My guess is that Facebook has been hedging their bets and now that Democrats have taken control are going to change their policy in an effort to reduce the perceived need for regulation.
Maybe, although regulation isn't necessarily bad for Facebook, as it builds a bigger moat for them and makes it harder for smaller organisations to compete. They can afford it.
Firstly martial arts groups don’t incite violence. They encourage control and technique between consenting individuals. Which is totally different to breaking into buildings and attacking innocent individuals.
Secondly the whole “where do you draw the line?” argument is such a stupid one. Just because you can’t create a rule that is 100% perfect 100% of the time it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother trying at all. Laws are constantly being changed and evolving through court because people recognise that need.
BLM: protesting the repeated and unpunished murder of PoC by the police, that was immediately met with excessive force in a way known to cause reciprocal violence in the form of riot damage.
Vs this: police not using any force until after people violently invaded the literal government because their favorite lost an election, and they want to stop the peaceful transfer of power. The police didn’t use any meaningful force until well after people had called attention to the disparate response.
> Hopefully the same time they remove everything BLM, who were far more violent and caustic this summer.
Posts that are asking to violate curfew and go into the streets to protest should be removed at the time these calls would violate said curfew, regardless of the reasoning behind the protest.
If you’ve worked at Facebook at any time over the last four years, this is on you too. You don’t get to make your money, wash your hands of it, and ignore that fact that Facebook has been the primary engine fueling the right wing media sphere.
Let’s require at least 100 different words per comment in political threads, for example. There are ways the UX entices opposition and ways it can entice debate.
I get so frustrated when people offer solutions that encourage debate. Antagonized opponents do not need debate. They are not listening to arguments. They are arguing to show their loyalty to their own side and the science shows this. They are not trying to find a new position or willing to change their mind and the science shows this as well.
This naive belief that "we should have more debate!!" will solve our problem must be put to rest. Instead, make the two sides go bowling together, or to a picnic. Then we'll see real change.
...but the structure of modern society, and the ideology since 1945 of having the UN around, is to lower the nationalistic propensity everywhere. And there was a good reason for that. But it has produced side-effects. Nationalism is a big no-no today.
So people don’t feel like they belong to a group. There are just, many groups living next to each other, London is a symbol of that but Paris is well in line, and all of France is made of groups who live next to each other, and don’t like each other.
Military service was praised by the elderly as instigating a sense of belonging and cohesion (among all the evil it also did on the weaker half of the population, I’m not having rosy glasses here).
So, basically, it has been more than 70 years that your idea of a nation going bowling together is a big no-no, and we work hard on mixing people, which... let’s say it doesn’t work yet, to be nice... I mean we all have a daughter who’s been raped by the « other » group so I don’t personally think it will work, but if it will, you’ll have to invent something that solders our co-country with us.
Of course bowling together is a good idea, but it works with small groups, and we’ve killed the glue that holds larger societies together (for good reasons at the base).
Also, my best friend and I cut ties after we’ve seen each other’s life choices is about exploiting the other, so I have at least one counter-example that going bowling together doesn’t tie people closer, when one is causing harm to the other with his life choices.
My opinions is, we do need less ideology, because we’ve reached peak brainwashing in 2020, and social networks need to accompany research and science and discovery of stats formulated in an digestible manner, instead of hammering onto people that one’s opinion is right and the others are evil.
The events in the US are appalling! On one hand I am glad that FB and Twitter are taking these steps but on the other I am deeply uncomfortable.
One of the things FB is removing is “ Calls for protests — even peaceful ones — if they violate the curfew in DC”.
Not many years ago we as lauded the ability of social media to galvanise protest against tyrannical regimes (eg the Arab Springs). Currently FB is removing calls to protests against decisions we agree with but what happens when we need to protest again things that we do not agree with? Does FB become the arbiter of what we are allowed to protest and what not?
The removal of calls for post-curfew peaceful protests in DC seems like a move that will galvanize the right against FB, given that they didn’t do this six months ago when Democrats were protesting. They weren’t rushing the Capitol back then, but this removal notice isn’t limited to that.
Perhaps FB is not afraid of being defanged (pun intended) by Republicans, since they won’t control the House, Senate, or White House.
> They weren’t rushing the Capitol back then, but this removal notice isn’t limited to that.
Antifa and BLM protestors were attacking Federal property in DC. They were tearing down Federal statues and publicly threatening to stage attacks on monuments.
Facebook is openly taking political sides. They're doing it now because Trump is essentially out of office, so Zuckerberg can safely expire his pact with Trump for FB to attempt to remain neutral.
> The removal of calls for post-curfew peaceful protests in DC seems like a move that will galvanize the right against FB, given that they didn’t do this six months ago when Democrats were protesting. They weren’t rushing the Capitol back then, but this removal notice isn’t limited to that.
No, those Antifa protests mere months ago were rushing the White House. But that's OK because Trump. [0] [1] [2]
How is one supposed to process such brazen hypocrisy?
Edit: Since I've been flagged for this comment, I'm adding links to video of the violence and destruction in front of the White House seven months ago. Don't remember these people being called "insurgents".
I fear FB is trying to "thread the needle" a bit too finely here. In the process, they are becoming arbiters of content. I feel like a little kid in school being told what's good for me. There's a healthy skepticism of our public officials that should be encouraged. Many of their fact checks delve into opinion and are more complex than simply true/false/or missing context.
Facebook et al. should have looked at "fact checking" as a product, rather than a (voluntary) regulatory compliance measure.
There's a pretty straight line for them to deliver value through it via crowd sourcing, in a way they're uniquely positioned to.
Instead, the current implementation is basically a Section 230 PR stunt to deflect public outrage ('Sure we have terrible things on our platform, but see, they have a warning!').
It's more than just a nuisance though. It comes off as arrogance to their users and a big brother feel to it. Not sure crowd sourcing would be any better, because it would involve people "ganging up" on each other and would be inflammatory. Fact-checking involves somebody's own search for truth. There's an independence to searching things out, feeling along for sources you trust. Trust isn't gained by a simple textbox warning.
I think that generally people are in favour of so called "fact" checking, if the results of that fact checking align with their beliefs. As a silly analogy, how about a road that gave you a thumbs up when you had the right of way? The platform is an authority, and we like authority to echo our own beliefs.
>Does FB become the arbiter of what we are allowed to protest and what not?
no, they become the arbiter of what you are allowed to do on facebook. there exists a whole world outside of facebook, they only control their product.
There are other platforms and other means. In hindsight I’m not sure that social media is such a godsend for popular uprising. They had popular uprising before social media, and we will have them post social media. The popular uprisings we have seen that are fueled by social media to me seem they either deteriorated into devastation (a la the Arab spring), or never went anywhere (a la Occupy Wall Street).
I think we undervalue the amount of mobilization during the BLM protests that happened out side of social media, e.g. simple pamphlets, word of mouth, words on the radio, printed words, static ads and propaganda, etc.
Maybe part of the difference is that the “agree with” isn’t just a matter of opinion it’s a matter of governing democratic law? As in, maybe if it were trumpers staging a successful coup and people protesting the undemocratic expression of authoritarianism there would be more permission to flout rules.
> Not many years ago we as lauded the ability of social media to galvanise protest against tyrannical regimes (eg the Arab Springs).
We're pushing a decade from when these were now, and everything since then demonstrates malicious actors (be they state or private) quickly turned the tables and got the upper hand on the use of social media.
We need to stop holding up things that happened (and largely failed, but that's not the fault of social media) nearly a decade ago as evidence we shouldn't change things now. These networks are changing and developing fast, the Facebook of today is wildly different to the Facebook of 2011.
If the end result is Facebook is no longer an avenue for anyone to organise on, so be it. They've shown they're unable to properly moderate and handle that power.
They feel obligated to take a stance and pretend they didn't see it coming. Facebook enabled a lot of dubious people run campaigns and get in power in a lot of countries. I guess they'll never do anything about that anytime soon, they're making very very good money
What about the individual employees enabling the company to enable these campaigns? At the end of the day, the buck stops with every single employee that has been or is even tangentially related to the newsfeed algorithm. Mass quit in protest. Unionize. Reject this work that is destroying democracy.
Honestly, the employee bees don't see out of their boxes, they execute on specs and are directly concerned with the technology they are building. I wouldn't really hold them responsible. Higher ups should be made responsible but I don't see it happening anytime soon. The law has a lot of catching up to do and seeing honesty and responsibility come directly from these people is not going to happen anytime soon. As long as their incentives are short term profits this is what we're going to come out of it
Yes, but most of us can say that our job isn't contributing to a possible end-game for civilization. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit at this point is a massive net negative on society, that's abundantly clear.As existential risks against civilization go I put Facebook, Twitter etc only below global warming. And it's closer than it should be.
