Facebook bans far right groups

psionl0 said:
Assuming that there exists somebody who is wise enough and incorruptible enough to decide what information the 5% can be exposed to (assuming that this is not a made up statistic) you haven't made a case for trying to suppress this information.

Can you imagine what would happen if governments attempted to make dissenting opinions about vaccinations illegal? Even reasonable people would begin to suspect that a conspiracy was afoot. That 5% of people who were antivaxers would surely rise.

You are proposing tactics similar to those used in the "war" against drugs.
Click to expand...


You seem to be confused as to what we are discussing here.... so let me make it clear for you...

"what would happen if governments attempted to make dissenting opinions about vaccinations illegal?"
​
Outrage... a clear violation of antivaxers' 1A rights

"what would happen if social media platforms attempted to make dissenting opinions about vaccinations outside their terms and conditions?
​
Nothing. Its their absolute right to choose what they do and do not allow on their platform.
 
Last edited:
Eddie Dane said:
Evidently, I can listen to hours of right-wing podcasts without hating Jews, laugh my ass off at Alex Jones and still not think school shootings are staged, and I doubt I'll find the Flat Earth society convincing.

I don't think I'm very special at all, but this is a numbers game: 5% of us are idiots and therein lies the problem.

This was fine when we had some Neo-Nazi living in Alaska distributing his message to his ten followers by mailing them casette tapes.

What would you do if you were Marc Zuckerberg? Let Alex Jones have his long angry rants about pedophilic drag queens who groom children? And then one of his followers detonates a nail bomb in a gay bar. People start pointing fingers at your respectable multi-billion advertising business. What will your press release look like?
Click to expand...

Quoting someone who understands the problem.
 
Eddie Dane said:
I think it is very important that only the fringes on the right (Nazis) and left (Stalinists) be excluded from the main platforms. But I think the slippery slope is real and there will be never-ending scope-creep.
Click to expand...

I don't.

IMO, the slippery slope is a fallacy, like the "thin end of the wedge" fallacy - if you allow "this" then it won't be long before will be allowing "this" and then "this" and before you know it, burglary, rape and murder will be legal.

Banning of extremes will have a soft limit and a hard limit, rather like the lowest likely score and the lowest possible a golf course.
 
smartcooky said:
I don't.

IMO, the slippery slope is a fallacy, like the "thin end of the wedge" fallacy - if you allow "this" then it won't be long before will be allowing "this" and then "this" and before you know it, burglary, rape and murder will be legal.

Banning of extremes will have a soft limit and a hard limit, rather like the lowest likely score and the lowest possible a golf course.
Click to expand...


Not only do I predict there will be scope creep, but this scope creep will also be powered by algorithms.

That means some AI will look at this thread and remove all of Ponderingturtles snarky parodies of conservative positions. Not because they are unfunny strawmen, but because the AI will be incapable of recognising sarcasm.

I don't think this sanitised internet will be particularly fair, fun or sharp. Five years from now you'll be dusting off your VHS copy of Eddie Murphy's RAW because all the clips have been purged from Youtube for being racisthomphobicsexisttoxicmasculinitytransphobicetc.

I hope I'm wrong, but we'll have to see.

For now, it's inevitable that these companies restrict some speech as they cannot risk being liable for its outcomes and because the idiots in radical information bubbles can do disproportionate damage to society.
 
Last edited:
smartcooky said:
And if just a few idiots from 4Chan can create such a furore of hate with so few resources and get the attention Carlson, then just imagine what the resources of the FSB and the Russian Government could do.... oh, wait!!
Click to expand...

People are so willing to believe anything negative about the "other" that some troll can just cook up a social media account and play the role of black radical, radical feminist, Trumper etc and get major exposure through social sharing.

It is ridiculously easy. As you mentioned 4Chan has managed to do some absolutely insane social experiments. Freebleeding, recasting the OK sign as a White-power symbol. This is so successful that actual white nationalist are now using it as a symbol AND media companies are now seeing it like the Hitler salute.

The impact of a small group of teenagers having actual real-life effects should alert us to the dangers of organised trolling.
 
