Facebook & Instagram ban extremist accounts

[commando]

farrakhan is a far right extremist?

[NM11046]

2 hours ago, commando said:

is this the only issue from your trainers lobotomy?

Honestly - not really.  :-) But I only have him once a week for 30 mins so I ignore most of his babble.  (he's a sub)   

 

He tries super hard to come across as "cool".  He's a white guy, probably 50 and talks a lot about race.  Overcompensating really  - in Boston that's not unusual with all our past issues on this topic, but this one had me dumbfounded.  For instance, it's a women's gym, so there is typically 4 of us training with him at a time, and we'll be in the middle of something and he'll just blurt out, "it's a white man's world ladies" and it takes us 10 mins to figure out he's seen something on the news and is trying to be cool and timely with his open mindedness, but it's not on topic.  He just wants to make the point, it's on his agenda so he's going to blurt it out even if the topic everyone is discussing is a Sex & The City episode.

[RedDenver]

15 hours ago, knapplc said:

 

Hi. It's 2019. A brief viewing of the news will show you that this hate speech has turned to action in the past few years.

 

That's evidence for censoring Trump, but this isn't evidence for censoring any of the people that got censored.

 

15 hours ago, knapplc said:

We already allow that. I've posted a few examples above. We've allowed that since... the day this country was founded.

But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not asking if private entities are allowed to do that currently, which they clearly are. But rather a different question: should we be concerned about the twin affects of private entities controlling so much of the public discourse AND being able to censor that discourse?

 

15 hours ago, knapplc said:

Hate speech leads to hate violence. The best way to address it is to keep the hate speech as hard to access as possible.

I don't agree. Suppressing hate speech might actually lead to more violence than letting it be aired. Plus you've opened the door to the slippery slope of censorship, which is way worse than the hate speech. The best way to address hate speech is with speech opposing that hate.

[knapplc]

5 hours ago, RedDenver said:

That's evidence for censoring Trump, but this isn't evidence for censoring any of the people that got censored.

 

But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not asking if private entities are allowed to do that currently, which they clearly are. But rather a different question: should we be concerned about the twin affects of private entities controlling so much of the public discourse AND being able to censor that discourse?

 

I don't agree. Suppressing hate speech might actually lead to more violence than letting it be aired. Plus you've opened the door to the slippery slope of censorship, which is way worse than the hate speech. The best way to address hate speech is with speech opposing that hate.

 

Show me where suppressing hate speech leads to more violence, because that empirical data does not exist.

 

If your premise is that it's better to suffer the violence that hate speech begets and not to make hate speech harder to access, then we'll have to agree to disagree. Hate speech 8chan, which bills itself as a bastion of free speech, is directly responsible for several recent mass murders.

 

How is 8chan allowing any kind of bigotry and hate on their platform helping?

[BigRedBuster]

Oh.....wouldn’t it be interesting if Trump got banned. 

 

 

[RedDenver]

7 hours ago, knapplc said:

 

Show me where suppressing hate speech leads to more violence, because that empirical data does not exist.

I've never seen this evidence either, so I'll concede the point. It'd be extremely difficult to control for all the variables in order to gather such evidence, so I doubt we'll ever have any evidence either way.

 

7 hours ago, knapplc said:

If your premise is that it's better to suffer the violence that hate speech begets and not to make hate speech harder to access, then we'll have to agree to disagree. Hate speech 8chan, which bills itself as a bastion of free speech, is directly responsible for several recent mass murders.

 

How is 8chan allowing any kind of bigotry and hate on their platform helping?

Again, you're avoiding the main argument against this: the slippery slope of censorship. For example:

In Europe, Hate Speech Laws are Often Used to Suppress and Punish Left-Wing Viewpoints

[funhusker]

5 hours ago, RedDenver said:

 

 

Again, you're avoiding the main argument against this: the slippery slope of censorship. For example:

In Europe, Hate Speech Laws are Often Used to Suppress and Punish Left-Wing Viewpoints

But this isn't a law.  This companies doing what "presumably" most of their customers want.

[BigRedBuster]

 

[RedDenver]

4 hours ago, funhusker said:

But this isn't a law.  This companies doing what "presumably" most of their customers want.

What isn't a law? The article is about anti-hate speech laws in Europe. I'm trying to describe why anti-hate speech isn't a good idea, from the conclusion of the article:

Quote

 

As The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf recently explained, there is a grave irony at the heart of these newfound liberal desires for “hate speech” censorship laws: The people who would implement and interpret them are those in power, people like Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions, GOP governors and legislators, and their litany of right-wing judges. It takes little imagination to see how such laws would be applied, and against whom. Indeed, the U.S. history of allowing such restrictions is that they have been used against exactly the groups that censorship advocates think they are protecting. As Cole wrote:

 

"Our history illustrates that unless very narrowly constrained, the power to restrict the advocacy of violence is an invitation to punish political dissent. A. Mitchell Palmer, J. Edgar Hoover, and Joseph McCarthy all used the advocacy of violence as a justification to punish people who associated with Communists, socialists, or civil rights groups."

