFace in your comment.
If I ran those companies, I'd ban anyone inciting violence. But it's their platform. They can choose who to ban and who to keep. And we can choose to criticize them. In that way, everyone's freedoms are preserved.
None of your links are from “a few weeks ago”. There was one non-BLM-affiliated protest in Minnesota in 2015 where this was chanted for a few minutes. It was roundly criticized, and the people involved clarified that they did not want to have anyone killed, but just wanted police to receive the same punishment for murder as anyone else. Clearly the chant itself was stupidly inflammatory, however angry the protestors might have been, and it does not accurately reflect anyone’s serious beliefs, which is why it has not been repeated or endorsed by other protestors.
I can't speak to Facebook, because I don't use Facebook, but Twitter will apply punitive measures if you incite violence for a specific person on the platform. You are making a case for whataboutism that doesn't exist.
Is the nytimes calling for Stephen miller’s head on a pike here? Do you truly believe that? Or is this a bad faith example? Do you think I’m also arguing Twitter should also remove all tweets that reference what Bannon has said?
Bannon isn't calling for their literal decapitation either. "Head on a pike" is an euphemism for getting fired. Another way to say this is "heads should roll" which also does not mean decapitation. Also, when someone "eviscerates" someone, that doesn't mean literal disembowelment, just so we're clear. Nor does "raking over coals" or "drawing and quartering" mean literal torture. But people here just pretend to be obtuse and feign outrage instead. Zuck chooses not to do that because he's an adult. Kudos to Zuck.
The next thing Bannon said he would like to return to Tudor England. Was “head on a pike” a euphemism in 14th century British politics? Then Jack goes into a quip about how people used to hang traitors. Did you not hear the rest of the conversation?
You are bending so far incredibly backwards for a guy with an incredibly poor moral compass that’s slinging death threats at a public servant who already has to hire body guards.
> Facebook FB.O Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told an all-staff meeting on Thursday that former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon had not violated enough of the company's policies to justify his suspension when he urged beheading two senior U.S. officials, according to a recording heard by Reuters.
Because, apparently, he didn't do it enough times.
I mean, I guess it's good that they have a policy, and they stick to their policy even when it's politically inconvenient. But maybe there ought to be some kind of sliding scale or something. Publicly calling for someone to be beheaded is egregious enough that it might belong in a more severe category.
This discussion is pointless because it's just a proxy war. Everyone's position is completely determined by what they think of Bannon (or Trump really), so no information is exchanged. Here's a thought anyway though. The image he used (heads on pikes) is gruesome and is also a common metaphor for doing something dramatic to deter unwanted behavior, also known as pour encourager les autres. In my mind that usage tilts the remark away from "let's literally put their heads on pikes" to the more metaphoric. Now try this thought experiment: come up with some new grisly image of a way to murder someone, without any history of being used as a metaphor, and imagine Bannon had used that image instead. That would tilt the remark more towards being an actual threat.
Other people in this thread have made a similar better point. If he had said "heads should roll", that's not a call for decapitation. Another obvious point is that he's being an edgelord, going too far but not exactly all the way, in order to get attention. Edgy references to civil war are the same. That's not starting a war, but it's not totally not starting a war either. There aren't precise lines to draw here, probably on purpose.
I assume you mean https://web.archive.org/web/20201106185230if_/https://www.fa... because you've brought this up like six times already, but I think you're overinterpreting it. To me it looks like someone pasted a headline from some news story reporting the heads-on-pikes comment. Probably some intern, as I doubt that Bannon is pasting things into Facebook, he is surely too vain for that.
You've successfully allowed a thread to have DOZENS of AaronFriel's false comments, whether or not they were lies, they were clearly misinformed. You've allowed his comment, which I'm sure multiple people flagged, stating this, to stick:
> I am beyond tired of people making excuses for public threats of violence from authoritarian right-wing actors. It isn't helpful to any discourse to pretend words don't mean what they mean anymore.
Fuck you, dang. Go ahead and ban me. You're a really fucking shitty moderator, and you allow fucking garbage political threads like this to go with one-sided, bad faith, bullying trash from people like AaronFriel. But, OOOH GOTCHA ISOSKELES, YOU SAID "LYING" WHEN MAYBE HE JUST DIDN'T KNOW. Fuck you. And fuck Hacker News.
Ouch. Look, I know how explosive all this is and I don't need to ban someone for having strong feelings. But we need to hold the container in a certain way.
It's fine to say that another comment is false, especially if you then add corrective information. It's fine to say that it's misleading, if you show how and (again) add corrective info. But to say that another user is lying crosses a clear semantic line: it imputes malicious intent, i.e. not just that they're wrong but that they know the truth and are intending to deceive. That we don't allow. Surely it's not hard to see why.
It’s sad that trust and civility has devolved so low that nothing but the direct meaning of words and phrases is what’s considered incendiary. Clearly the expression “head on a pike” has historic metaphorical significance in the English language.
I’d argue that comments like this Maxine Waters gem instructing the general public to harass Trump administration officials in all manner of their public and private lives are much more dangerous yet they get a pass from 90% of the media and 100% of social media:
“Let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
I know the HN crowd is going to make a number of posts making the argument that any moderation by social platforms is a slippery slope towards authoritarianism. I used to be one of these people, so understand the appeal of this argument to those of us that have libertarian inclinations. However, I think it's an argument that's easily made in theory, but doesn't hold up when tested against its actual consequences.
Specifically, I have consistently made the point that this argument is appealing due to it's simplicity and purity, but doesn't grapple with the actual consequences of allowing bad-faith actors to flood platforms with propaganda.
I have updated my prior beliefs in free speech absolutism in the light of such events - some moderation is necessary due to the way social networks lends itself to exponentially amplify propaganda and disinformation in ways that, principled debate and discourse don't.
I would love to hear what the posters arguing about censorship think we should do about these specific instances.
> understand the appeal of this argument to those of us that have libertarian inclinations
I actually don't. Aren't property rights also important to libertarians? Shouldn't the idea that someone is entitled by law to use your property in a way you dislike be anathema to a libertarian?
Excellent point. That's a vector of attack I chose not to include since I wanted to just focus on free speech, but yes, that is a valid argument. Unfortunately it looks like my comment and yours is getting downvoted without any engagement, but hopefully the people that seem to disagree will make their rebuttals.
More disturbing to me than Facebook, since I do not use it, is the visible subset of HN users who express complete solidarity with Trump-Bannon brand authoritarianism.
When I was a kid, I was once shocked to overhear my parents talking about someone getting fired, thinking that that meant literally setting him on fire.
In this instance, Bannon gets away with it because he is white and shares political views of Zuckerberg.
If an (e.g.) Muslim had said the same thing about a high profile (far)-right candidate, many of the people who supported his post would be calling it a terrorist threat.
In this case Zuckerberg is defending the terrorist calls to arms of those who think, and look, like him.
