Not surprising, considering how any mention of covid, no matter how incidental, flags a post with fact-checking. Every single post there is likely put through sentiment analysis and sent off to any number of pipelines if found to warrant further attention.
It's the world we live in, not the one I grew up in. We could easily put the genie back in the bottle by hosting all this stuff ourselves, and encrypting it before sending it off to our friends, and using secure operating systems. However, the social inertia means that will never happen en masse.
It just depends on the extent of it and the scale. Piss enough people off enough, and they will want to move. I think we are close personally. It doesn’t take that much for a group of conservative people to move somewhere else if everyone is pissed. They just need another platform.
The conservatives keep on moving from /r/the_donald to Voat to Gab to Parler. It is just that they end up creating such a cesspool of hate and misinformation that nobody wants to do business with that platform, whether it be infrastructure, payment processors, or advertisers. That makes it unviable in the long term.
The question is, do “conservative people” only want other conservative people as an audience?
While there are plenty of competent conservatives, there also seem to be a lot of people whose primary motive in posting on Facebook is to “trigger the libs” and that doesn’t happen without “libs” to “trigger”
Look at Twitter, you see a similar sentiment on the other side.
In the television industry, you've seen a massive segmentation in the news and TV channels over the years. 40 years ago, there were only a few news channels that tried to target the largest demographics possible. Because of that, they largely stayed neutral. However, market competition and other forces have led to a separation between left- and right-leaning news channels. If given the choice, people avoid information that doesn't align with their worldview.
Fast forward to now. Social media companies are anything but unbiased, enforcing a mentality of "tolerance," multiculturalism, and cultural relativism. In such an environment, pushback from people who disagree makes a lot of sense, though it isn't good.
This back-and-forth will never end until there's government regulation that tells the creators of digital communication platforms, in no uncertain terms, "You do not get to control the content on the platform you have built, because the platform exists to serve the people of this country, and this country has law enforcement agencies whose job it is to police any illegal communication."
As long as corporations have the right to control what people say just because it's on their servers, and as long as they don't feel threatened by the state, this problem will persist.
No country has the capacity to have law enforcement go on active patrols in the digital space, many fail even to intervene when they're called in.
Platforms need to have some ability to moderate themselves, the things that are sorely lacking is due process in front of an actual court on one side, and some form of international agreement on how to deal with freedom of speech on the other side.
Just take Nazi symbols: it's perfectly legal in the US to fly a Swastika flag on your home, to take a picture of that and to post it on Twitter. In Germany, all three of these acts would be illegal per §86a StGB (with the exception if one was a journalist and tweeted that photo to publicly document this). In other countries, e.g. Russia, flying the rainbow flag may be illegal - something that is perfectly legal and mainstream in Western countries.
Porn is another thing: what is legal in the US under freedom of speech / art, may be illegal in Muslim countries. Not to mention that while porn may be legal in the US, advertisers still don't really want to have their brand appear next to fetish porn.
Should Twitter now ban such accounts worldwide, restrict the availability of the content to certain jurisdictions, should it do nothing?
These are highly relevant problems, which we need to solve as societies of this world.
So, if a country says "you cannot criticize anyone who promotes exclusionary ethnostates", or even "you cannot criticize anyone who promotes exclusionary Jewish ethnostates in particular", then Facebook should ban that content on behalf of the exclusionary ethnostate supporters.
Otherwise, allow criticism of exclusionary ethnostates. White supremacy and zionism are two sides of the same coin—both feed off each other, justify each other, complement each other.
> So, if a country says "you cannot criticize anyone who promotes exclusionary ethnostates", or even "you cannot criticize anyone who promotes exclusionary Jewish ethnostates in particular", then Facebook should ban that content on behalf of the exclusionary ethnostate supporters.
Exactly these kinds of questions are what should be regulated by international agreements between countries.
