This is a post about why Facebook should remove anti-semitic groups. He doesn't cover the case of a group that is not anti-semitic, but does deny the Holocaust. Since his argument is "Holocaust denial correlates strongly with anti-semitism, thus Holocaust denial must be banned," can be simplified to "Anti-semitism must be banned" with, in the worst case, no loss of accuracy, and, in the best case, a reduced rate of false positives.
"He doesn't cover the case of a group that is not anti-semitic, but does deny the Holocaust."
Mental masturbation: Applying logic in a theoretical realm without regard to the real world or the human condition.
Elephant in the room: By definition, the outlier you cite cannot exist, since the sole purpose of "Holocaust denial" is to rub salt into Jewish wounds.
I have been on this forum forever, have discussed many issues with many of you, and never comment on these types of threads, which frankly do not belong on hn. But since you turned this into a logic play, I took the bait (for which I'm already sorry.)
I also see that the ho-hums have arrived and have started to vote me down without providing comments, a perfectly expected outcome.
You are churning logic which, based upon my axioms, is illogical. I understand that you may not agree with my axioms, rendering your treatment of the logic as plasible.
Please understand that, either way, it doesn't matter. Saying that "Holocaust denial" != "anti-semitism" is not a speed bump; it's a show stopper. For many sensible people, you have effectively disqualified yourself from further logical discussion.
I look forward to discussing business & programming with you and all the others in future threads. This is my last posting in this thread (and hopefully all others like it).
Thank you for explaining. Now, what I don't understand is how you'd cover such a case -- a historian who honestly says "Looking at the record, I think the conventional story of the Holocaust overestimates the death toll, and misunderstands the motivations." At least one former denier (can't recall his name right now) is Jewish; the guy who blogs at http://hooverhog.typepad.com/ is a Holocaust denier (among other unusual beliefs) and has also made references to having a Jewish girlfriend, which I think goes beyond even the usual "some of my best friends are..." argument.
Exploring edge cases is generally not mental masturbation. In this situation, there's a genuinely weird argument: "Holocaust denial is synonymous with anti-semitism, and anti-semitism is bad, thus Holocaust denial is bad." If all Holocaust deniers are anti-semites, then this makes as much sense as saying "Anti-semites are more likely to dislike people who celebrate Passover, thus groups opposed to celebrating Passover must be banned." Why the extra mental gymnastics? Why is Holocaust denial even a factor?
"By definition, the outlier you cite cannot exist, since the sole purpose of "Holocaust denial" is to rub salt into Jewish wounds."
I'm glad you have the power of looking into people's souls. Personally, I don't, so I have to remain open to the possibility that some holocaust deniers are just cranks.
It saddens me that "anti-semitism" is liberally applied to arguments involving people of Jewish descent. If someone makes a personal decision that they haven't been presented with a convincing argument that Jews were specifically targeted by a genocide campaign, they are labeled "anti-semite". If he chooses to make the argument that establishing and defending by force a Jewish state on another country's land might not be fair, he is labeled "anti-semite". It's liberal use in questionable situations weakens its value when properly used to describe someone whose words and actions are specifically negative to those of Jewish descent.
I agree with Arrington on this one, but as Mr. Wizard used to say, he is right for the wrong reason. He is right because Facebook should censor hate speech just as they censor questionable images. The target of that hate speech is irrelevant.
Glad to hear it. This is a silly debate. Let them have their Facebook group, their twitter hashtag, their IRC channel, whatever. If you think they're idiots then simply don't click links that take you to their content.
Agreed! The way I always viewed it is removing any of the groups is all but vindicating them: it is tantamount to saying their views might actually have some traction in the world...
Leave them to it: especially as it means wer can see who holds such opinions and ignore them :)
And allow them the opportunity to play on the fears and prejudices of a great many uninformed souls, winning them for their cause? No, thank you. I'd rather have someone with a conscience step in and say: "We won't allow this here. I have the moral right at my side and I will make it as hard as possible for them to spread their lies."
If you are affraid to do the right thing, then you are enabling the wrong thing, which makes you just as guilty of the consequences.
Restricting the spread of information is not the act of those who think that truth is on their side. Those against such restrictions aren't "afraid to do the right thing", they're for doing the right thing, which is allowing those who disagree to speak.
Careful. There is an inherent difference between "hate speech" and "holocaust denial".
Suggesting all holocaust deniers are anti-semitic and want jews dead is as bad if not worse stereotyping.....
(indeed I would classify it as worse: many Holocaust deniers are simply delusional and historically uneducated, or brainwashed. Branding them anti-semitic and hateful is a considered opinion in the face of reasonable evidence. And, well, hateful.....)
Agreed. I should have explained more, what I was referring to wasn't holocaust denial per se but the hate speech threads/posts within the category (which seem to go hand-in-hand).
Everything is information. Holocaust denial is only extremely weak information about the Holocaust, but it's much better information about the speaker. :)
Those against such restrictions are naive in believing that the truth will triumph, simply because it is the truth. History and psychology both prove otherwise. The truth is often hard to accept or to understand.