330 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 285 ms ] threadBut, to tone down my own snarkiness-- in just a few months we have seen a dramatic increase in moderation in what people are allowed and not allowed to say. This is not going to end well, imo. We are just going to end up with the liberal equivalent of the oppressive religious right from the 80's.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I am beyond tired of people making excuses for public threats of violence from authoritarian right-wing actors. It isn't helpful to any discourse to pretend words don't mean what they mean anymore.
Facebook post here: https://www.facebook.com/SteveKBannon/posts/376710023761776
archive.org snapshot here: https://web.archive.org/web/20201106185230/https://www.faceb...
Here's the text of that post in case it is removed:
Even if it's not his own, this is his official Facebook page from which Bannon hosts his weekly live stream.
Here, you can see his "War Room" video series in its entirety: https://populist.press/americas-voice-war-room/
Bannon is "just joking" about beheading his opponents, Pompeo is "just joking" about Trump not stepping down, constant talk about jailing political opponents -- sorry, constant jokes -- and constant talk about lynching journalists (e.g. "rope, tree, journalist" t-shirts that you see at MAGA rallies, not at any others).
And the FBI eventually breaks up a ring of people who are planning to kidnap and ??? the sitting governor of Michigan, but all of the violent-yet-it's-a-joke speech continues unabated. Was the kidnapping plot a joke, too? Where does all this end?
Serious question, what's the end-game for increasingly violent, increasingly authoritarian jokes?
This is akin to what you're doing right now:
"User whymauri makes allusions to beheading on tech forum known for promoting hacking"
> Bannon suggested in a video posted on Nov. 5 that FBI Director Christopher Wray and government infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci should be beheaded, saying they had been disloyal to U.S. President Donald Trump, who last week lost his re-election bid to Biden.
So I'm not sure where you get your claim that whymauri is lying.
Stronger: Even if whymauri is incorrect, lying is a whole different level. Can you prove whymauri had intent to tell something other than the truth? I'm pretty sure you can't. And if not, site guidelines call for a charitable interpretation of what others say. Your accusation of lying is completely out of bounds.
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/08/jeff-bezos-guilloti...
You are missing the point. It is not about the content.
Steve Bannon on Facebook gets called out and shouted down. Steve Bannon on Parlor gets praised and encouraged. People on Parlor get positive feedback and begin to think their views are mainstream and reasonable. People on Facebook get negative feedback and at least have a chance to think "Hmm, maybe if everyone says I'm wrong about this, I should rethink it".
Yes, I know many people won't rethink it, but facing some opposition at least provides the possibility of that happening. Forcing everyone into a filter bubble of only their own views provides no possibility of that happening.
But oft-repeated falsehoods are harmful even if we know they're not true.
- FB's moderators posses better judgment than me as to what is and isn't true
- FB's moderators will always act in the best interest of the users and not the company when they come into conflict
I would say that the first point is very unlikely to be true, and the second is certain not to be true. I'm not sure how a lie can be harmful if it is know to be a lie.
I don't believe that when an algorithm is used, the output is suddenly not a function of human nature or human design. That suddenly no human has any responsibility for it.
It isn't a great choice for users to have to decide between debunking someone's Facebook thing in their post's comments and thereby boosting engagement and promoting it to all their friends, or just leaving it be unchallenged.
Or for Youtube, do you watch a youtube video of a demagogue to prepare arguments against them, knowing that Youtube will promote it more because you watched it?
We need some kind of way to interact with this stuff while getting the choice to not promote it as a result.
1: https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/17/17582152/facebook-channel...
Might I suggest moving to Facebook rather than complaining that Voat doesnt fit your needs when it doesn’t claim it does?
Platforms with their corporate overlords now decide what I can and cannot see, because I'm too stupid to think for myself.
This has always been a slippery slope and won't end well. Zuckerberg as it stands today got more power than the president of the united states. He can swing any election and push any level of propaganda. I really want to see some laws around what they can censor.
This where we have to ask whether we want Facebook to be a publisher or a platform. Is Facebook responsible for Steve Bannon's speech, or is Steve Bannon?
Facebook is not a public utility. It is not a dot gov. They can allow whatever content they want so long as it doesn't break the law.
If I run a service on an EC2 instance that uses Auth.0, they can shut it off until I agree to use Cognito?
Conversely, should every user of a platform get to dictate terms? No.
In both cases you and a provider enter into a mutually agreeable relation under some terms of service. And you both can terminate that relationship up to terms of service.
We also recognize there's a value in having a diverse set of opinions presented so people can decide on them based on their merits and the best ones can rise to the top. This does mean that sometimes bad opinions are presented, just like sometimes companies that turn out to be bad ideas get started. The solution is not place all authority in the hands of some central dictator who picks the winners and losers beforehand. There is no person or organization capable of reliably filling that role.
I suspect most people agree on this fwiw. But it'd only apply when antitrust laws are invoked successfully - the vast majority of companies and situations do not fall into that category, as viable alternatives exist. E.g. Amazon is most certainly not the only / impossibly-dominant storefront or CDN.
The same goes for OSX and iOS and Android. There are lots of things that can't be run. They're under no obligation to allow them, however much we might want them to.
No, no I don't, not as a "comments section," anyway.
To an extent, NYT is riding on users' past experiences with uncensored comment sections in other contexts. It's the violation of expectations (both of commenters and readers) that grinds.
Were NYT to put up a disclaimer to the effect that "This is our damn site and we'll delete whatever we want," I think they'd actually get some respect for it. The ire comes because they want it both ways---they want the engagement metrics, without the freedom that engagement requires.
What's needed is a rule of law, such that users can predict beforehand what the outcome of an action will be.
Do you think private companies should be able to provide weapons to the enemy in times of war?
Societies provide rules, regulations and protections around private property to harmonize private and public interests. Facebook is not NYTimes and there is no reason to treat them the same way. Laws and regulations should be pragmatic.
Zuckerberg is a glorified newspaper salesman. He depends on soaking up negative narratives to appear powerful. Nobody is more powerful than the government, they can only impose costs on the gov, the government will resolve all conflicts.
Yes, I know free speech. However, there's a responsibility here that needs to be filled when the information is so carefully crafted (actual facts be damned) towards people who haven't got the education to understand the manipulation that is happening.
The big platforms are falling well short.
Yes, Facebook is private property and can do what it wants.
And yes, the rest of us are free to criticize Facebook whenever it attempts to play the role of thought-police (a role I think few of us actually want social media platforms to play).
Then someone else responds that network effects in social media make a truly free market impossible even with strong anti-trust legislation, and we’re back to square one.
Contrariwise, people sign up for Facebook to socialize with their friend group as a whole. An alternative platform with only a handful of your friends would be pretty useless. Worse, having your friend group split between platforms would completely prevent being able to socialize as a group, defeating the whole point of the platform.
How many times have you said something along the lines of "I will kill you if you put that picture of me on Instagram!"
Why engage in such lying?
People like Bannon and Trump have lots of followers and someone of them do end up doing things like attempting to kill politicians or trying to kidnap them.
> or as adults do we realize he was using hyperbole
or as adults Bannon and Trump should realize that their words have consequences and some of their followers wont know if its hyperbole. You can still make your point without the violent language.