> White supremacy and zionism are two sides of the same coin—both feed off each other
HN has the right to control what people say here. Are you against that as well? The reality is that internet discussion without moderation is virtually impossible.
many people here believe private business has a right to control anything they please (their platform, their rules) and to some extent they are right but the infuriating thing is that the banhammer is obviously not just. so one has to ask; what is their function?
Precisely this. A blog gets to decide what comments to allow. But if Facebook wants to connect everyone in my country then we as a people have a right to decide what is allowed and what isn't, not some billionaire. This is especially egregious for people outside the US where Facebook is a foreign company.
Why not let the market take care of it? I think it will in the long run.
We have CNN and Fox, because we want news and media through the lens of similar people politically? Why wouldn’t social media be the same in the long run?
The distinction between when Zionist is acceptable is bizarre. If someone acts on the ideology, you can't criticize them but if they don't act it's fine? I'd guess that their excuse would be that only Israeli's could be responsible for the forced expulsion of Palestinians while anyone can be a Zionist but it just seems backwards to me.
I'm a pretty staunch critic of Israel's actions overall, but I shy away from using the word Zionist, because I think it's too bound up and associated with the language used by some serious anti-Semites. And no, I don't think criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic, but anti-Semitism is still out there (and growing again it seems), and often starts with legitimate criticism of Israel and then crosses lines. I don't really want to make fellow company with some of the people who make a point of using the word as their focal point of attack. It's far too easy to lose nuance in this discussion.
Yeah. The word has taken on the connotations of a slur. Serious, charitable, good-faith critics, of any government (or any group, for that matter), should avoid slurs like the plague. Stick with criticizing policies.
The government of Israel should be criticized but that has nothing to do with who they are, only what they do.
This is a good point. The dictionary contains definitions but misses social context, which changes over time. Just like the language we use for disability, racial identity, or any other emotionally charged subject.
Although I have a great-grandparents that were ethnic hebrews... I must say that I am not surprised anti-semitism is growing, considering many people now considered "villains" for whatever reason ARE jewish.
The average human is a simple creature and quickly create some heuristics of the kind: "if a bunch of people from certain group is evil, then the whole group is evil".
Doesn't help that it is very hard to find neutral ground too, for example Austria was supposed to be the neutral ground for negotiations between Iran and US in the Iran vs Israel nuke conflict, then they went ahead and hoisted Israeli flags. Iran now is sending their delegation home basically.
I was talking about Jeffrey Epstein, Ivanka Trump, Zuckerberg, Netanyahu, Soros, Larry Ellison, Joseph Safra, and the list keeps and keeps going.
See, you listed some politicians, but many "common" people don't care about these people.
People DO care about their privacy when they are using applications that literally affect the whole planet, they DO care about pedophiles living nearby (for example whoever lived near Epstein or Maxwells), people DO care about a whole economy tanking because of corrupt shenanigans (what Safra did) and so on.
Even then you are not totally wrong, a lot of people think all north koreans are evil, because of their leadership, a lot of people think all iranians are evil, because of their leadership...
Well, in USA seemly both halves of the country believe the other half is evil because they voted for Trump or Hillary.
You cherry-picked a bunch of names out of the world's population of thousands of wealthy influential people, and you cherry-picked the people that happen to be Jewish (or married to Jewish people?) and used that selection of names to support... what? Some implication that there's some Jewish pedophiles or economy manipulators?
Sorry, this is bordering on "elders of zion" garbage -- "Rothschilds" "World banking conspiracy" blah blah blah, it is a kind of dog whistling going back to the 1930s and earlier, and it's repulsive. And basically, what you just performed here is classic anti-Semitism, even if you don't recognize it.
While I also tend not to use the word, what other word would you use for the people colonizing your home? Keeping in mind that the reason Zionist is forbidden is that it could only mean "Israeli," so that word is presumably also not acceptable there.
I always wonder why Israel gets so much exceptionally good support from USA. You can't boycott made in Israel product, Israel is always considered as defending (doesn't matter if root cause in specific cases were Israel) even though it has superior military advantage comparing to tiny Palestine, who uses toy like rockets, don't get me wrong, I am making an assumption based on damage their rockets made on the streets of Israel.