For instance, we like to believe the general German populace in WO II was innocent, because they were powerless or in the dark. The fact is that they were taken in by Hitler and are guilty of that, but the painful truth of the way this happened is that it could happen to most of us. In 'most of us', I include myself: I can perfectly dream up scenario's in which I become Eichmann, despite what I am saying now. I'm no stranger to fear or prejudice and given a convincingly presented threat from the outside, who knows how you react to protected your loved ones?
Finally, their are two types of 'the right thing'. There is the morally right thing, based on principles and there is the morally right thing, based on the goal to be achieved. These often do not overlap, especially not when we have to acknowledge our oh-so-human shortcomings.
The tools of information/speech suppression are worse, as a rule, than the information or speech being suppressed. Even if you don't agree in this case, you should hope that suppression doesn't become the accepted tool, because those without scruples are far more likely to be able to use it effectively. Don't support the building of the tools of your own destruction, to reduce it to a soundbite.
From a moral point of view as well as from Facebook's business point of view I fully agree one should be as reluctant as possible with banning contents. But considering that Facebook already bans a range of contents, I don't think it would have been noted if they just banned holocause denial.
I wonder what they will do when a group of radical Muslims start an anti American group. Would the tone of the responses here be different then?
BTW, I think those without scruples are always a step ahead of us: the tools already exist and are used as effectively as they can get away with.
Because everyone on the internet is capable of making a rational judgment about the lies these groups are spreading.
Young, impressionable minds (kids) can't form their own opinions and deduct logical conclusions based upon presented facts; they will simply believe what they read, and they shouldn't be reading that.
It's not about me and people like me. People with fewer advantages are less likely to grasp the scope of such a conspiracy as a denial of the holocaust and are more likely to entertain the idea.
It's about the poor, stupid people? We can't let the proletariat know of these ideas, since they are too weakminded to hold against them? No, you can't ban opinions just because they are stupid and wrong. Calls for violence are one thing, but someone expressing an opinion is the definition of free speech. Facebook may have the right to take them down, but I am glad they are holding firm.
Sorry, but when his excuse comes out the debate is over. The children will be fine, just like they have been fine for all of human history. They survived as slaves, through depression and wars, and every other thing history has thrown at them. A random group on facebook posting about a revisionist stance that almost 99.99% of people know to be insane isn't going to hurt "kids". I'm glad facebook is allowing free speech on their platform. As many have stated, this is a private entity and it is within its rights to pull the content. I'm glad they are not. I would prefer my child to see this and see how horrible these people are then pretend they don't exist.
I commend you for how you'd handle the situation with your child, however every situation will not unfold with a caring parents explaining to their kids how wrong these "bad men" are.
It's not just kids who shouldn't be reading this material, it's all kinds of impressionable people who don't compare facts before forming opinions. It's hard to argue that this kind of hate speech will benefit more people than it will hurt.
I fear there is just no reasonable way you can protect such people from, eventually, being brainwashed or deluded by someone in some way (mostly it's religions that do it).
Im not saying that is an excuse not to ban the groups: but as a reason FOR banning the groups it is ignoring the elephant in the room :)
There's a simple solution to this problem. We'll simply film two minutes of holocaust deniers over the noise of grinding machinery and show it to everyone every day while encouraging them to yell and scream about how upsetting holocaust denial is at the screen.
Kids who can't form their own opinions will be exposed to holocaust-denial information as well as the opposing views. It's not Facebook's job to parent your kids.
I'm sorry, but this isn't about free speech. These people are calling for violence and murder against an entire class of people. You're okay with a " Facebook group ... twitter hashtag ... IRC channel" dedicated to promoting murder and genocide?
Or look at this another way: if someone started a "Kill thenduks" Facebook group dedicated to justifying why killing you would be a good idea, and good for the world... how'd you feel about that?
There's a difference between removing hate-speech from comment threads and such and removing the group entirely because we don't agree with it.
You're right, though, that the issue is deeper than free speech. What I gather from Facebook's position is that it wont shut down a group just because of the beliefs of it's members... that doesn't prevent them from moderating the content itself according to their terms of use.
There is a difference between supporting free speech and supporting it on a particular platform. The First Amendment doesn't give me the right to force the NYT to say what I want. Similarly, it doesn't require FB to post stuff it disagrees with; they're completely within their rights to censor this stuff.
A private citizen or company may choose not to broadcast whatever it likes, for whatever reason. This is not "censorship" except in the broadest and most meaningless possible sense.
I agree with you, but to call it "censorship" is to cede part of the argument.
There's an important difference you're glossing over. If I post a photgraph to Facebook and Facebook takes it down, that's censorship. If I don't post the photograph in the first place, that's not censorship. That doesn't mean it's a violation of free speech or the first amendment, but we shouldn't redefine words like "censorship" just to gloss over all these issues.
Is FB more like the NYT or the ATT telephone network? I think it's a stretch to claim that FB is "saying" the things that users post on walls. Perhaps a better offline metaphor would be a mall tossing out someone for wearing an objectionable t-shirt or handing out pamphlets.
I did not mean to imply that private censorship is forbidden by the first amendment. Freedom of speech is more than a legal right. It is an ideal that many of us support in all contexts.