Notice how my example has similarities to what Bannon actually said, and therefore sounds far more inappropriate.
Let's also keep in mind that this hypothetical "boss" is probably not linked to various groups known for frequently making death threats and engaging in political violence.
Regress in social norms doesn't require actual time travel, and that happening through normalization of political violence is a real thing, which has happened lots of places, and which Bannon is overtly calling for here, pointing to the mere firing he expects from the President as inadequate. (Making it clear that the call was not a metaphor for firing.)
Essentially, he wants dictatorship.
It's not illegal to promote dictatorship but it is gross, and he should be publicly shunned for it.
We do. That doesn't conflict with platforms having standards that prohibit advocacy of violence.
> If they believe there is a credible threat, they should investigate, that is their purpose.
It wasn't a threat, it was advocacy /incitement, which is a different thing.
> We can hold them accountable via voting and their actions should ideally be transparent to the public.
Their actions, by law, are not transparent to the public, and instead are subject to among the broadest exceptions of any public agencies (beyond defense/intelligence) to transparency laws. Not that your fantasies about law enforcement transparency, even if true, have any relevance to Bannon's incitement.
> If Bannon is part of a real, literal plot to place Fauci's head on a pike at the White House, that is the avenue through which it should be prosecuted.
A plot/conspiracy is a third thing, different from both a threat and incitement.
And no one is talking about prosecution.
Facebook isn't a public utility that is somehow obligated to relay and promote all speech equally without filtering with the only controls being after-the-fact actions by law enforcement. You are free to create a service with those terms of use and try to compete with Facebook, if you wish, but that's not what Facebook users have signed up for. And, while I've certainly seen examples of Facebook being overzealous in enforcing their “Community Standards”, this particular case doesn't come close to that.
I understand what Facebook is and isn't obligated to do. I'm not saying they are obligated to be neutral. They are not obligated to play the role of speech police either. I am saying it would be better for society as a whole if they leave adults to make up their own minds about speech. Speech should not be controlled by corporations.
Yes, they can impose whatever limits they want. That doesn't meant that it's good or that we should be happy about it or that we are not allowed to question whatever limits they impose.
And sure you can argue "just don't use Facebook". That is fine, for now. Facebook is a large, but not completely necessary part of society. What happens when it becomes larger and more necessary (or another company does) and we've already imbued them with the power to decide what people are and are not allowed to say? Do you think then they'll just give that power up?
Have you seen that episode of Black Mirror where you can literally ghost people? I forget exactly, but there was some way to punish people by making them physically invisible and inaudible, so they had could barely interact with the world. I guess they could still eat, but they couldn't talk to or be acknowledged by anyone.
Obviously, getting banned from Facebook is not that, but it's maybe Version 0.01 of that, and I get the distinct impression that people here would be perfectly fine with that as long as it happens to people they don't like.
That's, again, not analogous to what Bannon said.
What Bannon said was, after having suggested that Trump’s second term would start with firing of Wray and Fauci, "Now I actually want to go a step farther, but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I'd put the heads on pikes, right, I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you're gone – time to stop playing games."
He's not using heads on pikes as a metaphor for firing, because firing was the prediction of what the President as a “kind-hearted man” would do, while Bannon wanted more.
People never, ever use hyperbole for effect and only speak 100% literally.
I guess it was behind the gym, not the bleachers. Regardless, he had a specific location picked out and everything! Clearly a real threat.
No, just like I never said Bannon's statement should be taken as a threat.
> People never, ever use hyperbole for effect
I never said that. What effect so you think Bannon was going for? I've explained what I think, and that that the statement was a neither literal nor hyperbolic.
If you want a productive dialog, you need to respond to what people actually say, rather than fantasies of what you'd like them to have said because it is convenient to argue against.
To me it sounds like Bannon is just a pompous blowhard who's making outrageous claims he will never, in a million years, be able to back up.
But that's not my point. My point is that I get to read his words myself and make up my own mind about them. I can decide he's a pompous blowhard or a serious threat to democracy and direct my own actions accordingly. I don't have to get a secondhand account from Facebook who tells me what to think about Bannon. Do you see the difference?
If you read Bannon's word and decide he's a threat then you can go around warning people about him if you like, or starting some counter-advocacy movement, or whatever (legal) action you want to take. If you have to rely on Facebook telling you which people are threats and which people are not, that gives them a power to direct the public discourse to their whims. The public needs to have the ability to view primary sources and make up their own minds about them.
I'm not concerned about the specific details of this one piece of speech, I'm concerned about the general principle of where the power to decide which speech is appropriate lies.
But as a tip, 'All you seem to be doing is repeating the statement and gesturing wildly at it going "See? See????? Bad!"' is horrifyingly bad technique when responding to someone who just said 'you need to respond to what people actually say, rather than fantasies of what you'd like them to have said'. gp is literally correct now. When someone says that you'll get much better results with literal quotes rather than unfair characterisations. You've got a good point, you can afford to be gentle.
But his threat was much more graphic and specific. How many times have you e.g. emailed your friend’s whole family with a message along the lines of “If you post that picture online I will eviscerate you and then hang you from your mother’s dining room ceiling by your intestines as a warning.”
That is not normal friendly exaggerated banter, and would be pretty hard to play off as a joke.
"Eviscerate you and then hang you from your mother’s dining room ceiling by your intestines" is not.
But “Mount their heads on pikes at the corners of the White House as a warning the way they used to do to traitors in Tudor England” is nothing close to a common expression.
Why can't you just be honest about what the guy actually said?
How many times and in how many ways is one allowed to intimate that they believe someone should be murdered before it's unacceptable to you?
I am going to post this as a reply to every single one of your comments that repeats this lie.
There are some things we don’t give the benefit of the doubt for. Murdering public officials is one of them.
Book reading has been in decline for a long time, and the loss of high level literacy and the ability to sense nuance and figurative language is a sign of that.
A lot of people indeed can't understand how the quote could have other meanings besides the literal one, because they've rarely encountered such use of language before.
I believe Bannon was genuinely attempting to fuel the escalation of both disorganized and, through normalization, top-down political violence and intimidation against people insufficiently adherent to his vision; I don't think the statement had either literal or figurative, hyperbolic or otherwise, meaning beyond that intended effect.
Discussing “meaning” of a speech act assumes that the acts intended to operate on a certain rational level, which I don't think actually applies here. But, inasmuch as an interpretation of the intended effect centered around meaning is appropriate at all, I think the literal meaning is the closest.
> How many times have you said something along the lines of "I will kill you if you put that picture of me on Instagram!"
That's not even remotely analogous to what Bannon did here. He wasn't personally and privately addressing the person who was the subject in a context (whether immediate or through a preexisting relationship) that undermined the literal meaning of the expression. His act differed on literally every meaningful aspect from that.
No, he didn't say that. He said - "I’d put the heads on pikes"
There's a big difference between saying something more along the lines of present day ISIS than the Tudor England we associate with movies.
But that's how fake news works.
Why not just quote him directly, why not give the exact truth? I wonder....
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bannon-fauci-wray-head-pik...