Anything related to Zionism, Nazi or some conspiracy theories against Israel is prohibited, but using words like Islamic extremist or Muslim terrorist are fine (even though it hurts another 1B Muslim population). Same applies to what Twitter did to pro-Trump articles/tweets. Not saying Trump is good or bad, but some people had opinion pro-Biden, others pro-Trump, but Biden got unfair advantage when Twitter started censoring pro-Trump articles.
I think this double standard is going to hurt next generations, by silencing alternative ideas/opinions. All opinions should be equal, unless it promotes danger to human life.
There's a lot going on but the basic reasons are:
Evangelical white Christians think the existence of Israel is necessary to bring about the Apocalypse, a thing they want because they go to heaven.
The Israeli right wing wants criticism of Israel to be inseparable from criticism of Jewish people. This means you can't criticize Israel without being painted as anti-Semitic, and to be fair there are a lot ppl who criticize Israel for deeply anti-Semitic reasons.
The deep irony of this is that Israel have an apartheid system that discriminates against many ethnic Semites (such as Palestinians). That and they supply military arms and training for far right groups in South and Central America - include ones with anti-Semite beliefs.
thanks for article with alternative view! I agree with some parts of it and not with others, but as I said before opinions should not be oppressed/censored if it doesn't promote violence or danger to human life
I didn't downvote you and I won't respond to the main thrust of your comment because I don't have a good response, but I want to point out that those "toy like rockets" killed a man not three kilometers from my home in Tel Aviv today. They're real and serious. The reason that more people don't die is that Israel has strong defensive technology, both in terms of the Iron Dome (anti-missile system that intercepts about 90% of rockets and blows them up mid-air, after which metal debris rains down on the street) and warning sirens (if you're in Tel Aviv and you hear a siren you have 90 seconds [0] to get to a shelter, most buildings and homes are built with fortified air-raid shelters).
Please note that I am aware that the suffering of Israeli citizens under rocket fire pales in comparison to the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli air strikes. I am shaken when I feel/hear rockets exploding nearby, I cannot imagine what it must feel like to have entire buildings around you blown up and reduced to rubble. Unlike Israelis, Gazan civilians are largely defenseless, and I can only imagine how terrifying that must be. So nothing in my comment is meant to belittle their suffering and I'm not trying to score victim points in some ridiculous competition. Just clarifying the misconception that Hamas rockets are toys, give them a little more credit. Their military abilities are not nearly as advanced as Israel's but they're not nothing either.
[0] If you're in Sderot, I believe you have just 15 seconds.
sorry for my ignorance regarding scale of damage causing rockets which I mentioned as "toy rockets". I didn't mean to belittle damage either, I used toy like compared to Israel rockets which are highly accurate and as you mentioned Palestinians have no defense line.
Prolific Israel critic Norman Finkelstein, has suggested that the Palestinians' supporters should replace "Zionism" with "Jewish supremacy". Because to them, Zionism and Jewish supremacy is the same thing. It would be quite difficult for Facebook and the other tech giants to ban "fuck Jewish supremacy" while allowing "fuck white supremacy" (or "fuck black supremacy"). Another advantage would be that labeling Israel a "Jewish supremacist state" is both a more precise and a more serious allegation than labeling it a "Zionist state". Given what is going on in Gaza and the evictions in East Jerusalem, the allegation probably isn't far-fetched to the general public. Furthermore, it allows for those who define themselves as Zionists not to feel threatened, unless they also support supremacist policies. Like how I don't feel threatened by condemnations of white supremacy or how most Muslims don't feel threatened by condemnations of ISIS or Saudi Arabia.
However, unlike white supremacy, Jewish supremacy has strong non-Jewish support; from evangelical Christians in the US and many right-wing parties in Europe. To the latter group, Israel's treatment of "the Muslims" is something to be imitated in their home countries.
