That the political left would capitalize and exercise their power based on a false narrative that there was an insurrection and ban a former POTUS from their platform which is a de facto monopoly of the American public square?
The biggest surprise is that it's a temporary ban instead of a permanent one. (and a temporary ban that ends at a coincidentally convenient time should he run in 2024)
People are not immutable. It would set a bad precedent to make the ban permanent, versus revisiting and re-evaluating the decision in the future.
This person likely won’t change, but the process should still be reasonable depending on it’s expected lifecycle and the variety of folks who are going to be evaluated by it.
Right, but a two-year suspension is essentially unheard of in the tech world. Generally temporary suspensions last up to one month then just go permanent with virtually no appeals.
This is still special treatment. If you or I were banned from Facebook, unless you're good friends with a staff member, we would likely be permanently banned.
> This is still special treatment. If you or I were banned from Facebook, unless you're good friends with a staff member, we would likely be permanently banned.
Since this is supposedly the maximum penalty available for the reason for the suspension under the new framework, that seems unlikely unless it was for some reason not covered by the same rule.
Now, it may be that the most likely reason for bans are different than this one, but treating different actions differently isn’t special treatment.
Im really not surprised at all. As the other individual mentioned, its convenient for 2024 purposes. And its the best thing for the GOP if they do let him run, so as he cannot do any more damage of what is left.
Yes, I am actually surprised that Facebook decided that the response to Trump undermining the 2020 election was to ban him... until the run up to the 2024 election.
He got a "at least 2 years" ban, to be exact. The 2 years is the punishment for the post. Then, at the end of those 2 years, fb will evaluate the restrictions you quoted, and re-assess if further ban is necessary.
> What will be the new factors in 2 years that aren't present now
The location of the Overton window. Facebook is just hedging it's bets. George Bush is largely accepted by Democrats now many of whom wore F bush t-shirts a decade or so ago.
It's disgusting how Bush managed to have his reputation laundered since then. If there was any real justice in the world, he'd be on trial for war crimes.
But of course, there isn't. The best we can hope for is that Bush (and Blair) is somehow captured and beheaded by Islamists. It would be a fitting end, not to mention a rare case of terrorism hitting a legitimate and deserving target, rather than some unfortunate member of the public.
Could possibly be because his policies have been carried on by every single president after him. It's not like the Democrats stopped the wars he started. It's not like Trump did and Biden doesn't seem to be stepping up to do so.
They've all been doing essentially the same thing. The only way the parties really differ is in the lies they tell to get votes.
We will evaluate external factors, including instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly and other markers of civil unrest.
I don't have a dog in this fight, but I'm confused by this line. Whose restrictions on whose peaceful assembly?, and why is it worded so that restrictions on peaceful assembly is included in the list of "markers of civil unrest"? If I recall correctly restrictions on assembly started in response to disease outbreak, and later were sometimes applied to some left wing and some right wing protests. What if it's an unjust restriction on a righteous protest, or an unsafe lack of restriction on a "riot"? Is either situation a marker of civil unrest?
Sorry my literal mind is having trouble parsing this.
Sigh, Glenn Greenwald is right, it’s only a matter of time before these censorship tools are used on people on the political left. Everyone cheers it now but they don’t seem to realize this will happen to them in the future once the other side controls these tools.
Yeah, I don't have a facebook account either, yet I'm concerned about censorship on facebook, because facebook has enough users in my country to swing any election.
I hope you're not suggesting that this ban was "censorship", because the user being reprimanded had clearly violated the TOS, which meant that Facebook has no legal obligation to provide them service.
> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.
They weren't suppressing his content on the basis that it was "objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient" though: they banned him because he posted something which explicitly violated EULA, which had clearly defined stipulations. Perhaps if he didn't read or understand those rules I'd understand where he's coming from, but his treatment is nothing atypical.
The part of the EULA he violated was for objectionable and harmful content. The rules were laid out ahead of time in the EULA, sure, but the point that this can be considered censorship remains.
If we want to go down this route, then we could argue that every platform censors content. Hacker News censors content when it removes rule-breaking content, and the radio station down the road is censoring your because they won't play your music. But you have a right to free speech, not a right to be heard. Censorship is a word that we use to describe the abuse of that limitation, and doing something that happens hundreds of times a day (banning users for violating the TOS) absolutely don't constitute as an abuse. Even using the most liberal possible definition of "censorship", it barely applies in this situation.
> If we want to go down this route, then we could argue that every platform censors content. Hacker News censors content when it removes rule-breaking content.
Yes, that's true. But for most platforms, like Hacker News, that's not a concern, because they don't have that many users.
> The radio station down the road is censoring you because they won't play your music.
That's not really what censorship means, because the radio station only has limited time, and they have to choose what music to play. (This limit on time also creates competition: Since one radio station can't play everything, there will always be many different radio stations, they same isn't true for social networks.)
> that's not a concern, because they don't have that many users.
Oh, so all of the sudden censorship is a matter of scale? I'd like to see a definition of censorship that involves scale in any way.
> That's not really what censorship means, because the radio station only has limited time, and they have to choose what music to play.
Yeah, and Facebook's servers have limited capacity and their bandwidth is billed at-cost. They're limited in the content they can serve, with the difference being that they can scale infinitely. In any case, your liability as a user increases as your share of that content scales. All you've done so far is deflect, without actually making any case. There are hundreds of social networks. You can build your own social network in 5 minutes with Mastodon and a VPS. Failing that, there's hundreds of decentralized and perfectly un-censorable protocols that you can use too.
Facebook is a business. They have every right to refuse you service if you break their rules. End of discussion.
> Yeah, and Facebook's servers have limited capacity and their bandwidth is billed at-cost.
This is a red herring. Facebook doesn't argue that they have to ban Trump to save bandwidth.
> In any case, your liability as a user increases as your share of that content scales.
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.
> All you've done so far is deflect, without actually making any case.
This is pretty rich. My first comment in this thread was: "Yeah, I don't have a facebook account either, yet I'm concerned about censorship on facebook, because facebook has enough users in my country to swing any election."
All you've done is to deflect from my main point - the concern about facebooks power to swing elections - by playing wordgames with the word "censorship", making various claims about what isn't censorship without even offering a definition of your own.
> You can build your own social network in 5 minutes with Mastodon and a VPS. Failing that, there's hundreds of decentralized and perfectly un-censorable protocols that you can use too.
Needless to say, none of this engages with my main point either.
That's a plausible but extremely simplistic definition. If I teach private music lessons to children and hold a public recital where only my students can perform, is that censorship? If a small town holds a local short film competition and has a public screening of the chosen winners, is that censorship?