You're supporting it in the sense that "Someone who wants to broadcast a message in a particular medium has the right to decide how that medium is used." Plenty of bad examples -- Pepsi doesn't have the right to push their products in Coke's newsletter.
After the Jewish haters, Facebook will have to deal with the Black haters, the neo Nazis, the anti abortion, the anti gays, the anti government, the fascists, the socialists, the chicken haters, the fast food advocates ...
The list is endless, you can just run around and shut down all non straight opinion makers and by the way Facebook is not NYT.
You do not have the right to express any random 'opinion'. Slander is always defended as 'an opinion' and both juries and judges rightfully punish those guilty of slander.
Holocaust denial is not 'an opinion': it is a blatant lie. There is no reason why spreading lies about historical facts should be less punishable then spreading lies about a companies' products. They both do damage and the cumulative damage of the first category is much more dangerous.
The first amendment is not there to allow idiots, fearmongers, demagogues and pussies to hide behind a twisted interpretation of the word 'opinion'. Neither uninformed statements that are false nor lies are opinions and neither is protected by the first amendment.
We forgive those that utter uninformed statements, 'for they know not what they do'. When they are informed of what they do and insist on repeating the statement, it becomes a lie.
We forgive those that utter uninformed statements, 'for they know not what they do'. When they are informed of what they do and insist on repeating the statement, it becomes a lie.
The phrase "when they are informed" skips the step where they are somehow convinced of the truth of the information. Do you think that they "really know" the Holocaust happened and are actually lying, or do you think they're actually mistaken? If there's any significant chance of the latter (and if you think that Holocaust deniers are a serious problem, which I don't necessarily agree with), then figuring out what evidence would be convincing is important.
Of course they are convinced they are telling the truth, but that is not an acceptable excuse. If you go down that road, you can't put anyone in prison anymore: "they were just born and raised that way". A holocaust denier, or General Relativity denier for what that matters, arrives at his conviction through contingent factors that are nigh impossible to trace. Fortunately, that also isn't required. As in the case of the criminal, we still hold them accountable for their convictions and the damage that those convictions do, irrespective of their capacity to understand why it is wrong.
We like to believe that punishment teaches and that even criminals consider their punishments fair. Fact is: they don't consider them fair and they don't learn. Yet we keep punishing them, because locking them away makes life much nicer for the rest of us.
I think you're making broad assumptions about what we (by which I assume you mean world (or maybe just Western) civilization) want and believe which may not hold up to scrutiny. While they're often conflated, there are at least three different goals for what societies do to criminals: retribution, restitution, and punishment. Some of us think that it would be better to use the first two only, and that feeling "punished" should be only an effect of that. But that's another topic.
I certainly grant that when I write 'we like to believe X, but', it means 'I would like to believe X and I think most people (like to) believe X'. :) Don't most people do that, perhaps without realizing it?
I do think most people do that. I just think that here it's not actually the case (though maybe it is with the crowd here on HN; I'm probably more conservative than most here).
The issue really is weakening of free speech rather than holocaust denial. Distorting facts should never be a justification to suppress speech. This is exactly the justification the Catholic church used for a long time, and they even have a word for it: heresy. Free speech really is our only tool to get out of situations where a bad idea or 'fact' is widely accepted and supported by those in power.
The irony here is that if Germans hadn't lost their freedom of expression under the Nazis, the holocaust might not have happened at the scale it did.
By your reasoning, it should be illegal to deny that the moon landing ever happened, or to deny that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of JFK, or even to deny that human beings are the product of biological evolution. It's not the role of government, or of Facebook, to officially designate one version of past events as "true" and prohibit all consideration of any contrary version.
The Holocaust happened. It is sufficient to fully show the evidence of what happened and leave it at that. Prohibiting anyone from making claims to the contrary is no defense of the truth. Only liars need that defense.
By your reasoning, it should be illegal to deny that the moon landing ever happened, or to deny that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of JFK, or even to deny that human beings are the product of biological evolution.
The first two don't need to be illegal, because they don't do much damage. There is little emotional attachment, making the controversy less influential or dangerous.
The last one is trickier: the education of children is certainly impaired by withholding facts from them. Everyone is entitled to every conviction, but no one is entitled to spreading lies about contrary convictions, not even to their own children. If we could reasonably make that illegal, I'd go for it, but I don't think we could write up a law in such a way that it would work. Those are the trade-offs that have to be considered.
"The first two don't need to be illegal, because they don't do much damage. There is little emotional attachment, making the controversy less influential or dangerous."
Well that's rather ad hoc of you. If holocaust denial causes "harm" by convincing people that the Jews are liars, wouldn't Oswald denial cause harm by convincing people the American government covered up a coup it instituted against its own president, shattering all social stability?
Wouldn't moon-landing denial do the same thing? I seem to remember Buzz Aldrin getting real angry and punching a moon-landing denier in the face for calling him a liar. Do you think Buzz had a legal case for defamation there? Wouldn't moon-landing-denial hurt sales of Buzz Aldrin's books?
Why can't you just accept the fact that we have to share the world with a bunch of cranks?
