Facebook bans far right groups

isissxn said:
I was under the impression that the actual policy bans groups with violent rhetoric or principles from the platform, regardless of political affiliation or whatever. So the Nazis would be gone, but so would, say, a left-wing group who talks about killing TERFs, or a group that advocates environmental terrorism, or those idiots who violently destroy people's beehives. Am I incorrect in that understanding?
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That's correct. There are two reasons that we only hear about the wingnut and Nazi groups:

1. They are the only groups "centrists" and "classical liberals" worry about losing their right to a soap-box for their bile.

2. They are the ones killing other people, thus prompting the clamp down.
 
uke2se said:
That's correct. There are two reasons that we only hear about the wingnut and Nazi groups:

1. They are the only groups "centrists" and "classical liberals" worry about losing their right to a soap-box for their bile.

2. They are the ones killing other people, thus prompting the clamp down.
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Hmmm, not really much of a slippery slope then, in my opinion. "Don't advocate violence" is a pretty clear line. They could still have their gross ideology, no one is hunting them down, they just have to cut out the violence BS. If they want to post on a certain website, that is.


I don't mean to mock or diminish anyone else's concerns in the thread, though. I may not be understanding the full picture. "Banning far-right groups" sounds pretty bad - definite slippery slope there (meaning that the platform could determine what counts as "far," and that could theoretically become problematic). But "banning groups that yammer on about (and sometimes stir up) violence, many of whom happen to be far-right" doesn't sound quite as perilous. What am I missing?

EDIT: I guess the line can blur quite a bit with violence/dehumanization in those discussions though. At what point does likening people to cockroaches who should be stomped out cross over to advocating violence? Maybe it's not that simple. "Technically we didn't advocate it, blah blah blah, we just wished for it, ban unfair! Whinge, whinge."

I wish the racists would just go away, ugh. Their position makes no sense.
 
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psionl0 said:
There is no honesty in this thread. Posters here speak of rabid Nazi violent racists but they really mean all forms of political incorrectness.
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What ? you mean there's no massive nazi infestation on Facebook ? Ever since Trump got elected and the nazi warning flag was raised, I've been waiting for these guys to have stadium sized rallies.
 
I thought that I'd be able to hide that what I really want, deep down inside, is capital punishment for anyone who tells a dirty joke, but I guess psionl0 can't be fooled!
 
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angrysoba said:
That’s a shame! Soldiers of Odin sounds like a cool name for a group.
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They are a Norwegian vigilante group who patrol the streets looking for Muslims who misbehave.

Many of their members have ties to nazi and nationalist organizations, and many of them are convicted of violent crimes.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I'll describe you as someone who thinks it really, really important that racists have soapboxes. Because that's what you are arguing.
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Defending free speech is ALWAYS about defending the rights of abhorrent people to express their abhorrent views. If nobody thinks their views are abhorrent, then nobody will want to restrict their rights to free speech.

For this reason, I believe this is not a valid rebuttal.
 
psionl0 said:
"Unfortunately, Facebook immediately used this new precedent to switch its sights on the left, temporarily shutting down the Occupy London page and deleting the anti-fascist No Unite the Right account (Tech Crunch, 8/1/18). Furthermore, on August 9, the independent, reader-supported news website Venezuelanalysis had its page suspended without warning."​
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You're using last year's banning of fake news sites to argue that this year's banning of nazis is the beginning of a slippery slope.
 
psionl0 said:
There is no honesty in this thread. Posters here speak of rabid Nazi violent racists but they really mean all forms of political incorrectness.
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Well, that post really makes the thread less honest.
 
I Am The Scum said:
Look out, we got a mind reader here.
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You don't need to read minds. The history in this forum shows that the guiding principle is that we all have the freedom to agree with the prevalent views here and we all have the freedom to attack those who defend the right to alternative views.
 
uke2se said:
Criticize them all you want. When you reserve your criticism for when racists get booted off the platform, it informs the rest of us about your priorities.

Slippery slope my butt.
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As I said in the previous thread on this, companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Paypal have been banning people for being trans, for criticizing Nazi wannabes, for doing ASMR videos, and many other asinine reasons for years now, while racial supremacists (not just white nationalists like Richard Spencer, Louis Farrakhan's Twitter account has a video where he likens Jewish people to termites) are allowed to run wild. The only *possible "slippery slope" argument is the exact opposite direction from what people are fretting about: Today it's people who point out that the "alt-right" are really just a pack of genocidal white supremacists, tomorrow it'll be Holocaust deniers.
 
kellyb said:
Where do you get news from?
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Many sources. Two sources I do not like are Fox and CNN, though I do check them out at times. I don't use Facebook and I don't use Google for anything other than Youtube. I like to verify national stories with local news when possible. I like to read more than one article on a subject, and I like to check out sources from other countries to get their perspective.

For example, I used to check out BBC sometimes because they often expanded on stuff that the US sites would leave out, and I found them well written as well, but I don't use them so much anymore.

I don't trust any news source to get any single story 100% correct. I can think of no news site that I trust to consistently deliver unbiased reporting either, so checking more than one is a requirement.

I used to enjoy coming here to get perspectives from other people around the country and world but not so much now.

I don't spend nearly as much time with the news or this forum as I used to. I find it does little to enhance my enjoyment of life and accomplishes little to nothing. The news has its place still. Maybe it's overload.

Silly side note:
I can't stand listening to NPR. Too much whispering and zero emotion or passion. I shouldn't say zero, but enough to drive me crazy. Sometimes they an-nun-ci-ate. so. much.

I'll never forget this NPR thing I heard. A few news jocks or whatever are sitting in the studio. Maybe a morning show?

A question was asked: "What was the first thing that made you think science was cool?" We got a few standard answers, stuff learned in school, whatever. Then one of them answers, "When I fist found out how much energy goes into raising livestock vs how much we get out of it"

"Ooooh good answer good answer!" The rest said. :rolleyes:
 
isissxn said:
Hmmm, not really much of a slippery slope then, in my opinion. "Don't advocate violence" is a pretty clear line.
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Yes, not advocating violence is usually a fairly clear line (although would people advocating for the US entrance into WW2 against Germany cross that line?). Except almost all the discussion here justifying the banning is based on the identity of the people who were banned, and not the specific content of whatever they posted. In fact, I don't think I've seen a single reference to any posted content which violated Facebook's policies. So I don't really believe that that's actually the line which is being drawn. It smells a whole lot like "offensive speech is violence".
 
Anything that results in fewer people on Facebook is fine with me. Maybe someday everybody will switch it off.
 
psionl0 said:
You can criticize all you want but don't pretend that this is only about extreme right wing hate groups or that anybody who doesn't wholeheartedly support whatever you say is one of them.
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But not pretending that would be lying on my part.

Also, you didn't answer my question.
 
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