[talmand]

At what point do such things change into a public discourse problem?

Do we wait until it can be shown that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. influenced elections because they refused to serve information from a candidate they didn't like? If we aren't already there, it's not long before it is.

What do you think would happen if these "private companies" with such deep hooks into our communication infrastructure suddenly decided to remove all data associated to the Republican Party? For that matter, the Democratic Party?

It seems to me that Facebook and Twitter are trying to have it both ways. They can choose to police the content provided by their users but can't be held responsible for said content? Are they a publisher or a platform?

I don't think comparing old thinking based around old methods of communication compares to what we have today, it requires new thinking. These aren't like newspapers sold by kids on the corner in a city that can have dozens of newspapers countering each other. Imagine if there were only three newspapers in the entire country, soon the world, controlled by a small group of people who wish to use their publishing for their own agendas.

Tim Pool is right, at this rate, sooner or later, the Feds will come knocking and will shut that party down.

[sagichmal]

> What do you think would happen if these "private companies" with such deep hooks into our communication infrastructure suddenly decided to remove all data associated to the Republican Party? For that matter, the Democratic Party?

They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry. Luckily, as moral agents, we humans are capable of differentiating "general political party" from "white nationalists", and can target the latter and not the former.

[raxxorrax]

I can give you hundreds of examples of people being accused of being a white nationalist without any merit to it. To such a degree that this word almost lost its meaning.

edit: Tim Pool for example was already accused. It will clearly be used to shut down unwelcome dissent.

[pmarreck]

A while back, my leftist circles kept repeating ad nauseam that Peter Thiel (who is already in a minority, being gay) is a white nationalist. I suspected bullshit and decided to look into it.

All I could find was this: Peter Thiel once spoke at a libertarian conference. Libertarians, being libertarians, permit racism (read: not the same as "support racism"). THEREFORE, PETER THIEL IS A WHITE NATIONALIST.

Are you fucking serious? I pushed back on my leftist friends with what I found. "Duhhhhh, errrrrr, ummmmm, well... everyone just knows he is!" Oh, really.

Bullshit, repeated often enough as truth, becomes evidence for itself.

[pmarreck]

Honest question, why is this getting downvoted?

[zymhan]

Because it's a straw man argument. GP (you) is talking about some argument their friends made, not something anyone in this thread has said.

[pmarreck]

But it was a related example of how echo chambers can corrupt the truth

[namlem]

Ok but have any of these falsely accused actually had their account removed?

[mike10010100]

> I can give you hundreds of examples of people being accused of being a white nationalist without any merit to it.

Feel free to do so whenever. Be sure to indicate when that has resulted in serious consequences for the "victim".

> Tim Pool for example was already accused.

TBF Tim Pool pulled the whole "I'm so neutral" act when dealing with a bunch of actual white supremacists. What "dissent" was unwelcome there? That he was pretending like these were totally fine people who just happened to think that genocide was okay?

[AsyncAwait]

Before we make this into 'conservatives being silenced', it's worth pointing out that the censorship problem also exists for leftists outlets that are left of the neoliberal centrist view of the D.C. Democratic Party.

[raxxorrax]

Taking a stand against content moderation was a fundamental leftist position some years ago...

That said, I absolutely agree that leftist positions do get censored. Even if I currently like to underline my dissociation with its authoritarian excesses and general dishonesty on certain subjects, the problem is a general one.

[pas]

Unrestricted free speech was always a strange issue. Hitchens' very eloquently presented how control of speech was used to suppress a lot of groups, and he knew about the dangers of radicalization, incitement, hate speech, but considered those negatives acceptable.

However not everyone thinks that it's so great.

I don't know, and it's probably not something we can just settle easily.

It's usually true, that a society cannot simply rely on "laws" to save it, and when the power imbalance get too extreme, then laws won't save anyone anyway. Though it seems having some kind of policy and publicly agreed way to stop serial inciters is not a bad idea. After all information censorship generally happens through claims of potential national security hazards and other gag orders, not by a too wide interpretation of hate speech laws. (But of course human creativity is pretty limitless when it comes to suppressing others.)

[mike10010100]

> the censorship problem also exists for leftists outlets that are left of the neoliberal centrist view of the D.C. Democratic Party.

Which ones, specifically?

[oarabbus_]

such as...

[AsyncAwait]

Jimmy Dore, Max Blumenthal, Rania Khalek, Aaron Maté, Michael Tracey, Abby Martin, Matt Taibbi, Katie Halper, Ben Norton, Lee Camp, Ilhan Omar, Mark Ames etc.

There are many, just some off the top of my head.

[paulddraper]

I'm only familiar with a couple of those names.

Who/what de-platformed Jimmy Dore (here's his YouTube channel; [1])? Or the rest?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3M7l8ved_rYQ45AVzS0RGA

[int_19h]

By definition, this arrangement favors viewpoints that generate more public outcry, which sets up any marginalized group for being steamrolled. Do you seriously think that's going to be restricted to white nationalism? I mean, there's already plenty of other stuff that Facebook is censoring that the same people who are cheering these news have pushed back against before.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/internet-speech/facebo...

[mike10010100]

...and yet white nationalists are still free to set their own social network up or use networks that don't care, like Voat for example.

That's called freedom of association: the right for an organization or individual to not wish to associate with someone.

