Admirable move. I think Facebook (and all its properties), Twitter, and other hyper-connected social networks must show a healthy level of intolerance towards groups and ideologies that are beyond reason and recall, especially when those said groups are overtly and unmistakably intolerant themselves.
This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant.
Civil law systems have "The abuse of rights principle". It means that legal right can't be used in the purpose of _only_ causing annoyance, harm, or injury to another or violating or invalidating the rights.
In the EU the principle is codified in the article 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights and in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. They both prohibit the use of rights in a way that they nullify or weaken the rights provided by the agreements.
The principle also exists in the European contract law and property law. You can't use the property rights for the sole purpose of causing annoyance or violating other rights.
At least one of four conditions is required to invoke the doctrine:
(1) the predominant motive for exercising the right is to cause harm;
(2) no serious or legitimate motive exists for exercising the right;
(3) the exercise of the right is against moral rules, good faith, or elementary fairness; or
(4) the right is exercised for a purpose other than that for which it was granted.
---
edit: In the common law systems it can exist under names like "nuisance, duress, good faith, economic waste, public policy, misuse of copyright and patent rights, lack of business purpose in tax law, extortion, and others" see: Abuse of Rights: A Pervasive Legal Concept https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=17...
Canada uses the common law system (with the exception of provincial courts in Quebec), but our constitutional rights are granted only up to "reasonable limits", which gives courts a lot of room to allow legislation which nominally infringes on one of those rights but which might have an overall positive effect on the exercise of others.
This seems like it would be very difficult to litigate. How do you ascertain the "predominant motive"? How do you define "serious or legitimate"? To whom? If a Muslim woman wants to wear a head-covering (or a Christian wearing a cross necklace) in a French school, it's probably very serious and legitimate to her, but perhaps not to a tribunal of secularists. There aren't any silver bullets for the issue of speech freedoms.
In many important cases it's not too difficult. You look at the evidence and make the ruling. Finnish Supreme Court made precedent about banning fascist organization.
>Moreover, the Supreme Court noted that to invoke the freedom of association or the freedom of speech in order to disrupt parliamentary democracy, to promote national socialism as an ideology, or to justify the defamation or demeaning of an ethnic group was an abuse of these rights, as the objective was to cancel democratic government or to materially undermine other fundamental rights and human rights. Accordingly, the objectives and the activities of the association were not to be afforded the protection of the freedoms of association or of speech.
Agreed but my point was that in order for such a lawsuit to succeed, it must clear such a hurdle that it leaves little room for anyone to doubt the justifications. IANAL as well so this is just me wondering and hoping someone who's more knowledgable can give some insights.
Europe has a much longer and more recent history of censorship than does the United States.
Currently it’s against the law in Germany to insult the leader of a foreign country. Some (many?) have laws against flag burning. Religious restrictions were common in some countries within the lifetimes of the current generation.
I’m not even talking about the ex-Communist countries.
Europeans simply don’t place the same emphasis on freedom of speech as Americans.
It's a good think the current "defenders of free-speech" don't align themselves to a klepto-theocracy otherwise we'd think they'd be up to something...
Additionally full of all kinds of flavorful anecdotes like:
> I once pulled a prank on a friend. Years ago when Big Tobacco were hiding and repressing the evidence of harm from secondary smoking, New York had smoking and nonsmoking sections in restaurants (even airplanes had, absurdly, a smoking section). I once went to lunch with a friend visiting from Europe: the restaurant only had availability in the smoking sections. I convinced the friend that we needed to buy cigarettes as we had to smoke in the smoking section. He complied.
edit: there are a bevy of sibling comments to this one, asking an important question: "When should I be intolerant of intolerance?" The answer explored in the article above is, "...the formation of moral values in society doesn't come from consensus. The most intolerant person (or minority) imposes virtue on others precisely because of that intolerance."
On a larger timescale, the most intolerant viewpoint will shift the views of others toward it. Recognizing this, a society can't tolerate a viewpoint which would be damaging to the core values that society purports to hold, or over the inevitable long-term it will destroy itself. This is why a society which values free speech must quash those elements inside it which will only accept censorship.
Also, "virtue" as quoted has a more specific meaning which is consistency with internal values. That's to say nothing of what those internal values are. They can be great or horrendous for society. Virtue is the willingness to sacrifice for them. Being intolerant is the mechanism by which civil rights advances, just as it can be used for evil.
Except Taleb's thesis is not supported by history whatsoever. The past three centuries have had ups and downs, but overall there's been a remarkable and consistent global trend towards tolerance, liberalism, and democracy.
This didn't happen because intolerant groups decided to let up on their zealotry. It didn't even happen because intolerant ideas were violently suppressed. (In almost every conflict, it almost always was the anti-liberal faction that initiated hostilities.)
It happened because starting with the Enlightenment, we built a culture around an open marketplace of ideas. In places with liberal cultures and democratic governments, totalitarian ideologies like fascism and Marxism consistently failed to gain traction. They don't need to be forcibly suppressed. Scratch their surface, and virtually everybody realizes that these ideologies are obviously stupid and inconsistent. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
> Do you think the major religions got to be the size they are because people though their story was cute?
Considering that the world's largest religion's central tenet is "turn the other cheek", I don't know if this is exactly a compelling argument for the primacy of intolerance.
It's almost certainly the case that the major world religions, as they're practiced in 2000 AD, are certainly much more liberal and tolerant than their Bronze Age counterparts. The arc of the moral universe is long, but over time it bends towards justice.
Almost any kind of censorship could be justified with the argument that some voices are "drained out" by others, so to protect the former, the latter most be censored, which is not actually "an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact". WTF does this mean? The internet is not a room where some people have to be silent so that you can hear the others. You can simply ignore people you don't like, or you deem "intolerant", etc.
> You can simply ignore people you don't like, or you deem "intolerant", etc.
Simply ignore the internet-radicalised mass shooters! Ignore the people raising funds for murderers. Ignore the people gathering molotovs to protest, and the others encouraging each other to run them over with cars. I'm sure none of that stuff will ever happen to you.
If you change yourself and the internet because of these mass shooters, what did you achieve?
People protest for different reasons and I don't like all of them.
Homicide is actually something very rare in humans apart from formal war. A tiny subset is perhaps radicalized by internet content, but I would guess there are actually underlying issues for everyone.
Your reaction seems to indicate panic, not rational thought.
All of those things are incredibly rare occurrences, and there is still a greater probability that you will be the victim of one of them than that the country becomes North Korea.
> there is still a greater probability that you will be the victim of one of them than that the country becomes North Korea.
I don't agree with this.
To be honestly, I would consider around 1/3rd of the world wide population to be currently living under authoritarian regimes of varying degrees of bad.
That seems wrong. No matter how I slice it, risk of being North Korea (specifically) seems to clock in at somewhere between 0.1% and 2%, appreciably more than incredibly rare occurrences.
Is this the risk of, say, a randomly chosen person happening to be North Korean or the risk of the USA turning into North Korea? If the latter, I'd love to see how you end up at that number.
Those things you worry about are already illegal. Direct threats of violence (through speech) are already illegal. Funding raising for terrorism is already illegal, including fundraising through speech.
> Those things you worry about are already illegal.
This is where free speech absolutists lose me. They say that all speech should be protected and as soon as they find an exception that is just labeled "not speech". Why then can't we use a definition of "not speech" that includes Blood Libel?
Exactly. This is not a binary choice between free speech and no free speech. It is a debate over where to place the line. We have plenty of speech that already falls on the illegal side of the line such as threats or libel. Some people want to move the line so a few more things are on the illegal side. Free speech absolutists aren't making a fair argument when they respond to that good faith request with "any change means the end of free speech".
But "violates criminal law" is a statement about the population's beliefs. We pick what is illegal. It isn't some fundamental thing. In Germany, for example, holocaust denial is literally illegal.
Right, but the criminal law falls outside of purely speech. That's the line drawn at least in the US - you can say whatever you want, but if you start inciting crime, that's a problem.
In Germany, the line is drawn much further back. It doesn't matter if what you say incites crime, the speech in and of itself is illegal.
Facebook is not the legislature. You can make Lessig-style Code Is Law arguments, but the fact remains they are not defining the bounds of legality, they are defining the bounds of acceptable on their platform.
Yeah, everyone already knows that. Facebook can do what they want. But they can't claim they support free speech at the same time they censor their platform.
If they came out and said "Facebook does not support free speech on it's platform", then at least they'd be hoenst.
The "ignore voices you don't like" argument completely fails to account for the effect of those voices on the millions of people around you, and the effect of their changed actions as a result, on you in turn. It's like saying "pretend you're the only person in the world."
Sure, the effects of speech on the real world has always been the reason for censorship. "Ignore voices you don't like" isn't a refutation of that old and honest argument in favor of censorship, it's a refutation of the new and dishonest argument that censorship actually protects freedom of speech.
> it's a refutation of the new and dishonest argument that censorship actually protects freedom of speech
Once you convince people that the other side is evil and your side must win at all costs, they'll rationalize any behavior. This includes censoring and de-platforming voices that don't agree with them.
After you've convinced yourself that "I believe that we should hire whoever is the most qualified, regardless of their ethnicity" or "I believe that all lives matter equally, none more than any other" are HATE SPEECH, it's very easy to convince yourself to ban people with those opinions from being able to speak their opinion. This is why throwing around "Nazi!", "White Supremacist!" for people not actually exhibiting those behaviors is so dangerous. Once you de-humanize someone, it's easier to convince yourself to take away their human rights (like free speech).
Just to reground the rhetoric, we are talking about facebook removing posts by people that try to convince others that one of the largest genocides in human history didn't happen, not about all that other stuff.
The Holocaust was peanuts compared to the looming climate catastrophe. Thus, we absolutely must silence anyone who denies that the earth must become carbon neutral by 2040.
Nice example. Another would be abortions. If someone believes that abortion is murder, well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_Uni... gives numbers that add to 46.4 million abortions reported to the CDC in 1970-2016. Imagine if the people who held the reins at Facebook were hard-line pro-life.
> If you don't like the way other people are thinking, you have to have a conversation with them and try to change their views the hard way.
Again, that’s not how people work. “The marketplace of ideas” is an idealism, a mini-utopia. It does not account for known and unpatched vulnerabilities in human psychology - and a fix from the vendor is not expected any time soon.
It is how people work, as evidenced over and over again by a widening view of compassion for others.
Just look at the past 20 years and the success of the gay rights movement. Views changed because of millions of one-on-one conversations between people who disagreed on gay marriage. No censorship was required for progress. In fact, censorship would have been counterproductive, as I believe it is here.
It's no coincidence that the countries with the least free speech also tend to be the most regressive on civil rights and some of the worst places to be an ethnic minority.
>It's no coincidence that the countries with the least free speech also tend to be the most regressive on civil rights and some of the worst places to be an ethnic minority.
Feels like this is an attempt to simplify something complex. Most Western European countries have more restrictions on speech than the US, but many of them do a better job of upholding civil rights. Just today someone posted a thread about the broken bail system in the US - for example.
Political change of this magnitude happens because different people are voting, not because the same person changed their mind. Literally it’s because the old people died before they could pass 100% of their bigotry to the next generation.
This isn't true. Approval for gay marriage has gone up for all generations. It's now at 45% approval among people born before 1945, up from just 17% in 2003.
Thanks for linking to the poll, I had no idea that that was what the distribution of support for same sex marriage across ages looked like. Fascinating that almost two thirds of Catholics and Protestants support same sex marriage, would never have guessed that. Even more surprising to me was that the trend line basically goes up over time no matter which way you slice and dice by demographic or religious affiliation or church attendance.
There was actual activism and political organizing that took place. Conscious and thought out attempts to change laws and society generally. It was not "one-on-one conversations" and much less millions of them. To large extend, issue was legal and it took Supreme Court decision. Those are not won by personal conversations, those require legal strategy, selection of the right case, right Supreme Court composition (e.g. picking right time) and so on.
The individual gay were not about to go out of closet unless it was safe to do or unless they had strong motivation to risk.
I agree with you that this is not exactly how people work, but I believe the parent comment was going in the right direction, they just went just a bit off the mark. To quote what they said.
>> If you don't like the way other people are thinking, you have to have a conversation with them and try to change their views the hard way.
So yes, while having a conversation with someone who is strongly holding onto some insane beliefs is unlikely to help that specific person, however, it definitely helps with steering other people (who observed that exchange and who are a bit more on the fence) in the right direction and away from those insane views.
You don't even need to go far to find examples of that working, just look at HN. While the views here won't normally be as insane as an average "hot take" on FB, there were definitely some heated arguments (about higher-level fundamental ideas, not technical matters) that swayed my opinion one way or the other, despite those arguments clearly not really changing the minds of people actually involved in those arguments.
Yes, this is just anecdata and not a peer-reviewed study, but I have a belief that this experience is not that uncommon at all.
> If you don't like the way other people are thinking, you have to have a conversation with them and try to change their views the hard way.
You and I have a right to not do anything with those people. But for the sake of discussion, I'm willing to do that with people where we disagree on reasonable things. I'm not willing to have a civil discourse with people that adamantly refuse to believe facts and think I'm a part of a larger conspiracy.
Does that mean censorship of all of these people / ideas is the answer? I don't think so. But I know that if I ran a platform where people were discussing holocaust denial I would ban them. I'm willing to admit I might be a hypocrite on that front, but alas I am a human.