I think the term "censorship" is overwhelming understood to refer to cases where the suppression of communication is particularly onerous or harmful. There is a vast range of reasonable moderation that absolutely limits the distribution of communication but I would argue is not harmful, and I think it's unreasonable to refer to all such instances as "censorship."
(I'm not however arguing that this particular action by Facebook doesn't constitute censorship. I'm just arguing that the extremely simplistic definition you provided does not really match broad usage of the term.)
The problem is the inconsistent application of the TOS. If every prominent person who violated the TOS was also banned there would be far less complaints by Trump and his supporters.
It is no where near as common on Facebook as say Twitter, but here is an example
"Why do the people of conscience around the globe say "Death to America"? What do they mean? To the newly elected president of America, Donald J Trump, we say, dear Mr Trump, DEATH TO AMERICA!"
He is the Supreme Leader of Iran. That is quite prominent. He was far more active on Twitter than Facebook which is why there are not a lot of posts and likes.
I deleted my Facebook in July 2019, but what another user says is important: Facebook has enough users to swing an election if they want to.
Displaying the message "Go vote!" to likely voters of X, while flooding the walls of likely voters of Y with ballast is going to do something. The question is if we want to tolerate this risk of targeted manipulation.
As far as the old capability vs. intent pair goes, it is pretty certain that FB has the necessary capability. As far as intent goes, that can change on a moment's notice.
It is also not just the USA we are speaking of. Facebook campaigns are huge in other democratic states. And they want to add their two cents to the conversation.
There's no censorship here. A large account broke their contract with a service provider, who is now choosing to suspend (not terminate) their account in response. Seems like a perfectly free and legal exchange to me.
The point here is the risk of our social communications being concentrated via a few large companies, who have ended up with an enormous amount of power to control speech online globally.
Then don't use those companies. Problem solved. There's plenty of decentralized and federated platforms that are perfect for people worried about being censored, same as it ever was. If you're too ignorant to use those platforms, I'm not taking pity on you.
I'd argue it doesn't matter. If Taco Bell kicks you out of their store for breaking the rules, you can't sue them because the taco stand down the road isn't a "valid alternative". There were rules of engagement, and you broke them. Since you are the person who violated the contract, you're objectively the guilty party: the extent to which Facebook can punish you is only limited by how invested you are in the platform.
If the point of speaking in public is to be heard, speaking in front of no audience isn't really speaking.
I'm not arguing you're entitle to an audience, either, just that taking your speech from a major player to a much smaller niche player is not nearly equivalent.
The cost of going to a website other than Facebook is literally zero. People do it all the time. The only impediment is the audience's own will and awareness. And they're still free to publicize non-Facebook websites on Facebook. If someone's off-Facebook site flops, that's their fault. Tons of non-Facebook communities have vibrant conversations between multiple speakers and audiences. This site is one.
Maybe I'm just dense, but I'm not seeing the cost differential, either for the speaker or audience. What Facebook is doing is equivalent to saying "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." What's so wrong about that?
Problem not solved. The issue here is the huge amount of power to control online speech that these few companies have gained, with basically no oversight.
Suggesting that people who don't like it should just use something else, doesn't actually address this issue.
Exactly. Nobody here limited his right to free speech when every official Government outlet was still perfectly operational, alongside his personal website and presence on decentralized platforms. Sounds like someone's mad that nobody wants to listen to them...
Yes, a free and legal exchange that meets the definition of censorship. Many famous censorship schemes operate entirely in the private sphere. The Hays code, for instance, censored movies for decades and existed purely in contracts between movie distributors.
The Hays code might not be the best example, since it was "self-censorship" but done in direct response to imminent threats of government censorship all over the United States. Several states had just created censorship boards in response to a Supreme Court ruling which declared that freedom of speech didn't apply to movies.
But again, it’s weird to see this painted in partisan terms. How short is our memory? I would have sworn just last year that those tech companies were painted as strict censors of right-wing content who needed to be strongly regulated. Apparently now it has switched again? But of course this is just partisans playing the victim (at least until someone can show evidence of some actual partisan bias in their censorship/moderation).
There's no "left" or "right" in EULA enforcement, just objectionable content and non-objectionable content. If you don't agree with their rulings, then you shouldn't sign up for an account. Twitter and Facebook are not platforms to run a Government from, and they've repeatedly made that perfectly clear. Your discourse is liable to be removed at any time, because it's not your bar. They can kick you out at any time, because you're there on the graces of the collective establishment. Dystopian? Maybe, but that's what happens when a libertarian platform invites capitalism to run wild.
Why is having Terms Of Use 'censorship'? Like, Facebook isn't allowed to have rules on their own private property- which Trump voluntarily agreed to, in exchange for being allowed to use that property for free? Is a bar allowed to kick an obnoxious drunk out, or is that 'censorship' too?
I don't think that suspending private property rights is a particularly great idea for society. If we're suspending private property rights now, to copy your last sentence, everyone cheers but they don't seem to realize this will happen to their private property in the future once the other side controls these tools
The extent to which people and organisations should be permitted private property 'rights' always needs to be weighed up against the public good, and this is no exception.
This is demonstrably false. There was no coup attempt, only a peaceful protest.
The protestors were happy to remain outside. There's video evidence of Alex Jones using a megaphone to tell the protestors to walk around the building to the other side, specifically not to enter it.
The protestors were allowed into the building by Capitol Police. The Capitol Police opened the doors for them and ushered them in, offering no resistance. There's video evidence of this as well.
The only casualties were Ashli Babbitt, who was murdered by a still-unidentified member of Capitol staff, and those people who were assaulted by Capitol Police the following evening after the cameras were turned off.
Wow, such delusion here. I guess broken doors and windows means peaceful now? Police officers getting stomped on? Pepper sprayed? Breaking glass and destroying offices?
Do your research kid. I can only hope you are joking.
It wasn't a coup attempt, it was a protest that became a riot.
All this talk of a coup is really quite silly - you can't just break into the Capitol and then start running the country, somehow.
If he did indeed incite a riot (and I personally think he likely did, to some extent), then that is a matter for the actual courts - not the kangaroo courts of the social media giants.
The wider principle here isn't even about Trump really, it's about how much the power of online censorship has become concentrated into a handful of mostly unaccountable companies.
This is such an overly simplistic take. Depending on where you are in the country, you could easily suspend some combination of power, water, heat, road access, banking, or internet connectivity to individuals purely by restricting access to private property somewhere down the line. Simply accuse them of violating the terms of service. We collectively agree that is unacceptable, because those things are basic utilities.
We’ve let only a half dozen websites more or less completely control the internet on the front and backend - far fewer than the number of utilities it would take to turn off someone’s electricity. That kind of power is not just a free speech issue, it’s a national security threat and it’s only being celebrated because it’s being wielded, for now, against people we don’t like.