I don't work for facebook. I work for another large tech company.
I worked on doing facial recognition. I was told it would be used to improve login systems. It actually was! It was also used to detect suspected criminals from stadium footage for the Chinese government.
What do you do with this? When even your best-intentioned work was turned against society?
I hope this doesn't sound deliberately obtuse, but can we be specific about the parts of the social media space (and probably Facebook specifically) that feed this?
- I don't think private or group chat is on the hook.
- I think that if group "pages" are responsible, then this at least potentially applies to BBSes and mailing lists and any blog with a comment section. Along this argument it sounds like Facebook is responsible because it's big, lightly moderated, and easy to use -- none of which I find particularly egregious. (Should we expect every website to fail at least one of those three conditions?)
- I think that leaves the "news feed algorithm" argument. That the content (news, ads, friends' posts) you see is tailored for engagement. I think this argument is the one most commonly held. I disagree with it, but it's the one I'm most partial to.
Are there other parts of social media that deserve the blame?
>Are there other parts of social media that deserve the blame?
Allowing propaganda to fester on their websites with the same air of legitimacy as actual factual content for years now is the reason why we were terrorized today.
OK, I think I'd put that mostly under the second point -- it's a platform for content that's big, lightly moderated, and easy to use.
To look into that a bit more, I guess the "big" condition could go one of two ways:
- Bigger platforms have a proportionately greater impact than smaller platforms, and a proportionately greater responsibility to moderate content. Ideally actual factual content should be prohibited from all platforms -- Facebook, wikipedia, blogger, the internet generally. Propaganda should not be allowed to "fester" anywhere.
- Bigger platforms have a responsibility that smaller platforms simply do not. There can be places on the internet for them, but not too many under the same domain name.
I know that my characterization of neither possibility is charitable. I'd appreciate another perspective. Maybe the important point is that Facebook stores and serves the content. But DNS helps serve content, and ISPs help serve content, and software providers help serve content. Maybe storage is where your moral line is crossed? Maybe you think AWS and GCP and Azure etc have the same resposibility as Facebook (per unit of horrible content)? And the banking system probably has a moral incentive to cut off people doing questionable things? And if someone were to self-host, we'd probably need to think about who sold them their computers, electricity, bandwidth and hardware and food.
This stance will only radicalize everyone. It actually more looks like a setup to scenarize the events. Only calm and thoughtful analysis can calm down both sides, and Facebook is responding with power and domination.
when radicals are storming the houses of government and elected representatives are being evacuated to a secret location, it might be a little late to worry about whether your actions will "radicalize" people. maybe it's time we started worrying more about dealing with the people who are already radicalized.
doing nothing for fear of radicalizing people is what got us here. it's not working.
Facebook, Twitter,Reddit and the classic media where the key enabling factor to Trump. They reward the most brash, most outspoken statements - which quickly became the most hateful and partisan.
They need to do a lot more then this.
(And that cuts both ways, daily there is anti-religious hatred on reddit's front page, or covid quacks on twitter). Falsehoods get more clicks then the truth, and they have been ridding that.
The answer to that is more free speech. Not less of it. Restricting speech only leads to a narrowing set of viewpoints. there are always risks free speech, but the alternative is worse.
> The next demagogue will be happy to tell his critics the same when he takes power.
So...you're agreeing with me that demagogues in the government should not have the power to silence criticism? Last time I checked, TwitFace is not the government. The government has no right to tell them who they can censor. That is also an infringement on free speech.
> the dignity of being officially persecuted.
What persecution? This is just the free market at work. Forcing a private company to carry their views would be tantamount to communism. I thought "these people" (your words) abhorred communism.
> Either that, or you've already decided to use it to keep yourself in power.
Get out of your bubble. Not everyone thinks like that.
True, it is the a private business. But the idea of freedom of speech is so ingrained in our collective conscious as a priority, It is a principle of fairness. Social media is akin to the public square. Sure, they've got the right to do it, but still comes off as unfair.
Any regulation is going to be a tricky needle to thread.
On the one hand you have the Section 230 "truthers" who seem intent on peddling their publisher/platform horseshit. They don't seem to understand that if TwitFace were liable for the crap their users posted, they'd start moderating way harder. No more anonymity, ability to serve libel lawsuits to any user, hours-long moderation queues to control the crap. It could mean the end of honest online reviews (whatever's left of them).
And if they try to condition Section 230 liability protections on "neutrality", it'll get shot down in court really fast because forcing any point of view even "neutrality" (whatever that means) is an infringement on free speech. And if viewpoint "neutrality" does become enshrined in the law, every single message board, social media site, or other discussion platform will either shut down (because it's not profitable or worth the hassle) or turn into a hellscape of spam, porn, and trolls. Any legal content, no matter how off-topic, disruptive, flame-baity, troll-y, insulting or whatever, will have to be allowed. Otherwise you aren't "neutral" anymore, right?
Of course, IANAL or a fortune teller, so I may be completely wrong about this.
Which is why anonymous speech sites like 4Chan and 8Chan and semi anonymous speech like Twitter are the most enlightening and edifying of our media devices./s
You’re allowed to say whatever you want. The government won’t stop you. Facebook and Twitter shouldn’t be amplifying it. The fact that they only do so when you express a message of hatred Turns this from a free speech to debate to a hateful incitement debate
Removing non violent posts that contain: “Calls for protests — even peaceful ones — if they violate the curfew in DC” or “Praise and support of the storming of the US Capitol” feels like such an overreach. It makes me sick.
Unpopular speech is the most important, perhaps the only speech that needs to be defended. As Rosa Luxembourg said: those who do not move do not notice their chains. Any discourse that isn’t allowed to happen in popular mediums don’t disappear, it happen underground, and it’s a lot harder to detect.
I get removing calls to violence, but I don’t want these tech overlords making these judgment calls.
Last I checked, the US didn't have a law against praising and supporting neo-Nazis.
(Hypothetically) If I can praise and support them, the majority of what they advocate being conceptually illegal if implemented, then yes... the First Amendment seems clear that anything shy of advocating and/or planning imminent action is permissible.
Of course, Facebook as a private company is under no obligation to follow Constitutional limits on permissible vs non-permissible speech. But should they be?
> Of course, Facebook as a private company is under no obligation to follow Constitutional limits on permissible vs non-permissible speech. But should they be?
Absolutely not, the first amendment only applies to the government for a reason.
Perhaps there should be a government-run equivalent that is subject to the first amendment.
Though honestly, I think that would work out horribly. The number of people you can reach by shouting in a town square isn't very high, that's why the government can allow any kind of crank to do it. If you can reach millions...bad things would happen.
The problem is that network effects create monopolies. Social network effects create monopolies on free speech.
I'm not an American, and I still don't know if there was cheating or not, and actually I don't understand whether there is enough data on it to decide, though usually the bigger problem is when a president stays in the president seat forever.
> Social network effects create monopolies on free speech.
Absolutely. Many people want to talk in the public (or at least town) square, which trends strongly towards a few providers (where everybody is), which establishes de facto global free speech limits via those provider's policies.
And "moving to another service" isn't a feasible redress.
Do we want to live in a world where conservatives only read ConservaPedia, and liberals read LibPedia? Or one where they're exposed to each other's ideas and share some facts?
>> the first amendment only applies to the government for a reason. [...] The number of people you can reach by shouting in a town square isn't very high, that's why the government can allow any kind of crank to do it. If you can reach millions...bad things would happen.
I'll assume that's the reason you were referring to? If so, we disagree on the intent of the First Amendment.
I don't think it's about audience reach, so much as relative power: government has historically had controls not available to private companies.
Yet in modern times, Facebook / Twitter / Youtube have as much or more control over their platforms, which are as bigger or bigger than the largest First Amendment-covered venue.
So while Facebook or Google can't send the FBI to your door, they can effectively disappear your idea / product from their ecosystems, and there are very few checks on that power, particularly when ranking algorithms are allowed to be shielded from public scrutiny.
Some speeches are omens to terrible actions and they are usually supported by symbols.
I've seen the pictures of the Confederate Flag waving in the halls of the Senate, It was pretty disturbing to me.
If I am not wrong that never happened before, not even during the Civil war.
IMO if the flag entered the Capitol Building in 1860 it would have been normal, but today it has become the symbol of the resistance to the racial integration and the support to the segregation, hence it should be banned and people speaking openly about any "racial supremacy" should face consequences.
outside the contexts of "art or science, research or teaching" (quoting the The German Strafgesetzbuch (Criminal Code) in section § 86a) it is simply unacceptable.