Free speech isn't the issue here. It's not censorship, it's moderation, and companies have every right to moderate what content is allowed on their platforms.
I think it's important to distinguish between the two. Censorship, that is the government proscribing or restricting what people say and thinks in general/public/day-to-day life, is an egregious attack on people's liberty. I think we shouldn't tolerate any limitations on free speech.
Moderation, or companies determining a code-of-conduct for the properties and platforms they control, is the same as someone telling you to shut up or get out of their house if you say something that offends them. I think what's important there is that the code of conduct is clearly stated, objective, and enforced even-handedly, which hasn't always been the case as of late.
Censorship in the form of moderation often makes sense for businesses seeking to maintain their properties. If I run a forum for car enthusiasts, I should be able to curate the community and limit discussions on locomotives.
But what of the platforms that make my forum possible? The Cloudflares the protect from DDoS, the DigitalOceans that provide the servers, the ISPs that provide transit, the Facebooks that provide social media support? Should they have the freedom to decide they don't like my forum and kick me off? I've come to believe that the more general purpose a service is and the more communication it controls, the more harmful the business's freedom to censor is for a free society.
Should they have the freedom to decide they don't like my forum and kick me off?
Yes. Their infrastructure is still private property, and you're using it to provide your own service. Similarly, if you rent a shop space in a food plaza and start a car mechanic's garage there, the owner of the food plaza will kick you out.
That the government has a hard-on for monopolies doesn't change the fact that you're still building your service on private infrastructure.
_ Should they have the freedom to decide they don't like my forum and kick me off?_
I would say the opposite: No. While it might be _legal_ for them to kick me off, I don't think a private company should decide what I say on their platform. For example, should my ISP block websites of competing ISPs if they so choose? What about posting on Facebook that Comcast sucks, should I get my internet disabled for that?
Except that Congress is leaning on FB right now to remove "fake news". Facebook's sudden interest in removing content is inextricably tied to censorship until the government stops pressuring.
It's Facebook who serves the content because of their money driven algorithms. If you would just serve content coming from your friends and some random ads, then all this bullshit content won't be a problem at all.
Facebook is the only problem here. Not the people behind these fake stories.
It becomes an issue when a company gets so big that it can control a significant fraction of the above-mentioned "what people say and thinks in general/public/day-to-day life".
> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant.
What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree.
This is an encroachment on free speech (and it's intolerant). You may believe that it's necessary -- and perhaps you're right: maybe the country will fall apart unless we censor voices outside the mainstream. But to frame this issue as you have done is nonsensical, as if, through sheer power of righteous will, you can transmute censorship into something else.
This is a typical slight of hand in these discussions. We are talking about deeply intolerant, bad faith actors, and you substitute this with "censoring opinions outside the mainstream".
This is deeply dishonest by you. We are not talking about removing peoples right to use a platform because they are out of the mainstream and we disagree with them. That is NOT the reason. There is plenty of non-mainstream opinion around. There is plenty of things that a vast majority find disagreeable that no one is talking about removing.
I don't think the person you're replying to is being dishonest. You've simply listed reasons as to why this content isn't acceptable. Of course there are often reasons why content and beliefs might be rejected by mainstream thought -- "it's a pack of lies" is chief among them.
There's a definition problem here. We could use "no one is talking about removing the content" as a rubric to determine whether content is truly outside of mainstream thought for example.
Pointing out that there's diversity among mainstream thought is not at all the same as tolerating dissent.
I don't understand how this isn't also similar to messaging abusive language or similar is technically "diversity in mainstream thought" (as in people can and will be abusive in some populations) and also should be totally barred (such as child neglect).
Well, we generally do not prohibit abusive speech.
What's prohibited is targeting people with speech who do not wish to participate (or who cannot, statutorily). Plenty of adults freely choose to engage in abusive relationships with one another and of course they are free to do so provided the other party is a willing participant.
The same is true of non-abusive language. Consider a simple romantic overture.
The underlying problem is some people respond to intolerant, extremely misleading attacks. The past decade there has been an increasing ability to find people who are impacted by this propaganda much more successfully than in the past. Everyone points to Hitler - yes, he also was in the right time that his version of BS and motivation impacted people. Today those who want to can utilize these propagandistic methods much more than they can before.
In the past if there was one person more capable of organizing hatred they'd have a smaller impact. Before newspapers it was just in a town. Then you had newspapers (like those in the south accusing blacks of rape and pushing lynching). Then later it was radio and Father Coughlin. Then TV and now the internet.
Still the challenge remains how does anyone decide what's beyond the acceptable. I'm terrified that after Trump there will be a series of more successful destructive manipulators. I don't see why that wouldn't happen.
The reason why this matters even more is the us system where a single vote in a state pushes all those electoral votes together, making it much much more powerful to focus energy on the small misleading stuff. The US has a structural electoral system that makes it matter so much more. Otherwise it would be for a smaller election. I think with time the majority of people will build up 'intellectual armor' against accepting lies. But it's impactful enough now that it's the potential end of america.
From your comment we don't actually know at all what we're (or rather, you) are 'talking about'. Asides from you about what these people are really like, whoever they are, don't amount to a salient point. Perhaps you can give an example instead.
>This is a typical slight of hand in these discussions. We are talking about deeply intolerant, bad faith actors, and you substitute this with "censoring opinions outside the mainstream".
NO U.
That aught to be enough for the argument to be closed, but since we like to pretend we're better than that: how can you tell that someone holds bad faith views? I do not have a machine to peer into the soul of man, neither do you. People can believe horrible things and think themselves good people, just wait 30 years and you will be one of them. That your views happen to be ascendant doesn't mean we should ban everyone who isn't.
There is a a very very close to zero percent chance that somebody that is denying one of the most heavily documented genocides in history is acting in good faith.
Holocaust denier is often used as a straw man of someone that estimate the exact figure to something lower than consensus. In Austria and France etc. the state throw people in jail for that. Like a Tiananmen Square policy in reverse.
Yeah, but there's also a very very close to zero percent chance that people labelled as "deniers" are actually saying the Holocaust never happened. The sibling comment seems to reinforce this intuition and in fact the article groups "deniers" with people who "distort" the Holocaust. That would appear to encompass any historian who attempted to disagree with any aspect of the historical record at all, in any way.
How many people have you ever met, or even heard of directly, that claim the Holocaust never happened? I can honestly say I couldn't name a single one, not even in places like the USA where they'd be able to make such speech under the First Amendment (not on Facebook). I've only ever heard about such people indirectly, via what censors claim about them.
Now how many people do you see who throw around the term "Nazi" like it's a schoolyard insult? That happens every day. I see people being compared to Nazis all the time, right here on HN which claims to have strong moderation.
The likelihood of this sort of censorship being applied to people who literally deny the Holocaust is tiny. Facebook have spent 2020 routinely censoring scientists who don't agree with the WHO, even though the WHO changes its mind every five minutes. Many of the people in high places in these companies seem to believe any disagreement with authority is worthy of censorship. They are not free speech absolutists who make an exception for truly dire cases.
The funny thing is that everyone in the West denies the Holocaust happened to the Slavs (5 million Slavs to 6 million Jews). Even though Hitler said time and time again that Slavs were to be exterminated from all areas west of the Urals.
So when are we banning everyone who says only 6 million people died in the holocaust?
When Holocaust denialism spreads it erodes solidarity with its victims, and people who do it are wittingly or not contributing to build the conditions for its repetition. So yes, we should be having the argument.
> Let's get specific. Should this be allowed, yes or no:
> <<< Jews are described as "the ugliest, most evil-minded people" who resemble "maggots when they overpopulate a decaying cheese." >>>
> Edit: point of this is to get to the reality of what's said. If you think this is too unpleasant, 5 downvotes and I'll delete it.
That may depend on whether you are asking whether it is okay to say, literally, "$GROUP is described as $X", or if you are actually asking if it is permitted to say "$GROUP is $X".
Yes. And most everything else that isn't evidence of intent to commit a crime (which should probably still be allowed so police can investigate).
It singles out an individual to the group as being full or hate and bile, censoring would not disappear the person, it would only force them to be more convincing and manipulative.
It would trigger a backlash in which would be a convincing and Thorough retort of the viewpoint, giving good immunity to lurkers in their lives after that should they come across this viewpoint again.
It would ensure that a constant evaluation of what is true within society. Without this we really don't know what is true.
open discourse has its problems, but its literally our only vehicle from bad ideas to good ideas.
Upthread the guy said "Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree". He's arguing for no restrictions AFAICT. Hence my post, to which no answer was forthcoming from him.
> Upthread the guy said "Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree". He's arguing for no restrictions AFAICT. Hence my post, to which no answer was forthcoming from him.
I think that "disagree" isn't exactly the correct description of someone's stance vis-a-vis hate speech, particularly that which is targeted at them.
Free speech is tricky, and every nation has to find its own balance, its own limits to what is acceptable and what isn't. Being German, I am pretty sensitive with regards to the Holocaust, anti-semitism, Nazi propaganda and, as a logical extension, anti-muslim and anti-lgbtq propaganda.
Personally, I draw the line where other people's freedoms are limited and other people are actively discriminated against. Basically at hate speech.
Facebook isn't a collection of books, and it isn't a collection of speech: the speech is a side effect.
Facebook is a virality engine. How do you get content that's appealing to the widest variety of people shoved into their faces?
The popularity of a President almost always goes up by starting a war, because the American public loves war. It's how Bush Jr. got the popular vote after losing it so miserably the first time.
People love hate, so an engine aiming to do nothing but push content with the possibility of going viral, viral, will endlessly promote the most inflammatory content. It drives engagement! The speech doesn't matter at all; it could be anything. On their other popular platform, a platform with a younger population, the most popular post is literally a picture of an egg. It's more a video game than a "marketplace of ideas."
Of course, the obvious solution would just be for Facebook to stop suggesting this content algorithmically rather than removing it outright, but hey, I'm not Facebook. It's not an attack on speech for a company that makes money off of suggesting content to other people to stop suggesting some variant of content, though, because again: the content never mattered.
>Facebook is a virality engine. How do you get content that's appealing to the widest variety of people shoved into their faces?
This is a very good way to put it. I haven't figured what the best stance would be yet, but it's clear that the old concerns about censorship are quite outdated. Almost no one can make information disappear, and instead, what modern platforms can do (as you've so well put it) is restrict or encourage virality.
What is the role of old free speech absolutists when ideas still remain accessible, but the fight is simply over how how mainstream, and how viral those ideas are? I'm not really sure, however I don't worry about things being censored on facebook. Cloudflare's power, although perhaps less impactful in practical terms, seems scarier: the withholding of DDoS protections from individual websites who hold controversial views. (and to be clear, 8kun's loss is probably a net benefit for society, I'm just thinking about the modern equivalent to a free speech principle)
I'm a free speech absolutist in that I think governments should not be able to punish speech outside of direct and imminent attempts to induce others to commit crimes, false reports of dangerous situations that imminently cause real dangerous situations, and the like.
I don't extend that to private platforms. Facebook should be free to host or not host whatever it likes, arbitrarily. What's becoming problematic is that the algorithms of tech giants now dominate content discovery. If Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Reddit decide something is bad, that something will probably have trouble gaining traction.
Most of us, me included probably think attempts to color the perception of historical events to serve racist ends are bad, and do not want them to gain traction. That does not, however mean that I want Facebook to have the power to decide what ideas get traction. I'd like to see online content discovery grow more decentralized again, and I think using algorithms optimized for something other than maximizing engagement will probably tend to reduce extremist content without much active intervention, but I don't know how to get there from here.
I'm aware that's the status quo, but it is most certainly not immutable. Many have been advocating for legislative solutions such as removing platform immutity for editorial algorithms or even regulating algorithmic feeds.
I'd rather see something more decentralized become popular organically, but I rarely get what I want.
> Couldn't someone have said the same thing of the printing press in the year 1440?
Yes, and they did. Society went through a period of disruption and experimentation and came out on the other side with new institutions and cultural norms.
The same is happening here. That suggests what's considered acceptable for pamphleteers and public speakers may not be acceptable on an auto-curating micro-targeting real-time nonlocal platform like Facebook.
There was a balance between free speech and the common interest and it's been disrupted. Holding as absolute policies and norms from mass broadcasting in the era of social media is delusional.
The question would then be whether the owner of a particular printing press should be required to publish materials widely considered false and offensive.
They have done so, and it has been argued by people worried about Social Media that the introduction of the printing press directly led to the Protestant-Catholic schism and all the associated bloodshed.
The printing press lowered the cost of making copies considerably but it was still not cheap. Options for widespread distribution of the copies you made were very limited. On top of that the literacy rate was only around 30%.
You have to get rid of those kinds of barriers before you can get anything like what we are seeing today, where some crazy idea with no evidence to support it can quickly spread far and wide.
As a strong-form First Amendment supporter and free speech advocate, this sort of fundamentalism is the greatest threat to free speech across the world.
Nobody is arresting the groups fomenting outright violence against their fellow Americans. We aren’t even saying they can’t use the banking system to collect resources or our public spaces to share their ideas. We’re literally saying they’re limited from using a mob-inducing micro targeting tool.
When that gets lumped in with vilifying speech, it gets easy to curtail both.
I strongly disagree, I don't mind some people shooting beyond reason on that topic. Misattributing issues of free speech is common. It is even more dangerous to say it would just concern the government.