[int_19h]

What happens when all ISPs in the country combine forces to block Voat, even though there's no law banning it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral...

Are you going to suggest that people start their own ISP?

At some point, private actors can carry so much economic power that their private rules effectively become laws. Much of Jim Crow was implemented in this manner, in addition to actual legislation.

[mike10010100]

ISPs as a group blocking IP-level access to portions of the web is far and above a different thing than a private company or a group of private companies refusing to host content on their servers that they do not want to host. Your attempt to conflate the two is moving the goalposts and arguing a slippery slope.

But even then, VPN or Tor? The internet is built to route around damage. Has Mastadon, IRC, or ICQ ever been blocked?

Again, just because white nationalists don't have the platforms they want doesn't mean they can't get their message out. But what they want is mainstream acceptance, and that is most certainly not going to happen.

[repolfx]

The same Voat that just got banned in New Zealand for hosting stuff the government didn't approve of whilst Facebook, which also hosted it, was left alone?

That Voat?

Somehow I'm skeptical this is a viable approach short of Torrifying the entire internet.

[mike10010100]

> The same Voat that just got banned in New Zealand for hosting stuff the government didn't approve of whilst Facebook, which also hosted it, was left alone?

Take it up with New Zealand, which has very strong laws about hate speech and promoting extremist communities.

> whilst Facebook, which also hosted it, was left alone?

That content makes up a microscopic amount of the content on Facebook, and it was removed when reported. That content makes up the vast majority of the traffic on Voat, however.

It seems like you're moving the goalposts here, though. We're not talking about governments banning websites, we're talking about the government forcing websites to host content that they don't want to host. That's what's at play here.

And the fact is that you are free to start a public or Tor-based community of your own, unless you're in countries where Tor is blocked, in which case I think you're in far deeper shit than this discussion is focused on.

[pas]

So this problem probably requires some fragile and "temporary" complex solution.

Letting paranoid xenophobes roam, recruit and incite violence on Facebook is bad. And its ill effects are already felt, and it has significant potential for doing a lot more harm in the future.

Whereas allowing a quasi-public-forum to be controlled and basically censored by an unaccountable entity (FB) is problematic - especially if said control is co-opted by the very same ideology that in the first place that particular control mechanism was supposed to, well, control.

It feels like the problem is that hate speech and other kinds of populist nonsense is currently the tool that easily leads to more and more authoritarianism, more and more xenophobes and isolationists getting into power. But censorship itself is also a great tool for power consolidation.

[BurningFrog]

> They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry

Where would the outcry happen?

There aren't that many public platforms with any reach, and they're all adopting similar policies.

In [blocked] no one can hear you scream!

[javajosh]

You have misused a slippery slope argument to turn the other position into a strawman. There are risks to this FB ban, but silencing outcry about the ban is not one of them.

In practice, the distinction between banning a subject and banning a conversation about a subject ban, is easy to make. For example, Germany bans racist speech, but does not ban speech about whether racist speech ban should continue (and this particular debate is definitely alive and well in Germany). Even in the US we've banned certain words from broadcast TV for many years, but this never limited people from discussing whether the ban should continue!

[coldtea]

>In practice, the distinction between banning a subject and banning a conversation about a subject ban, is easy to make

And equally easy to abuse, something which has happened time and again:

Complain about the "ban of X"? Discussion shut down as supporting X.

[BurningFrog]

Germany and the US are constitutional republics with independent judiciaries who adjudicates these things.

At FB, Twitter, Snapchat etc, whoever happens to work in the subject banning division arbitrarily makes these decisions, unless overridden by top management.

[vsl]

> In practice, the distinction between banning a subject and banning a conversation about a subject ban, is easy to make

Apparently not for Facebook’s moderators/censors workforce. Just they other day: https://mobile.twitter.com/OzraeliAvi/status/111040092879067... The day before that they banned a local satirical comics and this keeps popping up regularly.

[mike10010100]

> There aren't that many public platforms with any reach

Okay? Private organizations are under no obligation to provide you with a platform to spread your message.

If you want, you can start your own social network or host your own blog.

[BurningFrog]

This is a great argument against things I didn't say.

[mike10010100]

Then perhaps if you could be a little clearer about what you are saying, we could have a discussion about that.

[naasking]

> They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry.

This is an argument for mob rule. I'm not sure that's as comforting as you intended.

[gormo2]

>They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry.

Somehow saying "yes, these multinational corporation could exert undue influence over a political system, but they just wouldn't" does not seem sufficient. I feel that such an attitude is like saying "The US government would not spy on its on citizens -- they wouldn't do that, just imagine the public outcry!" Perhaps that is a bad analogy, but the issue here is that we are nearing the point where "oh, they wouldn't do such a thing" becomes untenable.

The CFO of Google said, in the leaked video[1] of the TGIF immediately following Trump's election, that they would use "the great strength and resources and reach we have to continue to advance really important values." Going by the reactions of everyone in that meeting, their efforts are certainly not impartial or apolitical.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRf9UxsM-NE

[CathedralBorrow]

What's the alternative? Governments dictating what kind of speech private communications platforms can and cannot allow? Is that better?

[ryandrake]

> They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry.

If Facebook and Twitter suddenly decided to de-platform and ban any discussion praising, defending, or favoring a political party, where would the outcry happen? On Facebook? Sorry, it’s banned!