After all it is written in the US Constitution that
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
> Some speeches are omens to terrible actions and they are usually supported by symbols
Absolutely. Which is why the US Supreme Court has continually debated and weighed First Amendment tension against public safety.
To my knowledge, the Confederate battle flag has never flown in the US Capitol. Not in July, 1864, when the Confederate Army stared at it across 6 miles and lightly defended lines [0]. Not after 1939 when it was hoisted in film by Gone with the Wind with sanitized nostalgia for an antebellum past [1]. And certainly not in the 50s and 60s when it was appropriated by the reborn Ku Klux Klan to represent their racist beliefs [2].
But it has been present at all three instances of armed insurrection against the US government -- Civil War, first US terrorist organization, and modern, militant Trump supporters.
And ultimately, it's those people's actions, not their ideas or symbols, that are dangerous.
As Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote in Whitney v. California [3], by way of Jefferson's views [4]:
"[Those who won our independence] believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones."
To consign evil to the shadows is no victory, for there are always shadows.
We must be able to discuss and even support things that are currently illegal, including discussion of acts of violence (but not carrying them out, just talking about them), to explore whether or not existing laws might need changes. So this cannot be the boundary between allowed and disallowed speech.
In this particular case, I would quickly argue "Hell no, storming the US Capital is illegal for good cause, and I will never condone such acts of violence." But I would allow the discussion. We have to allow the discussion. Because if you draw a line here, then you will be censored when you argue for things like marijuana legalisation and gay marraige while they are still illegal as McCarthyites will censor you based on inciting people to break the law.
This is why 'incitement' has such a high bar.
I could be wrong. Maybe "praise and support for /storming/" is incitement to violence. I'm glad I'm not a judge that has to make that call. So long as the line isn't drawn on the wrong side of the points I argued above.
> We must be able to discuss and even support things that are currently illegal, including discussion of acts of violence (but not carrying them out, just talking about them), to explore whether or not existing laws might need changes. So this cannot be the boundary between allowed and disallowed speech.
I strongly agree with this. I just don’t agree that you’re entitled to use other people’s publishing resources to do it.
You can argue that an illegal thing should be legal without inciting people to do it while it's illegal. Under your reasoning, any act of inciting violence could be dismissed as "discussion".
There's probably not a clear line in every instance. Whether you think "praise and support" crosses the line, it would be pretty hard to claim it made things better, and pretty easy to see how those words, from the most powerful person in the country, might make a person more likely to continue doing whatever it is they're doing.
I agree with all of that in spirit, but I don't think the "under your reasonsing" part accurately reflected my reasoning (maybe it reflected a inference or a poorly chosen word). Incitement intends the act to occur while illegal, and I didn't mean to argue that such a thing should be legal.
This is the fundamental issue when the public square is owned by a company.
I don't think anyone can solve that. You can't disallow moderation in a space, otherwise you just have people screaming at you all the time. If there is freedom of expression, you can't then also force people to platform things they find abhorrent. The freedom to express surely also includes the freedom not to express.
I don't think there are easy answers, and "people should have to have the firehose of the internet sprayed at them unfiltered" seems like a bad take to me.
The spread of propaganda to undermine the democratic process is chilling.
Holochain is a distributed version control system for the development of social applications / protocols. Imagine if Uber or Airbnb were just protocols, able to be used without the company in the middle - in a fully peer to peer context. You could evolve and improve the rules together with others peers, and start playing new economic and social ‘games’ without any central authority being able to block you from experimenting/doing so.
Holochain’s novelty lies in its use of DHT’s to create, store and retrieve data. Like Git source chains, it then uses cryptography to guarantee data integrity in this distributed application context. You’re basically agreeing in advance on which functions to use. Instead of using proprietary functions that are kept secret behind a firewall or limited through an API, Holochain allows you to create and use apps that directly enforce and verify open rules in a 100% distributed peer to peer way. To the best of my knowledge this sort of system hasn’t been seen or invented before.
“Holochain maintains data integrity without the need for global consensus. It uses an agent-centric approach, combining ideas from BitTorrent and Git, along with cryptographic signatures, peer validation, and gossip.
An overview:
- hApps have validation rules.
- Agents have their own local, tamper-resistant hash-chains recording their actions, built upon hApp rules.
- Each hash-chain entry is cryptographically signed (multi-party actions, like transactions, are mutually countersigned).
- Data is shared to random peers who validate it.
- Validators gossip to share good data, warn against bad data, and blacklist bad actors.“
Except if no one is using the protocols, they don't actually solve the problem.
People don't want everyone to have a complete platform to them to say anything they want. So somewhere someone has to be doing some deciding of who gets a platform. Protocols can't magically solve that problem.
I think there is something to giving people options on what moderation they want distinct from having to limit who they can communicate to, but all of the current attempts at that don't do a good enough job, they all offer technical solutions, but no real solutions.
What you really need is for one of these protocols to get a particular instance that does an amazing job of "no nazis, no one telling you to die or that you shouldn't have human rights", while giving you the room to move and remain on the protocol if the instance you are on starts to limit you or you start to disagree with the moderation.
Of course, this begs the question of who is going to be doing that moderation and why. That's the hard part, not the decentralised platform.
> Except if no one is using the protocols, they don't actually solve the problem.
Applications built using Holochain are literally using a novel pattern that hasn’t existed before. If you know of a project that uses the same agent-centric ontology, please let me know, because I’ve looked far. As to why the lack of diversity of protocols in existing platforms (or non-usage of new protocols), I think the reason many platforms/protocols aren’t adopted is because the commons has been plundered: trade secrets block progress and have led to the creation of the web as walled gardens. Great for capitalists and advertisers, but crap for individuals.
> People don't want everyone to have a complete platform to them to say anything they want. So somewhere someone has to be doing some deciding of who gets a platform. Protocols can't magically solve that problem.
Who is 'people'? Who do you speak for? Could you share any sources that back up your claim?
From your (seemingly) quick dismissal, I’m curious to know if you read up on the actual tech? I’d be curious if you have any critique on the underlying tech?
I agree that any community needs moderation but that doesn’t mean we should have a faceless company doing it. It can be done by making cooperative block-lists/blacklists, and sharing those among participants. We don’t need the middlemen at all, in fact they are unaccountable, and are dangerous by themselves since their only focus is to exploit users and extract a profit for shareholders.
As I said though, I’m curious about any critique about Holochain tech (the software pattern). Personally I think it’s inevitable that we will move in that direction imo: the direction of an agent-centric web, a space of direct protocol negotiation and renegotiation.
I’d like to make you aware that Holochain also paves the way for new types of value accounting systems. If you are curious, check out the work of Lynn Foster, Bob Haugen, Pospi and others on hREA / http://valueflo.ws. They are in the later stages of developing a fully featured, fully distributed, Resources Events Agents (REA) accounting system built using Holochain - creating one of the world’s first Network Resource Planning software [1] that uses an official ISO standard.
It's some really groundbreaking stuff here, that's got me super excited and hopeful.
The tech is irrelevant if it isn't solving a problem people care about in a way that is useful to them.
> Who is 'people'? Who do you speak for? Could you share any sources that back up your claim?
The fact that we don't allow people to scream whatever they want in your face as you walk around the supermarket.
You don't seem to be able to see the forest for the trees and are trying to lawyer me on this. How do I know people don't want literally everyone to have a direct line to them? I'm a human being, and it is obvious as hell.
You are just completely missing the point of my post.
Yes, liars will accuse their opponents of doing what they are doing.
We can observe reality to determine who is telling the truth, rather than blindly repeating lies alongside truths.
The right in the US have created an alternative reality to live in, but it clashes with actual reality if you spend even a little time comparing what they say to what has actually happened in the world.
The FCC chose to end it for the reasons I mentioned.
The equal time rule has so many exceptions that it might as well not exist. Also, to my knowledge, it has not been extensively reviewed by the Supreme Court on constitutionality grounds, probably because of those exceptions that mean there's never really a case to fight over. The one case I could find wasn't fighting the rule itself, but rather it's interpretation.
I think based on market share of "all public / semi-public social media discourse", and the relatively few platforms with high shares, they are effectively a limited resources.
You can solve this with decentralization. Mastodon, for example, is a public square, but no owns it. This is "protocols over platforms" as a sibing comment mentions.
It may be technically solved, but if people aren't using it instead of centralized, biased social networking, it's not really a solution in it's current form.
Until we can find a way to make a Mastodon better than Facebook, it'll be impossible to gain a critical mass for people to take it seriously.