In a way, the war over the word Zionism is like the war over Communism in reverse. Communists had to defend or downplay the Soviet Union's human rights abuses, exactly like Zionists today defend Israel's abuses. They had to argue that Communism wasn't the same thing as the Soviet System, just like Zionists have to argue that Zionism isn't the same thing as Israel's record-breaking 50-year-old long occupation. The Communists lost the war over the word and today most Communists call themselves Socialists instead (me included). We'll see if the Zionists can defend their word better. They certainly are in a much better position to do so than the Communists ever were.
> However, unlike white supremacy, Jewish supremacy has strong non-Jewish support; from evangelical Christians in the US and many right-wing parties in Europe. To the latter group, Israel's treatment of "the Muslims" is something to be imitated in their home countries.
Sorry to say I know a few individuals who are disgusting racists but somehow always seem to root for Israel when the news hit about the latest big enough skirmish or weapons testing/bombing
46 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 99.4 ms ] threadIt's the world we live in, not the one I grew up in. We could easily put the genie back in the bottle by hosting all this stuff ourselves, and encrypting it before sending it off to our friends, and using secure operating systems. However, the social inertia means that will never happen en masse.
While there are plenty of competent conservatives, there also seem to be a lot of people whose primary motive in posting on Facebook is to “trigger the libs” and that doesn’t happen without “libs” to “trigger”
In the television industry, you've seen a massive segmentation in the news and TV channels over the years. 40 years ago, there were only a few news channels that tried to target the largest demographics possible. Because of that, they largely stayed neutral. However, market competition and other forces have led to a separation between left- and right-leaning news channels. If given the choice, people avoid information that doesn't align with their worldview.
Fast forward to now. Social media companies are anything but unbiased, enforcing a mentality of "tolerance," multiculturalism, and cultural relativism. In such an environment, pushback from people who disagree makes a lot of sense, though it isn't good.
As long as corporations have the right to control what people say just because it's on their servers, and as long as they don't feel threatened by the state, this problem will persist.
Platforms need to have some ability to moderate themselves, the things that are sorely lacking is due process in front of an actual court on one side, and some form of international agreement on how to deal with freedom of speech on the other side.
Just take Nazi symbols: it's perfectly legal in the US to fly a Swastika flag on your home, to take a picture of that and to post it on Twitter. In Germany, all three of these acts would be illegal per §86a StGB (with the exception if one was a journalist and tweeted that photo to publicly document this). In other countries, e.g. Russia, flying the rainbow flag may be illegal - something that is perfectly legal and mainstream in Western countries.
Porn is another thing: what is legal in the US under freedom of speech / art, may be illegal in Muslim countries. Not to mention that while porn may be legal in the US, advertisers still don't really want to have their brand appear next to fetish porn.
Should Twitter now ban such accounts worldwide, restrict the availability of the content to certain jurisdictions, should it do nothing?
These are highly relevant problems, which we need to solve as societies of this world.
So, if a country says "you cannot criticize anyone who promotes exclusionary ethnostates", or even "you cannot criticize anyone who promotes exclusionary Jewish ethnostates in particular", then Facebook should ban that content on behalf of the exclusionary ethnostate supporters.
Otherwise, allow criticism of exclusionary ethnostates. White supremacy and zionism are two sides of the same coin—both feed off each other, justify each other, complement each other.
Exactly these kinds of questions are what should be regulated by international agreements between countries.
> White supremacy and zionism are two sides of the same coin—both feed off each other
What?
We have CNN and Fox, because we want news and media through the lens of similar people politically? Why wouldn’t social media be the same in the long run?
It just moderates content posted on FB.
The government of Israel should be criticized but that has nothing to do with who they are, only what they do.
The average human is a simple creature and quickly create some heuristics of the kind: "if a bunch of people from certain group is evil, then the whole group is evil".