 

Indeed, the ACLU was borne out of an attempt by former President Woodrow Wilson to criminalize dissent from his policy of involving the U.S. in World War I. It then spent decades fighting censorship efforts aimed at communists, socialists, civil rights groups, and LGBT activists. When you empower society to outlaw ideas it hates most, that is who is most vulnerable. Civil liberties lawyers were successful in defending those groups only by upholding the principle that state censorship of political viewpoints is always impermissible.

 

But to see what the actual rather than the hoped-for effects of hate speech laws are, no speculation is necessary, nor does one need to dig through U.S. history in the 20th century. Just look at how such laws in Europe are now being applied, and against whom. Who could possibly look at that and view it as desirable?

 

 

[Moiraine]

16 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

What isn't a law? The article is about anti-hate speech laws in Europe. I'm trying to describe why anti-hate speech isn't a good idea, from the conclusion of the article:

 

 

Not sure about knapp but I didn’t realize we were talking about implementing laws. I thought this discussion was about Twitter and FB banning people.

[Enhance]

On 5/4/2019 at 8:48 AM, knapplc said:

I would think you and @Landlord, who has been a Mod at other sites, would see this pretty clearly. They're modding their sites just like you do here, and LL did/does there.

 

When you have to silence someone it's not (always) an easy decision, and you're going to trample on someone's feelings. The decision is always the lesser of two evils.

 

I agree with you two, and @RedDenver, that this should not be taken lightly, and is not necessarily a good development. It's a sign of our times, and it's, unfortunately, necessary.

Your last line there is ultimately where I stand - probably the right move, not a good development (in the sense that they had to make this move because of political extremism, an unfortunate sign of the times indeed) and should be taken seriously.

[BigRedBuster]

 

[RedDenver]

3 hours ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

Not sure about knapp but I didn’t realize we were talking about implementing laws. I thought this discussion was about Twitter and FB banning people.

There's a few different takes going on at once. I was originally trying to ask whether people were concerned about private entities having a large control over public discourse given that those private entities can ban/censor anyone for any reason. That evolved to a debate between knapplc and I about whether hate speech should be banned.

[Landlord]

39 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

There's a few different takes going on at once. I was originally trying to ask whether people were concerned about private entities having a large control over public discourse given that those private entities can ban/censor anyone for any reason. That evolved to a debate between knapplc and I about whether hate speech should be banned.

 

 

The first part is all I've tried addressing and people keep turning into lessons on the first amendment. All I'm expressing is an ideological and methodological concern of what this could do or where it could go. 

 

Generally speaking, I am not a fan of words/viewpoints becoming taboo or forbidden. It ends up giving them way too much power. It also causes people to not know why certain things are considered bad other than just by virtue of being what they are, which doesn't teach anything. I see this effort by these private companies as a large scale Streissand effect. I don't think it will help anything at all. Actually, I take that back; I think it will help galvanize and calcify bad actors into a stronger more underground front united against a "them". 

 

Here are several studies about the effect of trying to ban/censor internet trolls and how they've backfired. @knapplc you might be particularly interested in the last one:

 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886914000324

 

https://en.unesco.org/news/unesco-releases-new-research-youth-and-violent-extremism-social-media

 

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1909467

 

Now to anyone who tries to again argue that I'm conflating government/state censorship with these big tech companies, I understand the distinction I'm just asking what exactly is the difference? Sure you can't go to jail. But you can still be severely punished by a very powerful institution. You can have your life ruined by being deplatformed by Youtube similarly to the capability of the government to ruin your life when you break laws.

[Nebfanatic]

1 hour ago, Landlord said:

 

 

The first part is all I've tried addressing and people keep turning into lessons on the first amendment. All I'm expressing is an ideological and methodological concern of what this could do or where it could go. 

 

Generally speaking, I am not a fan of words/viewpoints becoming taboo or forbidden. It ends up giving them way too much power. It also causes people to not know why certain things are considered bad other than just by virtue of being what they are, which doesn't teach anything. I see this effort by these private companies as a large scale Streissand effect. I don't think it will help anything at all. Actually, I take that back; I think it will help galvanize and calcify bad actors into a stronger more underground front united against a "them". 

 

Here are several studies about the effect of trying to ban/censor internet trolls and how they've backfired. @knapplc you might be particularly interested in the last one:

 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886914000324

 

https://en.unesco.org/news/unesco-releases-new-research-youth-and-violent-extremism-social-media

 

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1909467

 

Now to anyone who tries to again argue that I'm conflating government/state censorship with these big tech companies, I understand the distinction I'm just asking what exactly is the difference? Sure you can't go to jail. But you can still be severely punished by a very powerful institution. You can have your life ruined by being deplatformed by Youtube similarly to the capability of the government to ruin your life when you break laws.

To me, this is where the difference arises. Having your life 'ruined' by being deplatformed is miniscule in comparison to punishment of actual crimes imo. Its really not even close to the same in terms of having your life ruined. Being potentially jailed, stripped of rights, and seperated from assets is much more life ruining than not being able to post on an internet website, even if that is your main source of income.