This might come from marketing the benefits of decentralization, maybe finding a way to have a universal "login" page that can direct users to particular nodes, etc.
So, in the perfect world, you have all these nodes with different levels and types of moderation and people can communicate across them, but pick the level and type of moderation they want by what instance they use, right?
The reality is, no one has a good idea how to moderate something at that scale, even with the resources that come from have a walled garden. You don't even get that, and you want better moderation to draw people away? No one is doing it.
Then, on the other end, you want someone to believe in free speech enough to host the completely unfiltered one, and not baulk at some point when abhorrent shit is on their server? You just end up with a nazi server run by nazis, because those are the only people who actually want that.
It's "solved" only in theory, in practice, there is no practical draw for real-world users.
If only we had a decentralized way of allowing people to host their own content and draw their own users, without having to rely on a centralized platform... Of course, I'm talking about the Internet itself. Mastodon at first glance it's just an abstraction over an already decentralized system of content.
My question to this, is would you take the same line if the censorship was something nakedly egregious?
Let's pretend there was a massive Harvey Weinstein-like sexual harassment scandal at Facebook Inc. And Facebook responded by removing any posts mentioning the scandal or blocking the account of any journalists that reported on it.
Would you shrug your shoulders and say "private property". If not, then I think you have to admit that Facebook has some obligations to not abuse its moderation powers. If not in the formal legal sense, at least in a cultural and moral sense.
In your analogy this is more like Facebook deleting posts that call for sexual harassment, or praise/support Harvey Weinstein. I think people would be ok with that.
That situation would be more similar to this one, but it isn't their point.
I think the grandparent was indicating that this is mostly a debate between the positions "Facebook should be broadly permissive of legal speech" and "Facebook should shape the discussion in ways that benefit the public good". The argument that Facebook has a moral right to do whatever the hell they like is mostly just a cudgel of an argument, though, to be picked up when it suits whichever of the two "real" arguments you support.
One refutation of this "private property argument is instrumental" position is the one the grandparent mentioned: That the people making the argument would "support" Facebook taking down speech that they deem "just". If the private property argument only holds for taking down unpalatable speech, it's not a position that's held honestly.
The potential for hypocrisy doesn't mean the hypocrite's judgment in the first case was bad. It just means they're a hypocrite, or biased in the second judgement, or whatever.
I agree, and I think there's an even more charitable phrasing: that the "private property" argument could be neither totally negligible nor totally compelling, but "somewhat persuasive". When someone does something borderline it might change the calculus, and when someone does something unambiguously laudable or egregious it may not.
Making the argument even when it's not compelling (that is, even when there are other hypothetical cases in which it doesn't sway you) isn't necessarily hypocritical.
I'd say it was naked self interest for Facebook to remove posts like that, but I wouldn't consider it illegal.
There is also a difference between disliking a company covering up its own bad acts and a company preventing a 3rd party from using its resources for a thing that walks up to the edge (and in many people's opinion crosses over) into inciting other illegal acts.
No. We’d be mad because that would be an abuse of their right as a content hoster. Some content can be good to remove and some content can be bad to remove and it is not hypocritical to get upset when some content is removed and not when other content is removed.
> My question to this, is would you take the same line if the censorship was something nakedly egregious?
Do you object to Facebook censoring child pornography?
How nakedly egregious does the crime have to be before you're ok with Facebook censoring or removing it?
It doesn't sound like you consider solicitation to commit a crime of violence to be a serious enough offense. So I guess promoting, instigating or encouraging treason, sedition or subversive activities is acceptable to you.
And there are vast stretches of the internet where private or not the platform is infinitely permissive or a close approximation. So if people are feeling unheard, it’s pretty likely they have their work cut out in terms of building the audience for their voice.
The left has been in this position forever. But somehow we’re supposed to sympathize when a bunch of yokels storm into a parliamentary procedure and start shooting it up?
Unpopular opinion, but I would like HN mods to take action against comments like this.
Every time that this topic comes up, where the discussion is about the right and wrong of censorship, about finding a moral balance for safety and justice and expression, trolls like these jump in and give the "well it's not illegal so suck it" argument. It's tiresome, it's in bad faith, and it incites an emotional response from the reader.
So I'm... what? What are you talking about? In what universe is the topic of discussion here about what's popular? If you willingly facilitate people with the intent to hurt and kill, the blood is also on your hands for failure to act. This is about ethical duty. Facebook is trying not to shirk this ethical duty. The top-level comment believes they are misapplying and overreaching in their effort to do this. Both my comment and the one it replies to largely do not touch even this discussion, their shtick is property rights and mine is substantive discourse. If you think I made a point about censoring unpopular content, you replied to the wrong comment.
Secondly, your tone suggests you'd think I have an inconsistent worldview if I believe moderators should perform any moderation action at all? You'll have to explain how that makes sense to you, because moderators providing escalating warnings to users that post insubstantive and volatile comments is something that's been with me for a long time and I'm rather fond of the practice.
You’ve outright accuse a user of trolling when there’s no indication of this being so. In fact, it seems more likely that this is their genuine viewpoint. Nothing about it seems insubstantive or volatile to me and it’s pretty inoffensive compared the garbage fire these threads to end up with.
> This is about ethical duty. Facebook is trying not to shirk this ethical duty. The top-level comment believes they are misapplying and overreaching in their effort to do this. Both my comment and the one it replies to largely do not touch even this discussion, their shtick is property rights and mine is substantive discourse. If you think I made a point about censoring unpopular content, you replied to the wrong comment.
As to this, fair enough. I had wrongly assumed this comment to be implicitly taking the other side of the GP comment, simply calling for its removal instead of refuting it (you’d be surprised how much things like this happen)
I have three reasons why the comment they made was not worthwhile.
1. Tiresome; it gets made every thread, rebutted every thread, and no progress is made in the discussion. It's time to stop saying the same thing over and over.
2. In bad faith; it does not respond meaningfully to the discussion. Something being legal does not make it ethically optimal.
3. Inciteful; these comments are lightning rods for emotional arguments in the replies. If a comment always causes low-quality discussion, then it's a low-quality comment.
You're free to disagree with my points. I suppose I started the character shitflinging by calling the author a troll, but I really think anybody that's been reading HN for long enough (a decade, in that user's case) can do better if they intend to.
I also find common argument tropes pretty tiring, and I feel like I've typed out the same responses again and again, but pointing out the inconsistency is probably the best way... and in a year maybe you see someone else pointing it out instead of you, and it catches on... till the pendulum swings the other way.
At least as a reader of comments that's what I'd rather read: a well thought out rebuttal, than to never see the exchange due to moderation. Eternal September and all, it's fresh for someone.
Of course in this particular situation FB are siding with the existing laws of a well-established Deomcracy, though in a nearby future they could easily side with the laws of a Dictator in some other country, or even just side with whoever happens to be in charge of some country right now otherwise they'll be shut down in said country.
It seems pretty risky to allow a private company that controls as much "global voice" as FB does to censor people with no oversight.
Supporting 'the storming' IS a call to and in support of violence and attack on our country. what if it was phrased 'praising and supporting the [armed attack and illegal invasion] of the US Capitol'
What about if we were talking about allowing the widespread social propagation of those siding with and advocating for al qaeda on 9/12?
A rhetorically extreme comparison in terms of levels of violence BUT to me this is equally as <u>symbolic</u> of an attack on our Democracy and country. Even worse because it was from our own citizens attempting to actively stop Democratic process with weapons.
What I find chilling is that so much of the freezed peach brigade has relegated so much power to these paper tiger tech companies that they think content moderation is any kind of threat to public discourse.
There are zillions of unencumbered ways to have unmoderated discourse on the tubes. The entitlement of having it on the most amplifying platforms is something that people couldn’t dream of a decade ago.
Overthrow of a US election is treason. That is violent at its core. FB has aided and abetted the spinning up of emotion and irrational fear. That they do something to 'put the genie in the bottle' is the least they could do.
And its not permanent. The same people can discuss this at length at some future time. Just not during a riot.
Lets not pontificate about fine points of personal rights, while the nation's Capitol is under attack?
Facebook is a private company. It is their right to do what they want on their site. It seems fair that they should do what they believe is right.
You're free to say whatever unpopular thing you want, just not everywhere. Given how these events have played out, I suspect many of the tech giants will take similar actions.
They could still call for a peaceful protest, elsewhere.
This seems to be limited to a place where it's clear protests aren't peaceful and people are calling on / acting undemocratically and are pretty open about it.
Facilitating folks who wish to take undemocratic steps would seem to bring us closer to far more serious restrictions, imposed by those same folks as far as how a democracy is or isn't allowed to operate.