You are right that there is harm done in all cases, but the amount of harm differs and even breaking the law comes in degrees (at the discretion of the cop or judge).
I'm not arguing in favor of actually making this behaviour illegal, as it is simply not possible to formulate a proper law covering the exact behaviour you'd want to prevent. Any attempted law would be extremely prone to abuse.
I merely wanted to argue in favor of Facebook banning what they judge to be unwanted examples of holocaust denial, without fearing the wrath of people waving the 1st amendment around. What's good for facebook isn't necessarily good for a country :).
And if Facebook was banning them for being cranks, that would be one thing. I usually downvote crank comments on Hacker News because we're a specialized community that values rational thought.
To me, singling out Holocaust denial as the one prohibited form of crankism on Facebook smacks of exceptionalism. You can have conspiracy theories or contrary opinions about any other historical event, no matter how many people were killed—just not that one.
Notably, you can become a "fan" of Ataturk or Genghis Khan or Andrew Jackson or Christopher Columbus on Facebook, but not Hitler.
>Holocaust denial is not 'an opinion': it is a blatant lie.
> There is no reason why spreading lies about historical
>facts should be less punishable then spreading lies about
>a companies' products.
Creationism is a lie, a flat earth is a lie, that the world was created in 7days by a guy with a white beard is a lie.
Fancy banning religions on face book?
If you do not support a person's right to express an opinion that you abhor you do not support free speech at all.
I support their right to express it. I also support Facebook's right to remove them from the virtual, private premises for expressing it. I also support their right to complain that Facebook deleted their account because they were expressing hate-speech. I also support our collective right to side with Facebook on this one.
I support Facebook's right to censor them as well. I would not agree with their decision to do so, but it is their decision to make.
I write this not because I agree with Holocaust deniers. What if the issue were a 9/11 conspiracy theorist group? A group that discusses differences in intelligence between ethnic groups?
What if the issue were a 9/11 conspiracy theorist group?
Then I would not support their removal. I don't have any credible evidence that 9/11 truthers are rooting for mass murder on a global scale, so I believe they're harmless.
I realized that this wasn't a good example after reading your comment a second time. I added an additional example moments later.
Facebook is free to shape their community in any manner they see fit. If their goal is simply to have the largest audience possible then perhaps being overly political correct serves their purposes well. I happen to believe that a community is much more interesting when distasteful views are not censored. I'd much rather give users the option to suppress groups that they do not wish to see.
Do you also agree that Google has the same rights to censor their search results in a similar manner? Would you agree with a decision to suppress results which lead to "hate speech" websites?
There are some significant differences between Facebook and Google. We're not talking about hosting or removing pointers to information, we're talking about hosting discussion.
I would fully support Google's right to remove any discussion they don't like from any forums where they host discussion. I think making something disappear from the search results would be a little more delicate, particularly since Google are currently in a quasi-monopoly situation, but I would, on the whole, support their right to block search results that they want to block, yes.
An unbalanced opinion, based on a soundbite that is repeated over and over again by people that should first think through what it would mean if put into practice. You would not defend my right to publically, repeatedly, defamate you or your products, would you? For that exact reason there are laws against that. If I repeated over and over again you were a pedophile and spread false evidence to that effect, don't you think I would be able to convince people? And don't I need to convince only a few 'right' people to make your life hell?
Disagreement about historical fact is not defamation. If I want to say Ataturk or Hitler or Andrew Jackson are variously guilty or innocent of genocide that is my right.
In fact, I really don't see how it's defamation to claim that someone is innocent of genocide.
It's defamation to call an Auschwitz survivor a liar. More general, it's defamatory to implicitly say that all those people that know the facts are liars.
It's defamation if it's known to be false and spoken maliciously. Moreover, to be actionable, defamation has to actually cause damage. You're making assumptions here that won't survive your argument.
The fact that you cannot get someone sentenced for defamation does not mean his words weren't defamatory. If a murder is committed in a crowd of fifty and they all deny knowing who the murderer is, making justice impossible, then one of them is still a murderer.
Imagine a holocaust surviver with a business. Imagine a client that is convinced by a lying holocaust denier. Business owner loses client.
In more general terms, lies cause damage in indirect ways. That you cannot prove such a thing in an individual case does not mean no damage is done. The aggregated effect of holocaust deniers convincing a few more people that the Jews are a lying bunch necessarily causes damage.
"Imagine a client that is convinced by a lying holocaust denier".
Can I imagine him with antennae, too?
You haven't addressed my point, and you're repeating points you've made elsewhere in this thread. You're making the same assumptions (that deniers are malicious "liars", and not simply morons), and informing us only that you're afraid of certain kinds of speech.
Antennae would be very fashionable in Milan this time of the year :).
Was your point that 'defamation' has a strict meaning in law and that I was wrong in suggesting that these deniers are guilty of defamation in that strict sense? In that case, that is probably true, I'll trust you on that.