[KozmoNau7]

Traditional media, competing social media, forums, blogs, posters, demonstrations, sticker campaigns.

Journalists would be absolutely salivating at the thought of writing about Facebook's new policy, especially if it was that blatant.

FB and Twitter are not the entire world. It's good praxis to be involved with people in the real world.

[repolfx]

No they wouldn't, because this already happens and you hear nothing.

For instance in the UK Facebook banned the pages of a political party and very little was said because the same kinds of people who control Facebook also control the mainstream media, so they're almost always in agreement, except that journalists would really love Facebook to ban even more stuff to achieve the 'right outcomes', as they see it.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/359847/facebook-bans-far-right-uk...

[mike10010100]

> the same kinds of people who control Facebook also control the mainstream media

There's that conspiracy language again!

And then you go on to link a piece of "mainstream media" that writes extensively about it! Did you mean to prove yourself wrong?

[repolfx]

PC Mag is mainstream media, now? How many readers do you think it has compared to a national newspaper?

It's hardly a conspiracy - the worldviews of these people are formed in the same crucibles and result in the same outcomes. They want to manipulate the narrative to ensure the right outcomes, in their view.

[KozmoNau7]

Britain First (the political party in question) is a fascist white supremacist group, known for harassment actions and violence, particularly against muslims.

They're the British equivalent of the NSDAP.

[colordrops]

> Luckily, as moral agents, we humans are capable of differentiating "general political party" from "white nationalists", and can target the latter and not the former.

This is highly debatable. There are plenty of examples of benign movements and opinions that have been stifled violently by society and the state.

You can find with little effort plenty of people today calling for censoring or even being violent towards harmless liberal or conservative people because they are "communists" or "fascists". People are not good judgement and measured response.

[yawaramin]

Luckily, in civilized societies we have a system of checks and balances in place to ensure that doesn't happen.

[remarkEon]

Do we anymore?

Facebook and Twitter have become a digital public commons for discourse today. The check and balance is "what Facebook decides". That doesn't exactly seem like an adversarial check and balance system to me.

[toofy]

> Facebook and Twitter have become a digital public commons for discourse today

Absolutely correct, however, they aren’t the only places for public discourse. People have never been able to demand a newspaper print their article or that a magazine must include their story—people have always had the choice to start their own newspaper or their own magazine and build their own audience and this is still true today, in fact it’s much easier than it’s ever been.

People who’s business is access to human inputs, whether they are newspapers, music venues, theaters, magazines, etc.. have almost always had the freedom to set their own standards and it isn’t clear to me why business owners shouldn’t have this freedom anymore.

[coldtea]

>Absolutely correct, however, they aren’t the only places for public discourse

Small comfort if they are the main places for public discourse - so cutting people and ideas there essentially means relegating them to far less reach.

Strange how when some foreign state censors FB or Twitter it's an outrage, but when FB or Twitter sensor people directly "there are other places".

Not to mention the monetary deplatforming (e.g. Mastercard, PayPal, Patreon and co not allowing funding), in which case there are no "other places" (not many in any way, and not reputable for someone to go pay there).

>People have never been able to demand a newspaper print their article or that a magazine must include their story

Which is irrelevant, since newspapers and magazines where always top-down affairs, written and curated by a specific team. Social media and platforms were supposed to be open to society (hence "social"), not only for a select team of journalists to have an account there.

[coldtea]

Luckily, "civilized societies" are some of the most deluded about this point.

From McCarthyism, to J.E. Hoover, to MLK, Gary Webb, to WMD, to the Patriot Act, to Snowden, to the "collusion" BS, to today's de-platforming, the establishment and the media easily stomps on whoever they don't like with impunity.

[heavenlyhash]

So, can we as humans learn from history? Can we establish better, more thoughtful, and more balanced societies as time and our understanding progresses?

Or have we already built the pinnacle of society at some past point, and everything we ever do in the future is doomed to be as bad or worse than what we already have?

I'd like to choose optimism here, personally.

[coldtea]

Well, starting with free for everybody speech platforms, and letting people make up their mind, would be a good start.

Banning ads would also be another good start, but I don't see the idea getting very popular.

[antt]

>They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry. Luckily, as moral agents, we humans are capable of differentiating "general political party" from "white nationalists", and can target the latter and not the former.

Why white? The CCP is running concentration camps for hundreds of thousands of Muslims right now, yet I see no ban on the only party that can be called National Socialist today, just because the nation they are supporting is yellow.

[yawaramin]

Which banned party (on Facebook) are you talking about? You said, '... yet I see no ban on the only party that...'. Which banned party are you comparing it to?

[coldtea]

The CCP obviously (Chinese Communist Party, aka CPC), which he already mentioned.

Not sure if CCP has a FB page, but that far is obvious.

[yawaramin]

Is it though? I can't find anything that explicitly says that Facebook has banned the CCP. Could you provide any sources which say this? Also, the post I was replying to said:

> The CCP is running concentration camps for hundreds of thousands of Muslims right now, yet I see no ban on the only party that can be called National Socialist today, just because the nation they are supporting is yellow.

I don't see any way to infer this as saying that Facebook has banned the CCP–what am I missing here?

Also, if Facebook has indeed banned the CCP, well, turnabout is just fair play–after all, the CCP has banned Facebook from China.