Imagine a future election where one candidate wants to classify social networks as utilities, and the other candidate wants to do nothing but set puppy orphanages on fire. Candidate 1 has her social media pages cancelled for nebulous violations to a labyrinthine TOS, and she loses the election - because that is how people are reached in the modern world.
If you can't get banned for inciting a coup against a democratically elected government- can you get banned for anything? His conduct was arguably illegal.
In your ideal world of free speech, is Islamic State allowed to post recruiting videos or call for generalized action? If not, is that 'censorship'? Can you openly call for violence? Can you post revenge porn? Can NAMBLA have a Facebook page and sign up underage members?
The only overly simplistic take is imagining that the world's largest communications platform isn't allowed to have rules or a Terms Of Service. That's just incredibly naive- one can't realistically run a planetary scale (hell, even a small town-scale!) platform with no rules on speech. You seem to be advocating that rules themselves are impermissible. This is an unrealistic take, I'm sorry.
I think that Facebook & others would be best served by having more explicit rules and an independent arbitration system- which they've begun with the Oversight Board- that can make common-law style precedent that gets expanded over time. In your example, the banned candidate can apply to be reinstated- hell that's the case right now, Facebook has lost every case brought to the Oversight Board other than the Trump one!
If something is “arguably” illegal, then that is what the law is for. We in fact have a very complex and refined branch of government designed specifically to decide whether something is illegal or not, and it works far better than a bunch of underpaid Facebook employees answering to shareholders and in the case of speech that is actually dangerous, it has the authority to go and arrest people.
Can Facebook remove Islamic State recruiting material- yes or no? If so, why isn't that 'censorship'?
Also please answer- threats, revenge porn, the North American Man Boy Love Association- can they be removed from social media? Wouldn't that be censorship as well?
I'm a bit fascinated by this argument that we should be relying on the government to remove bad speech- that that's somehow not censorship
If it was indeed illegal, then Trump should be taken to court for it. If convicted, the judge then has the opportunity to impose specific social media restrictions if, in their judgement, it is proportionate and warranted.
Surely this is fairer than the extrajudicial punishments from these social media giants?
(And this isn't a partisan opinion - I say this as a leftist who despises Trump and his politics.)
The "political left" has been targeted for censorship and disruption by the FBI and other government agencies for decades. Forgive me if I interpret this as concern trolling, I think there are bigger social issues to tackle than the nebulous and catastrophic fear that Facebook being allowed to ban people will lead to ??? dystopia.
Right that doesn’t mean we should continue to censor and remove people from public discussion. My comment isn’t specific to Facebook, it’s directed at all the tech giants who usually “coincidentally” all ban the same person(like Alex Jones). This doesn’t lead to a good place and it’s odd to me that you would dismiss this so easily. Imagine AOC had been banned from FB and all social media platforms while she was running her first election, doubt she would have had the same result.
Is there any real evidence to support the claim that members or views from one "side" are subjected to this treatment more than members of the other side? I'm skeptical, because my impression is that people who identify with both sides seem equally convinced that their side is primarily the victim of this kind of treatment.
Everyone tries to victimize each other because everyone latently hates big companies and technology, and political censorship is a good way to incense people who otherwise lack the ability to rationalize their hatred for technology, and desperately need ammo to fire at big corporations.
In that sense, it's a very effective double-whammy that pretty much any social-media user has fallen victim to at some point. While Facebook and Twitter certainly aren't benevolent, I completely understand how their unpreparedness to deal with political figures would be misconstrued as censorship or suppression.
> Everyone cheers it now but they don’t seem to realize this will happen to them in the future once the other side controls these tools.
Somehow on Facebook or Twitter, censoring another user is always spun as 'an accident' or 'a mistake in the algorithm' or even simply 'an error'. Usually the political left cheer on how cancelling someone everywhere works, thinking that it would never happen to them will later find out that these companies will soon won't be on their side, or any side.
Because they are always on the side of profit.
The chickens on the left are cheering on the wolves eating the other chickens who disagreed with them.
Facebook is a public company and can do whatever it feels right to do as long as its legal. The concentration of power here is worrying. The bias in their corrective action should worry us more, as should the possible extension of these type of actions to other groups.
EU leaders expressed concern over these policies because even they could see that this problematic intervention into the politics of a country is a line that need not be crossed. This extended ban isn't just FB, since other tech platform will likely fall in line.
It will be interesting to see if this will increase Trump's popularity when he does return to social platforms since his fanbase has been starved of his attention.
EDIT - since I'm being downvoted. The bias being referred to isn't strictly left/right leanings in America since FB is a global platform.
> Facebook is a public company and can do whatever it feels right to do as long as its legal.
Agreed.
> The concentration of power here is worrying.
Also agreed.
> The bias in their corrective action should worry us more, as should the possible extension of these type of actions to other groups.
Aaaaaaaand this is where you lost me. What sort of bias are we seeing here? If anything, Facebook has finally made it's first responsible choice in decades and had a sit-down discussion about a user who broke the rules on their platform. Their corrective action was pretty light too: they're only suspending him, and not even for a duration that could potentially interfere with a (god forbid) 2024 campaign. Only objectionable material has been removed, and his accounts are still up and publicly available.
> It will be interesting to see if this will increase Trump's popularity when he does return to social platforms since his fanbase has been starved of his attention.
Maybe, but the RNC is going to do everything in their power to stop it. You can expect the 2024 GOP lineup to start early and be furnished with crazy characters, because most of the RNC would rather endorse Kanye than give waste any more time with Trump in office.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe you thought I meant left/right bias, I was looking at this from the lens of Facebook being a global platform.
To expect an even response across all political parties across all governments by the metrics they gave around incitements to violence and danger to the public is a bit unrealistic.
Bias can easily be introduced in every phase of these cases being accessed. Arguably, long before the political and activist leanings are considered.
From that it's not to difficult to see it being extended to other groups.
Trump doesn’t need a Facebook presence to be visible in American politics. Adjacent Facebook pages will still post about him and what he’s up to. News companies will still report on what he says (because it is newsworthy). He will still be a major topic of conversation on broadcast television and radio which still has a major audience.
I wonder which other world leaders and government entities will be suspended from Facebook, with the same reasoning.
For example, maybe Israel's leadership should be banned for their frequent propaganda there on why it's actually really great to kill Palestinian civilians because they're all secretly Hamas operatives, somehow.
Though, I expect Facebook singled Trump out as a special case. As awful as he was, there are world leaders out there saying and doing far worse. Perhaps it only counts if it's the USA?
I'm not on Facebook so I haven't seen what Netanyahu or other official Israeli government accounts post, but if what you posted is a fair summary of their statements, I think the key difference would be that Israel's leadership is (again, in your paraphrasing) justifying their own actions as legal, not calling on others to take illegal actions. Or are official Israeli Facebook accounts actually calling on their citizens to kill Palestinian civilians?