My previous comment was intended to explain that I did not mean it in such a strict sense. My argument was not that it is wrong because it is that exact offense that is punishable by law. The fact that we have laws covering parts of that behaviour merely illustrates that we consider it wrong. But that only parts of the behaviour are covered does not mean that the other parts are not considered wrong. Some behaviour is not outlawed because it is not feasible to formulate proper laws to cover the behaviour: even in countries where holocaust denial is forbidden, most cases of holocaust denial cannot possibly be prosecuted.
As an aside, in my book, a 'liar' does not necessarily have malicious intent. He may just be ignorant: morons and liars are not mutually exclusive.
Finally, seeing what demagogues have been capable of: yes, the power of words is scary. Fear is a bad counsellor, but still a warning to be heeded after the fear has passed over you and through you.
Not by the law. Or are you using "defamatory" as a label to dismiss ideas without having to actually prove them false? (Fact: Proving that the Holocaust actually happened is easier, and works better, than trying to change people's opinions through sheer outrage.)
What if what I want to say is: "Guards, shoot him now." ?
This is a contrived example, of course, but it demonstrates a simple idea: (some) words kill.
Facebook is a private company. They have no duty to uphold free speech. However, they do have a duty to do what's in their own self-interest. Being seen as a haven for hate speech is probably not it.
Freedom of speech is a fundamental right of all human beings. Freedom to hate is also their right. Otherwise who decides what is right to say and what is not right - at some point in history, it would have been illegal to have a group advocating miscenegation.
This is a very tough call on Facebook's part. Their primary purpose is to serve as a facilitator, not as a moderator of people's opinions. At the same time, this is a pretty clear case of religious/racial hate speech.
Leave it to TechCrunch to ignore every nuance of the issue and make a catchy headline out of it. If anything I find TechCrunch's demagogy more offensive than Facebook's official line on this subject.
Hate speech is speech. If you favor free speech, you favor free hate speech. I don't get what's such a tough call about it, aside from the business/legal implications of Facebook operating in countries which restrict speech.
Oh, certainly Facebook has the right to turn the Holocaust-deniers away. But that implies that they do not support free speech -- at least not enough to support it materially. That's the call that's being made -- whether Facebook supports free speech on Facebook. I wouldn't have hard time with this call.
This is the right decision by Facebook. I don't agree with that group, but you can't just go around bowing to everyone X group that's offended/insulted by Y topic.
If they do, when do you draw the line? If a group of "A" people say that the "B" religion groups are offensive/insulting/wrong, and how they committed crimes in ages before, do you ban "A"'s groups? What about the other side, you ban "B"'s group since the other side is wrong/insulted/offended?
Free speech is there for a reason, to protect those with unpopular views. The views may be wrong/insulting/offensive/whatever, but their still their views. The holocaust denial group is indeed in the wrong and I don't agree with them, but they still have the right to express their views.
The only time I really hear about these groups is when there is a controversy over censoring them. Seems to be by far the best way for them to get their message out.
"No, the problem is that Holocaust deniers make their arguments for one simple purpose - they want to finish what was started and wipe Jews off the planet."
This is far from true. "Holocaust deniers" very often turn out to be "The holocaust was more than just killing Jews, so stop making it just about them. A lot of the figures about those killed are inflated. The Holocaust needs to be stop being used a trump card for getting everything from Hate Speech Laws codified to a free pass for Israel to wall in the Palestinians and bomb densely populated areas."
Now I tacitly accept the figures for those killed in the Holocaust (6 million Jews, 5 million gypsies, gays and others) because it isn't an important issue for me.
But trying to call holocaust deniers closeted genocidal maniacs is pretty absurd.
"In an historic breakthrough, the Claims Conference has negotiated one-time payments from Germany for certain Jewish victims of the Nazi siege of Leningrad."
I'm sure Facebook has been letting them roar in their little hole for some time. It's techcrunch that's reopening the issue, which I don't quite understand. Facebook is a rather small snapshot of the real world - a real world where hundreds of thousands of Holocaust deniers exist. Removing this insignificant subset from Facebook wouldn't do anything. I think Mike needs to just settle with the realization that people with these opinions exist, and will always exist, and have always existed.
> I would expect such indulgence for our primal trollish instincts from reddit. But HN?
I resisted the reddit comparison but I'm glad someone else mentioned it. Furthermore, I'm unconvinced that this is the type of submission that should be appearing on HN's front page.
When it comes to living in a society, I believe in degrees of free speech rather than absolute free speech. Sometimes tempered opinions lead to improved social harmony. I don't see a problem in this case though, especially considering the dozens of "hate" groups on Facebook.
Of course they're proud. They realize they're on the right side: the first amendment's side.
You do NOT have the right to squelch speech simply because it's unpopular, controversial, or distasteful. If Facebook pulls these groups, it should be because of market pressure (advertising boycots and so forth), not some government mandate. That's going in the WRONG direction. What's so hard to understand about that?
There's a distinction to be drawn between espousing a worldview and organizing direct action. We don't know what Facebook would do if confronted with evidence that a violent group was organizing and energizing itself through their service. All we have are people drawing lines of varying thicknesses and curvatures between ideas, actors, and projections.
Many right-wing extremist groups organize on Facebook. They organize camping trips, rallies, birthday parties, and sometimes they even organize illegal direct action.