Eddie Dane said:
Not only do I predict there will be scope creep, but this scope creep will also be powered by algorithms.
Click to expand...

I'd seriously like to know what this "scope creep" will look like. It seems unlikely that they'd suddenly ban comedy, although advertisers on Youtube may run for the exits rather than have their products associated with, say, Holocaust denial. And as for progressives, minorities, and so on, again, they've been arbitrarily banning them for years, so if there's any "slippery slope", the pro-genocide folks seem to be at the bottom of that slope, not at the top.

Eddie Dane said:
People are so willing to believe anything negative about the "other" that sIt is ridiculously easy. As you mentioned 4Chan has managed to do some absolutely insane social experiments. Freebleeding, recasting the OK sign as a White-power symbol. This is so successful that actual white nationalist are now using it as a symbol AND media companies are now seeing it like the Hitler salute.
Click to expand...

"Social experiment" isn't really the correct word, when any resistance is met with a storm of doxxing, followed by calls to employers, phone calls threatening rape and murder, and so forth.

(I'll also note that, much like Pepe the Frog in both his original form and the newer clown variant, the splayed-finger OK symbol became associated with white supremacists, not because of some experiment by trolls, but because it was adopted by violent white supremacists like Gavin McGinnis and the Christchurch terrorist.)
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
That's a fascinating article, thanks for sharing.

It's so relevant to the subject of social internet haters on these two sites (FB and Twitter) plus flooding comment sections and stalking people.

What is it about feminism that is so threatening to some men?
Click to expand...

Losing privilege is terrifying. Look at all the backlash to any civil rights movement.
 
Mumbles said:
I'd seriously like to know what this "scope creep" will look like. It seems unlikely that they'd suddenly ban comedy, although advertisers on Youtube may run for the exits rather than have their products associated with, say, Holocaust denial. And as for progressives, minorities, and so on, again, they've been arbitrarily banning them for years, so if there's any "slippery slope", the pro-genocide folks seem to be at the bottom of that slope, not at the top.



"Social experiment" isn't really the correct word, when any resistance is met with a storm of doxxing, followed by calls to employers, phone calls threatening rape and murder, and so forth.

(I'll also note that, much like Pepe the Frog in both his original form and the newer clown variant, the splayed-finger OK symbol became associated with white supremacists, not because of some experiment by trolls, but because it was adopted by violent white supremacists like Gavin McGinnis and the Christchurch terrorist.)
Click to expand...

I agree that 'social experiment' is too benign a term. Social arson more like it.
I imagine it must be a weirdly powerful feeling for some teenage edgelords to throw some idea out there and then see it lead its own life in the web until it shows up at demonstrations and -as was the case with the christchurch shooter- used by an actual terrorist.
 
Eddie Dane said:
Not only do I predict there will be scope creep, but this scope creep will also be powered by algorithms.

That means some AI will look at this thread and remove all of Ponderingturtles snarky parodies of conservative positions. Not because they are unfunny strawmen, but because the AI will be incapable of recognising sarcasm.
Click to expand...

Hey those are just basic sumaries of common conservative beliefs just put into fewer words and made more clear.

What slippery slopes do you believe in and what ones do you not? Is it wrong to make it not rape for two 16 year olds to have sex with each other because that is a slipper slope to 50 year olds having sex with 13 year olds out side of the legal bonds of marriage?

Here is the thing slopes are only really slippery when the issue is only partially addressed. Like sure giving women the vote did lead to anti discrimination laws and married women not needing their husband to sign for them to get a credit card. So that clearly was a slippery slope right, and we shouldn't have given them the vote. But in reality when an argument can be legitimately made for harm there is no slippery slope like how there is no real goal to legalize pedophilia because we legalized homosexuality.
 
Ziggurat said:
Is anyone here arguing that Facebook should be forced to give up their freedom of association? I haven't so argued, I've only claimed that Facebook is acting badly, not illegally.

But more generally, businesses are frequently denied freedom of association on the grounds of anti-discrimination laws.
Click to expand...