Knowing a bunch of people who are part of this mob, I'd have to say that the "peaceful protest" is not at all what they want. They want violence. They want revolt. To be honest, even now, I'm not sure most of them know what they're fighting for. There's no coherent message. What are they even protesting?
At a certain point, someone has to call it out as it really is - not what they say it is.
They're not fighting for. They're fighting against.
What are they against? I don't know a bunch of people who are part of this mob, but I'll make a guess. They are against a political establishment that has ignored them and their concerns.
I suspect yes on both. But also, I think, a sense that the country/society no longer values them, but instead looks down on them. The Democratic Party was once the party of the "working man". Now it regards many of those people as "a basket of deplorables".
Bernie appeals to the same kind of people, but the mainstream Democratic Party does not.
Honestly, who the hell cares what Facebook has to say about this? I genuinely don't understand how these random tech executives end up feeling an obligation to push out statements like these.
Is there any other explanation than these people having massively overblown feelings of self importance? I'm genuinely stumped.
And I'd like to add this whole thing wasn't possible before facebook/twitter, not possible at this scale. Technology without responsibility often leads on the wrong path.
Does Facebook really care about hate speech? Hell no. I have reported at least 10 content containing hate speech and violence. The only reaction to them was “they don’t seem to violate our community rules...”
Mostly because that attracts more people and is more catchy.
Indeed, their hate speech filter is very selective. I've reported threats against jews and they just say it's not a violation. Then advise me to block the content on my own.
I think it would be naive to take anything Facebook says at face value, given their history (one example of many is their claiming that they could not match whatsapp accounts with Fb accounts and then later requiring it).
I just see a company shifting its PR policy now that Democrats have taken control in Washington.
As far as I can tell, the "violence" in Washington is minimal outside of people physically overwhelming guards.
BLM and Antifa have been assaulting and terrorizing cities for months, and the effete latte-sippers at FB headquarters have been lauding them because they don't actually have to put up with the violence.
I missed the bit where BLM and the magical antifa organisation were rioting before police assaulted them. I missed the bit where BLM tried to use force to overthrow the elected government because they lost an election.
CHAZ. The Antifa assaults of people at DC. The fact that you can't get a business insured at any cost in Portland or Minneapolis. The mayor of Portland tear gassed by Antifa.
These people are burning down some of the richest cities in America, and the wealthy class in blue cities are too afraid to confront them on it because of what their friends think.
2021 is shaping up to be an exaggerated version of 2020 until people start confronting reality.
Personal attacks will get you banned here, and ideological flamewar is not cool either. Please stick to the intended spirit of the site when commenting here: thoughtful, substantive conversation—not snark, and certainly not internet-battle-to-the-death, which is what this sort of exchange amounts to.
Dang, I want to take time to thank you for working hard and keeping this place civil but also working to encourage discourse between opposing views.
Over the course of the past months I have seen several political threads and while they get heated, there is also good conversation. I am not sure how often that people are actually swayed but the fact that conversation can take place where other sites have turned into echo chambers or massive flame wars is a testament to your hard work.
> Personal attacks will get you banned here, and ideological flamewar is not cool either.
What Facebook is doing is an ideological flamewar. Now please stick to the script, pretend that HN and your moderation isn't totally biased on a certain worldview, and feel free to ban me.
My comment is quite frankly--in kind--for how unbecoming this response is from Facebook.
You may be right, but we're trying for something different here. The HN guidelines are all about not responding in kind. Why? Because it always feels like the other person started it and/or did worse. Rightly or wrongly, everyone feels this way—so if we're all going to respond "in kind", that's a recipe for a downward spiral and eventually for scorched earth. The reason we don't want that is that it's not an interesting outcome for anybody.
This means that, regardless of our views, we all have to work on learning to keep a certain standard even when the other side isn't keeping it. We don't do that because the other side necessarily deserves that from us. We do it for ourselves, and to help take care of the community we all belong to.
they did damage many businesses. Walk through minneapolis, place was destroyed. Storming the capitol is not appropriate, and i'm not drawing a moral equivalence, but those people will be arrested and charged. Many of the rioters over the summer were not. Celebrities raised bail money for them.
Watching the coverage live, the police treatment of today's insurrectionists and the BLM protestors is fairly stark. I watched the kettle tonight, and it looks like arrests were not a priority for the VA State Police on the ground.
Please stick to the intended spirit of the site when commenting here: thoughtful, substantive conversation—not snark, and certainly not internet-battle-to-the-death, which is what this sort of exchange amounts to.
Sure, perfectly non-violent except for the violence. And the occupation of a federal building for a few hours. Smash a few windows, jump a few barricades, fight a few cops, but no real violence.
Right now YouTube translates ads in my country Kazakhstan which literally ask people to overthrow the government at Jan, 10 with specific isbstructions. YouTube moderators accepted that ad and they did not remove it after complaints.
Big companies are influencing politics right now. They dictate their opinion to billions of people because they can.
What would you think if you would see an ad in YouTube which asks you to come to White House at specific date-time and start storming it? And you would see the same ad few days later, after you filled complain about inappropriate ad. I’m shocked.
> Big companies are influencing politics right now.
and they are influenced by politic parties as well, in my opinion.
People decides and takes the responsibility for their own actions, not big companies. So these big companies should only warn, and must not restrict their user/customer.
I can see the big companies are orienting our opinion. And we even didn't notice it.
I've been out for a while now. It was tough at first, but life as a whole got a lot better. Especially when I moved from not doing Facebook to doing other things I'd neglected.
Why does Facebook need to respond to this? Why do they need to tell us they're responding to this? "This is important. We are important. Ergo..."?
Best case, this would be just another case for application of preexisting policy. Without more fuel for the flame of those feeling victimized, rightly or wrongly, by bias, persecution, and conspiracy. Certainly mass violent action of this general kind was well within the scope of foreseeable outcomes during recent policy discussions. We saw similar photos of smaller events in at least one state capitol in the past year.
They’re responding because in the coming days it’s going to become obvious that a large number of people involved in this attempted coup were organising on Facebook.
211 comments
[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 253 ms ] threadIt depends which way you look at it -- and most importantly, remember, the winner will be the narrator.
I feel like things hit a critical mass today.
Or, better yet, don’t deplatform either because it’s easier to keep tabs on your enemies when they’re using a compromised platform.
Where and how do we draw the line!?
Secondly the whole “where do you draw the line?” argument is such a stupid one. Just because you can’t create a rule that is 100% perfect 100% of the time it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother trying at all. Laws are constantly being changed and evolving through court because people recognise that need.
Vs this: police not using any force until after people violently invaded the literal government because their favorite lost an election, and they want to stop the peaceful transfer of power. The police didn’t use any meaningful force until well after people had called attention to the disparate response.
These are clearly equivalent.
Posts that are asking to violate curfew and go into the streets to protest should be removed at the time these calls would violate said curfew, regardless of the reasoning behind the protest.
What AI are they using? It must be like a toddler.
This naive belief that "we should have more debate!!" will solve our problem must be put to rest. Instead, make the two sides go bowling together, or to a picnic. Then we'll see real change.
...but the structure of modern society, and the ideology since 1945 of having the UN around, is to lower the nationalistic propensity everywhere. And there was a good reason for that. But it has produced side-effects. Nationalism is a big no-no today.
So people don’t feel like they belong to a group. There are just, many groups living next to each other, London is a symbol of that but Paris is well in line, and all of France is made of groups who live next to each other, and don’t like each other.
Military service was praised by the elderly as instigating a sense of belonging and cohesion (among all the evil it also did on the weaker half of the population, I’m not having rosy glasses here).
So, basically, it has been more than 70 years that your idea of a nation going bowling together is a big no-no, and we work hard on mixing people, which... let’s say it doesn’t work yet, to be nice... I mean we all have a daughter who’s been raped by the « other » group so I don’t personally think it will work, but if it will, you’ll have to invent something that solders our co-country with us.
Of course bowling together is a good idea, but it works with small groups, and we’ve killed the glue that holds larger societies together (for good reasons at the base).
Also, my best friend and I cut ties after we’ve seen each other’s life choices is about exploiting the other, so I have at least one counter-example that going bowling together doesn’t tie people closer, when one is causing harm to the other with his life choices.
My opinions is, we do need less ideology, because we’ve reached peak brainwashing in 2020, and social networks need to accompany research and science and discovery of stats formulated in an digestible manner, instead of hammering onto people that one’s opinion is right and the others are evil.