I don't know if Facebook should step in or not because the profiles of these groups are a goldmine of information about their activities. What I do believe however is that any decision to let them continue existing on Facebook should not be made on the basis of respecting their free speech or assembly rights.
You clearly know more about this than I do. So, people tell Facebook, "these people are organizing an attack on a grocer like in Romper Stomper", and Facebook leaves them there?
Mainly they use Facebook for organizing perfectly legal events, as well as keeping in touch with other Nazis.
Regarding illegal activity, incitement would be a better way to describe what I've seen than blatant organizing.
The loose cannons among them (of which there are plenty) also have a propensity to use social networking sites for self-incrimination. Here's a guy that uploaded pictures to Facebook of himself Nazi saluting in front of worlds-lamest-hate-crime:
101 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 211 ms ] threadMental masturbation: Applying logic in a theoretical realm without regard to the real world or the human condition.
Elephant in the room: By definition, the outlier you cite cannot exist, since the sole purpose of "Holocaust denial" is to rub salt into Jewish wounds.
I have been on this forum forever, have discussed many issues with many of you, and never comment on these types of threads, which frankly do not belong on hn. But since you turned this into a logic play, I took the bait (for which I'm already sorry.)
I also see that the ho-hums have arrived and have started to vote me down without providing comments, a perfectly expected outcome.
You are churning logic which, based upon my axioms, is illogical. I understand that you may not agree with my axioms, rendering your treatment of the logic as plasible.
Please understand that, either way, it doesn't matter. Saying that "Holocaust denial" != "anti-semitism" is not a speed bump; it's a show stopper. For many sensible people, you have effectively disqualified yourself from further logical discussion.
I look forward to discussing business & programming with you and all the others in future threads. This is my last posting in this thread (and hopefully all others like it).
Exploring edge cases is generally not mental masturbation. In this situation, there's a genuinely weird argument: "Holocaust denial is synonymous with anti-semitism, and anti-semitism is bad, thus Holocaust denial is bad." If all Holocaust deniers are anti-semites, then this makes as much sense as saying "Anti-semites are more likely to dislike people who celebrate Passover, thus groups opposed to celebrating Passover must be banned." Why the extra mental gymnastics? Why is Holocaust denial even a factor?
I'm glad you have the power of looking into people's souls. Personally, I don't, so I have to remain open to the possibility that some holocaust deniers are just cranks.
I agree with Arrington on this one, but as Mr. Wizard used to say, he is right for the wrong reason. He is right because Facebook should censor hate speech just as they censor questionable images. The target of that hate speech is irrelevant.
Leave them to it: especially as it means wer can see who holds such opinions and ignore them :)
If you are affraid to do the right thing, then you are enabling the wrong thing, which makes you just as guilty of the consequences.
Suggesting all holocaust deniers are anti-semitic and want jews dead is as bad if not worse stereotyping.....
(indeed I would classify it as worse: many Holocaust deniers are simply delusional and historically uneducated, or brainwashed. Branding them anti-semitic and hateful is a considered opinion in the face of reasonable evidence. And, well, hateful.....)
For instance, we like to believe the general German populace in WO II was innocent, because they were powerless or in the dark. The fact is that they were taken in by Hitler and are guilty of that, but the painful truth of the way this happened is that it could happen to most of us. In 'most of us', I include myself: I can perfectly dream up scenario's in which I become Eichmann, despite what I am saying now. I'm no stranger to fear or prejudice and given a convincingly presented threat from the outside, who knows how you react to protected your loved ones?
Finally, their are two types of 'the right thing'. There is the morally right thing, based on principles and there is the morally right thing, based on the goal to be achieved. These often do not overlap, especially not when we have to acknowledge our oh-so-human shortcomings.
I wonder what they will do when a group of radical Muslims start an anti American group. Would the tone of the responses here be different then?
BTW, I think those without scruples are always a step ahead of us: the tools already exist and are used as effectively as they can get away with.
From that standpoint we agree.
I wonder what they will do when a group of radical Muslims start an anti American group. Would the tone of the responses here be different then?
Well, that will be an interesting day. :)
Young, impressionable minds (kids) can't form their own opinions and deduct logical conclusions based upon presented facts; they will simply believe what they read, and they shouldn't be reading that.
Sorry, but when his excuse comes out the debate is over. The children will be fine, just like they have been fine for all of human history. They survived as slaves, through depression and wars, and every other thing history has thrown at them. A random group on facebook posting about a revisionist stance that almost 99.99% of people know to be insane isn't going to hurt "kids". I'm glad facebook is allowing free speech on their platform. As many have stated, this is a private entity and it is within its rights to pull the content. I'm glad they are not. I would prefer my child to see this and see how horrible these people are then pretend they don't exist.
It's not just kids who shouldn't be reading this material, it's all kinds of impressionable people who don't compare facts before forming opinions. It's hard to argue that this kind of hate speech will benefit more people than it will hurt.
Im not saying that is an excuse not to ban the groups: but as a reason FOR banning the groups it is ignoring the elephant in the room :)
Or look at this another way: if someone started a "Kill thenduks" Facebook group dedicated to justifying why killing you would be a good idea, and good for the world... how'd you feel about that?