Is this really an example of the "fake news" you love to demonize, or are you just arguing in bad faith because the truth makes you look bad?
It's cute trolling when you are 17, not so much as an adult. It's up to you where you are in your life.
Clearly people say things like a "head on a pike" or "rape and pillage" in regular speech. "Head on a pike" is a well know idiom.
They are clearly different to saying "I want to behead someone", "I want to rape someone"
They changed the quote from a well know idiom. There was no need to change the quote.
My point was clear.
> Bannon: "Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci. Now I actually want to go a step farther, but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I’d put the heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you’re gone – time to stop playing games. Blow it all up, put Ric Grenell today as the interim head of the FBI, that’ll light them up, right."
> Maxey: "You know what, Steve, just yesterday there was the anniversary of the hanging of two Tories in Philadelphia, these were Quaker businessmen who had cohabitated, if you will, with the British while they were occupying Philadelphia. These people were hung. This is what we used to do to traitors."
> Bannon: "That’s how you won the revolution. No one wants to talk about it. The [American] revolution wasn’t some sort of garden party, right? It was a civil war. It was a civil war."
This is clearly WAY beyond offhandedly using the phrase "heads on pikes" as a colloquialism, and veers into discussing the necessity and morality of executing political opponents.
Point 1: Firing isn't good enough. They are traitors and need to be punished with death.
Point 2: Clear evidence of their execution needs to be on display to intimidate everyone else into falling in line.
Point 3: These executions are justified when carried out on people who are seen as traitors in the midst of a war.
So when you come in here trying to whitewash everything as if the big bad fake news media put words into Bannon's mouth, well, you can fuck right off.
---
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/05/steve-bannon-makes-beheading...
[2] https://twitter.com/FrankFigliuzzi1/status/13244858190427054...
This is unambiguously true, Steve Bannon's Facebook page reiterated the claims the same day, and may this cursed, bad-faith argument about whether he meant what he said be over and done with. Steve Bannon knows what words he said, he used the Facebook platform to repeat those words, and he is not a nobody but an individual who rose to prominence and is a former senior White House official, in fact, he was among the most senior one can be, on par with the chief of staff with privileged access to the President and the National Security Council. Whatever you think of him and how he may have fallen, he has a platform and he speaks to many millions of people and his words carry weight.
I am reminded yet again of a Jean-Paul Sartre quote from Anti-Semite and Jew:
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play.
"They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
Here are the receipts: Facebook post here: https://www.facebook.com/SteveKBannon/posts/376710023761776
archive.org snapshot here: https://web.archive.org/web/20201106185230/https://www.faceb...
Here's the text of that post in case it is removed:
Edit: and 30s later this comment is at -2. It’s bizarre to me that so many Americans simply cannot entertain that the First Amendment might not be a net positive for the country.
I think the freedom of speech Bannon has is fine. He's welcome to make whatever calls he wants - though I do wonder if he may have strayed from merely "uncivil" into "incitement".
But Facebook, Twitter, the New York Times... they don't need to amplify it. He is not entitled to their audiences too.
I would argue that this is exactly what legal and democratic systems that work but that don’t give such primacy to 1FA offer.
Facebook, twitter must not amplify one content over another or it loses it's neutral status. If it begins make decisions based on what it prefers content wise it would lose a common carrier status and should be regulated like those other entities and not be treated as neutrual platform.
The New York Times is a newspaper and doesn't belong.
So I believe we're mostly talking about a spectrum of what mechanisms there are and their consequences. Ie. is it OK for the entire planet to bully anyone in public until they lose everything? This is actually hard to prevent, if no mechanisms to do so are in place, while communication is as "free" as possible.
It can't lose what it never had to begin with. Information services post Section 230 have 0 obligation to be "neutral". You should read the law instead of listening to Internet commentators' fantasies and wishlists of "neutrality" and "censorship makes you a publisher". This is all bullcrap.
But my position is that not having the First Amendment also has negative effects, and those effects are worse. Such as, for example, creating a world where your post could be deleted merely for suggesting that the Constitution had a weakness.
I'm going to say stuff. Some of it will go against the prevailing narrative. I want to be able to say it anyway. Sometimes, I'll even be right. I think the right to do so is important.
None of which you enumerated
> But my position is that not having the First Amendment also has negative effects
Protections of free speech are much weaker in most of the rest of the free and rich world. Why don’t those negative effects show up there?
Because it's pretty obvious. You're trying to score some cheap rhetorical points, and I decline to give them to you.
> Protections of free speech are much weaker in most of the rest of the free and rich world. Why don’t those negative effects show up there?
They don't at the moment show up strongly in most of the rest of the free and rich world. They show up in, for example, China. (Though negative effects show up in England from their libel laws, for example. They just aren't as flagrant as what you see in China.)
To put the burden of proof on the other foot: Is there any reason to think that the absence of FA-type free speech guarantees is making things better in the rest of the free and rich world? If not, I'll keep the guarantee, because I really like being able to say what I please.
Yes. It's the negatives you were unwilling to enumerate.
And I note with some amusement that you are now the one unwilling to specify. Sauce for the goose...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25077547
Anyway, in short, I'm sure (and I mean this) you're a smart and well-read guy or gal, but from your entirely circular arguments here I don't think you've ever seriously spent time considering what the alternatives to the first amendment are. Everything you've claimed to like about it is just as true in other free, rich countries, and the negatives you repeatedly decline to mention are largely absent. You've brought in libel as an example, which of course is _not_ protected by 1FA. The importance of 1FA at this point is a national religion.
If you don't think this is negative, I guess we aren't talking about the same thing.
Did you actually read the article before reposting it? It's been illegal there since 1981. The article simply says it's been extended to include new groups.
Yes, I absolutely think hate speech should be restricted, and the laws of most countries agree with that, with the USA being a notable exception:
> A majority of developed democracies have laws that restrict hate speech, including Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom
Do I think hate speech in private should be restricted? I think _probably_ not, but I think this is for the elected legislature to decide, not an idea that is edict from several hundred years ago.
So you _probably_ agree with me? This is the exact point. Many people that might agree that some public speech should be outlawed would recoil at the idea of private speech being similarly restricted. Yet this has been the case in Norway for 40 years. Now you might reply that it has caused no harm yet. And I admit I don't know the number of convictions for this type of private speech, but this is the very definition of chilling effect. Criminalization of private speech has been normalized. When the ratchet is tightened there will be no room to complain.
Freedom of speech is complicated and subtle, and that’s why a several hundred year law that binds the hands of the legislature to refine and update laws around it is a bad idea.
Look how often constitutional ammendments were proposed in the past compared to today. We're fossilizing the idea of our country into a religion instead of continuing to have useful debate on why today isn't like yesterday and on what updates we need to make now.
>"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."[1]
But to address your key point, I'd bet a lot of people are down-voting the grandparent's superior/condescending tone, as exemplified by the following fragments:
>"America’s big problem... yet Americans take it on faith... Americans simply cannot entertain"
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I also don't think the rate at which amendments are proposed is a good indication of how healthy our country is. Shouldn't things stabilize and require less revision eventually?