[jsutton]

This discussion is about FB and, more broadly, speech on private platforms. Not the Chinese Communist Party or any governments.

[AsyncAwait]

Ignoring the obvious attempt to bring fascism as somehow not right-wing, which is all too common on the right today, FB/Twitter etc. make exceptions for governments/public figures, including Donald Trump and the DoD.

I don't think they should, but I also know that if they didn't, Trump and others would get banned and the cries from the fake free speech worriers, (who are quiet as heck on ie BDS), would be a lot louder.

[coldtea]

>Luckily, as moral agents, we humans are capable of differentiating "general political party" from "white nationalists", and can target the latter and not the former.

Really? How about plain nationalists? How about communists? How about separatists? How about traditionalists? How about "Occupy Wall Street"? How about "nationalists" in e.g Iceland, a country where nationalists would be predominantly if not exclusively white in the first place?

If your idea of "general political party" is Democrats and Republicans and the occasional third candidate, ie. the bland two-party consensus that agrees on almost everything (foreign policy, more money to big money, etc), but disagrees on token issues (and that increasingly less), then sure.

But the movements and parties that change things up historically were never welcomed as "general political parties" by the establishment and the "good people" of the 10%.

I'm from a generally center-left-leaning country, where e.g. Reagan would be considered the epitome of nationalist and/or imperialist. Would it be OK for Facebook to censor Reagan (or some modern politician with the same ideas) on those grounds?

[mike10010100]

> Really? How about plain nationalists? How about communists? How about separatists? How about traditionalists? How about "Occupy Wall Street"? How about "nationalists" in e.g Iceland, a country where nationalists would be predominantly if not exclusively white in the first place?

Are they talking about racial genocide? No? Then they're a-okay.

I don't know why this is such a difficult concept for people to understand: If you're advocating genocide or violence against a people, you're gonna get banned. Pure and simple.

[firexcy]

Yes, they wouldn’t do that. But no, checks and balances can not be based on something that would or would not happen.

[josteink]

> we humans are capable of differentiating "general political party" from "white nationalists", and can target the latter and not the former.

We’re also good at being boiled slowly, like frogs.

[joesb]

Which is debunked.

[coldtea]

Regarding frogs, maybe. Regarding people, it has never been debunked, and it has been proven time and again to be exactly right.

[magduf]

This is correct. Frogs just aren't that dumb; it's been proven. Humans, on the other hand...

[sisu2019]

you say that as if we didn't just have two years of progressives and media smearing people they disagree with as alt-right.

Doesn't matter what they believe or say: Sam Harris? Alt-right. Tim Poole? Alt-right. Jordan Peterson? Alt-right. David Rubin? Alt-right. And that's just the leftists!

[hcurtiss]

Are you sure? Do we even know, for sure, what "white nationalist" means? I'm white, and I favor a government that's principally oriented toward advancing this nation's interests. Am I a white nationalist?

[clucas]

You're right that some of these terms have ambiguity, but your example is silly - it's well-accepted that the term "white nationalist" stands on its own and means something different from "white and a nationalist."

But even setting aside your specific example, I don't believe that ambiguity should paralyze us into inaction. I think it's fair to say "OK, we'll ban anyone who advocates distributing political power based on race, with the white 'race' getting the most power... when people cross that line won't always be clear, but we'll do our best." For private action especially, we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

[manfredo]

> You're right that some of these terms have ambiguity, but your example is silly - it's well-accepted that the term "white nationalist" stands on its own and means something different from "white and a nationalist."

Stephen Colbert would disagree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nk0dUjYUNI

"You know why you're not supposed to use that word [nationalist]? Because it's the second half of 'white nationalist'. Chopping off the first word doesn't change what it means in our minds."

[freehunter]

Stephen Colbert is also a comedian and not a linguist.

[raxxorrax]

Good thing Facebook moderators are linguists. It was high time they get a real job.

[cat199]

> it's well-accepted that the term "white nationalist" stands on its own and means something different from "white and a nationalist."

Is it?

Or is this a deliberately conflated term promoted as an 'official' label in public discourse in order to dissuade association with those favoring the more benign meaning?

Agreed that ambiguity shouldn't create inaction - but it just as well shouldn't promote incorrect action either

[speedplane]

> Or is this a deliberately conflated term promoted as an 'official' label in public discourse in order to dissuade association with those favoring the more benign meaning?

Why would you use the term white and nationalist together? Being white has very little to do with being a nationalist unless you believe it has everything to do with it, in which case you would be racist.

[cat199]

Maybe you wouldn't, but if you happen to be white, and taking an (inclusive, not race based) nationalist ideology, you can now conveniently be smeared by describing these two facts..

Oh her? don't listen to her, shes a 'white nationalist'.

Also, if, assuming this confusion to be true, having the term 'white nationalist' existing in the discourse as a negative, those who are not aware of the nuances between 'whites who happen to be nationalist' and 'those promoting a white nation' are pre-biased via faulty discourse to discount the words of 'whites who happen to be nationalist'.

Any popular terminology which deliberately overlooks subtlety and dismisses it when it is pointed out in the discourse is problematic. It's effectively a subtle smear campaign against the non-problematic nuances.