You're right, though, that the issue is deeper than free speech. What I gather from Facebook's position is that it wont shut down a group just because of the beliefs of it's members... that doesn't prevent them from moderating the content itself according to their terms of use.
While I disagree with their decision to prohibit photographs of nipples, doing so is unfortunately quite prudent lest US politicians decide to meddle.
A private citizen or company may choose not to broadcast whatever it likes, for whatever reason. This is not "censorship" except in the broadest and most meaningless possible sense.
I agree with you, but to call it "censorship" is to cede part of the argument.
The list is endless, you can just run around and shut down all non straight opinion makers and by the way Facebook is not NYT.
Holocaust denial is not 'an opinion': it is a blatant lie. There is no reason why spreading lies about historical facts should be less punishable then spreading lies about a companies' products. They both do damage and the cumulative damage of the first category is much more dangerous.
The first amendment is not there to allow idiots, fearmongers, demagogues and pussies to hide behind a twisted interpretation of the word 'opinion'. Neither uninformed statements that are false nor lies are opinions and neither is protected by the first amendment.
We forgive those that utter uninformed statements, 'for they know not what they do'. When they are informed of what they do and insist on repeating the statement, it becomes a lie.
The phrase "when they are informed" skips the step where they are somehow convinced of the truth of the information. Do you think that they "really know" the Holocaust happened and are actually lying, or do you think they're actually mistaken? If there's any significant chance of the latter (and if you think that Holocaust deniers are a serious problem, which I don't necessarily agree with), then figuring out what evidence would be convincing is important.
We like to believe that punishment teaches and that even criminals consider their punishments fair. Fact is: they don't consider them fair and they don't learn. Yet we keep punishing them, because locking them away makes life much nicer for the rest of us.
I think you're making broad assumptions about what we (by which I assume you mean world (or maybe just Western) civilization) want and believe which may not hold up to scrutiny. While they're often conflated, there are at least three different goals for what societies do to criminals: retribution, restitution, and punishment. Some of us think that it would be better to use the first two only, and that feeling "punished" should be only an effect of that. But that's another topic.
The irony here is that if Germans hadn't lost their freedom of expression under the Nazis, the holocaust might not have happened at the scale it did.
The Holocaust happened. It is sufficient to fully show the evidence of what happened and leave it at that. Prohibiting anyone from making claims to the contrary is no defense of the truth. Only liars need that defense.
The first two don't need to be illegal, because they don't do much damage. There is little emotional attachment, making the controversy less influential or dangerous.
The last one is trickier: the education of children is certainly impaired by withholding facts from them. Everyone is entitled to every conviction, but no one is entitled to spreading lies about contrary convictions, not even to their own children. If we could reasonably make that illegal, I'd go for it, but I don't think we could write up a law in such a way that it would work. Those are the trade-offs that have to be considered.
Well that's rather ad hoc of you. If holocaust denial causes "harm" by convincing people that the Jews are liars, wouldn't Oswald denial cause harm by convincing people the American government covered up a coup it instituted against its own president, shattering all social stability?
Wouldn't moon-landing denial do the same thing? I seem to remember Buzz Aldrin getting real angry and punching a moon-landing denier in the face for calling him a liar. Do you think Buzz had a legal case for defamation there? Wouldn't moon-landing-denial hurt sales of Buzz Aldrin's books?
Why can't you just accept the fact that we have to share the world with a bunch of cranks?
I'm not arguing in favor of actually making this behaviour illegal, as it is simply not possible to formulate a proper law covering the exact behaviour you'd want to prevent. Any attempted law would be extremely prone to abuse.
I merely wanted to argue in favor of Facebook banning what they judge to be unwanted examples of holocaust denial, without fearing the wrath of people waving the 1st amendment around. What's good for facebook isn't necessarily good for a country :).
To me, singling out Holocaust denial as the one prohibited form of crankism on Facebook smacks of exceptionalism. You can have conspiracy theories or contrary opinions about any other historical event, no matter how many people were killed—just not that one.
Notably, you can become a "fan" of Ataturk or Genghis Khan or Andrew Jackson or Christopher Columbus on Facebook, but not Hitler.
I support their right to express it. I also support Facebook's right to remove them from the virtual, private premises for expressing it. I also support their right to complain that Facebook deleted their account because they were expressing hate-speech. I also support our collective right to side with Facebook on this one.
I write this not because I agree with Holocaust deniers. What if the issue were a 9/11 conspiracy theorist group? A group that discusses differences in intelligence between ethnic groups?
Then I would not support their removal. I don't have any credible evidence that 9/11 truthers are rooting for mass murder on a global scale, so I believe they're harmless.
Facebook is free to shape their community in any manner they see fit. If their goal is simply to have the largest audience possible then perhaps being overly political correct serves their purposes well. I happen to believe that a community is much more interesting when distasteful views are not censored. I'd much rather give users the option to suppress groups that they do not wish to see.
I would fully support Google's right to remove any discussion they don't like from any forums where they host discussion. I think making something disappear from the search results would be a little more delicate, particularly since Google are currently in a quasi-monopoly situation, but I would, on the whole, support their right to block search results that they want to block, yes.