But even that pales in comparison with peer pressure and fears about missing something, the main driver of virality on platforms like facebook. Restriction on free speech can be subtle. You just don't speak about it or are compelled to say something specific or face retaliation.
That there is some retaliation if there is someone openly denying the holocaust is a dishonest argument.
Can't you be a holocaust denier (i.e. a strictly historical perspective) without also being pro- "outright violence"? That's like removing all of BLM just because some of them are also violently rioting...
There is no strictly historical perspective that leads to denialism. It is fundamentally tied to antisemitism and providing ammunition to modern day fascists and racists.
I don't believe that you can. The core belief system of modern neonazis is the protection of the white race by excluding non-whites. It takes violence to remove non-whites from their nations. And then, because of the one-drop rule, the ratio of white people will always drop across time. This necessitates violent responses. All neonazis agree on the goal and there is just one means to possibly achieve that goal: ethnic violence.
No I'm not. Many political goals can be achieved without violence. Creating a white-only nation is not one of those goals. That one specifically necessitates violence and this makes neonazis fundamentally violent.
Do you honestly believe that if the neonazis were in charge that I'd be given speech rights?
From what I understand the violent rioting is a small minority and distinctly not the objective of the greater BLM movement.
Holocaust deniers turning out to commit hate crimes, encourage violence, and going on to aim for violence towards minorities is well-documented to be a significant proportion of that group.
> The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant.
People point to the Paradox of Tolerance like is a gospel straight from your preferred deity, something absolute and self-evident and universally true and universally applicable.
I personally think the thesis of the Paradox of Tolerance has merit, but far too often I see it used as a blunt object to bludgeon dissenting opinions, with people telling themselves they are doing good and are protecting society.
(And no, I dn NOT deny the Holocaust, and yes, I do think Holocaust denial is a big problem which got only bigger recently and needs addressing)
Agreed. I have seen most of the time when people bring this they are usually of type 'As long as intolerants are of my favorite type they are fine' Anything else is like "ah let me pull my nuclear weapon "Paradox of Tolerance".
> It might be worth considering The Paradox of Tolerance
Or the slippery slope fallacy, as it is known in less ideological circles. The "paradox" simply asserts that a tolerant society will be usurped by intolerant actors. It is in all respects a slippery slope argument.
> Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree.
True, but it kind of crosses the line when something denies well documented fact and tries to discredit reality itself. This "gamification" of alternative realities is insanely toxic to democracy and society.
Does this same denial of "well documented fact and to discredit reality itself" extend to religious doctrine, also or do the corporations get to pick and choose what realities they choose to censor?
Ah, you strike at the contradiction embedded into the US First Amendment.
It's almost like the Amendment was built as a practical tool to constrain government from actions which history showed led to people rising up and overthrowing a government, not as a holy shrine of virtues that were self-evidently virtuous.
I don't think that refugees flew through space on 747's, a la Scientology (I may have gotten the specifics wrong). But, if you can show me how a 747 can fly through space, I am more than happy to be shown the error of my ways.
Many religions have falsifiable ideas in them. Some of their "core tenets" may not be falsifiable but, again, you can't pick and choose through these books to get the pieces parts to fit your conclusion after the fact.
Yeah, I see the point you’re making, and I don’t necessarily disagree with it. I didn’t mean to say that no religion has obviously falsifiable claims in them, and the example you gave is a perfectly fine demonstration. I’d even say obviously Jesus didn’t literally rise from the dead, because that’s clearly not possible (and probably besides the point if you are simultaneously a serious, critical believe - I should point add that I’m not Christian by the way).
So what did I mean? As part of a broader concept I’d say that there is a lot we don’t know about the world, that there are problems to solve that are beyond our current abilities to do so, and at a certain point there will always be a need to simply believe, because we don’t have the luxury of not making choices. My concept of religion in this sense then is by definition a system of thought pertaining to the things that we don’t get to know the answers to, but we still have to make choices on because that’s life.
I’ll add that I don’t think the big name brand religions get to dictate what counts as a religion, any more than people in the past have had the right to have a monopoly on what counts as legitimate science. Everyone has a brain and therefore has a right to pursue truth, both for things that are falsifiable and not.
I’ll add that this isn’t static either and hopefully, with time, progress will be made and things will transition from unknowable to knowable. When those things happen I hope that people will continue to update their beliefs (ie religions), and I don’t think that’s too controversial.
With regards to the name brand religions, yeah they definitely have obviously false aspects to them, and I don’t know if people believe them as fact, even though they may say that or even think it. I do however think that they all have aspects to them that are applicable in the religious sense I defined above. For example the concept of a god, etc...
My last thought is I think all of the concepts that are being discussed in this thread are very hard problems. The definitions themselves are hard, what we consider good and bad outcomes are hard, and in a way it’s hard to be compassionate when it feels like people are saying things that are dangerous. That’s basically it, I think it’s important to just remind ourselves that these problems are hard, because I know I have a tendency, or a mental limitation if you will, to get mad or impatient when I forget that. I don’t mean to imply you are btw, but as I was writing I could literally feel a sense of empathy and understanding in the more general sense by reminding myself that this stuff is hard.
Sorry, wrote this on my phone, so sentences, spelling, grammar, structure, etc might suck lol.
And I don't mean to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are many wonderful things to learn from the scaffolding of religion and parable. To apply it to our legal system, tax system and to cherry pick bits from it for our military conflicts seem less than fruitful and more than a little hypocritical in a modern age (no accusation on you). As an American, I would much rather we go towards a scientific, historical, philosophic and arts educational model and leave religion at home, with tax loop holes removed. Charity tax breaks should be more than enough for those churches that stick to their mission statement.
But I digress. It doesn't matter until the likes of Facebook are turned into public spaces and regarded as havens for free speech or they are not. That's really the question that has to be answered.
Yeah, I agree completely. The fact that there is a material difference between one kind of institution and another gives legitimacy to complaining about religion, IMO.
> To apply it to our legal system, tax system and to cherry pick bits from it for our military conflicts seem less than fruitful and more than a little hypocritical in a modern age
I totally agree and it saddens me to see this happen. I think one crucial detail though is that instead of religion, I would call this dirty politics (or maybe even just rhetoric?). Dirty politics itself isn't new, but what has changed has become the scale at which it is now employed.
> It doesn't matter until the likes of Facebook are turned into public spaces and regarded as havens for free speech or they are not. That's really the question that has to be answered.
I don't really know myself, but I lean towards yes, if the likes of Facebook had a policy of safe harbor, then they should be regards as havens for free speech. I don't know enough about FB to say if they are no longer protected by safe harbor, but they're probably not in that category.
When we consider though the systematic exploitation of human psychology deployed at scale, it's honestly terrifying, but to me instead of treating it as a free speech question (which is hard), it should be treated as a privacy question and the kinds of businesses you should be able to make. All of these terrifying capabilities and their free speech implications are predicated on companies harvesting our data at scale. The answer should be that there are limitations on what you can do, and business should probably just make money by charging people for stuff.
I get that, early on, it may have felt necessary because we didn't know better, and there wasn't a cultural infrastructure for consumers paying for digital goods. However, a lot has changed since then, and the internet has now become basically the equivalent of a welfare state, where our digital existences within it have been sponsored by all powerful benefactors, e.g. Facebook, Google. To me the solution is simply, pay for stuff, and make it hard to have businesses where your users don't pay for stuff. That could be have liabilities around data that you collect, or outright making it illegal.
Can't promise I have answers to all of the details, but this I feel good about the overall premise of my hypothesis.
Of course you don't have all the answers. No one can. It's an impossible task and that's where civil conversations like these come in. I quit Facebook quite a while ago because civil conversations were becoming rare and spiteful rhetoric was becoming the norm. I obviously don't have the answers.
I think a very good first step, especially since schools have been forced online, is to see internet access become a public utility before we ever worry about the likes of Facebook. A public space to voice one's concerns can be made at a .gov space or hosted at one's own website once internet access is a utility. The only barrier to entry then is learning to set up your own server (I always thought it was fun when I was younger). Though security certificates are a harder hurdle to clear, these days.
As for data collection, well, I trust neither corporations nor government. They've both proven to be dishonest when it comes to that particular topic, laws be damned =[
What is the standard of proof here? I'd that the standard seven day creation story is about as outlandish as the narrative that the holocaust is a big hoax.
Is it technically possible to explain away all the evidence with sufficient effort? I suppose. But occams razor tells us that yes, the holocaust happened, and no, three days did not pass before the sun was created.
My point is that we generally don't expect mathematics-like incontrovertible proof to establish historical fact, and it's unfair to demand it to disprove religion. More broadly, Facebook now has to figure out what the standard of proof is for their platform.
> it kind of crosses the line when something denies well documented fact and tries to discredit reality itself
Are you suggesting that news organizations should no longer broadcast false statements made by word leaders, such as Trump, who continuously and repeatedly denies well documented facts? Or are you suggesting that these restrictions on free speech should only apply on regular people, whose lowly opinions should be censored while blatant lies by the rich and famous should be broadcast?
> Are you suggesting that news organizations should no longer broadcast false statements made by word leaders, such as Trump
That would be helpful or, if they need to, to point where exactly the so-called leader is incorrect.
In fact, abusing elected office to provide materially false and misleading information should be an impeachable offense and a crime similar to perjury.
This seems to be one of those things where the arguments pro and con have already been so endlessly hashed out that it’s simply become a matter of choice which camp you’re in.
It's an important conversation to have. Ironically, the problem is that the signal gets divided into shortened binary views which are easier to say "yes" or "no" to. The answer isn't no censorship ever or censorship is always okay. The real answer always depends on context.
The problem with platforms like FB and Twitter is that anyone can say anything, and that can get amplified organically, or by state actors, or by trolls who are just saying offensive things to get attention. It's obvious that they need some form of moderation -- in most societies, you can't legally threaten to kill people for any reason, etc.
I think the main problem is trolling and foreign interference because it is basically free. Trying to establish a fringe idea required a lot of effort when making pamphlets or sending out biased newspapers were the main ways of doing it.
In the current digital age, people who are easily influenced are being blasted with controversial ideas by algorithms that are not trying to spread good information, but get more clicks. Foreign psyops efforts and the trolls who would not publicly support an idea, but will do so anonymously, falsely inflate its value. This is a new problem. It may need a twist on an old solution, like allowing people to choose between moderated or unmoderated news feeds, with the default being moderated.
Our democracy (and dozens of others) have survived for hundreds of years with limits to free speech. In my opinion, it's reasonable and rational to trust that the generations before us were at least partially right, and save ourselves the pain of reinventing that wheel.
Have they? Because I still regularly encounter educated people who can't tell the difference between free speech and threats, harassment, etc. If you can't distinguish between free speech and coercive speech, then you don't understand the free-speech position that you purport to oppose ("He who knows only his own argument knows little of that").
I recall a thread on cancel culture a few months ago where virtually everyone on the pro-cancel-culture position were arguing that free speech ideals were meaningless because threats and harassment are also free speech ergo you can't oppose cancel culture without also opposing free speech--of course, threats and harassment aren't free speech, and this is precisely why free-speech proponents oppose cancel culture.
It seems like this is one area where more debate can be genuinely enlightening.
It sounds like you have a very, very specific idea of what should be considered free speech, and you seem to have very little tolerance for people who hold a different opinion on that topic. Rather than saying "we disagree on what should be considered free speech", you describe the people who disagree with you as confused and ignorant, who need to be educated with more debate.
I have news for you: people can have different ideas about what should be within the limits of free speech and what should not. In fact, different countries have entirely different laws regarding what is protected as free speech and what is not.
Let's consider the harassment example that you brought up: in principle I agree with you that people should not be allowed to harass each other. However, when you can quell unwanted speech by labeling it "harassment", you create an incentive for people to label more and more speech as harassment. We see this issue in practice all the time. In many places, stating facts such as "men and women have biological differences" is now considered harassment and can lead to losing your job.
You've missed the point. Free-speech is widely understood to exclude threats and harassment, but even if it were only a niche definition used by free-speech proponents the pro-cancel-culture argument would still be nonsense because it claims that the pro-free-speech argument is inconsistent and self-refuting based on a definition of 'free-speech' that includes threats and harassment. Anyone who makes this argument plainly doesn't understand the free-speech argument.
No, the "free-speech proponents" do not adhere to your specific definition of what should be considered free speech. The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents.
> The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents.
If they are doing this, then they are contradicting themselves, but in all of the debates to which I've been a party, the free speech position has always held that coercive behavior (threats and harassment including quid pro quo harassment) are out of bounds of free speech. Once in a while you'll have a few people indulging in a little schadenfreude when a cancel-culture proponent is themselves canceled, and sometimes this stretches so far as to legitimize their canceling--rationalizing the canceling certainly goes too far and conflicts with free-speech ideals and schadenfreude while understandable is probably still not helpful.
If as you claim, free-speech proponents are arguing that coercive behavior (harassment, threats, etc) are "free speech", then they are contradicting themselves. However, I dispute that this is a general phenomenon, even if there are a few individual free-speech proponents here or there who do contradict themselves in this way. For the most part, free speech proponents are consistent in arguing that threats and harassment are not free speech and should not be treated as such.
> If as you claim, free-speech proponents are arguing that coercive behavior (harassment, threats, etc) are "free speech", then they are contradicting themselves.