One of the things FB is removing is “ Calls for protests — even peaceful ones — if they violate the curfew in DC”. Not many years ago we as lauded the ability of social media to galvanise protest against tyrannical regimes (eg the Arab Springs). Currently FB is removing calls to protests against decisions we agree with but what happens when we need to protest again things that we do not agree with? Does FB become the arbiter of what we are allowed to protest and what not?
Perhaps FB is not afraid of being defanged (pun intended) by Republicans, since they won’t control the House, Senate, or White House.
Antifa and BLM protestors were attacking Federal property in DC. They were tearing down Federal statues and publicly threatening to stage attacks on monuments.
Facebook is openly taking political sides. They're doing it now because Trump is essentially out of office, so Zuckerberg can safely expire his pact with Trump for FB to attempt to remain neutral.
No, those Antifa protests mere months ago were rushing the White House. But that's OK because Trump. [0] [1] [2]
How is one supposed to process such brazen hypocrisy?
Edit: Since I've been flagged for this comment, I'm adding links to video of the violence and destruction in front of the White House seven months ago. Don't remember these people being called "insurgents".
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KeITz_JYQE [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CERQjWhIIfY [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOl2nHMDO7E
There's a pretty straight line for them to deliver value through it via crowd sourcing, in a way they're uniquely positioned to.
Instead, the current implementation is basically a Section 230 PR stunt to deflect public outrage ('Sure we have terrible things on our platform, but see, they have a warning!').
no, they become the arbiter of what you are allowed to do on facebook. there exists a whole world outside of facebook, they only control their product.
I think we undervalue the amount of mobilization during the BLM protests that happened out side of social media, e.g. simple pamphlets, word of mouth, words on the radio, printed words, static ads and propaganda, etc.
We're pushing a decade from when these were now, and everything since then demonstrates malicious actors (be they state or private) quickly turned the tables and got the upper hand on the use of social media.
We need to stop holding up things that happened (and largely failed, but that's not the fault of social media) nearly a decade ago as evidence we shouldn't change things now. These networks are changing and developing fast, the Facebook of today is wildly different to the Facebook of 2011.
If the end result is Facebook is no longer an avenue for anyone to organise on, so be it. They've shown they're unable to properly moderate and handle that power.
That's a can of worms.
I don't buy this. They know what they are doing, they know what facebook is doing. They know how damaging it is, yet they do it anyway. For money.
Anyone that works at facebook is happily contributing to this mess, for money.
I worked on doing facial recognition. I was told it would be used to improve login systems. It actually was! It was also used to detect suspected criminals from stadium footage for the Chinese government.
What do you do with this? When even your best-intentioned work was turned against society?
- I don't think private or group chat is on the hook.
- I think that if group "pages" are responsible, then this at least potentially applies to BBSes and mailing lists and any blog with a comment section. Along this argument it sounds like Facebook is responsible because it's big, lightly moderated, and easy to use -- none of which I find particularly egregious. (Should we expect every website to fail at least one of those three conditions?)
- I think that leaves the "news feed algorithm" argument. That the content (news, ads, friends' posts) you see is tailored for engagement. I think this argument is the one most commonly held. I disagree with it, but it's the one I'm most partial to.
Are there other parts of social media that deserve the blame?
Allowing propaganda to fester on their websites with the same air of legitimacy as actual factual content for years now is the reason why we were terrorized today.
To look into that a bit more, I guess the "big" condition could go one of two ways:
- Bigger platforms have a proportionately greater impact than smaller platforms, and a proportionately greater responsibility to moderate content. Ideally actual factual content should be prohibited from all platforms -- Facebook, wikipedia, blogger, the internet generally. Propaganda should not be allowed to "fester" anywhere.
- Bigger platforms have a responsibility that smaller platforms simply do not. There can be places on the internet for them, but not too many under the same domain name.
I know that my characterization of neither possibility is charitable. I'd appreciate another perspective. Maybe the important point is that Facebook stores and serves the content. But DNS helps serve content, and ISPs help serve content, and software providers help serve content. Maybe storage is where your moral line is crossed? Maybe you think AWS and GCP and Azure etc have the same resposibility as Facebook (per unit of horrible content)? And the banking system probably has a moral incentive to cut off people doing questionable things? And if someone were to self-host, we'd probably need to think about who sold them their computers, electricity, bandwidth and hardware and food.
doing nothing for fear of radicalizing people is what got us here. it's not working.
They need to do a lot more then this.
(And that cuts both ways, daily there is anti-religious hatred on reddit's front page, or covid quacks on twitter). Falsehoods get more clicks then the truth, and they have been ridding that.
This is just an article of faith. Prove it.
> Restricting speech only leads to a narrowing set of viewpoints
Go share those viewpoints on the street. You are entitled to a voice. You aren't entitled to the means to make others hear it.
Either that, or you've already decided to use it to keep yourself in power.
And God help you if you fail, nothing is going to arm these people like the dignity of being officially persecuted.
So...you're agreeing with me that demagogues in the government should not have the power to silence criticism? Last time I checked, TwitFace is not the government. The government has no right to tell them who they can censor. That is also an infringement on free speech.
> the dignity of being officially persecuted.
What persecution? This is just the free market at work. Forcing a private company to carry their views would be tantamount to communism. I thought "these people" (your words) abhorred communism.
> Either that, or you've already decided to use it to keep yourself in power.
Get out of your bubble. Not everyone thinks like that.
On the one hand you have the Section 230 "truthers" who seem intent on peddling their publisher/platform horseshit. They don't seem to understand that if TwitFace were liable for the crap their users posted, they'd start moderating way harder. No more anonymity, ability to serve libel lawsuits to any user, hours-long moderation queues to control the crap. It could mean the end of honest online reviews (whatever's left of them).
And if they try to condition Section 230 liability protections on "neutrality", it'll get shot down in court really fast because forcing any point of view even "neutrality" (whatever that means) is an infringement on free speech. And if viewpoint "neutrality" does become enshrined in the law, every single message board, social media site, or other discussion platform will either shut down (because it's not profitable or worth the hassle) or turn into a hellscape of spam, porn, and trolls. Any legal content, no matter how off-topic, disruptive, flame-baity, troll-y, insulting or whatever, will have to be allowed. Otherwise you aren't "neutral" anymore, right?
Of course, IANAL or a fortune teller, so I may be completely wrong about this.
You’re allowed to say whatever you want. The government won’t stop you. Facebook and Twitter shouldn’t be amplifying it. The fact that they only do so when you express a message of hatred Turns this from a free speech to debate to a hateful incitement debate
The intense censoring of its users creates an atmosphere of mistrust. Users are treated like children so they behave like children.
Removing non violent posts that contain: “Calls for protests — even peaceful ones — if they violate the curfew in DC” or “Praise and support of the storming of the US Capitol” feels like such an overreach. It makes me sick.
Unpopular speech is the most important, perhaps the only speech that needs to be defended. As Rosa Luxembourg said: those who do not move do not notice their chains. Any discourse that isn’t allowed to happen in popular mediums don’t disappear, it happen underground, and it’s a lot harder to detect.
I get removing calls to violence, but I don’t want these tech overlords making these judgment calls.
(Hypothetically) If I can praise and support them, the majority of what they advocate being conceptually illegal if implemented, then yes... the First Amendment seems clear that anything shy of advocating and/or planning imminent action is permissible.
Of course, Facebook as a private company is under no obligation to follow Constitutional limits on permissible vs non-permissible speech. But should they be?
Absolutely not, the first amendment only applies to the government for a reason.
Perhaps there should be a government-run equivalent that is subject to the first amendment.
Though honestly, I think that would work out horribly. The number of people you can reach by shouting in a town square isn't very high, that's why the government can allow any kind of crank to do it. If you can reach millions...bad things would happen.
I'm not an American, and I still don't know if there was cheating or not, and actually I don't understand whether there is enough data on it to decide, though usually the bigger problem is when a president stays in the president seat forever.
Absolutely. Many people want to talk in the public (or at least town) square, which trends strongly towards a few providers (where everybody is), which establishes de facto global free speech limits via those provider's policies.
And "moving to another service" isn't a feasible redress.
Do we want to live in a world where conservatives only read ConservaPedia, and liberals read LibPedia? Or one where they're exposed to each other's ideas and share some facts?
>> the first amendment only applies to the government for a reason. [...] The number of people you can reach by shouting in a town square isn't very high, that's why the government can allow any kind of crank to do it. If you can reach millions...bad things would happen.
I'll assume that's the reason you were referring to? If so, we disagree on the intent of the First Amendment.
I don't think it's about audience reach, so much as relative power: government has historically had controls not available to private companies.