And Facebook has decided that it will not remove them. Issue closed. They've made their position pretty clear.
In fact, I really don't see how it's defamation to claim that someone is innocent of genocide.
Imagine a holocaust surviver with a business. Imagine a client that is convinced by a lying holocaust denier. Business owner loses client.
In more general terms, lies cause damage in indirect ways. That you cannot prove such a thing in an individual case does not mean no damage is done. The aggregated effect of holocaust deniers convincing a few more people that the Jews are a lying bunch necessarily causes damage.
Can I imagine him with antennae, too?
You haven't addressed my point, and you're repeating points you've made elsewhere in this thread. You're making the same assumptions (that deniers are malicious "liars", and not simply morons), and informing us only that you're afraid of certain kinds of speech.
Was your point that 'defamation' has a strict meaning in law and that I was wrong in suggesting that these deniers are guilty of defamation in that strict sense? In that case, that is probably true, I'll trust you on that.
My previous comment was intended to explain that I did not mean it in such a strict sense. My argument was not that it is wrong because it is that exact offense that is punishable by law. The fact that we have laws covering parts of that behaviour merely illustrates that we consider it wrong. But that only parts of the behaviour are covered does not mean that the other parts are not considered wrong. Some behaviour is not outlawed because it is not feasible to formulate proper laws to cover the behaviour: even in countries where holocaust denial is forbidden, most cases of holocaust denial cannot possibly be prosecuted.
As an aside, in my book, a 'liar' does not necessarily have malicious intent. He may just be ignorant: morons and liars are not mutually exclusive.
Finally, seeing what demagogues have been capable of: yes, the power of words is scary. Fear is a bad counsellor, but still a warning to be heeded after the fear has passed over you and through you.
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
This is a contrived example, of course, but it demonstrates a simple idea: (some) words kill.
Facebook is a private company. They have no duty to uphold free speech. However, they do have a duty to do what's in their own self-interest. Being seen as a haven for hate speech is probably not it.
Hiding the groups does not change the beliefs.
Leave it to TechCrunch to ignore every nuance of the issue and make a catchy headline out of it. If anything I find TechCrunch's demagogy more offensive than Facebook's official line on this subject.
Facebook is not the government. They can ban any users they want for saying things they don't like, without impinging on our right to free speech.
If they do, when do you draw the line? If a group of "A" people say that the "B" religion groups are offensive/insulting/wrong, and how they committed crimes in ages before, do you ban "A"'s groups? What about the other side, you ban "B"'s group since the other side is wrong/insulted/offended?
Free speech is there for a reason, to protect those with unpopular views. The views may be wrong/insulting/offensive/whatever, but their still their views. The holocaust denial group is indeed in the wrong and I don't agree with them, but they still have the right to express their views.
This is far from true. "Holocaust deniers" very often turn out to be "The holocaust was more than just killing Jews, so stop making it just about them. A lot of the figures about those killed are inflated. The Holocaust needs to be stop being used a trump card for getting everything from Hate Speech Laws codified to a free pass for Israel to wall in the Palestinians and bomb densely populated areas."
Now I tacitly accept the figures for those killed in the Holocaust (6 million Jews, 5 million gypsies, gays and others) because it isn't an important issue for me.
But trying to call holocaust deniers closeted genocidal maniacs is pretty absurd.
President of Iran is my case in point. Need I say more?
http://www.claimscon.org/index.asp?url=hardship/leningrad_si...
"In an historic breakthrough, the Claims Conference has negotiated one-time payments from Germany for certain Jewish victims of the Nazi siege of Leningrad."
These fools are just seeking the opportunity of using censorship from Facebook to their advantage.
Good call Facebook, let the haters roar in their little hole, no more free PR.
I would expect such indulgence for our primal trollish instincts from reddit. But HN?
Let us debate emacs vs vi, or the failure of the Boost library, or rakudo vs parrot!
Hell, let us fight to the death over Star Wars vs. Star Trek.
I resisted the reddit comparison but I'm glad someone else mentioned it. Furthermore, I'm unconvinced that this is the type of submission that should be appearing on HN's front page.
I don't happen to agree, though.
You do NOT have the right to squelch speech simply because it's unpopular, controversial, or distasteful. If Facebook pulls these groups, it should be because of market pressure (advertising boycots and so forth), not some government mandate. That's going in the WRONG direction. What's so hard to understand about that?
In the current economic climate, the threat of white supremacist idiots being able to pull their shit together is something to take seriously.
I don't know if Facebook should step in or not because the profiles of these groups are a goldmine of information about their activities. What I do believe however is that any decision to let them continue existing on Facebook should not be made on the basis of respecting their free speech or assembly rights.
Regarding illegal activity, incitement would be a better way to describe what I've seen than blatant organizing.
The loose cannons among them (of which there are plenty) also have a propensity to use social networking sites for self-incrimination. Here's a guy that uploaded pictures to Facebook of himself Nazi saluting in front of worlds-lamest-hate-crime:
http://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/2009/02/meet-richard-m...