I would actually be curious to see other example of a country's leadership explicitly advocating on Facebook for citizens to take extra-legal actions. Perhaps Duterte's calls for killing drug dealers? But I'm not sure if that was actually on Facebook...
FB is dying. Not the company, but the product. I can't remember the last time I logged in. My parents still do, but even they are getting tired of it. I'm sure this isn't universal across the globe, but at least in my little portion of the U.S. it doesn't feel like it used to.
This could also be to loosening bot policy though. As companies struggle to show growth, internal decisions are often made to allow for additional leniency regarding what counts as a "user".
Those numbers do not refute my statement. I'm assuming they are global and not for the U.S. Midwest? Also as I indicated just because a user logs in does not mean they enjoy the product.
Also - does a FB ad on a web page refresh your login and count you as a DAU?
I don't have numbers for the Midwest, but this article[1] says the numbers for the US are basically stable. (Headline says "decline", but a number that small strikes me as margin-of-error stuff given the difficulty in measuring. Even stability would be worrying to Facebook, which depends on continued growth, though if the number really is 195 million, then that's such a huge fraction of the US that I'd think it's nearly saturated).
It's possible that some regions are declining faster than others. But if the Midwest is like the rest of the US, a .5% decline isn't something that would be detectable with the naked eye. Even 2x or 3x that wouldn't really be obvious unless you were measuring.
It's not impossible that they're measuring wrong, but the source of this data is their quarterly financial report, not a marketing document.
> When the suspension is eventually lifted, there will be a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions that will be triggered if Mr. Trump commits further violations in future
We have the same policy in our kids middle school.
> “At the end of this period, we will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded.”
Facebook should look at the mirror first before assessing the risk of another person or company.
In fact, they are the biggest risk to the entire world and public safety, given that the same disinformation campaigns are still running around its platform before, during and after Trump.
At least they went through an elaborate oversight procedure to do it. It's not like the usual "We're cancelling your account and not telling you why", or, worse, PayPal's "we're cancelling your account and holding your money for six months".
And yet, from an optics perspective, it’s still not a good look. Police ushering people in might be even worse. It’s really just teaching other agitators how gullibility and some forceful lies or confusion can start something stupid yet iconic.
It should be a “how can we not let that happen again” situation not a “oh lighten up it was just a parade.”
Nope. He's not getting reinstated in August, just like the results weren't overturned in January, and just like he wasn't inaugurated in March. Things may get bloody (I hope no bloodier than January 6, at worst, but we'll see.) But even if they get bloody, no, he's not getting reinstated in August. If anything happens, it will be Harris who becomes president.
> Nope. He's not getting reinstated in August, just like the results weren't overturned in January, and just like he wasn't inaugurated in March.
Exactly. It seems the cry babies on the right have finally admitted defeat after throwing a massive tantrum and vandalising the Capitol.
On the other hand, I also do remember the cry babies on the left threw a massive tantrum on the streets and vandalised many businesses when the results of the 2016 election were contested for years when Trump won and even after.
> If anything happens, it will be Harris who becomes president.
Yeah, And this time the Democrats, Big Tech and the media WILL definitely do everything they can to make sure that happens.
Things like this make me more and more want to remove the Section 230 clause shielding companies from lawsuits.
"Section 230 has enabled platforms to absolve themselves completely of responsibility for policing their platforms, while blocking or removing third-party speech — including political speech — selectively, and with impunity."
They banned his Twitter account, not remove him from existence. What did you expect?
And there's definitely a lot less drama now with Trump having such a large megaphone. I doubt his blog had anywhere near the reach of his Twitter account.
The issues are conflated because the existing legal framework never accounted for what we have today. It's confusing; and unteasing the concerns to find the primary core principles that should be supported isn't easy.
The existing CDA protections that are relied upon by social media giants was originally intended to allow content hosting platforms to manage issues that most everyone agreed upon, like "Content hoster should be allowed to remove explicit porn from their public interest bulletin board"
They never realized that social media giants would one day use their content moderation to bend large-scale public opinion to their will on day-to-day political and public health issues.
In addition to the overreach of the CDA safe harbor provision are issues of public accommodation, monopoly control of free speech, and in-kind political donations to candidates and parties that bypass existing election finance restrictions.
Agreed. This is not a "free speech" problem that is covered by the First Amendment or anything like that.
That being said, I think it is fair to raise some questions when inyalowda decide to enforce their policies in a seemly arbitrary fashion. Trump is toxic and his presence on social media did nothing to raise the intellectual bar of public discourse. But, he is far from the only world leader to share self-serving, destrucive, and misleading propaganda online. Users should demand clear policies and fair universal enforcement from FB.
I'm pretty onboard, but uneasy, with the framing that private entities should have broad discretion to decide how to govern the use of their spaces.
But Facebook (and Google, Apple, and many other "platforms") are such an indispensable part of our lives that we should have difficult conversations about what individual rights look like in these quasi-public private spaces. (It's worth noting that the explicit business model of many of these companies is to create gigantic platforms/walled gardens.)
I personally do not believe that many of the norms and common law relating to physical public/private spaces should be transferred to the modern age of digital oligopoly.
Respectfully, I just can't understand what the exact argument is here. Are you and others saying that- because Facebook is huge & used by many Americans, it can't have rules of behavior on the site? 'Facebook is very popular, thus it's not allowed to moderate content'- try saying it out loud to yourself. Is that what you're saying? Asking in a non-snarky/good faith way- like what is the actual argument?
If you accept that Facebook, like every platform in Internet history has content moderation rules- then Trump violated them, hence his suspension. Here's my logic chain, I'm open to a critique:
1. Facebook has content moderation rules
2. Trump violated them by inciting a riot or insurrection
3. The penalty for said violation is a suspension
Where is the problem in the chain? That Facebook isn't allowed to moderate content, that inciting a riot isn't punishment-worthy (??), that the punishment is too harsh.... Where is the exact issue?
The problem in the chain is that conservatives don't think he was inciting a riot and/or that it wasn't a riot and/or that it wasn't composed of his supporters, and/or that it was justified to enforce democracy.
That article is a litany of false talking points that leftists repeat as dogma. Case in point:
> known white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys
The Proud Boys were headed by a man named Enrique Tarrio [0]. Enrique Tarrio is of Afro-Cuban descent [1]. How many white supremacist organizations are headed by people of Afro-Cuban descent?
And before you suggest that he's a token figurehead, how likely do you think it is that an actual white supremacist would join an organization led by a man of Afro-Cuban descent? Do you think that leader would attract many actual white supremacists? Aren't there plenty of other white supremacist groups led by white men?
No, it's simply not believable. The claim fails. Reuters is willingly participating in a disinformation campaign.