Yet in modern times, Facebook / Twitter / Youtube have as much or more control over their platforms, which are as bigger or bigger than the largest First Amendment-covered venue.
So while Facebook or Google can't send the FBI to your door, they can effectively disappear your idea / product from their ecosystems, and there are very few checks on that power, particularly when ranking algorithms are allowed to be shielded from public scrutiny.
Maybe that's the problem?
Some speeches are omens to terrible actions and they are usually supported by symbols.
I've seen the pictures of the Confederate Flag waving in the halls of the Senate, It was pretty disturbing to me.
If I am not wrong that never happened before, not even during the Civil war.
IMO if the flag entered the Capitol Building in 1860 it would have been normal, but today it has become the symbol of the resistance to the racial integration and the support to the segregation, hence it should be banned and people speaking openly about any "racial supremacy" should face consequences.
outside the contexts of "art or science, research or teaching" (quoting the The German Strafgesetzbuch (Criminal Code) in section § 86a) it is simply unacceptable.
After all it is written in the US Constitution that
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Absolutely. Which is why the US Supreme Court has continually debated and weighed First Amendment tension against public safety.
To my knowledge, the Confederate battle flag has never flown in the US Capitol. Not in July, 1864, when the Confederate Army stared at it across 6 miles and lightly defended lines [0]. Not after 1939 when it was hoisted in film by Gone with the Wind with sanitized nostalgia for an antebellum past [1]. And certainly not in the 50s and 60s when it was appropriated by the reborn Ku Klux Klan to represent their racist beliefs [2].
But it has been present at all three instances of armed insurrection against the US government -- Civil War, first US terrorist organization, and modern, militant Trump supporters.
And ultimately, it's those people's actions, not their ideas or symbols, that are dangerous.
As Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote in Whitney v. California [3], by way of Jefferson's views [4]:
"[Those who won our independence] believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones."
To consign evil to the shadows is no victory, for there are always shadows.
[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-washington-dc-ca...
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qSEVyzKmlyU
[2] https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-confederat...
[3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/274/357
[4] https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/eli...
In this particular case, I would quickly argue "Hell no, storming the US Capital is illegal for good cause, and I will never condone such acts of violence." But I would allow the discussion. We have to allow the discussion. Because if you draw a line here, then you will be censored when you argue for things like marijuana legalisation and gay marraige while they are still illegal as McCarthyites will censor you based on inciting people to break the law.
This is why 'incitement' has such a high bar.
I could be wrong. Maybe "praise and support for /storming/" is incitement to violence. I'm glad I'm not a judge that has to make that call. So long as the line isn't drawn on the wrong side of the points I argued above.
I strongly agree with this. I just don’t agree that you’re entitled to use other people’s publishing resources to do it.
There's probably not a clear line in every instance. Whether you think "praise and support" crosses the line, it would be pretty hard to claim it made things better, and pretty easy to see how those words, from the most powerful person in the country, might make a person more likely to continue doing whatever it is they're doing.
I don't think anyone can solve that. You can't disallow moderation in a space, otherwise you just have people screaming at you all the time. If there is freedom of expression, you can't then also force people to platform things they find abhorrent. The freedom to express surely also includes the freedom not to express.
I don't think there are easy answers, and "people should have to have the firehose of the internet sprayed at them unfiltered" seems like a bad take to me.
The spread of propaganda to undermine the democratic process is chilling.
Protocols instead of platforms:
https://medium.com/holochain/holochain-reinventing-applicati...
Holochain’s novelty lies in its use of DHT’s to create, store and retrieve data. Like Git source chains, it then uses cryptography to guarantee data integrity in this distributed application context. You’re basically agreeing in advance on which functions to use. Instead of using proprietary functions that are kept secret behind a firewall or limited through an API, Holochain allows you to create and use apps that directly enforce and verify open rules in a 100% distributed peer to peer way. To the best of my knowledge this sort of system hasn’t been seen or invented before.
Thy have great descriptions on their website:
[from https://holo.host/faq/]
“Holochain maintains data integrity without the need for global consensus. It uses an agent-centric approach, combining ideas from BitTorrent and Git, along with cryptographic signatures, peer validation, and gossip.
An overview:
- hApps have validation rules.
- Agents have their own local, tamper-resistant hash-chains recording their actions, built upon hApp rules.
- Each hash-chain entry is cryptographically signed (multi-party actions, like transactions, are mutually countersigned).
- Data is shared to random peers who validate it.
- Validators gossip to share good data, warn against bad data, and blacklist bad actors.“
Their code is free software, available on Github here: https://github.com/holochain
People don't want everyone to have a complete platform to them to say anything they want. So somewhere someone has to be doing some deciding of who gets a platform. Protocols can't magically solve that problem.
I think there is something to giving people options on what moderation they want distinct from having to limit who they can communicate to, but all of the current attempts at that don't do a good enough job, they all offer technical solutions, but no real solutions.
What you really need is for one of these protocols to get a particular instance that does an amazing job of "no nazis, no one telling you to die or that you shouldn't have human rights", while giving you the room to move and remain on the protocol if the instance you are on starts to limit you or you start to disagree with the moderation.
Of course, this begs the question of who is going to be doing that moderation and why. That's the hard part, not the decentralised platform.
Applications built using Holochain are literally using a novel pattern that hasn’t existed before. If you know of a project that uses the same agent-centric ontology, please let me know, because I’ve looked far. As to why the lack of diversity of protocols in existing platforms (or non-usage of new protocols), I think the reason many platforms/protocols aren’t adopted is because the commons has been plundered: trade secrets block progress and have led to the creation of the web as walled gardens. Great for capitalists and advertisers, but crap for individuals.
> People don't want everyone to have a complete platform to them to say anything they want. So somewhere someone has to be doing some deciding of who gets a platform. Protocols can't magically solve that problem.
Who is 'people'? Who do you speak for? Could you share any sources that back up your claim?
From your (seemingly) quick dismissal, I’m curious to know if you read up on the actual tech? I’d be curious if you have any critique on the underlying tech?
I agree that any community needs moderation but that doesn’t mean we should have a faceless company doing it. It can be done by making cooperative block-lists/blacklists, and sharing those among participants. We don’t need the middlemen at all, in fact they are unaccountable, and are dangerous by themselves since their only focus is to exploit users and extract a profit for shareholders.
As I said though, I’m curious about any critique about Holochain tech (the software pattern). Personally I think it’s inevitable that we will move in that direction imo: the direction of an agent-centric web, a space of direct protocol negotiation and renegotiation.
I’d like to make you aware that Holochain also paves the way for new types of value accounting systems. If you are curious, check out the work of Lynn Foster, Bob Haugen, Pospi and others on hREA / http://valueflo.ws. They are in the later stages of developing a fully featured, fully distributed, Resources Events Agents (REA) accounting system built using Holochain - creating one of the world’s first Network Resource Planning software [1] that uses an official ISO standard.
It's some really groundbreaking stuff here, that's got me super excited and hopeful.
[1] https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Network_Resource_Planning
> Who is 'people'? Who do you speak for? Could you share any sources that back up your claim?
The fact that we don't allow people to scream whatever they want in your face as you walk around the supermarket.
You don't seem to be able to see the forest for the trees and are trying to lawyer me on this. How do I know people don't want literally everyone to have a direct line to them? I'm a human being, and it is obvious as hell.
You are just completely missing the point of my post.
Maybe. I feel like you’re completely missing the point of my post too.
It's unpopular to say this, but both sides see it this way.
We can observe reality to determine who is telling the truth, rather than blindly repeating lies alongside truths.
The right in the US have created an alternative reality to live in, but it clashes with actual reality if you spend even a little time comparing what they say to what has actually happened in the world.
If that were true, we'd never have had the Fairness Doctrine, and the debate over Net Neutrality would have been over before it began.
Compelled speech or forced speech is not free speech.
A similar rule, the equal-time rule, still exists. Arguments that it violates the First Amendment have never worked in court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule
The equal time rule has so many exceptions that it might as well not exist. Also, to my knowledge, it has not been extensively reviewed by the Supreme Court on constitutionality grounds, probably because of those exceptions that mean there's never really a case to fight over. The one case I could find wasn't fighting the rule itself, but rather it's interpretation.
It's really hard to argue that websites are a limited public resource.
Until we can find a way to make a Mastodon better than Facebook, it'll be impossible to gain a critical mass for people to take it seriously.
This might come from marketing the benefits of decentralization, maybe finding a way to have a universal "login" page that can direct users to particular nodes, etc.
So, in the perfect world, you have all these nodes with different levels and types of moderation and people can communicate across them, but pick the level and type of moderation they want by what instance they use, right?