See also the strangely similar situation with the term 'skinhead' -

Initially this was a mostly apolitical working class subculture, most listened to soul music and smoked pot and listened to reggae, and many were apolitical or left/socialist leaning. Genearlly mildly populist, mostly white, but yes somewhat 'dangerous' in that it was a popular social movement of unconventional rowdy people of all stripes. (much like the 'disenfranchised trumpians' that the media is happy to highlight as contributing to the rise of the so-called 'white nationalism' we're talking about here)

Cue one politically motivated overtly racist subgroup acting up and stealing all the headlines, and now the entire term/culture is essentially taboo..

One can argue that this group just got the press and 'messed up the term', but at some point editorial bias is a factor.

For god sakes this is 'hacker news' I shouldn't need to explain this.

[NotAnEconomist]

> it's well-accepted that the term "white nationalist" stands on its own and means something different from "white and a nationalist."

Many right-wing people claim that in practice, there's not: they're accused of being "white nationalists" for being "white and a nationalist".

Edit:

If people downvoting me think I'm wrong, explain why people like Jordan Peterson, who merely espouse non-leftist positions and happen to be white, routinely get accused of supporting the alt-right and neo-Nazis.

For the people who doubt what I'm saying -- here's a video of Jordan Peterson. This is who the leftists routinely call "neo-Nazis" or "alt-right": moderates who refute their positions and calmly assert values like personal responsibility over collectivist victimhood culture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2bFzK2EdIo

Edit 2:

I'd originally written "conservative"; I'm not sure Mr Peterson would describe himself in such terms. I've made it more neutral.

[manfredo]

I concur that terms like "Nazi", "white nationalist", "alt-right" and similar have essentially morphed into "person I don't like".

And this applies to both ends of the political spectrum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYlZiWK2Iy8

[josteink]

> have essentially morphed into "person I don't like"

I’d say it’s even closer to “people I disagree with”.

[Multicomp]

"White nationalism" is an overloaded term and until tonight I'd never heard the official definition of white nationalism until GPs comments.

I've just assumed it was a vague insult aimed at non-nominal conservatives.

[marmada]

Not sure how you reached the conclusion that white nationalism doesn't have a real meaning. Googling "white nationalism" gives plenty of results that indicate "white nationalism" is an ideology that promotes white supremacy and/or a whites-only nation/racial segregation.

To quote Merriam Webster:

"one of a group of militant whites who espouse white supremacy and advocate enforced racial segregation"

[Veraticus]

Words have meaning, and people know what those meanings are. "White nationalist" does not mean "white people who like their country" and it's disingenuous to pretend it does.

[fastball]

It's much more disingenuous to pretend that words and phrases have universal meanings.

[azernik]

Universal isn't necessary. Well-understood in the American political context is sufficient.

[atmosx]

There is an infinite number of definitions for “like their country”.

Nazis in Greece like their country or what they perceive as “their country”.

[jakeogh]

Wrong. It's a deliberate attempt to language engineer the idea that loving your country is bad. This is not new, the power structures that benefit from centralization (correctly) see national sovereignty as an obstacle.

Note how you will never hear the term "ethnic supremacists" used by conventional media. It's too accurate and does not push the borderless agenda.

[codyb]

I don’t think anyone’s mentioned policing patriotism. You can be as patriotic as you want. America’s great, I love our nation, it’s people, culture, and ideals.

That’s different from saying things like “get that Spanish off the menu, this is America”, “go home foreigners”, and “immigrants are criminals”.

I’m sure you can see the difference.

[jakeogh]

There will always be some junk quotes people can find (or make up!) to support their agenda.

I don't really care what FB does, I prefer it to have all the rope it needs, but this normalization of taking and modifying the meaning of terms to fit the anti-borders narrative is dishonest and manipulative. Again, it's not even remotely a new thing, the anti-borders crowd has been gunning against nationalism time eternal.

[seventytwo]

Yes. Because history demonstrates our ability to do that - not to allow factions like the KKK to triumph.

We’ve done this kind of thing before, and we’ll do it again. Facebook responding like this IS the marketplace of ideas reacting.

[KozmoNau7]

I've noticed this tendency among a lot of right wingers. Lately I've seen it a lot in metalhead circles, particularly black metal, which does have a bit of a nazi problem in some parts.

They'll crow and gloat about how the scene isn't a safe space, that it's founded in hate and intolerance. But as soon as well-known nazi/NSBM-related bands or members of the scene are deplatformed and antagonized for their views, the tone goes straight to "get these leftists out, this is a right wing scene! This is censorship!" and so on.

Apparently only right wing radicals should be allowed to have safe spaces... /s

[mch82]

We know, for sure, the dictionary definition. Consider looking it up & assessing whether you wish to apply the label to yourself.

[remarkEon]

>Consider looking it up & assessing whether you wish to apply the label to yourself.

But this isn't what will happen. Expressing skepticism about immigration - a fairly normal and mainstream opinion in the 1990s and early 2000s - can easily be construed today as "white nationalism" by many on the political left. It's not you who gets to define what your views are on these platforms, it's the "moderators".

[KozmoNau7]

Openly questioning the validity of the capitalist system has been construed as hardcore hunger and famine bread lines planned economy USSR-style communism for decades.

Welcome to not having a safe space anymore.

[roenxi]

Openly questioning the validity of the capitalist system is fine. Facebook shouldn't be banning people who don't like capitalism from their platform either.

[sisu2019]

you are a complaining about your ideology being ridiculed because its bad and leads to awful results, your interlocutor complains about not being able to voice his opinion without actual persecution.

[justatdotin]

will neo-nazis be able to side-step appropriate regulation by framing hate statements as questions?

[kingkawn]

Yeah it means neo-Nazis who believe in the innate supremacy of the white race. If you’re one of them I want you to be deplatformed immediately and without sentimental hand-wringing about liberal platitudes.

This will be an ongoing project and will require constant tweaking and adjustment, but I’m all for their removal from the public sphere.

There are underlying economic and social issues leading to the reemergence of this worldview that need to be dealt with urgently and with peacemaking intention. Still, in the meantime this kind of thought if unchecked leads to genocide and must be stopped.

[0xbadcafebee]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nationalism

[tibbydudeza]

In Sweden perhaps not since white and nation is analogous but in US you are going have a problem.

[zobzu]

you think so? republican stuff is already regularly banned from various platforms, mainly because tech companies lean left.

i dont consider myself republican, but the slippery slope seems all too real in this case.

[amanaplanacanal]

I'm curious, which platforms ban Republicans?

[Brendinooo]

OP said "Republican stuff", which if he meant that various conservative/Republican leaning stuff has been censored on Facebook, that's definitely true. Search around; most cases typically range from "persecution complex/not actually censorship" to "automated processes have implicit bias" to "neutral on the surface but always seem to hurt conservative causes". With FB you tend to see automated things catch conservative stuff, then get overturned on appeal rather than permabanning people.

Facebook banning outside ads for the Ireland abortion referendum comes to mind, as well as the case where a Christian satire site was threatened with a ban for spreading false information because Snopes had fact-checked one of their articles as false. Susan B. Anthony List had a bunch of pro-life ads banned; I think most of them were restored.

https://stream.org/328684-2/ this is a more recent case that follows a familiar pattern: Flagged, rejected appeal, then mysteriously overturned appeal some days later.

[laughinghan]

I'm sure that tons of conservative/Republican leaning stuff has been censored on Facebook then overturned on appeal.

Hopefully, you also don't doubt that there are also many examples of Facebook censoring liberal/left/non-Republican whatever stuff, and then overturning on appeal, many times mysteriously so, after initially rejecting the appeal. (This post presents like a dozen examples in the genre of black activists being banned for discussion of racism, such as uploading screenshots of racist and sexist harassment they received. You might also want a warning that these examples are interspersed with the author's strongly opinionated and bellicose comments. https://medium.com/@thedididelgado/mark-zuckerberg-hates-bla... )

Due to their scale and the shittiness of their algorithms and processes at this kind of thing, surely you're not surprised there are tons of examples on every side. (This article documents more examples on all sides, including exemptions for a prominent Republican: https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-hate-speech-cens... )

What reason do you have to believe these mistakes always seems to hurt conservative causes or that you tend to see conservative stuff get caught, disproportionately more than non-conservative stuff?

[Brendinooo]

Can't know for sure, of course. If someone wants to start keeping score, I'd be interested in the results.

If you want to convince me that it's more of a "establishment/fringe" divide than "left/right", that ProPublica piece goes a long way towards making that case.

[Murdoch]

It's generally considered a "conservative" or "republican" position to contend that males and females differ biologically and that sex is an immutable characteristic. On twitter, if you express this idea towards someone who is trans or advocating trans-issues you will very likely get banned.

[freehunter]

You know, those world renowned leftists that run Twitter and Reddit...

[zelon88]

> Tim Pool is right, at this rate, sooner or later, the Feds will come knocking and will shut that party down.

What party? The government is gonna come into a private organization and tell them they are obligated to spend money to preserve, host, and broadcast hate speech that doesn't align with the company's values?

Please tell me how this differs from telling small business owners they can't refuse service.

[NotAnEconomist]

The safe harbor protections from copyright violations for user uploads require neutrality in content hosting, because pre-approval implies you must also vet copyright.

They're welcome to censor to editorialize, but they lose their protections from copyright suits for relaying copyright material uploaded by their users.

For Facebook to be immune from copyright liability for my uploads, when they display them to others publicly for profit, they cannot express prior restraint over my upload. Such commercial copyright violations carry heft penalties, in the thousands of dollars per view: Facebook and Google can't operate in an environment where they're liable to such a degree for uploads.

The government recognized this about internet services, and granted them immunity to copyright related suits in exchange for supporting the American value of free speech on their platforms. (This is a law.) They're free to not accept that deal, but they're liable for their commercial copyright infringement in that case.

[laughinghan]

Are you a lawyer? If not, can you point to a legal expert explaining why a court would interpret the law as requiring neutrality, or as waiving the protection in the case of pre-approval or vetting copyright, or as requiring that the immunity is only provided in exchange for supporting free speech?

I read and re-read both the DMCA 17 USC § 512 and Section 230 of the CDA, and as far as I can tell, the DMCA only requires responding "expeditiously" to DMCA takedown notices and court orders, and the CDA has no conditions at all but doesn't protect from copyright liability in the first place.

In fact, the CDA explicitly states that its liability protection DOESN'T require neutrality, and extends to “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected”. See https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230

[NotAnEconomist]

There's a question of if a service which pre-filters (to editorialize) content from a user is actually qualified under 512.c at all -- since the content is no longer at the direction of the user, but at the editorial approval of the service.

An anthology is not exempted under 512.c.

[laughinghan]

I see. So am I understanding correctly that when you had asserted, in the comment I was replying to, that protections from copyright violations require neutrality in content hosting, you were not referring to settled case law, but rather an untested legal theory that you personally support but that has not been tested in the courts?

[Gene_Parmesan]

I am a lawyer, and while I know nothing about the law in question (not even close to my specialty), I can tell you that statutes are only half of the story. The other half would be court decisions involving those statutes. We live in a common law country which means that court decisions & precedents act as law themselves. They can't just overturn a statute or ignore it, but every court decision on a statute acts as a further refinement to the law in question.

So we'd have to pull relevant case history. You can't just look at the words in a statute. Each single term of art could have a chain of cases arguing over the specific meaning of that term.

[dragonwriter]

> The government recognized this about internet services, and granted them immunity to copyright related suits in exchange for supporting the American value of free speech on their platforms. (This is a law.)

No, it's not. You seem to be mixing an inverted understanding of CDA Section 230 (which was instituted to avoid discouraging host moderation of user content, because prior to 230 exerting any such editorial control risked a host being treated as a publisher rather than distributor, with greater liability exposure for the user content) with the DMCA safe harbor (which, unlike CDA 230, applies to copyright claims.)

[humblebee]

> The safe harbor protections from copyright violations for user uploads require neutrality in content hosting, because pre-approval implies you must also vet copyright.

Is this a 'A therefore B' thing due to the way the laws are written, or is this explicitly called out someplace?

> The government recognized this about internet services, and granted them immunity to copyright related suits in exchange for supporting the American value of free speech on their platforms. (This is a law.)

I did a bit of looking (though not a lot) to try and find some sources on this but I wasn't able to really uncover anything that supports this.

Do you have any source available? I'm interested in reading into this idea further, I find it rather fascinating.

[tannhauser23]

Look up Communications Decency Act, Section 230. This is a good primer: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

[laughinghan]

I read the entirety of the page you linked to. Nowhere I found does it say that neutrality is required for the protection to apply, nor that pre-approval or vetting copyright would waive the protection, nor that the protection is in exchange for supporting free speech. Could you point that out to me?

In fact, it links to another page which states:

        Wow, is there anything Section 230 can't do?
    Yes. It does not apply to [...] intellectual property law

https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230

Which directly contradicts your implication that Section 230 is the law that grandparent was referring to when they stated:

    The government [...] granted [internet services] immunity
    to copyright related suits [...] (This is a law.)

Furthermore, Section 230 explicitly states that its liability protection DOESN'T require neutrality, and extends to:

    any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict
    access to or availability of material that the provider or
    user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy,
    excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable,
    whether or not such material is constitutionally protected

(same link)

[dragonwriter]

> Look up Communications Decency Act, Section 230

Sure, but it (1) doesn't apply to copyright—that's the DMCA safe harbor not the CDA one, and (2) was specifically created to eliminate the added liability web hosts were then subject to if they engaged in content moderation, not to require them to abstain from moderation to secure the safe harbor.

[Natanael_L]

Section 230 explained:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/ted-cruz-vs-section-230-misrepre...

[Natanael_L]

No neutrality is required, only best effort removal of illegal material

https://www.lawfareblog.com/ted-cruz-vs-section-230-misrepre...

[jdsully]

The US government forces companies to spend money on many things they don’t want to do. Regulatory authority is extremely broad.

[jonfw]

The government tells power and phone companies that they can't cut off service to people discriminately.

I'm pretty libertarian in respects to market regulation, but when it comes to mopolistic industries you need regulation.

[codedokode]

> Do we wait until it can be shown that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. influenced elections because they refused to serve information from a candidate they didn't like? If we aren't already there, it's not long before it is.

That's an interesting question. What if Google and Facebook would secretly demote and hide articles about one political party and promote articles about another party? Theoretically they are absolutely free to do so but how do you think, will it cause a Congress investigation or not? Those people made noise about much smaller things.

Also, what if Google would start demoting its competitors and everyone who deals with those "untouchable" companies? That would be interesting to see.

I think people don't realise what power these new media have. The monopoly of Facebook or Google is a serious issue and we should not believe that they will always stay neutral.

[amanaplanacanal]

Well, sure, they could do all sorts of bad things. Normally we don't go after people until they actually do those bad things though, instead of removing their ability to act because they might.

[dqpb]

This already happens. "Mainstream Media" doesn't give equal coverage to 3rd party candidates.

[cynoclast]

Or even DNC candidates, if they're actual progressives: https://decisiondata.org/news/political-media-blackouts-pres...

[metafunctor]

Neutral might not exist.

> It seems to me that Facebook and Twitter are trying to have it both ways.

Of course Facebook and Twitter are trying to have it both ways, and, indeed, all ways — there are many more ways for people to communicate, or stances to take, than “both”.

Platforms like FB and Twitter hope to be the communications backbone of the world. The problem is, the world has opinions on what kinds of communications are acceptable. These platforms try to stay neutral, but the people are not.

Neutral does not exist. It's all relative.

In a polarized world, a neutral platform will die because either side won't like it. In a more interesting world, it might still die because people don't like people who don't think like them.

[prewett]

I like your idea that "neutral might not exist." FB is going about this in the obvious control-oriented strategy: we have a problem, ok, we'll make a rule against it. This doesn't work, and can only lead FB to having lots of rules and everyone unhappy with them.

The problem with FB is that they have built a system that rewards polarizing opinions. Edward Deming said that your system is perfectly set up to give you the results you are getting, so if you want different ones, you need to change your system. Incentivize quality, disincentivize "viral-ness". Maybe limit viral-ness. Optimize for something besides addictiveness^Wengagement. Admit that people think, say, and do harmful things and build a system that is robust to it. Add some kind of negative feedback for posts.

[JamesLeonis]

Here's another "way" that's ignored: Nearly all services give users little to no control over the content they see. They can't self-moderate or filter the content coming their way. Instead, users have to "Appeal To Authority" (whether Facebook or the Feds) in order to make changes. It's incredibly disempowering in both cases, and doesn't need to be this way. "Mods" on Reddit help. Page Owners on FB pages help. However these are still "Authorities" that must be appealed to. Even resorting to contacting advertisers to pressure them to not sponsor "bad" content is still an Appeal To Authority.

Essentially, you have no control so the only solution is to not participate or appeal to a higher authority. Both are terrible.

In a weird tangental side-thought: The Internet is to Western Capitalism what Glasnost/Perestroika was to the Soviet Union. The opening of information, while allowing many great things through, also removed the filters that kept harmful content on the margins. In the Soviet state, it was the authority of the State that dictated content. In the Western world, it's mostly those who own/control large media platforms. Since liberalization, each situation found The Authority under acerbic attack from these new wellsprings of content, both legitimate and illegitimate.

[salty_biscuits]

"Imagine if there were only three newspapers in the entire country, soon the world, controlled by a small group of people who wish to use their publishing for their own agendas."

Come over to Australia, that is what our traditional media has been like for years!

[Natanael_L]

They're protected by the US first amendment, unconditionally so given that online websites by design work through publishing. You can't compel them to host unwanted speech.

As for liability, here's why the laws intentionally shield them;

https://www.lawfareblog.com/ted-cruz-vs-section-230-misrepre...

And finally, there's nothing forcing you to use them. Convenience (or lack of it) is not a sufficient argument for regulation.

[samhain]

>Imagine if there were only three newspapers in the entire country, soon the world, controlled by a small group of people who wish to use their publishing for their own agendas.

Could you explain how this is any different than the handful of television companies for the past 70 years?

As best as I can tell, the older demographics seem to be the ones primarily watching the news, and it shows in polling data. Their opinions and narratives are easily manipulated by the "news" networks they are faithful to. Companies run by a "small group of people."

[coldtea]

>At what point do such things change into a public discourse problem?

When they censor opinions that the top 10% agrees with, since those are that control the media and what's acceptable.

[tibbydudeza]

I don't see Germany tolerating any support of National Socialism in their public sphere and rightly so ... some ideologies just too bloody abhorent and against the public good.

[aryehof]

For now. The passing of time and new generations will result in the loss of the lessons of the past.

[raxxorrax]

Contrary to popular believe we already had laws against hate-speech in the middle of the 19th century. The authoritarians used that regularly to underline their alleged prosecution. And it worked because they were right to a degree.

You can only remember the lessons of the past if you understood them in the first place. And frankly, arguing for more content controls by authorities is an insult to anyone actually having an understanding of those times.

[ptah]

slippery slope. at the moment there is no dialogue. commenting on white supremacist content on facebook and calling it out currently will get you banned. this statement purports that they will be more balanced from now on

[commandlinefan]

> influenced elections

In fairness to Google and Facebook, etc. TV networks have always been super biased and had far more reach than internet platforms - and it was actually conservatives who shut down (with good reason) the "fairness doctrine" that would have forced them to carry content they didn't necessarily agree with.

[seventytwo]

You listen to Tim Pool? He’s a right wing psycho that hides behind fake journalistic integrity to cherry pick stories for his target audience of white supremacists, xenophobes, and other anti-social nut jobs.

[talmand]

I, for one, listen to everybody I'm allowed to listen to.

[burfog]

We're already there.

Repeating a previous study, which had shown bias in the 2016 election, Dr. Robert Epstein shows that bias in the 2018 election pushed voters towards democrats. Approximately 4.6 million undecided voters are likely to have flipped. Numerous districts, particularly CA 45, are likely to have been flipped by Google's weaponized bias.

There has also been an awful lot of bans of beginner politicians, all on one side, often corrected after the election (damage is done) with a lame excuse about algorithms making mistakes.

[maldusiecle]

Do you have citations for any of this?

[humblebee]

It looks like the poster above is referencing the following

[0] https://www.theepochtimes.com/another-way-google-manipulates...

[1] https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_2018-Manipulating_minds-...

[bduerst]

These are both written by the same person, and amount to spreading FUD about liberal bogeymen and painting conservatives as a victim.

For example, he is quoting Hillary Clinton instant search debacle as an example of bias, which was debunked as being technical illiteracy:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/google-manipulate-hillary-...

[beat]

I'm guessing not.

[13415]

I don't believe these slippery slope argument are sound. You can apply these kind of arguments to almost every alleged free speech issue. Just make it an argument against banning <insert whatever content you find absolutely reprehensible and clearly worth banning>.