"We will no longer cuck to the left by appointing token negroes as our leaders. We will no longer allow homosexuals or other 'undesirables' into our ranks. We will confront the Zionist criminals who wish to destroy our civilization.
"We recognize that the West was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race."
An actual white supremacist rejected the non-white leader of the Proud Boys and split off to form his own group.
The Proud Boys were not a white supremacist organization. Attempts to use this despicable man's quotes to smear the entire organization (which he rejected) are naked appeals to guilt by association.
My argument is that because Facebook is huge and used by many Americans, there should be limits on what Facebook can do to its users.
Now I personally don't know what all of those limits should be. But I think there needs to be more open discussion from all corners of American society about that. I also think that the platforms should approach this problem with open arms.
As an example of one situation that needs to be limited is that a platform like Google is allowed to ban someone entirely from their services, with 1) no appeal to an independent party and 2) no ability to (quickly) recover data stored with that platform. Every so often, someone posts to HN saying that they lost all access to decades of email and photos because Google's algorithms banned them, and they have no idea how to talk to a human to explain or correct the situation. I think that kind of action from Google needs to be regulated out of existence.
> But Facebook (and Google, Apple, and many other "platforms") are such an indispensable part of our lives that we should have difficult conversations about what individual rights look like in these quasi-public private spaces. (It's worth noting that the explicit business model of many of these companies is to create gigantic platforms/walled gardens.)
I don't agree, I think the opposite. The government should be working to make them more dispensable. Every company you listed needs aggressive antitrust action from various worldwide governments.
I also believe that aggressive antitrust may address the concerns I raise.
But at the same time, I am sympathetic to arguments that aggregated platforms have efficiencies that are passed down to the everyday consumer, or network effects that make the platforms more competitive against similar platforms elsewhere in the world (e.g., data for training ML models).
There are many definitions of censorship. Government censorship is not the only valid version. To wit, Wikipedia even states "Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies"
I would say that it's not about whether the actor is a government or not but about whether the action is coercive or not. If a private individual personally threatens to physically harm someone for their speech, she is engaging in censorship just as much as if she was a legislator passing a bill to that same effect. If a government school refuse to teach a certain fact, it's not engaging in censorship any more than a private individual who refuse to teach the same fact.
Not communicating a piece of information and not helping others in communicating a piece of information is not censorship. Censorship is preventing others from communicating a piece of information by force. Facebook is not doing that, they have just decided not to help communicate some information. Another example would be that you would not be censoring me if you removed a political bumper sticker I placed on your car, even if you leave other bumper stickers placed there by other people in place.
That is why these companies should be treated as just that, private companies.
This means that section 230 of the CDA needs to be repealed and that they become liable for what their users submit. They will probably react by censoring even more, making their services even less palatable to more and more people. With a bit of luck that will give the decentralised 'net the push it needs to take the lead.
Getting rid of that protection would also get rid of the protection that ISPs have, which allows them to serve up internet service without having to moderate everything. Same for hosting companies and for forums like hn.
Section 230 can be replaced by something which does not allow the abuse which 230 makes possible. The replacement should explicitly disallow censorship, it should only allow the removal of content when ordered to do so by a court. As long as an ISP or hosting provider abides by these court orders they should be protected under the replacement-for-section-230 provisions. An alternative process would resemble the one used in the DMCA but this can only be implemented if there are true penalties on abuse, otherwise there will be a deluge of takedown requests on ideological grounds.
Not really, the commercial 'net had been humming along without overly blatant censorship on ideological grounds for about 15 years before this became an issue. Forums and social media platforms can be moderated without taking an ideological stance by making sure the moderators are as ideologically diverse as the potential user base.
Moderation keeps the discussion within legal bounds, censorship keeps it within ideological bounds. Moderation is what section 230 should have been, censorship is how it ended up.
Why on earth is this not on the front page? It was posted 1 hour ago and has 50 points and 96 comments.
If it's being flagged, that's an exercise in futility. The end result is that people don't see it on the front page and keep posting it. Then someone goes into all of those posts and points people to this discussion, which is keeping this discussion alive.
But it would be much more efficient if the @dang could just unflag this so the conversation could happen here directly.
EDIT: hey flaggers, thanks for the downvotes. Do you have a better suggestion for how to handle this, or do you just think that discussing a major move by one of the largest tech companies on the planet shouldn't happen on HN?
I'm aware of the guidelines, thanks. I've been here a while and don't comment on voting often. You'll notice others have commented on this also, which indicates that something strange is happening.
I didn't flag, but it seems that if the orange man's name is mentioned or written on this orange site then it is immediately flagged / downvoted without question. [0]
Don't bother asking for a reason or suggestions (They don't have any) I also tried that and they downvoted me to the bottom of the comments section, like this one. Most of them are devoid of reason or having a discussion about Facebook's actions since some of them even work for the tech giant themselves.
So in their case, the only 'sensible' action for them to do is to censor, silence or generate a robotic reply to your response. It's natural for them to reject anyone asking too many good questions.
[0] Unless if the source is from slatestarcodex. HN loves them.
EDIT:
Downvoters and Flaggers: Are you going to answer the parent's question or are you proving us both correct with the above claims?
I'm not sure the popular objection to this would be that FB is doing it, it is that they say they are doing it based on some kind of objective or at least shared principle and facts, with some kind of negotiable condition, and I think that is what many people would consider outrageous.
FB should just say, "we're against him and we're exercising our own discretion and prerogative." The bureaucratic worldivew expressed in press releases like this are what created the populist movement that supported him in the first place. Who cares what oversight process this went through if it is just internal bureaucratic theatre to insulate the individual decision makers, and with no national legitimacy?
FB is pretending it doesn't have responsibility for the power it is exercising. Zuckerberg & Co. should just say, "L'internet, c'est moi" and be done with it and try not to contemptibly hide behind words nobody believes. This relentless miasma of bullshit is what people see as totalitarianism, not their coastal opinions.
It seems like true freedom in digital social discourse is really only attainable via a decentralized system. (Note that I mean "freedom" not only to speak your mind, but also the freedom to not have to listen to someone else speak their mind if you don't want to.) There are plenty of unmoderated cesspools on the internet. There are also plenty of walled-garden centralised social media platforms that enforce their own interpretation of "appropriate" speech. A better solution is one that allows individuals to communicate on a decentralized network by joining a server of their choice (or hosting their own). Then those users/servers can control who they choose to federate with and who they choose to block. Subsidiarity in moderation will yeald the best outcome.
...until someone upstream from his server decides his content is no longer welcome on the 'net and pulls the server from the rack / drops his network service / drops his name service / refuses to process payment requests / cancels his domain registration / refuses to process mail from his domain / etcetera.
Think of how Parler was treated to get an idea of what I mean. Think of that scene in The Matrix where Neo was rhetorically questioned by agent Smith - "What good is a phone call if you are unable to speak?".