Doesn't help that it is very hard to find neutral ground too, for example Austria was supposed to be the neutral ground for negotiations between Iran and US in the Iran vs Israel nuke conflict, then they went ahead and hoisted Israeli flags. Iran now is sending their delegation home basically.
Depending on your politics, pick your villains:
- Trump
- Bush Jr
- Putin
- Kim Jong-un
- Ayatollah Khomeini
- Obama
- Hillary Clinton
None of these people, who are considered some of the world's biggest villains by huge numbers of people, are (to my knowledge) Jewish.
See, you listed some politicians, but many "common" people don't care about these people.
People DO care about their privacy when they are using applications that literally affect the whole planet, they DO care about pedophiles living nearby (for example whoever lived near Epstein or Maxwells), people DO care about a whole economy tanking because of corrupt shenanigans (what Safra did) and so on.
Even then you are not totally wrong, a lot of people think all north koreans are evil, because of their leadership, a lot of people think all iranians are evil, because of their leadership...
Well, in USA seemly both halves of the country believe the other half is evil because they voted for Trump or Hillary.
Sorry, this is bordering on "elders of zion" garbage -- "Rothschilds" "World banking conspiracy" blah blah blah, it is a kind of dog whistling going back to the 1930s and earlier, and it's repulsive. And basically, what you just performed here is classic anti-Semitism, even if you don't recognize it.
Anything related to Zionism, Nazi or some conspiracy theories against Israel is prohibited, but using words like Islamic extremist or Muslim terrorist are fine (even though it hurts another 1B Muslim population). Same applies to what Twitter did to pro-Trump articles/tweets. Not saying Trump is good or bad, but some people had opinion pro-Biden, others pro-Trump, but Biden got unfair advantage when Twitter started censoring pro-Trump articles.
I think this double standard is going to hurt next generations, by silencing alternative ideas/opinions. All opinions should be equal, unless it promotes danger to human life.
The Israeli right wing wants criticism of Israel to be inseparable from criticism of Jewish people. This means you can't criticize Israel without being painted as anti-Semitic, and to be fair there are a lot ppl who criticize Israel for deeply anti-Semitic reasons.
https://samharris.org/podcasts/why-dont-i-criticize-israel/
Please note that I am aware that the suffering of Israeli citizens under rocket fire pales in comparison to the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli air strikes. I am shaken when I feel/hear rockets exploding nearby, I cannot imagine what it must feel like to have entire buildings around you blown up and reduced to rubble. Unlike Israelis, Gazan civilians are largely defenseless, and I can only imagine how terrifying that must be. So nothing in my comment is meant to belittle their suffering and I'm not trying to score victim points in some ridiculous competition. Just clarifying the misconception that Hamas rockets are toys, give them a little more credit. Their military abilities are not nearly as advanced as Israel's but they're not nothing either.
[0] If you're in Sderot, I believe you have just 15 seconds.
However, unlike white supremacy, Jewish supremacy has strong non-Jewish support; from evangelical Christians in the US and many right-wing parties in Europe. To the latter group, Israel's treatment of "the Muslims" is something to be imitated in their home countries.
In a way, the war over the word Zionism is like the war over Communism in reverse. Communists had to defend or downplay the Soviet Union's human rights abuses, exactly like Zionists today defend Israel's abuses. They had to argue that Communism wasn't the same thing as the Soviet System, just like Zionists have to argue that Zionism isn't the same thing as Israel's record-breaking 50-year-old long occupation. The Communists lost the war over the word and today most Communists call themselves Socialists instead (me included). We'll see if the Zionists can defend their word better. They certainly are in a much better position to do so than the Communists ever were.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
> However, unlike white supremacy, Jewish supremacy has strong non-Jewish support; from evangelical Christians in the US and many right-wing parties in Europe. To the latter group, Israel's treatment of "the Muslims" is something to be imitated in their home countries.
Sorry to say I know a few individuals who are disgusting racists but somehow always seem to root for Israel when the news hit about the latest big enough skirmish or weapons testing/bombing