I contend that denying service to Nazis and white supremacist is not 'acting badly', and that those are not protected classes. Further I contend that anyone who thinks denying service to Nazis is acting badly but denying service to homosexuals is not is doing as Joe described.

Any criticisms of Facebook defining 'Nazi' too broadly would have to wait for that to happen and be judged on the merits of that case.
 
Baylor said:
Not trollingly at all. They want unity. Just not with you. (the Dutch)
Click to expand...
Are citizens of The Hague not Dutch if they are Muslims? What is the religious qualification for being Dutch? I didn't know there was one. Do you have to be a Calvinist Protestant, or something like that?
 
psionl0 said:
I was giving Eddie the credit of knowing that the government can't tell a multinational media company what it can publish in a foreign country.
Click to expand...

Why should the government tell them to do this?

Fake news spread via Facebook has led to severe ethnic violence in Myanmar. Facebook just didn't understand the potential for disaster there, but they do now.

FB wants to be known for making connections between people, burned villages and gangrape are not FB's brand values. They will have to address this by hiring locals to curate news.
 
Craig B said:
Are citizens of The Hague not Dutch if they are Muslims? What is the religious qualification for being Dutch? I didn't know there was one. Do you have to be a Calvinist Protestant, or something like that?
Click to expand...

Please ask one question per post. People reply to me with these-string-of question posts frequently and it gets annoying
 
ponderingturtle said:
Hey those are just basic sumaries of common conservative beliefs just put into fewer words and made more clear.

What slippery slopes do you believe in and what ones do you not? Is it wrong to make it not rape for two 16 year olds to have sex with each other because that is a slipper slope to 50 year olds having sex with 13 year olds out side of the legal bonds of marriage?

Here is the thing slopes are only really slippery when the issue is only partially addressed. Like sure giving women the vote did lead to anti discrimination laws and married women not needing their husband to sign for them to get a credit card. So that clearly was a slippery slope right, and we shouldn't have given them the vote. But in reality when an argument can be legitimately made for harm there is no slippery slope like how there is no real goal to legalize pedophilia because we legalized homosexuality.
Click to expand...

I'm obviously speculating. But people already have a problem with being banned for completely benign comments on Twitter.

Vocal ex-Muslims have been banned for criticising radical Islam, for instance. Plus the moderating teams might be infiltrated by people of a certain political or religious conviction. People who are incorrectly banned will have no place to publicly complain about their ban because there are only a few big social media platforms and I fully expect those to start coordinating their bans at some point.

Mumbles also pointed out that some groups were silenced who were much less deserving of a ban than literal Nazis. I don't expect that to get better as these platforms get more restrictive.

Plus, the platforms are in it for the money. If they could just sell advertising on the back of cat pictures and inspirational quotes posted by soccer moms, they would. Controversial content is a liability to them.
 
Eddie Dane said:
Why should the government tell them to do this?

Fake news spread via Facebook has led to severe ethnic violence in Myanmar. Facebook just didn't understand the potential for disaster there, but they do now.

FB wants to be known for making connections between people, burned villages and gangrape are not FB's brand values. They will have to address this by hiring locals to curate news.
Click to expand...

But they are muslims so for american conservatives spreading fake news to incite violence against them is presidential, and hence not something facebook should ever ban.
 
Eddie Dane said:
I'm obviously speculating. But people already have a problem with being banned for completely benign comments on Twitter.

Vocal ex-Muslims have been banned for criticising radical Islam, for instance. Plus the moderating teams might be infiltrated by people of a certain political or religious conviction. People who are incorrectly banned will have no place to publicly complain about their ban because there are only a few big social media platforms and I fully expect those to start coordinating their bans at some point.
Click to expand...

Show your sources then.
Mumbles also pointed out that some groups were silenced who were much less deserving of a ban than literal Nazis. I don't expect that to get better as these platforms get more restrictive.
Click to expand...

Yes I know lots of people who get into trouble all the time for posting pictures of themselves that facebook decides are indecent. And Mumbles point was that these groups were being banned for a long time before they came for the nazis. So why didn't you care about the censorship then and now only when nazis are a target it becomes a problem?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom