[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.