Once again: where is the contradiction? For example, I might say "Christianity is causing a lot of suffering and death". I think that statements like that are "free speech" and not "harassment", but a fundamental Christian person who hears this statement may think that expressing this opinion constitutes harassment. So you have a statement, and two people disagree whether it is free speech. You think there's a contradiction somewhere in there. Well, where is it?
That statement isn’t harassment (however awful it may be). If you follow Christian groups around protesting them at their events and so on then perhaps that constitutes harassment, but merely expressing a negative opinion of something is plainly free speech and not harassment.
> You think there's a contradiction somewhere in there.
You asserted the contradiction, not me. I merely confirmed your observation that a free-speech proponent who alleged that harassment was free speech would be contradicting himself because by definition harassment is not free speech.
> merely expressing a negative opinion of something is plainly free speech and not harassment.
Again, this is merely your opinion, and it does not reflect the opinion of everyone else. Another person will see that statement and believe it is harassment and not free speech.
> You asserted the contradiction, not me. I merely confirmed your observation that a free-speech proponent who alleged that harassment was free speech would be contradicting himself because by definition harassment is not free speech.
No, this is false. You asserted the contradiction and you still have not demonstrated that it exists. If you look up this chain of comments to find the first mention of "contradiction", that mention was made by you (not me!) as a response to my comment where I said:
""The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents.""
...to this comment you responded:
""If they are doing this, then they are contradicting themselves""
Notice that I never said "free-speech proponent alleges harassment is free speech". The example I gave was very clear that the label "harassment" is not given by the speaker - it is given by an observer. You seem to hold on to this strawman that you constructed where the speaker labels their own speech as harassment and free speech simultaneously. This does not really occur in practice. What occurs in practice is that the speaker does not label their own speech as harassment, the label is given by other people who are offended and want to silence the speaker . In some instances we might agree with speaker, in other instances we might disagree with them. But in any case, the speaker's internal position is not contradictory; they don't believe that their speech constitutes harassment.
> Again, this is merely your opinion, and it does not reflect the opinion of everyone else. Another person will see that statement and believe it is harassment and not free speech.
You are mistaken. Criticism is never harassment and it’s always free speech by definition. Someone might have their feelings hurt by criticism and they might even believe it to be harassment, but they’d be mistaken. The president would prefer the media not to criticize him so much and I’m sure he believes they harass him, but never the less, he is mistaken.
> No, this is false. You asserted the contradiction and you still have not demonstrated that it exists.
I interpreted (evidently “misinterpreted) your comment as a contradiction; I wasn’t claiming a contradiction. It seems like your point is instead “some people consider harassment to be free speech” which is fine, but incorrect at least per the widely accepted definition of free speech. You can have your own definition of “2” for example which means “3”, but you don’t get to call others wrong when they say “2+2=4”—they are simply using the conventional definition of “2” and not your personal definition.
Ok, so you accept that people do in fact have different interpretations about what constitutes free speech. But somehow you believe that your specific, personal interpretation is the absolutely correct one? Why? If you ask 100 people where the line is between harassment and legitimate criticism, you will get 100 different answers. What makes your answer correct and the other 100 answers incorrect? You refer to "widely accepted definition", as if a dictionary definition could somehow be applied to real world situations to judge whether an expression is harassment or not. Maybe it can be in _extreme_ cases, like if someone said "gays should be killed" we could easily judge that as harassment, or if someone says "i like cats" we could easily judge it as not harassment. But there's a huge gray area where expressions can be interpreted either way and it's up to each individual to assess whether they feel like an expression is harassment or not.
> Ok, so you accept that people do in fact have different interpretations about what constitutes free speech. But somehow you believe that your specific, personal interpretation is the absolutely correct one? Why?
It's not correct, it's just "standard" in the context that I'm using it. But whether or not it's "standard" is largely irrelevant--the question is whether the concept that I'm labeling "free speech" is consistent in my framework with the other concepts (which I've labeled, "harassment" and "criticism"--which are also labeled according to standard definitions, for convenience). Let's stay away from semantic arguments--they're tedious, pointless, and boring.
> What makes your answer correct and the other 100 answers incorrect? You refer to "widely accepted definition", as if a dictionary definition could somehow be applied to real world situations to judge whether an expression is harassment or not. Maybe it can be in _extreme_ cases, like if someone said "gays should be killed" we could easily judge that as harassment
That's not harassment. It's an abhorrent idea, but "abhorrence" is different from "harassment". If you're shouting your abhorrent idea while burning a cross in someone's yard, that's harassment. If you're following someone around shouting your abhorrent idea, that's also harassment. Abhorrent ideas tend to be accompanied by harassment (and if you think about it, we consider these ideas abhorrent because they're very likely to lead to harassment and violence); however, they aren't equivalent to harassment. This is true even for a very broad definition of "harassment" like what you would find in a dictionary and even more so for very precise definitions such as a legal definition or probably all philosophical definitions.
> But there's a huge gray area where expressions can be interpreted either way and it's up to each individual to assess whether they feel like an expression is harassment or not.
I think we can reasonably define harassment as "an action based on an intent to intimidate or pressure someone". I think that definition is very precise and there isn't much gray area; however, litigating the intent to determine whether any given action is harassment is difficult. We can devise increasingly better tests for assessing intent (e.g., "we assume intent is to intimidate if a significant majority of people would feel intimidated under similar circumstances"), but difficulty of assessing intent is different than the precision of the definition.
Definitions are a little murky. "Cancel culture" also isn't threats and harassment---it's deplatforming. It's using freedom of association to deny guilt by proxy for spreading someone else's lies, threats, and harassments.
Cancel culture is very often concerted petitioning of someone's employer into terminating someone's employment (harassment) or the threat of the same (recall the Hispanic utility company employee who was terminated for making the 'ok' sign inadvertently or the data scientist who was terminated for Tweeting a prominent black academic's research on the efficacy of nonviolent protests or the journalist who was harassed by coworkers and nearly terminated for interviewing a black man who expressed concern about crime in his neighborhood). It's also frequently walking into a venue and disrupting the speaker such that their message can't reach the crowd. It may also look like forming a dangerous mob outside of a venue such that the venue can't cover the security costs for hosting a speaker.
If petitioning your employer to fire you for something you said works, maybe you said something that your employer would fire you over?
That's, again, not harassment and threats, it's your employer using freedom of association to deny guilt by proxy for spreading someone else's lies, threats, and harassments.
> If petitioning your employer to fire you for something you said works, maybe you said something that your employer would fire you over?
Possibly, but there is another possibility which also occurs with alarming frequency:
The employer, feeling bullied and afraid of bad press, demonstrations, etc, makes a calculated risk vs reward decision: Is keeping this employee worth the (possibly existential) risk to my business?
That is, the employer may personally have zero problem with what you said, but fire you anyway because "it's just not worth it." The decision to fire is the result of both cowardice by the employer and coercion by the petitioners, even if that coercion is not an explicit threat.
If an employer fears bad press, perhaps it's because the thing their employee did is unpopular and their business is built on public perception?
I mean, we can keep digging, but at the end of the day the story keeps resolving to "Someone said something people didn't like and there are consequences." Technology has made it easier, by dint of lowering the cost of investigation of a person, to apply those consequences; it hasn't changed the rules under which society has operated in general. We block those consequences in terms of government intervention; we've never back-stopped them in terms of private intervention outside of some very, very specific class constraints.
If we want to discuss whether holocaust denial should be a protected class constraint, that would fit the existing (US) mold for constraint of reaction to speech by private citizens, but good luck finding popular support for holocaust denial protection.
As the comic says, defending a position by citing free speech says that the most compelling virtue of your words is that they're not literally illegal to say.
> If an employer fears bad press, perhaps it's because the thing their employee did is unpopular and their business is built on public perception?
> I mean, we can keep digging, but at the end of the day the story keeps resolving to "Someone said something people didn't like and there are consequences."
I see your argument here, in theory. Two things make me uneasy with it: lack of perfect information; and the power of disinformation.
That is, "unpopular" and "someone said something people didn't like" can't be taken for granted. A small vocal minority, especially one skilled with social media, can make something appear more unpopular than it actually is. And few people are equipped to gauge what the reality is (accurate polling, eg, can be problematic even for those with large resources, let alone a small business owner).
It is easy, then, to force the employer to make a decision about a risk they cannot gauge accurately, and which is made to appear much larger than they would view it if they knew the true average opinions of their customers. Couple this with most people's natural risk aversion, and you have a genuine problem that you can't write off as "well, employers are just finally being forced to respond to the will of the people."
I mean, I'm kind of surprised after this back-and-forth that it isn't as clear cut as you seem to think it is. I mean, I've seen both of you make pretty reasoned arguments, and the fact that you still disagree I would at least think proves the point that people who disagree with your definition of free speech (or, rather, your definition of "cancel culture" and your definition of "harassment and threats") are not crazy lunatics.
I mean, let's be honest: getting someone blackballed from gainful employment sure seems like harassment for any reasonable definition of the term. You just seem to believe that there are sometimes good reasons for that to occur.
> recall the Hispanic utility company employee who was terminated for making the 'ok' sign inadvertently or the data scientist who was terminated for Tweeting a prominent black academic's research on the efficacy of nonviolent protests or the journalist who was harassed by coworkers and nearly terminated for interviewing a black man who expressed concern about crime in his neighborhood
Which of these are things an employer would reasonably fire an employee over? I don't think any reasonable person would believe that these people would have been fired if it weren't for the concerted canceling. Otherwise why would people bother petitioning the employer if the employer would have fired them anyway?
Moreover, do cancel-culture proponents really want to cement the precedent that employment is just an ordinary association, and that anyone's employment (and thus livelihood and health insurance) can be terminated on the whims of their employer? Would they feel comfortable allowing a Trump-voting employer to casually part ways with an employee upon finding out they support Biden? Bear in mind that you and I and those we know are probably much more likely to be in high-demand tech positions than the median American.
> do cancel-culture proponents really want to cement the precedent that employment is just an ordinary association, and that anyone's employment (and thus livelihood and health insurance) can be terminated on the whims of their employer?
If we're talking about the US, that's already extremely firmly cemented outside of specific union protections (I haven't heard about unions going to bat for employees getting called out; I'd be interested to see if it's happening).
It's a major issue with the way American employment works, but is somewhat orthogonal to the question of calling out people for bad behavior. People can lose their health insurance if their employer doesn't like their haircut also; the root issue is that health insurance ought not be tied to employment.
> Would they feel comfortable allowing a Trump-voting employer to casually part ways with an employee upon finding out they support Biden?
That happens all the time. So does employers supporting employees' support of a political candidate.
Politicization of labor isn't new. My relatives who are union are required to spend off-job time working a phone bank for a few hours every election cycle in support of the candidate the union is backing; it's part of their union agreement.
> If we're talking about the US, that's already extremely firmly cemented outside of specific union protections (I haven't heard about unions going to bat for employees getting called out; I'd be interested to see if it's happening).
It's not firmly cemented, it's a common law, but it's well within the realm of possibility that Congress would pass a bill that strengthens employment protections. This is something the US has gone back and forth on for a long time; why do you assume it's fixed (i.e. "cemented") now? And if it's not cemented, why would you want to lean into that precedent?
> but is somewhat orthogonal to the question of calling out people for bad behavior.
How can you make the argument that it's "just employers' exercising their freedom-of-association rights" and then argue that freedom of association is orthogonal? Anyway, we're not talking about them exercising their freedom of association rights, we're talking about coercing employers into terminating employees who fail to toe the party line.
> That happens all the time. So does employers supporting employees' support of a political candidate.
Right, but I'm guessing you would argue that this is immoral and harmful behavior--if so, why would you advocate for those who would emulate it (note that canceling is even worse, because it's not just an employer parting ways with a heretical employee, but a mob pressuring an employer to part ways with said heretical employee)?
> Politicization of labor isn't new. My relatives who are union are required to spend off-job time working a phone bank for a few hours every election cycle in support of the candidate the union is backing; it's part of their union agreement.
Why would they do this if the status quo was already "extremely firmly cemented"?
> I'm guessing you would argue that this is immoral and harmful behavior
I do not. I argue that the public putting pressure on individuals who spread bad ideas to stop doing that---up to and including looping their employer in, up to and including the employer terminating that employment relationship---is part of the healthy public immune system to bad ideas and antisocial behavior. "We live in a society" and all that. The government is constrained from doing it because the machinery of government can be co-opted by tyrants, so people need the right to call tyrants what they are. Not because it's the obligation of every individual to feed those who seek their destruction.
In US history, unpopular politicians used to have their houses torn down brick by brick by an angry mob and tossed in a river. We've come quite a long way in expressing disagreement in a civilized way, but there's no expectation that someone should keep paying you money (or, in the concrete case of Facebook and what content they host, giving you an open "billboard along the highway" of their community communication service) so you can spend it on denying their history or their right to exist (or the history and right to exist of their customers).
> I do not. I argue that the public putting pressure on individuals who spread bad ideas to stop doing that
The whole point is that there's not a good way to determine what ideas are "bad ideas" apart from ongoing public debate.
> up to and including the employer terminating that employment relationship---is part of the healthy public immune system to bad ideas and antisocial behavior
The obvious problem is that "employers can terminate any employee at will" is that it does at least as much harm to "good ideas" as to "bad ideas". It optimizes for "popular ideas" and your ideas might not be popular, especially if you believe (as many cancel culture proponents do) that we live in an abhorrent white supremacist, rape culture. If these ideas are indeed popular, then a mechanism that allows employers to terminate employees for any reason coupled with an incentive system that encourages employers to terminate employees with unpopular ideas will naturally result in the propagation of those popular ideals.