What good is a platform if you are unable to connect it to the internet?
Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, and every other stooge who provided rhetorical cover for the BLM riots last year are still enjoying their Facebook accounts, so it doesn't look like the policy is getting applied evenly as you suggest it ought.
162 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadNot at all.
This person likely won’t change, but the process should still be reasonable depending on it’s expected lifecycle and the variety of folks who are going to be evaluated by it.
This is still special treatment. If you or I were banned from Facebook, unless you're good friends with a staff member, we would likely be permanently banned.
Since this is supposedly the maximum penalty available for the reason for the suspension under the new framework, that seems unlikely unless it was for some reason not covered by the same rule.
Now, it may be that the most likely reason for bans are different than this one, but treating different actions differently isn’t special treatment.
What a crazy world.
This was published today, when he is not in office. What restrictions could this refer to?
What will be the new factors in 2 years that aren't present now.
Current ban is based on "violated Facebook’s Community Standards and Instagram’s Community Guidelines"
I don't see what they can possibly re-assess if he isn't on their platform in the first place.
They will monitor his behavior outside of their platform and deem him worthy or not?
The location of the Overton window. Facebook is just hedging it's bets. George Bush is largely accepted by Democrats now many of whom wore F bush t-shirts a decade or so ago.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
But of course, there isn't. The best we can hope for is that Bush (and Blair) is somehow captured and beheaded by Islamists. It would be a fitting end, not to mention a rare case of terrorism hitting a legitimate and deserving target, rather than some unfortunate member of the public.
They've all been doing essentially the same thing. The only way the parties really differ is in the lies they tell to get votes.
I don't have a dog in this fight, but I'm confused by this line. Whose restrictions on whose peaceful assembly?, and why is it worded so that restrictions on peaceful assembly is included in the list of "markers of civil unrest"? If I recall correctly restrictions on assembly started in response to disease outbreak, and later were sometimes applied to some left wing and some right wing protests. What if it's an unjust restriction on a righteous protest, or an unsafe lack of restriction on a "riot"? Is either situation a marker of civil unrest? Sorry my literal mind is having trouble parsing this.
> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
Yes, that's true. But for most platforms, like Hacker News, that's not a concern, because they don't have that many users.
> The radio station down the road is censoring you because they won't play your music.
That's not really what censorship means, because the radio station only has limited time, and they have to choose what music to play. (This limit on time also creates competition: Since one radio station can't play everything, there will always be many different radio stations, they same isn't true for social networks.)
Oh, so all of the sudden censorship is a matter of scale? I'd like to see a definition of censorship that involves scale in any way.
> That's not really what censorship means, because the radio station only has limited time, and they have to choose what music to play.
Yeah, and Facebook's servers have limited capacity and their bandwidth is billed at-cost. They're limited in the content they can serve, with the difference being that they can scale infinitely. In any case, your liability as a user increases as your share of that content scales. All you've done so far is deflect, without actually making any case. There are hundreds of social networks. You can build your own social network in 5 minutes with Mastodon and a VPS. Failing that, there's hundreds of decentralized and perfectly un-censorable protocols that you can use too.
Facebook is a business. They have every right to refuse you service if you break their rules. End of discussion.
This is a red herring. Facebook doesn't argue that they have to ban Trump to save bandwidth.
> In any case, your liability as a user increases as your share of that content scales.
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.
> All you've done so far is deflect, without actually making any case.
This is pretty rich. My first comment in this thread was: "Yeah, I don't have a facebook account either, yet I'm concerned about censorship on facebook, because facebook has enough users in my country to swing any election."
All you've done is to deflect from my main point - the concern about facebooks power to swing elections - by playing wordgames with the word "censorship", making various claims about what isn't censorship without even offering a definition of your own.
> You can build your own social network in 5 minutes with Mastodon and a VPS. Failing that, there's hundreds of decentralized and perfectly un-censorable protocols that you can use too.
Needless to say, none of this engages with my main point either.
I think the term "censorship" is overwhelming understood to refer to cases where the suppression of communication is particularly onerous or harmful. There is a vast range of reasonable moderation that absolutely limits the distribution of communication but I would argue is not harmful, and I think it's unreasonable to refer to all such instances as "censorship."
(I'm not however arguing that this particular action by Facebook doesn't constitute censorship. I'm just arguing that the extremely simplistic definition you provided does not really match broad usage of the term.)
"Why do the people of conscience around the globe say "Death to America"? What do they mean? To the newly elected president of America, Donald J Trump, we say, dear Mr Trump, DEATH TO AMERICA!"
- Ayatollah Khamenei
https://m.facebook.com/khamenei.updates/videos/2205424783776...
Displaying the message "Go vote!" to likely voters of X, while flooding the walls of likely voters of Y with ballast is going to do something. The question is if we want to tolerate this risk of targeted manipulation.
As far as the old capability vs. intent pair goes, it is pretty certain that FB has the necessary capability. As far as intent goes, that can change on a moment's notice.
It is also not just the USA we are speaking of. Facebook campaigns are huge in other democratic states. And they want to add their two cents to the conversation.
How does your worst case scenario derive from this situation, where a user was banned for inciting violence (against the ToS of the platform)?
The point here is the risk of our social communications being concentrated via a few large companies, who have ended up with an enormous amount of power to control speech online globally.
Unless you want to make the claim that speakers are entitled to audiences, that is.
I'm not arguing you're entitle to an audience, either, just that taking your speech from a major player to a much smaller niche player is not nearly equivalent.
Maybe I'm just dense, but I'm not seeing the cost differential, either for the speaker or audience. What Facebook is doing is equivalent to saying "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." What's so wrong about that?
Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s not censorship.
I don't think that suspending private property rights is a particularly great idea for society. If we're suspending private property rights now, to copy your last sentence, everyone cheers but they don't seem to realize this will happen to their private property in the future once the other side controls these tools
The protestors were happy to remain outside. There's video evidence of Alex Jones using a megaphone to tell the protestors to walk around the building to the other side, specifically not to enter it.
The protestors were allowed into the building by Capitol Police. The Capitol Police opened the doors for them and ushered them in, offering no resistance. There's video evidence of this as well.
The only casualties were Ashli Babbitt, who was murdered by a still-unidentified member of Capitol staff, and those people who were assaulted by Capitol Police the following evening after the cameras were turned off.
Do your research kid. I can only hope you are joking.
All this talk of a coup is really quite silly - you can't just break into the Capitol and then start running the country, somehow.
If he did indeed incite a riot (and I personally think he likely did, to some extent), then that is a matter for the actual courts - not the kangaroo courts of the social media giants.
The wider principle here isn't even about Trump really, it's about how much the power of online censorship has become concentrated into a handful of mostly unaccountable companies.