The reality is, no one has a good idea how to moderate something at that scale, even with the resources that come from have a walled garden. You don't even get that, and you want better moderation to draw people away? No one is doing it.
Then, on the other end, you want someone to believe in free speech enough to host the completely unfiltered one, and not baulk at some point when abhorrent shit is on their server? You just end up with a nazi server run by nazis, because those are the only people who actually want that.
It's "solved" only in theory, in practice, there is no practical draw for real-world users.
Facebook is private property.
Let's pretend there was a massive Harvey Weinstein-like sexual harassment scandal at Facebook Inc. And Facebook responded by removing any posts mentioning the scandal or blocking the account of any journalists that reported on it.
Would you shrug your shoulders and say "private property". If not, then I think you have to admit that Facebook has some obligations to not abuse its moderation powers. If not in the formal legal sense, at least in a cultural and moral sense.
I think the grandparent was indicating that this is mostly a debate between the positions "Facebook should be broadly permissive of legal speech" and "Facebook should shape the discussion in ways that benefit the public good". The argument that Facebook has a moral right to do whatever the hell they like is mostly just a cudgel of an argument, though, to be picked up when it suits whichever of the two "real" arguments you support.
One refutation of this "private property argument is instrumental" position is the one the grandparent mentioned: That the people making the argument would "support" Facebook taking down speech that they deem "just". If the private property argument only holds for taking down unpalatable speech, it's not a position that's held honestly.
Making the argument even when it's not compelling (that is, even when there are other hypothetical cases in which it doesn't sway you) isn't necessarily hypocritical.
There is also a difference between disliking a company covering up its own bad acts and a company preventing a 3rd party from using its resources for a thing that walks up to the edge (and in many people's opinion crosses over) into inciting other illegal acts.
Sounds like a win-win to me.
Since it should be obvious not to use Facebook if you dont agree with their service’s tendencies.
Do you object to Facebook censoring child pornography?
How nakedly egregious does the crime have to be before you're ok with Facebook censoring or removing it?
It doesn't sound like you consider solicitation to commit a crime of violence to be a serious enough offense. So I guess promoting, instigating or encouraging treason, sedition or subversive activities is acceptable to you.
We conceded our communication to private ISPs, to private, device manufacturers, to private websites.
When people feel they cannot be heard, something is going to give.
The left has been in this position forever. But somehow we’re supposed to sympathize when a bunch of yokels storm into a parliamentary procedure and start shooting it up?
> The internet is nearly entirely private and controls the vast majority of communication.
Yes it's private, that doesn't mean they can't own it, they can setup their own private servers and be free of restriction.
Every time that this topic comes up, where the discussion is about the right and wrong of censorship, about finding a moral balance for safety and justice and expression, trolls like these jump in and give the "well it's not illegal so suck it" argument. It's tiresome, it's in bad faith, and it incites an emotional response from the reader.
Secondly, your tone suggests you'd think I have an inconsistent worldview if I believe moderators should perform any moderation action at all? You'll have to explain how that makes sense to you, because moderators providing escalating warnings to users that post insubstantive and volatile comments is something that's been with me for a long time and I'm rather fond of the practice.
> This is about ethical duty. Facebook is trying not to shirk this ethical duty. The top-level comment believes they are misapplying and overreaching in their effort to do this. Both my comment and the one it replies to largely do not touch even this discussion, their shtick is property rights and mine is substantive discourse. If you think I made a point about censoring unpopular content, you replied to the wrong comment.
As to this, fair enough. I had wrongly assumed this comment to be implicitly taking the other side of the GP comment, simply calling for its removal instead of refuting it (you’d be surprised how much things like this happen)
1. Tiresome; it gets made every thread, rebutted every thread, and no progress is made in the discussion. It's time to stop saying the same thing over and over.
2. In bad faith; it does not respond meaningfully to the discussion. Something being legal does not make it ethically optimal.
3. Inciteful; these comments are lightning rods for emotional arguments in the replies. If a comment always causes low-quality discussion, then it's a low-quality comment.
You're free to disagree with my points. I suppose I started the character shitflinging by calling the author a troll, but I really think anybody that's been reading HN for long enough (a decade, in that user's case) can do better if they intend to.
At least as a reader of comments that's what I'd rather read: a well thought out rebuttal, than to never see the exchange due to moderation. Eternal September and all, it's fresh for someone.
Facebook needs to make all posts non-public to become private property. Then they can moderate.
Of course in this particular situation FB are siding with the existing laws of a well-established Deomcracy, though in a nearby future they could easily side with the laws of a Dictator in some other country, or even just side with whoever happens to be in charge of some country right now otherwise they'll be shut down in said country.
It seems pretty risky to allow a private company that controls as much "global voice" as FB does to censor people with no oversight.
Surely this will end badly.
You are not
What about if we were talking about allowing the widespread social propagation of those siding with and advocating for al qaeda on 9/12?
A rhetorically extreme comparison in terms of levels of violence BUT to me this is equally as <u>symbolic</u> of an attack on our Democracy and country. Even worse because it was from our own citizens attempting to actively stop Democratic process with weapons.
There are zillions of unencumbered ways to have unmoderated discourse on the tubes. The entitlement of having it on the most amplifying platforms is something that people couldn’t dream of a decade ago.
And its not permanent. The same people can discuss this at length at some future time. Just not during a riot.
Lets not pontificate about fine points of personal rights, while the nation's Capitol is under attack?
You're free to say whatever unpopular thing you want, just not everywhere. Given how these events have played out, I suspect many of the tech giants will take similar actions.
This seems to be limited to a place where it's clear protests aren't peaceful and people are calling on / acting undemocratically and are pretty open about it.
Facilitating folks who wish to take undemocratic steps would seem to bring us closer to far more serious restrictions, imposed by those same folks as far as how a democracy is or isn't allowed to operate.
At a certain point, someone has to call it out as it really is - not what they say it is.
What are they against? I don't know a bunch of people who are part of this mob, but I'll make a guess. They are against a political establishment that has ignored them and their concerns.
Bernie appeals to the same kind of people, but the mainstream Democratic Party does not.
That's... a pretty questionable precedent.
Is there any other explanation than these people having massively overblown feelings of self importance? I'm genuinely stumped.
I just see a company shifting its PR policy now that Democrats have taken control in Washington.
BLM and Antifa have been assaulting and terrorizing cities for months, and the effete latte-sippers at FB headquarters have been lauding them because they don't actually have to put up with the violence.
I will be glad when Facebook is gone.
CHAZ. The Antifa assaults of people at DC. The fact that you can't get a business insured at any cost in Portland or Minneapolis. The mayor of Portland tear gassed by Antifa.
These people are burning down some of the richest cities in America, and the wealthy class in blue cities are too afraid to confront them on it because of what their friends think.
2021 is shaping up to be an exaggerated version of 2020 until people start confronting reality.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Ban me.
Over the course of the past months I have seen several political threads and while they get heated, there is also good conversation. I am not sure how often that people are actually swayed but the fact that conversation can take place where other sites have turned into echo chambers or massive flame wars is a testament to your hard work.
What Facebook is doing is an ideological flamewar. Now please stick to the script, pretend that HN and your moderation isn't totally biased on a certain worldview, and feel free to ban me.
My comment is quite frankly--in kind--for how unbecoming this response is from Facebook.
This means that, regardless of our views, we all have to work on learning to keep a certain standard even when the other side isn't keeping it. We don't do that because the other side necessarily deserves that from us. We do it for ourselves, and to help take care of the community we all belong to.
"Burning areas" would be the extent, if one is being accurate.
We're not talking 1968 Washington riots.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Sure, perfectly non-violent except for the violence. And the occupation of a federal building for a few hours. Smash a few windows, jump a few barricades, fight a few cops, but no real violence.
Big companies are influencing politics right now. They dictate their opinion to billions of people because they can.
What would you think if you would see an ad in YouTube which asks you to come to White House at specific date-time and start storming it? And you would see the same ad few days later, after you filled complain about inappropriate ad. I’m shocked.
and they are influenced by politic parties as well, in my opinion.
People decides and takes the responsibility for their own actions, not big companies. So these big companies should only warn, and must not restrict their user/customer.
I can see the big companies are orienting our opinion. And we even didn't notice it.
If not, seems like this is a gift to the rioters, overall.
Best case, this would be just another case for application of preexisting policy. Without more fuel for the flame of those feeling victimized, rightly or wrongly, by bias, persecution, and conspiracy. Certainly mass violent action of this general kind was well within the scope of foreseeable outcomes during recent policy discussions. We saw similar photos of smaller events in at least one state capitol in the past year.