> it does at least as much harm to "good ideas" as to "bad ideas"
If that's the case, then one is assuming that the public is incapable of discerning good ideas from bad ideas.
Calling that into question calls all of American democracy into question. At that point, why even leave leadership up to the voters? A dictatorship, oligarchy, or plutocracy would be wiser if the public really can't determine for themselves what will secure or endanger their freedom.
One of the cornerstones of American government is self-governance: the ability of the people to discern, in aggregate, good from bad. If we accept the public's ability to vote, we ought to also accept their right to inform a company of someone they perceive to be a bad actor in their midst and boycott said company based on their perception.
The public isn't always right. We assume, as a matter of American self-governance, that they often are.
(We probably shouldn't fork the conversation on the topic of white supremacist rape culture, because I'm guessing from your statement that you don't believe that describes America ;) ).
> If that's the case, then one is assuming that the public is incapable of discerning good ideas from bad ideas.
I'm assuming that the mob can't, and that even a democracy struggles; however, given enough debate good ideas will rise to the top more often than not. The viability of this kind of debate depends on free-speech ideals, however--our debate is presently very toxic in no small part to the fear that cancel culture inspires.
I wouldn't get too hung up on the term for the group as long as we both know which group I'm talking about. I used "the mob" because cancel culture behaves like a mob (a group seeking extrajudicial justice), and because it's silly to use "the public" to refer to <13% of the population (only 13% of US adults say cancel culture is not a problem, but the statistics don't differentiate between people who are indifferent about it and those who actively support it).
"Well they probably did something to deserve getting fired" is certainly a take. I'd ask though, would these companies still fire you if there wasn't a mob, social media or otherwise, causing a ruckus?
The point is the employer wouldn't fire them apart from the mob's pressure. Moreover, mobs are famously fickle and they're happy to descend upon anyone, guilty or not (even irrespective of whether or not today's target was part of the mob yesterday). I really hope we can agree that mob rule is strictly worse than rule of law.
The rule of law doesn't exclude an employer deciding an employee is more trouble than they're worth outside of some very specific situations (class protection, etc.).
Within the constraint of the rule of law, a group of people can organize to petition an employer to remove an employee for behavior A, and the employer can evaluate A and decide whether the group's claims are untrue, A should be removed for the behavior, or it's not worth the time to decide and A should be removed to quiet the group.
Good employers won't do 3, and we should probably shame the employers who do, but I think it opens a Pandora's box to constrain their choices with further law on this topic.
> The rule of law doesn't exclude an employer deciding an employee is more trouble than they're worth outside of some very specific situations (class protection, etc.).
"Rule of law" refers to "judgment in a court on the basis of a codified law" as opposed to "mob rule" where the mob takes it upon itself to determine who is guilty. My point is that I hope we can agree that the mob is bad at determining who is guilty and what an appropriate sentence ought to be, and this is why we have rule of law.
> a group of people can organize to petition an employer to remove an employee for behavior A, and the employer can evaluate A and decide whether the group's claims are untrue, A should be removed for the behavior, or it's not worth the time to decide and A should be removed to quiet the group. Good employers won't do 3...
The problem, of course, is that employers have a fiduciary responsibility that reliably overrides their moral responsibility in practice. And naturally, cancel culture depends on this basic fact, or else it would be ineffective. If employers were able to resist the mob, then the mob wouldn't get its way. If the mob and the employer were really righteous then the employer would terminate the errant employee without pressure from a mob (there would be no point).
Personally I think we should make it harder for employers to terminate their employees for their private free speech, such that mobs can "protest" employee behavior but they can't even implicitly threaten the employee's livelihood and access to health care. If you remove the mob's ability to control one's employment, then they can shout into the Twitter void to their heart's content with my full blessing.
> Personally I think we should make it harder for employers to terminate their employees for their private free speech, such that mobs can "protest" employee behavior but they can't even implicitly threaten the employee's livelihood and access to health care.
I'm personally nervous about a law enacting that creating a situation where a black employer can't fire an employee for organizing a Klan rally.
I empathize with this. There's not an easy answer.
First of all, to clarify, if the employee is using any racist speech at work at all, there's no question that s/he's creating a hostile workplace and that warrants termination. I'm very wary of allowing any private speech to constitute a hostile workplace due to the slippery slope and ease of abuse, but I certainly empathize with the impulse.
If the "Klan rally" is burning crosses or otherwise threatening or harassing people, then the law should handle this. Basically we should have stronger protections against mobs--make it easier for the law to prosecute participants. This also would have lots of additional social benefits (including protecting victims of BLM riots).
If the hypothetical Klan rally is truly peaceful (however abhorrent their ideals), then all they can really do is result to the same cancel culture tactics we're debating--if we can render those tactics impotent, then the Klan rally is impotent. Moreover, it becomes an opportunity to hold a counter-rally where we talk about why Klan ideas are abhorrent (because ideas about racial superiority/guilt are abhorrent, etc).
Note that while this isn't as satisfying as firing someone over their private speech, it provides much more protection against abuse, and it's more holistic--it not only covers your hypothetical black employer / racist employee scenario, but the much more common scenario involving racist employees offending their coworkers.
If cancel culture doesn’t depend on implicit threats of career repercussions, then no one should object when we pass laws to protect employees from this kind of mob-based termination. Of course, in this substantial thread, I don’t think anyone has disputed that CC is about threats and harassment and at least one CC proponent has advocated against employment protections. This is consistent with my observations in other HN and Twitter threads, but I’d be happy to be wrongness provided we protect employees from this kind of mobbing.
I'd love it if free speech advocates were uniform in their attack on "cancel culture".
I have two friends, each faculty members at top schools, who have been personally attacked on Fox News and called enemies of America. This has led to hundreds of people sending them death threats via email and constant calls to their department chairs demanding their firing. Not a peep from organizations like FIRE.
And why is sending an email to somebody's boss saying that they are an asshole and should be fired fundamentally worse than posting on social media about how so-and-so is a secret jew who works for the new world order and literally sacrifices babies to satan?
> I'd love it if free speech advocates were uniform in their attack on "cancel culture". I have two friends, each faculty members at top schools, who have been personally attacked on Fox News and called enemies of America. This has led to hundreds of people sending them death threats via email and constant calls to their department chairs demanding their firing. Not a peep from organizations like FIRE.
FIRE focuses on the exercise of free speech in education, so if your friends weren't fired or reprimanded for exercising their rights, FIRE probably won't weigh in. Doubly so if no one writes to FIRE on their behalf asking them to cover the case. Ultimately, FIRE can't cover every case (they're a nonprofit), so it might also just be bad luck that your friends' case wasn't selected. Hard to say. It certainly could be that FIRE is discriminating against your friends' for the content of their speech, but FIRE and Fox News are rarely aligned (indeed, FIRE got its start defending academia against conservative illiberalism).
> And why is sending an email to somebody's boss saying that they are an asshole and should be fired fundamentally worse than posting on social media about how so-and-so is a secret jew who works for the new world order and literally sacrifices babies to satan?
Distinguishing between free speech and harassment requires discernment, which is what a lot of modern people are either not trained to do, don’t have time to do, are too lazy to do, or have been brainwashed against. More and more, we demand bright lines in a society increasingly filled with gray areas because we charge ahead without consideration.
It’s never been easy and current social pressures make it even harder to do.
This is why we should craft a system that doesn't depend on discerning between free speech and harassment. If we strengthen employment protections, then we don't have to litigate whether "it would be unfortunate if you were fired for this tweet..." was a thinly veiled threat or simply free speech--the employee can rest assured knowing that their livelihood, health care, etc is secure and they can freely advocate for their political beliefs.
I'll be honest I don't understand your usage of the term "free speech" here. The way I define that term is that it's a political concept expressing the desire for people to be allowed to express themselves however they want to the largest extent possible/ethical. An example of law embodying free speech would be the 1st amendment of the US Constitution.
Based on context, I think you are using free speech to mean "speech that is protected by the doctrine of free speech" in the vocabulary I described above. Though that's ambiguous, because to be able to talk concretely about whether speech is protected or not you would need to say what it is covered under. So do you mean speech that is protected under the 1st Amendment, or some other law?
Presuming you mean the 1st amendment, it isn't necessarily true that threats and harassment are not protected, depending on the specifics.
No worries. The 1st amendment is a legal right and protection from violation by the government. Free speech ideals go further and are generally the belief that problems are best overcome by more speech--if someone has an abhorrent idea, let them express it so others can refute it and let the audience make up its own mind. Free speech proponents would argue that censoring the idea will look bad to those in the audience who haven't made up their minds, and those undecided people in their curiosity will still learn about the unsavory ideas without the guidance of refutation. Free speech is about persuasion and not coercion, so while you could get away with it, "if you say $x, I will get all of my friends to call your employer and demand your termination" (threatening someone with harassment) is not considered to be "free speech" (nor is it "free speech" to carry out the threat).
To distinguish between this definition and the first-amendment definition, I usually refer to this as "free speech ideals".
OK, I think I'm following. Your notion of free speech ideals isn't bound to a specific law like the 1st amendment and is more abstract. (I'll note that it sounds like your notion of free speech here actually seems to cover less speech than the 1st amendment, since you're explicitly excluding harassment and threats which the 1st amendment may cover. Of course, that's determining what is legal and illegal while free speech ideals are more abstract, so that's kind of an apples-and-oranges comparison). And you object to Counter Culture, which you're defining as coercive actions against those who hold abhorrent or objectionable views. And you propose an alternative, which we could call Refutation Culture, where you instead seek to open up a sort of dialogue to prove those views wrong or immoral.
I have a couple of follow-ups. You reject using Cancel Culture to silence those expressing abhorrent ideas. But what if someone isn't expressing a political view or ideology, but is instead performing bad actions? Like using racial slurs and insulting minorities, or shouting sexual harassment at women walking down the street? As you mentioned, threats and harassment aren't protected under the banner of free speech ideals. And, depending on the circumstances, those actions may be protected under the 1st Amendment, so are not illegal. Do you object to using Cancel Culture against those who are performing threats and harassment? If not, do you have an alternative recommendation? Because I'm not sure how Refutation Culture would apply in such a situation, there's no idea being put forward to argue against. As a follow up, what about abhorrent views being put into practice, such as the CEO of a company instituting racial segregation in their stores?
Secondly, where do you draw the line between Cancel Culture and general acts of protest? If someone in a position of power publicly expresses abhorrent views, and under Refutation Culture we should voice an alternative viewpoint, can that take the form of a protest? If we march around that person's office holding picket signs refuting their viewpoint, would that be considered coercive?
> I'll note that it sounds like your notion of free speech here actually seems to cover less speech than the 1st amendment, since you're explicitly excluding harassment and threats which the 1st amendment may cover. Of course, that's determining what is legal and illegal while free speech ideals are more abstract, so that's kind of an apples-and-oranges comparison)
Right, "free-speech" is a subset of "speech", and it aspires to optimize for the volume of free speech, which is to say that as long as people are free to threaten and harass, others will feel uncomfortable expressing their views. Of course, if those in power agree with you, the intolerant person will say "all is well", but the problems are that (1) sometimes we are wrong and (2) sometimes the person in power isn't going to agree with us and we find ourselves on the wrong end of our own speech-restricting precedents. Those of use who have lived in liberal democracies most of our lives may find it hard to believe that an illiberalism with which we disagree could ever come to rule, and so we take free speech for granted.
> You reject using Cancel Culture to silence those expressing abhorrent ideas. But what if someone isn't expressing a political view or ideology, but is instead performing bad actions? Like using racial slurs and insulting minorities, or shouting sexual harassment at women walking down the street?
As previously mentioned, harassment (sexual or targeted racial slurs) are already harassment. Note that "I think $race is inferior" isn't an abhorrent idea that falls within the realm of free speech, but "Get out of our neighborhood, you $slur" is harassment.
> As you mentioned, threats and harassment aren't protected under the banner of free speech ideals. And, depending on the circumstances, those actions may be protected under the 1st Amendment, so are not illegal. Do you object to using Cancel Culture against those who are performing threats and harassment?
Yes, I object. We should criticize the cancel culture movement; fighting cancel culture with cancel culture is self defeating. In general, I would advocate for legal protections that would neuter cancel culture (and provide a host of additional social benefits), such as decoupling health insurance from employment and strengthening employment protections. In many cases, harassment is already illegal, but proving harassment is difficult and this difficulty is exactly what cancel culture thrives on, so we need better tools--if an employer has to pay an expensive severance, they'll be less willing to cede to a mob. We could also prohibit them from terminating employees on the basis of their free speech altogether (provided of course that the "speech" in question isn't the employee representing the company in an official capacity). I'm not sure exactly which of these policies would be the most effective, but I'm confident that there's a lot of opportunity.
> As a follow up, what about abhorrent views being put into practice, such as the CEO of a company instituting racial segregation in their stores?
This is already illegal, and free speech ideals are perfectly consistent with the laws that condemn this behavior (instituting racial segregation isn't speech of any kind).
> If someone in a position of power publicly expresses abhorrent views, and under Refutation Culture we should voice an alternative viewpoint, can that take the form of a protest? If we march around that person's office holding picket signs refuting their viewpoint, would that be considered coercive?
I'm not sure what "Refutation Culture" is, but if you're talking about free speech ideals, then yes, it's perfectly fine to protest as long as your protest isn't harassing or threatening. There's nothing inherently coercive about expressing one's perspective; it's when there's a threat (either explicit or implicit) or when it's outright harassment (you're petitioning a politician in their workplace--this is healthy democratic behavior as long as the protests and messaging are peaceful in nature; petitioning someone's home or shouting death/rape threats constitute harassment IMO).
Perhaps, but I'll at least admit that my views on the limits of free speech have changed in the past decade or so as the toxicity and irrationality of social media has become apparent.
I think there is an often unspoken assumption by free speech advocates that if enough daylight is shined on something that the truth will win out. Thus, better to limit speech as little as possible because (a) those limitations have so easily and frequently been abused by those clinging to power and (b) at the end of the day the truth will win out anyway, so better to just let crazy stuff be said.
Over the past decade though, as people have seen the real, critical danger of unlimited free speech, and especially how the internet and social media has allowed free speech with few consequences to the original speaker (which did NOT exist when the ideals of free speech were first envisioned), I'm not sure these original hypotheses hold out anymore. I highly recommend The Social Dilemma - instead of showing truth to power, powerful entities have used powerful tools to "hack" human psychology to get people to believe things that are factually false.
Remember Reddit back in the late 00s? It had such a strong free speech ethos it allowed things like jailbait. I don't even hear many free speech defenders supporting stuff like that anymore. And look at the mobs in Myanmar that were enabled to commit violence against the Rohingya by false Facebook posts.
I still believe in the ideas of free speech, by I also now more strongly believe that unlimited free speech will lead us to a world where autocrats win and plain, 100% verifiable facts are dismissed (I mean, from the article, nearly a quarter of 18-39 year olds believe the Holocaust is a myth, exaggerated or aren't sure??!! I'm in my 40s and I have friends whose parents showed me their serial tattoos from being in concentration camps), and stuff is, for lack of a better term, "not good". So yes, I've changed my position, and I'm firmly on the side of being intolerant against speech that is demonstrably false.
Is the government doing this, or is Facebook doing this? Free Speech is only a concern when it's the state, not when it's a private entity, no matter how much HN tries to conflate the two.
> Free Speech is only a concern when it's the state, not when it's a private entity
Why?
Even though FB cannot literally muzzle me, it is explicitly trying to be the singular point of online social interaction in an increasingly digital world.
To the extent that it is successful, its decisions on what content is and is not acceptable affect us all, far more strongly than any government censor, regardless of how right or wrong are its determinations.
I can't tolerate (neo) Nazis because they want to harm queer people, Jews, disabled people etc. The people they want to harm can't do anything to stop being targeted by (neo) Nazis.
Nazis can stop being Nazis and then I'll start tolerating them.
It doesn't matter if a Jew stops practising Judaism they will be targeted. It doesn't matter if a gay person is in the closet, they will be targeted. If a Nazi stops spreading Nazi rhetoric and performing Nazi actions they will be tolerated.
Do you mean that you wouldn't oppose harming or wanting to harm practicing muslims or christians as they could stop practicing?
To be fair, I understand that your idea is mainly that there is a hierarchy in the level of intolerance. But there was some losses in explaining your idea in a quick and dirty way.
The idea that an attribute has to be involuntary to be tolerated is not a good one. In determining whether or not something should be tolerated, it being involuntary may be a contributing factor but cannot be required. If Nazis decided that they would not kill any Jews who renounced Judaism, or gay people who didn't engage in homosexual sex, how much less repulsive would their ideology be?
>Nazis can stop being Nazis and then I'll start tolerating them.
So, it's OK to harass e.g. gay people? After all they can stop having sex with men and marry a woman. How about Christians? Muslims? Democrats? All of them can stop being what they are, so it's ok to harass them?
That argument was specifically addressed ('it doesn't matter if a gay person is in the closet, they will be targeted'), but you're ignoring it.
Also, there's a qualitative difference between harassing someone (purposeful infliction of harm on an individual) and mere dislike of their non-harmful consensual activity with others.
I would say there's a difference between tolerance of facts, and tolerance of lies. There's no need to tolerate people trying to hide facts with lies, which is the case holocaust denial.
Using a third party service to publish posts is not equivalent to speech. It's more akin to press, but it's not quite like that either: it's equivalent to asking a publisher to put a communication of yours in their printed text.
Facebook is not preventing someone from physically going to any street corner or other real public place and talking about holocaust denial. Facebook or anyone else would have every right to prevent this on their property if they wish.
I disagree that this is an encroachment on free speech. Your free speech protections are only protected _from_ the _government_. The government is not allowed to silence you on most things you say. However, things like shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater (the age-old example) are not free speech. Moreover, Facebook is not the government and does not need to allow you to say anything you want.
People who would otherwise post on Facebook about Holocaust denial can go out on the streets and talk about it to their friends or others. But, they can expect a punch in the face if they do. I think that is what is happening here. People are spewing nonsense, and a non-governmental entity (Facebook) is punching them in the face (not letting them say it on their platform).
Like the grandparent post said, this is intolerant. But it's following the paradox to allow more tolerance in society.
Our first amendment rights in the US restrict the government from prohibiting free speech. But that doesn't mean free speech isn't a principle that can, and should, be applied in other areas of life. When people say Facebook is violating free speech, that absolutely makes sense as a violation of a principle that many of us care strongly about, and that our society is to a great extent founded upon. Just because free speech as a right is enshrined in the first amendment doesn't mean the first amendment is where the principle of free speech begins and ends.
Basically. Forcing them to disseminate it infringes Facebook's freedom of the press. Or freedom of association; there are arguments to be made in both directions.
Not really. You would think in a forum full of techbros, FB being a private entity would be the end of the discussion. But because it's white supremacist viewpoints that many of the forum users are sympathetic with, it gets moved into a conveniently gray area.
This accusation is severely dishonest and in bad taste. It is a character attack when substantial discussion is warranted. It allows you to undermine opposing viewpoints without examining them. You're accusing people of abandoning their stated principles for nefarious reasons. It is toxic. If you want to have productive discussions with people you'll be better off not labelling them as evil from the outset.
But the utility of it on other areas of life is up for debate. The US considers the question settled for government intervention, not for private actions.
Free speech doesn't protect my right to blare Nazi propaganda 24/7 into your living room using focused sound technology. Nor should it.
In the US, it doesn't even grant a person the "right" to blare Nazi propaganda 24/7 using a licensed FM radio station.
Many people seem to take as granted that free speech is a virtue that an entity like Facebook should support, but their statements assume without evidence that free speech protection is a virtue in that context.
>Your free speech protections are only protected _from_ the _government_.
This is a common argument but it is simply not true. Someone cannot tape your mouth shut because they aren't the government. The government (at least the US government) is saddled with the responsibility to protect your rights, even from other entities. I cannot search your house just because I'm not a cop. What good is a government if it only protects your rights from being infringed by itself?
With regard to the particular topic being discussed, that is, a private entity moderating speech on its own property, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama is very directly applicable, and more specific to the situation itself. The only sticking point to be hashed out might be "terms of service" which might constitute a private agreement and this precedent may not directly apply. Of course we shall see, because I'm willing to bet these cases will be brought to court within the next 5 years.
There's a difference between "free speech" as a set of ideals and "free speech" as a legal right in the American constitution. When people criticize social network censorship, they're usually talking about the former, and they're usually not concerned about holocaust deniers in particular, but the slippery-slope precedent that these kinds of behaviors set.
We shouldn't tolerate things that are objectively and provably false. Denying the holocaust is one of those things, and therefore we shouldn't tolerate it.
Because that is a common thing for holocaust deniers. The majority of them is smart enough to not deny its very existence outright. Being more subtle, they decrease numbers, sometimes a lot, deny certain atrocities. Quite often they end with comparing these new, and totally false, numbers with Stalin's atrocities. All to come to the conclusion, that the holocaust wasn't even half as bad as everyone believes. Ah yeah, and that the Wehrmacht was totally not involved in this non-existent and despicable crime against humanity.
>>What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree.
You can disagree with opinions, but not facts. Facts are... facts. That the Holocaust happened is a fact. Denying that fact should indeed not be tolerated.
People can disagree with facts. They're wrong, they might be very ignorant, they might look incredibly stupid, but they can do it. They do it all the time, that is a fact.
>You can disagree with opinions, but not facts. Facts are... facts. That the Holocaust happened is a fact. Denying that fact should indeed not be tolerated.
What is caught in the "Holocaust denier" net does not consist solely of people who outright deny it occurred - there are many shades of grey, opinions in this realm are highly dimensional.
This isn't to say that censorship in this case isn't justified or fairly optimal (in achieving gross human happiness), but if a cause is just and righteous, it shouldn't present a highly distorted representation of objective reality, or refuse to vigorously defend it's assertions. If your case is correct, "in fact", it should be defensible in the context of a non-simplified representation of reality.
If proponents of an ideology (censorship, in this case) are not willing or able to do that, then I would find it more palatable if everyone was just honest and acknowledge that a very rough approximation is being done, for reasons X,Y,Z - I think a fine argument could be made, and this way no fibs are being told.
>>If your case is correct, "in fact", it should be defensible in the context of a non-simplified representation of reality.
The problem is that it is much easier to spread lies and misinformation than to contest and correct them. Mark Twain once said that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can even put on its shoes. This is especially true in this day and age where all it takes for something to reach massive audiences is a button click.
This is indeed a problem, so acknowledge it as such. But do not use this problem as a justification for misrepresenting actual reality - that is dishonest. If your position is correct and righteous, misrepresenting reality should not be necessary.
It is a rather sad and concerning state of affairs that there is such a widespread aversion to honesty on a site as normally clear-thinking as HN. As well, there seems to also be a very strong aversion to discussing this phenomenon (that people regularly misrepresent reality here) in the abstract. I am infinitely curious about this behavior, that is observable in large quantities.
-------------------------------------------------
EDIT: FYI, I am only allowed a few posts per day here (overton window maintenance?), so I will have to put my answer to your child comment here as an edit...
> Sorry, what exactly am I misrepresenting?
This:
>> You can disagree with opinions, but not facts. Facts are... facts. That the Holocaust happened is a fact. Denying that fact should indeed not be tolerated.
The ~dispute regarding the holocaust does not consist of a simple binary of whether the event occurred, or not. There is all sorts of complexity and uncertainty (as is typically the case in reality, our recorded history of it, and alterations to that recorded history of historic events as time progresses)...and in turn, our individual perceptions of events (which we mistake for reality, as is always the case in every conversation of this type on HN, and elsewhere) are highly inconsistent with each other, as well as with that which physically occurred.
So my question is: why describe it as if it is a simple binary? What is the motive for this misrepresentation? Might it be perhaps, with conscious intent or not, to persuade others to adopt your style of thinking and opinions? Just speculating of course - I am very interested in knowing the actual underlying reason of why there is such a strong aversion here on HN to discussing reality in its true, high dimensional nature.
I speculate that: because we do not do this, it has real world effects similar to that which would be experienced if one wrote software on top of a specification that leaves out 3/4 of the actual complexity of the problem space. And so, I beat this same dead horse, day after day, hoping that some day one individual will be able to acknowledge that indeed, there is actually a horse in the room.
>What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree.
That's an easy one. Tolerance is putting up with things other people do, except when those other people are being intolerant. You can make a comfortable place for intolerant groups, or for the people they target, but not both. Better to remove the intolerance.
Removing holocaust denial is an easy win here. It will be more interesting to see if Facebook chooses to remove less obviously bad content.
Translation: tolerance means tolerating opinions that are agreeable to you personally. Opinions which are offensive to you can be labelled "intolerant", and under that guise they should be silenced.
You are transmuting a private organization’s choice, which is equivalent to a person kicking nazis out of their dinner party, into something only a government can do: limit free speech.
So I can’t delete comment spam on my public blog as that would violate “free speech”?
I also don’t need a Facebook account in order to post content and consume it?
You are missing the point about Marsh v Alabama: unrestricted public accessibility vs the private club with authentication and exclusion built into its very core.
Rockefeller center, though a “public” space closes and excludes the public for around 5 minutes annually to prove that it is not a truly public space and so they can kick anyone out at any time for any reason. Facebook’s registration and authentication does the same. You publish at their pleasure.
In marsh, the equivalent would be a velvet rope around the sidewalk where only approved and registered people could enter, view and express their opinions. Facebook is emphatically not the public sphere, as much as y’all want it to be: it is allowed exclusion of anyone according to its own choosing. That it can ban someone and delete their account makes Facebook not a public sphere.
Same as my blog: your comment stays up if I want it to, no implication on the right to free speech.
Not true. Rather, you (and the cartoon) are confusing the abstract general principle of free speech, for the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
If one steps back and observes this conversation from a disinterested 3rd party perspective, one might notice that these same arguments, based on falsehoods from both sides, reoccur every single time the topic comes up. And if one exercises this practice over time, across many conversations, one may notice that this same pattern is present always and everywhere.
Might a reason that we never seem to move the ball forward on these conversations (or representations in physical reality) be that everyone thinks they're talking about "objective reality", but in fact, each person is actually talking about their individual snapshot (perspective, worldview) of reality? If this is what was actually happening, what might the conversations look like? Might they bear an uncanny resemblance to the conversations we see before our very eyes, year after year after year, on topic after topic after topic?
Even funnier about the situation is that typically, at least here on HN, most everyone probably has enough depth in psychology to decently realize the degree to which each individual has a "unique" (to put it mildly) perspective on reality. However, if one is to then consider this, and then observe the nature of the conversations, it appears as if this knowledge is not possessed by people who are arguing over a particular, object level topic (politics, racism, sexism, sexuality, etc). But while people can realize that individual bias exists in the abstract, they seem curiously (and passionately) unwilling/unable to realize (and acknowledge) that it actually comes into play in real world conversations, like this one.
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
- Pericles
I think "politics" in the above sentence could be replaced with "reality" and it would fully retain it's truth.
Freedom of speech and expression has a long history that predates modern international human rights instruments. It is thought that the ancient Athenian democratic principle of free speech may have emerged in the late 6th or early 5th century BC. The values of the Roman Republic included freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Concepts of freedom of speech can be found in early human rights documents. England's Bill of Rights 1689 legally established the constitutional right of freedom of speech in Parliament which is still in effect.
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which regulate an establishment of religion, or that would prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.
The 5th century is the time period from 401 to 500 Anno Domini (AD) or Common Era (CE) in the Julian calendar. The 5th century is noted for being a period of migration and political instability throughout Eurasia.
You are mistaking the ability to say whatever you want with the ability to escape the social consequences of your expression. Both are fully compatible with any understanding of “free speech” constitutionally, politically and socially.
Would you kick nazis out of your dinner party? Yes or No?
That’s the fundamental question that is being asked.
If your answer is no, you would not kick nazis out of your dinner party, on account of “free speech”, well, that is your free speech. Mine is kicking the nazis out.
If you would not permit me to alter my behavior to stop my resources and forum to be utilized by nazis, meaning I must support and publish nazi material, your position is very extreme, severely limits my autonomy and in many ways forces me to “speak” on behalf of others.
“Free speech” that does not allow for others to express the consequences of that speech is not, in fact a support of free speech.
If you say “I hate nazis, but you must allow them to publish on your website” you are effectively prioritizing one type of speech over another. You are saying I must allow nazis at my dinner party. (Note: the government, with its force of law, is very, very different)
If one cannot defend one's assertion by answering straightforward questions, avoiding unpleasant questions via rhetorical insults are indeed an effective alternative, especially in a community with sufficient lack of diversity of beliefs and thinking styles. Humans do love to circle the wagons to defend their most cherished ideas.
Downvotes work well too, as does rate limiting accounts that do not stay within the boundaries of the community overton window.
> You are mistaking the ability to say whatever you want with the ability to escape the social consequences of your expression.
Am I though, in fact? Is this idea expressly conveyed in the text above? Not that I can see, and it certainly wasn't intended, because I do not hold that belief. So this raises an interesting question: where did that idea come from? This may look like a rhetorical question, but it isn't - it is literal, and I ask it for a very specific and important reason. Are you able to answer the question? After all, it's your idea, isn't it?
> Would you kick nazis out of your dinner party? Yes or No? That’s the fundamental question that is being asked.
Fine - then discuss it in those terms, not in objectively false terms like removing them from the dinner party does not diminish their freedom of speech. The actual actions (and subsequent changes in the state of reality), and the justifications for those actions, are two different things. Acknowledge this distinction, please.
> If you would not permit me to alter my behavior to stop my resources and forum to be utilized by nazis, meaning I must support and publish nazi material, your position is very extreme, severely limits my autonomy and in many ways forces me to “speak” on behalf of others.
It is not I who am forcibly restricting anything, so please refrain from making such accusations. I am merely discussing ideas.
> “Free speech” that does not allow for others to express the consequences of that speech is not, in fact a support of free speech.
Agreed. I am not doing that. Others may, but I am not.
> If you say “I hate nazis, but you must allow them to publish on your website” you are effectively prioritizing one type of speech over another. You are saying I must allow nazis at my dinner party. (Note: the government, with its force of law, is very, very different)
If I was saying that, you would have a fine point. But I'm not saying that. What I am saying, is what I have said above - supplementing what I have said with one's own interpretations and predictions, and then accusing me of holding those interpreted beliefs, seems like a sub-optimal way to solve problems - if we were to do it in our day jobs, we'd write shitty software, and that's why this type of behavior gets called out. So why is it not just acceptable, but enthusiastically preferred, to behave in this manner in "the real world" (including here on HN, home of the intellectually gifted)? Is this not a very odd state of affairs? I mean, if one drops all priors and playfully observes (a certain subset of) the conversations we have here all day every day, is the whole thing not beautifully (but also tragically) absurd? Why do we do this, and why do we refuse to acknowledge it (and why do we downvote people who dare to point these things out - don't shoot the messenger, as they say)?
These seem like good questions to be asking in the 21st century - it's odd not only that no one asks them, but also that there's such unanimous and passionate aversion to the ideas contained within such questions. This aversion can be observed, if one has the fortitude to look.
Congratulations, you’ve discovered the paradox of tolerance (which the parent helpfully linked)?
There can be no stable and 100% tolerant society, because by definition that means that nothing will be done to stop intolerance from taking over. Given that 99% tolerant (with an exception for “no nazis”) is about as tolerant as it’s possible to be, most people use “99% tolerant (with an exception for no nazis)” and “tolerant” synonymously.
It’s not perfect, and yes it would be clearer if every single use of the word “tolerant” was replaced with “99% tolerant” and came with an explanation of the paradox of tolerance in the footnotes, but I think most people already understand what is meant here.
IMO it’s more nonsensical (and dangerous) to go the other way, using "1% intolerant” and “intolerant” synonymously - as then people start getting the impression that “banning holocaust denial content” (1% intolerant) and “gassing the Jews” (100% intolerant) are equally bad acts.
This seems an argument in favor of Facebook removing holocaust-denial content, lest the holocaust-deniers seize upon Facebook's tolerance to cause further harm with their distortion of history leading to direct harm of people by those who believe a distorted history.
I'm envisioning a world where Germany won the war and Facebook finds itself removing fringe content proclaiming the war was a horrific genocide and not the triumph of free society that the mainstream accepts as factual rationality. For Facebook to outright remove this content puts them into the awkward position of policing rationality on a platform built proliferating bullshit. It seems odd they chose to go down the route of outright removing the content opposed to quietly preventing flagged topics from aggregation on its recommendation algorithms. That said it does make sense considering the status quo these days seems to be using ideas and opinions, often to which our commitment is at best lackadaisical, as a basis for esteeming ourselves above others.
People are always going to have ideas which conflict with the mainstream, ideas that incite outrage and seem totally absurd. If history has anything to say about the matter it's that some of these absurd ideas have proven themselves correct despite mainstream acceptance, even outrage, to the contrary. If these ideas were silenced because they clashed with the mainstream then societies would seldom have progressed beyond dogmatic belief. What immediately comes to mind is viral FB content proclaiming masks as a panacea for Coronavirus and the government will abduct your children if you test positive. God forbid Facebook won't be removing that content though, because it doesn't clash with the mainstream zeitgeist that our reaction to the outbreak hasn't caused more long term harm than good at this point.
Good grief, I never thought I'd find myself defending the existence of Holocaust denial content on the internet, but it blows my mind how in the age of the internet we STILL don't understand how to deal with trolls.
Maybe techbros will only realize how damaging the "unchecked free speech" they defend is when they end up being the target of hate speech (and eventually actions)
Popper never said anything of the sort. Quoting from the same link you posted:
"The term "paradox of tolerance" does not appear anywhere in the main text of The Open Society and Its Enemies. Rather, Popper lists the above as a note to chapter 7, among the mentioned paradoxes proposed by Plato in his apologia for "benevolent despotism"—i.e., true tolerance would inevitably lead to intolerance, so autocratic rule of an enlightened "philosopher-king" would be preferable to leaving the question of tolerance up to majority rule. In the context of chapter 7 of Popper's work, specifically, section II, the note on the paradox of tolerance is intended as further explanation of Popper's rebuttal specific to the paradox as a rationale for autocracy: why political institutions within liberal democracies are preferable to Plato's vision of benevolent tyranny, and through such institutions, the paradox can be avoided."
"The chapter in question explicitly defines the context to that of political institutions and the democratic process, and rejects the notion of "the will of the people" having valid meaning outside of those institutions. Thus, in context, Popper's acquiescence to suppression when all else has failed applies only to the state in a liberal democracy with a constitutional rule of law that must be just in its foundations, but will necessarily be imperfect".
Don't get me wrong, I make no excuses for those people. They are garbage human beings that I would rather see dead than alive, but we must be sufficiently lucid to keep separate our personal preferences and our public policy proposals.
Facebook certainly has 100% the right to make that move, and I'm personally happy to see it. But the floor is extra-slippery. Let's be careful.
Why would you want the death of somebody for merely holding an opinion, no matter what that opinion is? That was a pretty WTF moment while reading your comment.
It's OK not to like people who want to kill you for what you are rather than anything you did. You do not, in fact, owe anything to people who dispute your right to exist.
Because I don't buy that an otherwise reasonable and moderate guy is casually an holocaust denier.
I am specifically not arguing that anybody - including the government - should have the right to harm that person, but it's such a massive red flag that I believe I would be justified in severing all ties with that person.
I guess that even denying the holocaust, like everything else, comes in different degrees, but parent was talking about organized groups that actively attempt to spread that belief. That's too far for me to ever forgive.
> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech
Maybe this is necessary and good, but of course it's an "encroachment on free speech". That's literally what is is. We can obfuscate this by replacing the words "encroachment on free speech" with "heavy-handedness" to get the sentence above. But really what is says if we remove the obfuscation is:
> This encroachment on free speech isn't an encroachment on free speech
That makes no sense.
Again, it may be a good idea, but censorship with a good reason remains censorship, or as you put it, an encroachment on free speech.
Not really. Freedom of speech as defined in the constitution:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Internet speech is not the same as freedom of speech. Facebook is a private platform and when you sign-up and use them you abide by their rules. This is not censorship. Facebook can ban whatever they want. They are not censoring anything. They are just denying the use of their platform to spread absurd anti-semitic ideas that have no place in an educated and civilized society.
I have said this before in HN, but I'll say it again. There seems to be this idea that freedom of speech comes with an automatic and superseding right to distribution. That's 100% wrong. You can believe whatever idiotic ideas you want but you can't claim freedom of speech to force other people to give you a platform for your beliefs.
This is silly. Of course Facebook's censorship is censorship. It is true that they are not bound by the first amendment in the same way in which Congress (and via incorporation the states) are bound, but freedom of speech is a concept which exists independent of the first amendment guarantee to its enjoyment.
Wouldn't forcing Facebook, a private company, to promote and convey any and all content equally, even content that they fundamentally disagree with, be restricting their own freedom of speech? Why should they be forced to distribute such messages?
If you are yelling or distributing pamphlets in my backyard and I don't like the message, and I ask you to move, I'm not sure you would refer to it as "censorship".
This is exactly the reason non governmental entities should be allowed to do as they please within the confines of Constitutionality. If they aren't allowed that freedom, then they aren't free, and you have a bigger problem. In this sense, censorship is free speech, as you point out. But it's still a form of censorship. It's just censorship that should be allowed and encouraged like any other form of speech or expression by non governmental entities.
EDIT: (At least, that's how it works in the US. Other nations, other laws.)
In many countries Holocaust Denial it's a crime. The world it's not only the US. So let's start there.
If you want to call this censorship that's within your rights of course (your freedom of speech right, nonetheless).
Either way, I think people have also a wrong idea of what censorship is. If I tell you can't take a shit in the middle of my living room and you claim that I'm censoring you, then maybe you should reconsider your logic and definition of censoring. This is basically the same.
You're missing the point. "Censorship" is an abridgement of freedom of speech. Whether it's legal censorship or illegal or even government mandated, it's still censorship. You're trying to change the meaning of well-defined terms because you're uncomfortable with what the implications of them might be. If you're pro-censorship, just say so, don't try to change what freedom of speech means.
There's no one who would advocate complete and total freedom of speech in every arena. Whether it's social, legal or self censorship, the question isn't about whether a line exists, it's where we place it.
Well I already said it. I say that Facebook is within their rights (by your definition) to "censor" this. Personally I don't consider this censorship.
What else do you want me to say? You're talking about this like if it was a science where 2+2=4, and that's far from reality. That's why I provided an alternate angle, showing that in other countries Holocaust Denial is a crime.
I'm not changing what "freedom of speech means". I'm telling you that freedom of speech doesn't come with extra rights to give you the ability to disperse your thoughts and Facebook is also well within its own freedom of speech rights (as a Corporate personhood) to enforce whatever content rules they want.
Either way, I'm not even trying to argue here. You believe this is censorship. Fine. I respect that and really don't see that as an irrational thought at all. There's some sound reasoning around your idea that this is censorship. I just think that trying to create blanket definitions for "censorship" or "freedom of speech" is an easy escape to allow people to behave like shit. That's what I think. Totally a personal opinion, though.
> Internet speech is not the same as freedom of speech. Facebook is a private platform and when you sign-up and use them you abide by their rules.
Some people are better at compartmentalizing than others. They can hold freedom of speech as it applies to the government in one thought-bucket, while holding corporate-enforced limits on their ability to say whatever they want in another.
But others can't (or won't) compartmentalize. To them, the whole freedom from the government versus freedom from private corporations distinction seems arbitrary and distracting, especially in the US, where many government roles have been subsumed by private corporations.