I don't think that's obvious at all, especially given changes in population, technology, and international situations over the same timeframe as that nation's institutional stagnation.
What could you possibly mean by this? Can you provide any examples of how other nations have codified freedom of speech, expression, religion and peaceful assembly and in some different and superior way?
Does your right to spout hate speech about my religion infringe on my right to freely and safely practice my religion?
Does your right to spend $1B on amplifying your political speech drown out my political speech and effectively nullify it?
Other countries have answered yes to those questions while the US has answered no.
On this specific one, it’s not a matter of drowning you out, it’s being able to compete with someone else spending $1B endorsing the opposite opinion. Or more importantly, being able to pay for your message to be distributed rather than having to own a media empire to get it published.
If it weren’t for the Citizens United decision being decided in the correct direction, you’d be a the media landscape would be a slave to whoever owns it. People or organizations that make their money elsewhere would be stifled from expressing their opinions through advertising purchases.
The alternative is that only billionaires that control media empires get to pick what messages you hear.
More importantly, the CU ruling was that groups of non-billionaires (ex: a union or PAC) could pool their resources together in order to amplify their combined message.
> That is trading one devil for another. I don't want a good guy with $1B battling a bad guy with a $1B. That doesn't fix anything.
It sounds like you just want to silence voices that may be louder than your own.
> I want everyone's political speech to be on a more even playing field. That currently can't happen due to the First Amendment and the interpretation that says money is equal to speech.
If I spend my time making and selling widgets but feel strongly about a political issue or candidate, why can I not spend the money I earned (and paid taxes on!) to promote that issue or candidate? Must I purchase a TV network or a newspaper in order to push my agenda? That's what CU addresses.
That outcome is one alternative, it is not the only alternative. We can put laws in place to regulate how the media talks about political issues. We used to have the fairness doctrine for example. I wouldn't necessarily want that reintroduced exactly how it existed, but something along those lines would help the US political system.
>More importantly, the CU ruling was that groups of non-billionaires (ex: a union or PAC) could pool their resources together in order to amplify their combined message.
So what? These organizations are free to advise their people how to voice their opinion and they can even facilitate doing so through internal programs such as voter registration drives or petition drives. We don't have to allow them to pool money to voice their opinion to the general public.
>It sounds like you just want to silence voices that may be louder than your own.
"When you're accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression." I want voices to be equal. The people who have the loudest voices will probably feel like I want them silenced.
>If I spend my time making and selling widgets but feel strongly about a political issue or candidate, why can I not spend the money I earned (and paid taxes on!) to promote that issue or candidate? Must I purchase a TV network or a newspaper in order to push my agenda? That's what CU addresses.
You can still promote your issue or candidate. I just want the medium of exchange to be your time and not your money. That would help even out the balance of power. Why should the people with more money be able to spread their message further than people without it?
It is equality of opportunity. What you seem to want is equality of outcome.
Nothing stops you or your politically minded allies from pooling your own resources.
> You can still promote your issue or candidate. I just want the medium of exchange to be your time and not your money. That would help even out the balance of power. Why should the people with more money be able to spread their message further than people without it?
Why should the unemployed or those on the dole, with all the time in the world, have an advantage over the employed?
Does your right to criticize my religion infringe on my right to freely and safely practice my religion? No. Even if the criticism is harsh, even hateful. I find this a particularly curious example, because there's a long history of criticism of religion, from Nietzsche to Dawkins, much of it harsh, even hateful. I'm not aware of any countries that ban these writers, though apparently Dawkins got cancelled for also applying his criticism to islam. And what if your religion itself entails beliefs that makes other people, such as women or homosexuals, fear for their rights? Then they are not allowed to hate on your religion, because that makes you fear for your freedom of religion?
It is legal in the US to say that all Muslims are terrorists that deserve to be shot with bullets dipped in pig's blood. How would you feel hearing that if you were a Muslim? Would you feel that you could safely and openly practice your religion?
You say this as if these are clearly defined categories. Take the charlie hebdo cartoons: Criticism, blasphemy or hate speech? At any rate, your argument applies even to criticism. Criticism can lead people to infringe on your freedom of religion.
Not the OP but here in Germany the guiding principle of all lawmaking and action of the state is human dignity, as laid out in the first article of the basic law.
Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.
and freedom of expression while enjoying numerous protections reaches its limitations when that dignity is under attack (article 5):
(1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.
(2) These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons and in the right to personal honour.
Yeah, I'm also reminded of this quote whenever someone on the internet disagrees with me. Clearly they must be aware of "the absurdity of their replies".
Edit: Getting downvoted just reminds of that quote again. Clearly people are trying to "intimidate and disconcert me".
Issued at birth.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> I actually want to go a step farther, but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I'd put the heads on pikes, I'd put them on the two corners of the White House, as a warning to Federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program, or you're gone.
However, immediately after this quote, the other speaker and Bannon discuss historical political hangings and how the death penalty for treason is necessary during a civil war.
And Bannon appears to double down in his own FB post: https://www.facebook.com/SteveKBannon/posts/376710023761776
> Steve Bannon Under Massive Attack > - Steve Bannon’s Twitter Account Suspended After Calling for Execution of Dr Fauci and FBI Director Wray
Regardless of where you come down on the free speech side of calling for a public figure's execution, Bannon seems to concede that he meant what he said.
An alternative interpretation of his Facebook post is that he was quoting this:
https://populist.press/steve-bannons-twitter-account-suspend...
>> "Steve Bannon’s Twitter Account Suspended After Calling for Execution of Dr Fauci and FBI Director Wray"
Considering Bannon claimed: "Steve Bannon Under Massive Attack", and the next line (...After Calling for Execution...) is identical to that used on populist.press, and he included a link to the site (which seems to be broken), this interpretation (that he is quoting populist.press, as opposed to doubling down) doesn't seem too far fetched to me.
If, for the sake of argument (and I mean that very literally), he was actually quoting them (and therefore not doubling down), could Bannon, as you said, "...be assumed to be using "heads on pikes" as a euphemism for "getting tough / serious"?
For more clarity on what actually occurred, here is the link to the full story, and the relevant text and quotes:
https://www.thewrap.com/steve-bannon-suspended-by-twitter-af...
>> In the episode, posted Thursday morning, Bannon was discussing a hypothetical second Trump term. After advocating that among Trump’s first second term orders of business should be firing both Wray and Fauci, Bannon said, “I actually want to go a step farther but the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put the heads on pikes, right? I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats, you either get with the program or you’re gone.”
>> Shortly after, Steve Bannon and his co-host Jack Maxey offered some additional thoughts on the matter that certainly suggested they might actually be serious.
>> “Just yesterday, there was the anniversary of the hanging of two Tories in Philadelphia,” Maxey said. “These were Quaker businessmen who had cohabitated, if you will, with the British while they were occupying Philadelphia. These people were hung. This is what we used to do to traitors.”
>> “That’s how you won the revolution. No one wants to talk about it. The revolution wasn’t some sort of garden party, right? It was a civil war. It was a civil war,” Bannon replied.