We’ve let only a half dozen websites more or less completely control the internet on the front and backend - far fewer than the number of utilities it would take to turn off someone’s electricity. That kind of power is not just a free speech issue, it’s a national security threat and it’s only being celebrated because it’s being wielded, for now, against people we don’t like.
Imagine a future election where one candidate wants to classify social networks as utilities, and the other candidate wants to do nothing but set puppy orphanages on fire. Candidate 1 has her social media pages cancelled for nebulous violations to a labyrinthine TOS, and she loses the election - because that is how people are reached in the modern world.
In your ideal world of free speech, is Islamic State allowed to post recruiting videos or call for generalized action? If not, is that 'censorship'? Can you openly call for violence? Can you post revenge porn? Can NAMBLA have a Facebook page and sign up underage members?
The only overly simplistic take is imagining that the world's largest communications platform isn't allowed to have rules or a Terms Of Service. That's just incredibly naive- one can't realistically run a planetary scale (hell, even a small town-scale!) platform with no rules on speech. You seem to be advocating that rules themselves are impermissible. This is an unrealistic take, I'm sorry.
I think that Facebook & others would be best served by having more explicit rules and an independent arbitration system- which they've begun with the Oversight Board- that can make common-law style precedent that gets expanded over time. In your example, the banned candidate can apply to be reinstated- hell that's the case right now, Facebook has lost every case brought to the Oversight Board other than the Trump one!
Also please answer- threats, revenge porn, the North American Man Boy Love Association- can they be removed from social media? Wouldn't that be censorship as well?
I'm a bit fascinated by this argument that we should be relying on the government to remove bad speech- that that's somehow not censorship
Surely this is fairer than the extrajudicial punishments from these social media giants?
(And this isn't a partisan opinion - I say this as a leftist who despises Trump and his politics.)
The current Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, did exactly after the 2004 presidential election to reject certification of Bush's win:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?185005-2/debate-ohio-electoral...
In that sense, it's a very effective double-whammy that pretty much any social-media user has fallen victim to at some point. While Facebook and Twitter certainly aren't benevolent, I completely understand how their unpreparedness to deal with political figures would be misconstrued as censorship or suppression.
Somehow on Facebook or Twitter, censoring another user is always spun as 'an accident' or 'a mistake in the algorithm' or even simply 'an error'. Usually the political left cheer on how cancelling someone everywhere works, thinking that it would never happen to them will later find out that these companies will soon won't be on their side, or any side.
Because they are always on the side of profit.
The chickens on the left are cheering on the wolves eating the other chickens who disagreed with them.
https://www.instagram.com/realDonaldTrump/
https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump
EU leaders expressed concern over these policies because even they could see that this problematic intervention into the politics of a country is a line that need not be crossed. This extended ban isn't just FB, since other tech platform will likely fall in line.
It will be interesting to see if this will increase Trump's popularity when he does return to social platforms since his fanbase has been starved of his attention.
EDIT - since I'm being downvoted. The bias being referred to isn't strictly left/right leanings in America since FB is a global platform.
Agreed.
> The concentration of power here is worrying.
Also agreed.
> The bias in their corrective action should worry us more, as should the possible extension of these type of actions to other groups.
Aaaaaaaand this is where you lost me. What sort of bias are we seeing here? If anything, Facebook has finally made it's first responsible choice in decades and had a sit-down discussion about a user who broke the rules on their platform. Their corrective action was pretty light too: they're only suspending him, and not even for a duration that could potentially interfere with a (god forbid) 2024 campaign. Only objectionable material has been removed, and his accounts are still up and publicly available.
> It will be interesting to see if this will increase Trump's popularity when he does return to social platforms since his fanbase has been starved of his attention.
Maybe, but the RNC is going to do everything in their power to stop it. You can expect the 2024 GOP lineup to start early and be furnished with crazy characters, because most of the RNC would rather endorse Kanye than give waste any more time with Trump in office.
To expect an even response across all political parties across all governments by the metrics they gave around incitements to violence and danger to the public is a bit unrealistic.
Bias can easily be introduced in every phase of these cases being accessed. Arguably, long before the political and activist leanings are considered.
From that it's not to difficult to see it being extended to other groups.
For example, maybe Israel's leadership should be banned for their frequent propaganda there on why it's actually really great to kill Palestinian civilians because they're all secretly Hamas operatives, somehow.
Though, I expect Facebook singled Trump out as a special case. As awful as he was, there are world leaders out there saying and doing far worse. Perhaps it only counts if it's the USA?
Really? Show us.
I would actually be curious to see other example of a country's leadership explicitly advocating on Facebook for citizens to take extra-legal actions. Perhaps Duterte's calls for killing drug dealers? But I'm not sure if that was actually on Facebook...
* Facebook daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.88 billion on average for March 2021, an increase of 8% year-over-year.
* Facebook monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.85 billion as of March 31, 2021, an increase of 10% year-over-year.
* Family daily active people (DAP) – DAP was 2.72 billion on average for March 2021, an increase of 15% year-over-year.
* Family monthly active people (MAP) – MAP was 3.45 billion as of March 31, 2021, an increase of 15% year-over-year.
Also - does a FB ad on a web page refresh your login and count you as a DAU?
It's possible that some regions are declining faster than others. But if the Midwest is like the rest of the US, a .5% decline isn't something that would be detectable with the naked eye. Even 2x or 3x that wouldn't really be obvious unless you were measuring.
It's not impossible that they're measuring wrong, but the source of this data is their quarterly financial report, not a marketing document.
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90598536/facebooks-daily-active-...
We have the same policy in our kids middle school.
Facebook should look at the mirror first before assessing the risk of another person or company.
In fact, they are the biggest risk to the entire world and public safety, given that the same disinformation campaigns are still running around its platform before, during and after Trump.
> when conditions permit
> if conditions allow
So. What exactly are these "conditions"?
There's plenty of video evidence showing the Capitol police ushering people in.
And the only demonstrator who died directly from the walk-in was Ashli Babbitt, shot by a still un-named and un-indicted person.
The officer who was claimed to have been killed by the "invasion" died later of a pre-existing condition, as confirmed by his family.
But you'll never hear this from the corrupt MSM.
It should be a “how can we not let that happen again” situation not a “oh lighten up it was just a parade.”
Why does anyone care about him OR Facebook at this point?
Exactly. It seems the cry babies on the right have finally admitted defeat after throwing a massive tantrum and vandalising the Capitol.
On the other hand, I also do remember the cry babies on the left threw a massive tantrum on the streets and vandalised many businesses when the results of the 2016 election were contested for years when Trump won and even after.
> If anything happens, it will be Harris who becomes president.
Yeah, And this time the Democrats, Big Tech and the media WILL definitely do everything they can to make sure that happens.
"Section 230 has enabled platforms to absolve themselves completely of responsibility for policing their platforms, while blocking or removing third-party speech — including political speech — selectively, and with impunity."
It's almost like he never left.
You'd think with people wanting to silence him they wouldn't continue giving him a platform by sharing about his problems.
They banned his Twitter account, not remove him from existence. What did you expect?
And there's definitely a lot less drama now with Trump having such a large megaphone. I doubt his blog had anywhere near the reach of his Twitter account.
Private companies have always banned/blocked problematic users. That's not censorship.
The existing CDA protections that are relied upon by social media giants was originally intended to allow content hosting platforms to manage issues that most everyone agreed upon, like "Content hoster should be allowed to remove explicit porn from their public interest bulletin board"
They never realized that social media giants would one day use their content moderation to bend large-scale public opinion to their will on day-to-day political and public health issues.
In addition to the overreach of the CDA safe harbor provision are issues of public accommodation, monopoly control of free speech, and in-kind political donations to candidates and parties that bypass existing election finance restrictions.
That being said, I think it is fair to raise some questions when inyalowda decide to enforce their policies in a seemly arbitrary fashion. Trump is toxic and his presence on social media did nothing to raise the intellectual bar of public discourse. But, he is far from the only world leader to share self-serving, destrucive, and misleading propaganda online. Users should demand clear policies and fair universal enforcement from FB.
But Facebook (and Google, Apple, and many other "platforms") are such an indispensable part of our lives that we should have difficult conversations about what individual rights look like in these quasi-public private spaces. (It's worth noting that the explicit business model of many of these companies is to create gigantic platforms/walled gardens.)
I personally do not believe that many of the norms and common law relating to physical public/private spaces should be transferred to the modern age of digital oligopoly.
If you accept that Facebook, like every platform in Internet history has content moderation rules- then Trump violated them, hence his suspension. Here's my logic chain, I'm open to a critique:
1. Facebook has content moderation rules 2. Trump violated them by inciting a riot or insurrection 3. The penalty for said violation is a suspension
Where is the problem in the chain? That Facebook isn't allowed to moderate content, that inciting a riot isn't punishment-worthy (??), that the punishment is too harsh.... Where is the exact issue?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-disinformati...
Therefore, Facebook is just exerting their market power to push a partisan narrative.
> known white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys
The Proud Boys were headed by a man named Enrique Tarrio [0]. Enrique Tarrio is of Afro-Cuban descent [1]. How many white supremacist organizations are headed by people of Afro-Cuban descent?
And before you suggest that he's a token figurehead, how likely do you think it is that an actual white supremacist would join an organization led by a man of Afro-Cuban descent? Do you think that leader would attract many actual white supremacists? Aren't there plenty of other white supremacist groups led by white men?
No, it's simply not believable. The claim fails. Reuters is willingly participating in a disinformation campaign.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique_Tarrio
"We recognize that the West was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race."
https://www.newsweek.com/proud-boys-based-stickman-enrique-t...
An actual white supremacist rejected the non-white leader of the Proud Boys and split off to form his own group.
The Proud Boys were not a white supremacist organization. Attempts to use this despicable man's quotes to smear the entire organization (which he rejected) are naked appeals to guilt by association.
Now I personally don't know what all of those limits should be. But I think there needs to be more open discussion from all corners of American society about that. I also think that the platforms should approach this problem with open arms.
As an example of one situation that needs to be limited is that a platform like Google is allowed to ban someone entirely from their services, with 1) no appeal to an independent party and 2) no ability to (quickly) recover data stored with that platform. Every so often, someone posts to HN saying that they lost all access to decades of email and photos because Google's algorithms banned them, and they have no idea how to talk to a human to explain or correct the situation. I think that kind of action from Google needs to be regulated out of existence.
I don't agree, I think the opposite. The government should be working to make them more dispensable. Every company you listed needs aggressive antitrust action from various worldwide governments.
But at the same time, I am sympathetic to arguments that aggregated platforms have efficiencies that are passed down to the everyday consumer, or network effects that make the platforms more competitive against similar platforms elsewhere in the world (e.g., data for training ML models).
There are many definitions of censorship. Government censorship is not the only valid version. To wit, Wikipedia even states "Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies"
Not communicating a piece of information and not helping others in communicating a piece of information is not censorship. Censorship is preventing others from communicating a piece of information by force. Facebook is not doing that, they have just decided not to help communicate some information. Another example would be that you would not be censoring me if you removed a political bumper sticker I placed on your car, even if you leave other bumper stickers placed there by other people in place.
This means that section 230 of the CDA needs to be repealed and that they become liable for what their users submit. They will probably react by censoring even more, making their services even less palatable to more and more people. With a bit of luck that will give the decentralised 'net the push it needs to take the lead.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
If it's being flagged, that's an exercise in futility. The end result is that people don't see it on the front page and keep posting it. Then someone goes into all of those posts and points people to this discussion, which is keeping this discussion alive.
But it would be much more efficient if the @dang could just unflag this so the conversation could happen here directly.
EDIT: hey flaggers, thanks for the downvotes. Do you have a better suggestion for how to handle this, or do you just think that discussing a major move by one of the largest tech companies on the planet shouldn't happen on HN?
far less points than comments is penalized by the ranking algorithm
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Don't bother asking for a reason or suggestions (They don't have any) I also tried that and they downvoted me to the bottom of the comments section, like this one. Most of them are devoid of reason or having a discussion about Facebook's actions since some of them even work for the tech giant themselves.
So in their case, the only 'sensible' action for them to do is to censor, silence or generate a robotic reply to your response. It's natural for them to reject anyone asking too many good questions.
[0] Unless if the source is from slatestarcodex. HN loves them.
EDIT:
Downvoters and Flaggers: Are you going to answer the parent's question or are you proving us both correct with the above claims?
FB should just say, "we're against him and we're exercising our own discretion and prerogative." The bureaucratic worldivew expressed in press releases like this are what created the populist movement that supported him in the first place. Who cares what oversight process this went through if it is just internal bureaucratic theatre to insulate the individual decision makers, and with no national legitimacy?
FB is pretending it doesn't have responsibility for the power it is exercising. Zuckerberg & Co. should just say, "L'internet, c'est moi" and be done with it and try not to contemptibly hide behind words nobody believes. This relentless miasma of bullshit is what people see as totalitarianism, not their coastal opinions.
This is my I am a big fan of Mastodon! https://joinmastodon.org/
Think of how Parler was treated to get an idea of what I mean. Think of that scene in The Matrix where Neo was rhetorically questioned by agent Smith - "What good is a phone call if you are unable to speak?".
What good is a platform if you are unable to connect it to the internet?
So, vague consistency, and no foresight. What could go wrong