Regardless, he quoted it as a call to action for supporters to come to his defense, so it's reasonable to assume he felt it accurately captured the fact that he called for the execution of two public officials.
I think it's less in doubt what he did and more in doubt what social media should do in response. Twitter took one approach and FB another.
This is an interesting sentence, particularly the one word: fact.
This word seems to have some sort of a strange quality to it - very mysterious, almost magical.
It's a popular word, people use it all the time. And they seem to really enjoy using it, almost like it has a kind of...reverence to it, for them.
But if you ever talk about how they use it (like, the context they are using it in, and various details related to that), everyone seems to start acting....weird. Like, the passion and interest that was just there 5 seconds ago, kind of vanishes into thin air. There one moment, gone the next. Kind of like cherry blossoms in the spring, or that first crush you have as a teenager (no Mom, it's love, you just don't get it!!!) - so fleeting.
Oh well, it's probably nothing..."just my mind playing tricks on me!" lol
But that's obvious. Seeing the risk inherent in people like Bannon doesn't even require effort. Thinking like that (and only that) is kind of the equivalent of "phoning it in" [1].
Reality is very complex. Infinity complex, some people say. Managing it skilfully is a hard problem. There is risk, and problems, everywhere. Attributing it all to cartoon evil characters like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump is pretty low effort thinking. Not even trying to be correct(!) (as opposed to "right").
My point is, why make this problem (just as one example - it is a recurring theme if one pays close attention) even harder by talking about it inaccurately &/or imprecisely? I think most of us wouldn't dare to write software at our day jobs this way, for all the obvious reasons, so then why do we accept it (or sometimes even insist upon it) when it comes to a far more complex problem, which is arguably more important than what we do from 9 to 5?
I am "on the spectrum" (in case it wasn't obvious). I do not understand why people behave like this - in general, but especially programmer types, who possess logical and systems analysis capabilities far beyond what general public can even imagine.
Why do people do this? Human behavior seems completely counter-intuitive to me. Like, backwards from what it should be. Can you explain it to me in some way that might make sense, to someone like me?
[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=phoned%20it%...
Such populists play on the fears and anger of the people. There is real inequality in USA, but the masses bet on the wrong horses again and again. Why? Because the privatization of media assures that billionaires set the agenda every day.
It seems high time for a third party, a middle ground, to be made. Because Democrats are too wide, too divided, and thus end up being too extreme. Ie. their stance of unlimited abortion until birth, is extremist in any country. But with the failed two party "system", they end up alienating most of the republican voter base.
This is all frustration playing out due to failed two party political system and the billionaires that ensures the status quo on both sides. The problem is when people become too frustrated, but it is a hard problem who to turn to for aid.
This is what I do not understand about the culture on HN, and mainstream "right thinking" culture in general: if your ideas really are so proper and correct, then why is there so much dishonesty in your words? If your case is sound, why not just stick to facts? Why can you not reply to direct questions, but instead act as if you did not read them?
Why do people do this? I mean, the text is right here on the page. Do neuro-typical people not feel embarrassment or shame, or is that kind of offset by the feeling of security that comes with being a member of the majority, a kind of "normie privilege" I guess you could say? The lack of self-awareness seems stark to me, but maybe I'm the only one that sees it.
This is exactly the mechanism of people who don't _really_ want to discuss anything. They throw badly compiled thoughts at you, and laugh at you if you struggle to explain why they are foolish.
-- the claim that "Steve Bannon used the Facebook platform to call for the execution and public display of the corpses of two public officials" and "This is unambiguously true, Steve Bannon's Facebook page reiterated the claims the same day..."
...combined with...
-- "...for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play."
...when what Bannon wrote on Facebook was a direct quotation of what was said about him, here:
https://populist.press/steve-bannons-twitter-account-suspend...
He even linked to the site where it was said.
I'm not supporting what Bannon has said here by any means, but it boggles my mind why there seems to be this recurring pattern over the last several years where rather than simply using the actual, already more than bad enough words of Trump and his gang to criticize him, instead people seem to need to hyperbole-it-up for added effect. Claiming that Bannon was unambiguously not using a provocative/hyperbolic figure of speech, but rather was literally calling for someone's execution...seems a bit like cutting off your nose to spite your face (note: I am using that expression figuratively - I do not mean that people here or elsewhere are literally cutting their noses off).
To me, much of Western civilization seems like the Movie Lord of the Flies [1].
Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality.
Except in our case, I don't think there are going to be any adults showing up on the scene to stop us from killing each other. Sadly, real life is often not rescued at the last moment as it often is in the movies, as anyone who has read history would well know.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies
But I don't see what that has to do with what I wrote, which was regarding the pattern of "dishonesty" when it comes to the discussion of reality.
I consider this to be a very dangerous break from our cultural history. There are many examples in history of where this road can lead, but not only are we not exhibiting caution, the overwhelming sense I get is enthusiasm at this development. One probably shouldn't judge the general public in this regard too harshly, but thinking is what the HN crowd is supposed to be good at.
Democracy need a balance and spectrum, otherwise there'll be a One Party System, and people will be rationalizing that too.
History shows us what happens when these sentiments leap out of control.
What I wrote was primarily:
> But I don't see what that has to do with what I wrote, which was regarding the pattern of "dishonesty" when it comes to the discussion of reality.
It is especially interesting when done while accusing someone else of doing the very same thing (the fascinating pink elephant situation in this thread).
Perhaps your goal is to help by even further illustrating this pattern on HN? If so, thanks!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
[1] - https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/963076380505370624
Ironically, to me the Sartre quote better applies to your own comment than Bannon's bit.
Perhaps this is the rhetorical version of "the dress". (We seem to be stuck in general in some sort of political version of the dress.)
https://twitter.com/FrankFigliuzzi1/status/13244858190427054...
It's hard for me to believe that someone can watch that and think that Bannon is literally suggesting we put Fauci's head on a pike, when it's clearly intended to be a metaphor.
If I get exasperated with this conversation and say something like "kill me now," I guess you'd call the suicide hotline?
It is a call to violence. He is saying that these people deserved to be killed for what they have done to Trump. That in his estimation, the world would be a better place if someone were to kill Fauci and Wray as examples to the rest of Washington.
Sure, he's not really suggesting that he would actually do it, but he is certainly asking someone to.
I'm not a fan of vigilante justice in general, but at least the targets in the "punch a nazi" case have confessed, and the punishment called for isn't death.
However, I do not believe that posting "punch a nazi" is a conservative enough position given that the standard of evidence for labelling someone a nazi, in practice, is that they disagree with you on the internet.
For god's sake just look at that post. It's obviously something generated by a bot. This is what you take as the basis of accusing anyone who interprets Bannon's words differently then you of bad faith?
0: https://youtu.be/IXUMbz3U920?t=70
I've seen as nauseum posts accusing Drumpf and his cohorts of treason, for which the penalty is death, not to mention more recently scads of Twitterers gleefully posting photos of the mutilated corpse of Mussolini and expressing desire for the same to happen to the president and his "collaborators".
It's getting to the point where AOC's recent calls for lists of said collaborators be compiled for harassment and ostracization seem reasonable, as at least she's not calling for their execution.
We could have seen this coming several years ago with calls for violence against "Nazis" (and btw a Nazi is anyone who disagrees with me politically) but big tech looked the other way because they support it.
I'd expect more cogent analysis from the top intellects if HN, but apparently the stereotype is true: "It's acceptable when our side does it".
False. You should be thinking about the Solovian view to this (trigger warning advised):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bIwVIx5pp88
The phrase can be used in two contexts, one as a figure of speech. The figure of speech context does NOT have any threats involved.
Now, here is Bannon's statement:
"I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I’d put the heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you’re gone – time to stop playing games."
In this context, Bannon does not seem to use it as a figure of speech, it is a threat - maybe not literally - but a threat nonetheless. That's what's wrong, and why people are angry. Not because they don't like his "ideas".
Zuckerberg's argument appears to be that Bannon didn't say the head-on-a-pike stuff enough to trigger suspension.
What Zuckerberg isn't considering is Bannon's past. He's not just some sleazy media wannabe - he's a former staff member of the Executive Office of the President.
Nor is this the only thing. Consider Charlotsville:
https://www.newsweek.com/steve-bannon-support-trump-charlott...
If a former high-ranking member of the president's staff calls for heads on pikes and and that's not enough to trigger suspension, I can only conclude that the process is more or less arbitrary, or completely borked.
He and his audience make facebook employees a lot of money and give them air cover in DC, and are a public bellweather for facebook, so not surprising to see the CEO+employees keep giving a free pass. Advertisers only protested for ~1 month and Biden needs to focus on basics like COVID death rate, so I'm not expecting externally-triggered change for 2021.
That is pretty hilarious if you look at that next to the reports of people who have had their FB accounts permanently banned without recourse after trying to link it to their Oculus account for "violating community standards"
> I’d put the heads on pikes. Right. I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you are gone.
It’s silly to summarize this as Bannon urging Fauci to literally be beheaded. To “put [someone’s] head on a pike” is a figure of speech meaning to punish someone publicly as a warning to others, and the next line corroborates that intent.
That's not a figure of speech though.
Which part of the words "Calling for Execution" is a playful, fun idiom that former White House officials get to use?
EDIT: As noticed below, I have edited this comment to include Reuters.
It is equivalent to an official YouTube channel or Twitter account. It is not a "fan page" in the sense that you mean.
Edit: It looks like you may have edited your comment. I think it's important to emphasize that this isn't some random Facebook "fan page", but the official page of Steve Bannon, and it's a verified business page.
No, I think Bannon is actually pining for (and has, in fact, had notable success in producing, though not to the extent he clearly prefers) a regression of social norms in the area of politics, including and especially around political violence.
How about Kathy Griffin, who posted a video of herself beheading Trump in effigy? She still has a Facebook account as far as I can tell.
Corporations have broad rights to self-regulate their platforms.
No one is saying Bannon broke the law. It's just interesting how Twitter and FB are making different decisions about the kind of platforms they want to have.
So how come if the US government doesn't censor it, it doesn't make the US a pro-beheading country? Empirically, compared to other countries the US manages to be pretty anti-beheading despite tolerating speech about beheading.
Do you think that any failure to censor speech constitutes an endorsement of that speech? Is it not possible to allow speech you disagree with? Does Facebook the company have to endorse every opinion someone posts on it?
I don't like censorship and I don't like public speech that encourages violence. Unfortunately, those two stances are at odds sometimes and there are warnings from history on both sides.
Are you equating being suspended off Twitter to being thrown in Jail? For the record, people commonly do get suspended for harassments for sending death threats to public figures. Unfortunately they aren't as high profile as bannon, so they don't get op-ed's written about them.
>How about Kathy Griffin, who posted a video of herself beheading Trump in effigy?
Why would you bring up Kathy Griffin when she got Twitter account suspended as well for that stunt? The answer to your question is "no I don't think Bannon should get better treatment then Kathy Griffin".
My point here is that people on one end of the political spectrum are given the benefit of the doubt when they make statements like this that they are not meant to be taken literally. Meanwhile, people on the other end of the political spectrum are treated as though they actually intend to carry them out.
By your own example this isn’t true. Kathy was suspended from Twitter for what she did. Most targeted calls for violence lands you a suspension on Twitter.
The reason you feel like one side is given the benefit of the doubt isn’t rooted in reality, at least on Twitter - it’s just far more likely for the other side of the political spectrum to whip up a media frenzy about free speech. And your point about one side being more likely to carry acts of violence out also seems ignorant of what’s happening today. There is only one political leaning that has resulted in people showing up armed to pizza places or trying to kidnap a governor.
It’s difficult to understand why you bend over so hard to make excuses for Bannon, when the guy who he was “joking” about has had to literally hire bodyguards for much of the past year.
Here people are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to "prove" what Bannon really meant. "You see he mentioned Tudor England so therefore that conclusively proves that this was not a figure of speech..."
I don't care about Bannon, I care about a free and open exchange of ideas. We can't have that if some parties appoint themselves the arbiters of permissible speech.
Then don't use TwitFace. Go use 4chan or 8chan or someplace with looser standards.
Are you a free speech absolutist? So calls for violence isn’t a line you are willing to draw in the sand? If Bannon was distributing child pornography should Facebook allow that too, or should Zuckerberg not appoint himself as an arbiter is that situation? This is an insane premise, so I’m not sure what to say to this. Even the current law doesn’t let you recklessly abuse free speech like this (e.g. fire in a movie theater). You do realize Fauci and his family doesn’t even feel safe anymore leaving their home without security detail? Why should someone like Bannon be afforded such great benefit of the doubt given Fauci’s situation. Someone like Bannon would and has cried about “cancel culture” but in this case he’s free to essentially force a man into hiding.
This is not fire in a crowded theater either. Bannon made a clearly hyperbolic statement about something he would do in some hypothetical fantasy scenario where he is in the White House and it is some kind of alternate reality where putting someone's head on a pike is a real thing that could actually happen.
Bannon is not in the White House. It is very unlikely that he will ever again be in the White House. Trump fired him over two years ago. Even if he were in the White House, I can't believe I have to explain this, putting someone's head on a pike out in front of the White House is not a real thing that even has the slightest, remotest possibility of happening. Even if Bannon were President, that is not something he could do. Do you understand that? He may as well have said "I'd incinerate Fauci with laser blasts from my eyes" that is about as realistic.
Fauci is a highly visible figure in the midst of a global crisis. It is unfortunate, but not surprising, that he needs security. Even minor celebrities get stalkers and death threats. At some point you become known by enough people that it is a statistical certainty that some of them will have a form of mental illness that may cause them to unhealthily fixate on you. That will happen regardless of anything Bannon says.
Hold on a second here. Am I the only one that remembers this summer? There is also a party that excused, if not encouraged, arson, rioting, dragging people out their cars and beating them in the street, and one outright murder that was explicitly predicated on the victim being of the opposing political party:
https://nypost.com/2020/08/30/blm-activists-celebrated-as-tr...
The fact is, these were headlines on other sites, that were then linked to populist.press (I assume Steve Bannon has some affiliation with the site).
https://web.archive.org/web/20201106150453/https://populist....
The second headline, "Calling for Execution", links to this article: https://www.thewrap.com/steve-bannon-suspended-by-twitter-af...
As such, the headline is, without question, someone else's description of the events.
How do we interpret this next sentence as a continuation of the figure of speech? I can't seem to wrap my head around it sounding anything other than explicit.
The part everybody is missing is "I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England", which provides the context to understand the stuff people is having a meltdown about. This is not "heads on pikes" by a bunch of salvages; it is "heads on pikes" as part of the official policy of an absolutist State.
The way I read it, Bannon said: "I would have them face the death penalty, if there was a legal way to do so. And I would use their cases as deterrence from other would be traitors."
I don't see it as a call to have civilian supporters attempting against the lives of those two high ranking officials; but could be interpreted as a declaration of intent to pursue and extend draconian powers for the (Executive Branch of the) US Government. I will let you decide which of the two interpretation is gravest.
You know, when they ACTUALLY CUT OFF PEOPLE'S HEADS.
It’s not an uncommon phrase at the very least. I know I’ve heard people use it in business settings, just like folks sometimes use phrase “heads will roll” in otherwise polite conversation.
Facebook have previously removed, for example, suggestive posts from Ramzan Kadyrov, which, while they did not make direct statements, were threatening: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2016/02/02/instagram-removes-...
While Kadyrov has a more established history of following through on his threats than Bannon, I don't think it's unreasonable to come to the conclusion that Facebook does have a double standard: if you or I post "<prominent government official>'s head should be on a spike", do you think their moderation team would apply the same leniency?
I wager they would not: what we see here is part of an established pattern where Facebook's executives, and Zuckerberg in particular, do not want to be seen as biased against the right wing sentiment, because remaining in the good graces of those with political power is more important than actually upholding their supposed community standards.
BANNON: Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci. Now, I actually want to go a step farther, but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I'd put the heads on pikes, right, I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you're gone -- time to stop playing games. blow it all up, put Ric Grenell today as the interim head of the FBI, that'll light them up, right.
JACK MAXEY (CO-HOST): You know what Steve, just yesterday there was the anniversary of the hanging of two Tories in Philadelphia, these were Quaker businessmen who had cohabitated if you will with the British while they were occupying Philadelphia. These people were hung. This is what we used to do to traitors.
BANNON: That's how you won the revolution. No one wants to talk about it. The revolution wasn't some sort of garden party, right? It was a civil war. It was a civil war.
>The call to replicate actual specific events in the American Revolution really makes it feel real, along with the mention of a civil war being on.
Let’s say someone was calling for the gassing of Jews, would you also defend their position with a sentiment of: “ but that’s ok, because obviously a state can’t just start rounding up Jews and gassing them”?
Or perhaps his speech should be judged on his stated intent ?
You might come down on either side of the censorship / free speech argument, but Bannon knows exactly what he's doing with his words here, and it went beyond a one-off bad-taste metaphor.
Is it? Are you sure you know what a strawman is? I'm literally using your own words. You didn't say anything about people inciting violence on TwitFace in your comment.
If I ran those companies, I'd ban anyone inciting violence. But it's their platform. They can choose who to ban and who to keep. And we can choose to criticize them. In that way, everyone's freedoms are preserved.
This did not happen.
Evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFJmkws1Q40
Also, here's NYT: https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/831483401467265024
Is this OK or nah?
cf. e.g. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fact-checking-trump-s-refe...
The way Trump and others have described this is essentially a lie.
* * *
I am flattered that my balls have impressed you.
Could be a tumah, have them checked out.
I can't speak to Facebook, because I don't use Facebook, but Twitter will apply punitive measures if you incite violence for a specific person on the platform. You are making a case for whataboutism that doesn't exist.
You are bending so far incredibly backwards for a guy with an incredibly poor moral compass that’s slinging death threats at a public servant who already has to hire body guards.
It does seem a bit crazy that you should be banned anywhere for this comment.
Because, apparently, he didn't do it enough times.
I mean, I guess it's good that they have a policy, and they stick to their policy even when it's politically inconvenient. But maybe there ought to be some kind of sliding scale or something. Publicly calling for someone to be beheaded is egregious enough that it might belong in a more severe category.
Other people in this thread have made a similar better point. If he had said "heads should roll", that's not a call for decapitation. Another obvious point is that he's being an edgelord, going too far but not exactly all the way, in order to get attention. Edgy references to civil war are the same. That's not starting a war, but it's not totally not starting a war either. There aren't precise lines to draw here, probably on purpose.
You can say that those aren't his words, but... his platform again states he's calling for the President to execute two people.
I am going to post this as a reply to every single one of your comments that repeats this lie.
> I am beyond tired of people making excuses for public threats of violence from authoritarian right-wing actors. It isn't helpful to any discourse to pretend words don't mean what they mean anymore.
Fuck you, dang. Go ahead and ban me. You're a really fucking shitty moderator, and you allow fucking garbage political threads like this to go with one-sided, bad faith, bullying trash from people like AaronFriel. But, OOOH GOTCHA ISOSKELES, YOU SAID "LYING" WHEN MAYBE HE JUST DIDN'T KNOW. Fuck you. And fuck Hacker News.
It's fine to say that another comment is false, especially if you then add corrective information. It's fine to say that it's misleading, if you show how and (again) add corrective info. But to say that another user is lying crosses a clear semantic line: it imputes malicious intent, i.e. not just that they're wrong but that they know the truth and are intending to deceive. That we don't allow. Surely it's not hard to see why.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I also had comments flagged for saying someone was arguing in bad faith.
I’d argue that comments like this Maxine Waters gem instructing the general public to harass Trump administration officials in all manner of their public and private lives are much more dangerous yet they get a pass from 90% of the media and 100% of social media:
“Let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
Specifically, I have consistently made the point that this argument is appealing due to it's simplicity and purity, but doesn't grapple with the actual consequences of allowing bad-faith actors to flood platforms with propaganda.
Here are links to news stories that show how Facebook has been used by the Myanmar military, and by Sinhalese nationalists in Sri Lanka to incite genocide and anti-muslim violence: - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/13/sri-lanka-facebook...
I have updated my prior beliefs in free speech absolutism in the light of such events - some moderation is necessary due to the way social networks lends itself to exponentially amplify propaganda and disinformation in ways that, principled debate and discourse don't.
I would love to hear what the posters arguing about censorship think we should do about these specific instances.
I actually don't. Aren't property rights also important to libertarians? Shouldn't the idea that someone is entitled by law to use your property in a way you dislike be anathema to a libertarian?
that's a lie
If an (e.g.) Muslim had said the same thing about a high profile (far)-right candidate, many of the people who supported his post would be calling it a terrorist threat.
In this case Zuckerberg is defending the terrorist calls to arms of those who think, and look, like him.