I'm not saying your point is invalid, just trying to gain some perspective on the issue. Personally, I'm a compartmentalizer so I see your point.
Yes. This is very true, especially in the US. Many people tend to have this perspective that their constitutional rights have superseding power over any private hold rule or even can give you an avenue to deny rights to others. I consider this primarily a failure of the educational system.
Those who cannot compartmentalize seem to think it would be a violation of “free speech” for me to kick nazis out of my dinner party, for hacker news to ban trolls, etc.
In many ways, the unified absolute freedom of speech camp, no one should ever prevent nazis from posting on hacker news because it is a limitation on the nazis “freedom of speech” are arguing for a substantially more invasive understanding of freedom of speech: I am required to support, fund, enable and amplify speech that I find abhorrent and destructive.
By that logic, deleting spam from my blog comment section violates their conception of “freedom of speech”.
Or you can take your rants to your own little website and leave folks here to discuss their "racist and destructive" ideas. By your own argument this should not be any impediment on free speech.
If the mods decide to ban me, yes, it is wholly their right to do so, and in no way violates my freedom of speech.
I would remain free to speak, just not on hacker news. Forcing hacker news to host content (spam, nazis, Holocaust deniers, assholes, etc.) is a much much more invasive position.
> Facebook is a private platform and when you sign-up and use them you abide by their rules. This is not censorship.
It is until it isn't. The big question here is: Is it a common carrier in which people use it, or is it responsible for content on there?
When they start sticking their hand in it to determine what is and isn't acceptible content on there, imo they violate the claim that they're a common platform/being a common carrier.
Also reference the 14th amendment. Prior to it's ratification the bill of rights was construed only to apply to the federal government. It's ratification brought application of the bill of rights to the states, and then to private entities.
That's a law about free speech. It doesn't define the concept, it presupposes it. Certainly it doesn't imply that no other form of free speech exists.
(I'm not arguing that Facebook shouldn't remove holocaust denial. I just disagree with this new and extremely narrow interpretation of "free speech" that has popped up like mushrooms everywhere and is being used to curtail free speech in many social and business contexts.)
... in the vain hope someone reads the first one or two sentences.
> They are not censoring anything.
Technically untrue. It isn't that much fun to defend holocaust denial. Maybe even illegal in my country, I don't know the details. But you do what you have to do. Ignorance is still the most potent weapon of facists.
You are being obtuse. Following your definition, freedom of speech wouldn't exist in anywhere other than in the U.S. because no other country has a constitution with that exact same wording!
lki876 is clearly referring to a philosophical principle, not whether Facebook's policies violates the U.S. constitution. There was probably some law legalizing Trump's murder of Qasem Soleimani too, doesn't mean it wasn't also a dick move.
Freedom of speech is a principle that our constitution enshrines. It exists independently of our constitution and government.
The fact that the government isn’t violating an obligation to not restrict free speech does not mean that the principle isn’t being violated by other parties.
You have to be careful because you risk taking all the meaning out of the terms when you say that anything other than a completely unfiltered firehose is encroachment on free speech because you catch spam, bots, threats of violence, abuse, scams, etc. in the crossfire which (at least to me) are not types of speech that should be protected.
I think one can make the argument that, in all of those cases, the speech is not the thing being outlawed.
A threat of aggressive violence is a statement of intent to commit a crime. You're punished not for speaking what's on your mind, but for planning to commit a crime. (And I specified aggressive violence because self-defense is not a crime, and I think that stating "I intend to defend myself with violence to the extent permitted by law" isn't a crime either.)
A scam is also a statement of intent to carry out a crime—fraud, specifically.
With spambots, and also with what I'm guessing "abuse" refers to, it's more like harassment or stalking. You want to be able to say "I should be able to walk through this space without being constantly followed by people who are deliberately doing so and ignoring my requests to stop." That depends on exactly what "this space" is—if you own the space, then of course it's up to you, if your harassers own the space, then of course it's up to them, and if it's some "public" space, then it's not totally clear if it's owned by no one or by everyone or by the government, but at least in the latter two cases, it seems reasonable for "everyone" or the government to have rules against harassment and stalking (and I'm saying spam is low-level harassment). Facebook seems to be attempting to act like a "public space" in this regard, though not in all regards.
Spam, bots and scams aren't speech in any meaningful way. They don't attempt to say anything. Threats of violence and abuse may be speech in some sense but is in no way part of a dialogue.
I wasn't expecting this reply given your original comment.
To clarify, are you saying that when threats are censored it's not an encroachment of free speech because they aren't "part of a dialogue"? If so, then how is holocaust denial any different?
Trouble is that Holocaust denial isn't spam, bots, threats of violence, abuse, or scams. It's a different interpretation of history, something that is protected under the First Amendment. Except these sites aren't considered public forums for some reason, even though they've supplanted the public forum in modern society.
When a handful of corporations determine the Overton Window in society, that is a cause for concern.
Nothing is stopping the Holocaust deniers from posting all their "different interpretion" nonsense on Stormfront or whatever.
There are no 'first amendment' issues here, as no new law has been passed compelling Facebook to do this. It's simply Facebook saying they don't want this sort of antisemitic rubbish published and amplified via their platform.
Okay, just take a step back. Do we have to be so principled about all this? Holocaust Deniers are bad. Full stop.
We all keep going back and forth on these principled stances about how freedom of speech is some holy thing that should be protected at all costs no matter how much damage it causes.
That notion is absurd in my experience. This philosophical ideal of true freedom of speech doesn't even exist! 4Chan still has to censor child porn - and thanks God! Child pornography is horrible and no one should ever be able to hide behind the guise of "free speech" to get away with dissemination of it.
You know what else is horrible? A huge population of people were tortured, starved and gassed to death with numbers in the millions. But do you know what happened after that ended?
People tried to pretend it didn't happen at all. And they still are. Now, I'm not Jewish, but just thinking about that makes me sick. The idea that someone is out there gaslighting people into believing the holocaust doesn't exist is despicable.
If you proposed holocaust denial on this website you'd be in violation of its rules and be flagged or banned. The site is better because of these rules.
And finally, I'd like to pose a thought experiment -
If Hitler were alive today, how do you think he would gain power? Misinformation campaigns, appeals to white nationalism and racist dog whistles on one of the major social networks no doubt.
Of course, Facebook, Google, Twitter etc. are dealing with a very similar scenario right now with Donald Trump who has intentionally divided this country to its breaking point all while likely (indirectly) killing thousands of people by sending them confusing and false messaging about the coronavirus and don't let me forget he's literally stated his intent to steal the election if he loses. You know, basically just textbook fascism.
Ban them. All of them. Today.
Edit: Made things sightly less emotionally charged and rage-baiting. Apologies for the harsh (er) words. I understand it's not in the spirit of the discourse we want to encourage here.
And does your unclear definition of a "decent society" and "human dignity" imply that yelling fire in a theatre (or denying the holocaust) is acceptable behavior?
I mean, we both just called them pieces of shit. My version of the word "dignity" generally precludes people who have shown they have no dignity.
At any rate, I suspect you wrote this particular argument because it lacks nuance, appeals to our sense of decency and is emotionally appealing to those who already hold the viewpoint.
Were you trying to change my mind? Or just trying to find out how many people agree with you?
It is amusing that you propose the vigorous use of force (“Ban Them. All of them. Today”) to eliminate voices you deem fascist. If you feel this strongly about the harm of holocaust denial, have you considered working to convince people the holocaust did in fact happen? It’s pretty easy—-plenty of evidence exists to suggest it happened and all attempts I’ve encountered of people make a case otherwise have been debunked. I guess it’s not worth the effort to actually talk to people though, easier to just convince someone they’re wrong by threat of force.
To be fair, social media does facilitate both social contagion and echo chamber formation, the combination of which can form very fastidious communities.
Its not a simple issue, but I don't think putting this power in the hands of a few for-profit corporations is the right solution.
I'd rather see Facebook take steps to solve this problem than to start carving out lists of topics that are forbidden. Is there a way they can change the medium to encourage deeper thought, more meaningful conversation, and less virality? Maybe that's a better way to dampen the spread of hatred
These are people who are entrenched in a theory that also suggests people who disagree with you are "the enemy".
Arguing with someone like that is risky because the moment you get through to them, their cognitive dissonance might decide to double down on the falsehood because they would have to come to terms with the notion that they believe something quite shameful.
I see this happen in other areas alot. Mostly white people who can't handle that they may have contributed to racism at one point. "I'm not a racist! You're all just social just warriors!" turns into "I'm not a racist but...[insert racism here]". Of course the deep insecurity over being actually racist is the common thread. Meanwhile there's a whole other movement of white people who are now willing to admit how privileged all of us are to have been in a system for hundreds of years that was a "democracy" for some, but a nightmarish dictatorship for black people. Was I insecure when I realized how tone deaf I had been? Sure. But I possess self reflection and have made efforts to change my behavior since then.
But yes, if I find myself in a conversation with a holocaust denier I'll do my best to convince them they're wrong. I highly doubt that winds up working though.
How is a lie "free speech" though ? Water is wet. If someone says they don't believe Water is wet, isn't that outright false and has nothing to do with "opinion or free speech" ? Holocaust is a fact so the deniers are just lying correct ?
Are religious people lying when they claim that [their specific version of] God exists? No, people often believe untrue things for weird reasons. How far do you wanna go in restricting people's freedom of speech? And are you happy that the Ministry of Truth will be run by companies like Facebook and CloudFlare? I mean, sure, you're happy now that you agree with their censorship, but are you going to remain happy when they shadowban your comments on politics because they are deemed "lies"?
It might interest you to know that Popper only advocated for the right to censorship in the context of democratically established political institutions, as a last resort function of a liberal democracy with a constitutionally established rule of law, which Facebook most definitely is not. Whether or not the current US government is a better steward of censorship power is a separate question, but Popper would straightforwardly disagree with this exercise of power by private parties, imo.
Oh god, please not this parodox of intolerance stuff again.
It is a wholly untested and unproven idea. Stop parroting it as if it is something more than that.
Regardless, it is generally agreed that Popper was not talking about intolerant ideas but intolerant behavior i.e. violence and forced suppression. Popper's actual words were "they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols", that last bit being pretty important.
Denying the Holocaust, detestable though it may be, does not forcibly violate the freedoms of anyone else.
Why would you draw that line? Hate is an emotion every human feels. Are we not supposed to hate now?
How do you know if the hate is justified? Plenty of hate is fueled by religion and the many atrocities committed in its name by all involved. Hate has been caused by historical events and wars. Even disrespect towards others is cause for hate.
It's okay to hate. People should be able to think and feel whatever they want. What's wrong is acting out violently in response to that hate.
Being driven away is exactly why rules and legislations like these exist, so that no one has to "walk away" because of hateful people spattering their bullshit.
Not always. As soon as hate becomes widespread enough walking away besomes impossible. That's why things like Holocaust denial are so dangerous is being left unchecked.
The first time I ever encountered a neo-nazi, I was walking along minding my business during my lunch hour and a complete stranger walked up and punched me in the face.
There's an analogy between real and virtual spaces that often seems to be overlooked. If someone is holding a sign on a street corner saying 'the holocaust didn't happen' then I may find that quite objectionable but I can choose to go and remonstrate with the person or conserve my psychic energy and ignore them. On the other hand, if I'm having a discussion about history and a person comes up tries to force their way into the conversation, my walking away is ceding them the space that I formerly occupied.
In the physical world there's a cost to moving around and and physical constraints on people, so if I hear someone on the other side of town is holding an objectionable sign I have to decide whether I care enough to physically go there. that calculus might change if the objectionable message were on a billboard or an objectionable speaker were holding a rally with amplified sound, in which case I might consider it more worth my while to refute their prominent or loudly-staged opinion.
In the virtual world distance isn't a practical factor so it becomes trivially easy for people in different communities to raid each other and engage in semantic provocations, often with few consequences. Interestingly, there is some evidence that responding to provocation with aggression is more effective in deterring raiding behavior than politely ignoring it: https://snap.stanford.edu/conflict/
It should be borne in mind that the object of raiding (whether for sport as in MMORPGs or for deadly serious reasons as in military conflicts) is to drive people out of territory that they occupy. Getting them to walk away by being sufficiently obnoxious is not directly violent, but is often predicated on an implicit threat of violence.
Strategically it's certainly important to know who your antagonists are and what motivates them. But in the situation where you already know that, there's no need to entertain their antagonism.
I've heard the same arguments from hundreds of people. The same misquoted, manipulated statistics, the same concern trolling, the same dog whistles. There isn't any point in listening. Some people hate me for what I am. They want to take my rights away from me, they want to restrict my ability to access medicine, they want to stop me from being in the military (not that I wish to join). Why should I listen to one more person lie and spread hate?
Predictably downvoted instead of answering the simple question.
Fine, I'll tell you why you think you have the right: you think that you're more intelligent than most people and while you can see that the arguments are bogus, others are too feeble and might be more easily persuaded. So you think it's best for them (and you) that they don't see it.
Or I'm part of the group that all the hate is being spread about.
I didn't down vote you. You are getting downvoted because you are being condescending.
You can't just ignore the hatred being spewed at you. It infects how you interact with the world. You start having panic attacks going into the toilet, because maybe you will be harassed today when you want to pee. The people who hate you latch onto the twisted news stories. They use it to deny progress, or to push through restrictions. Like the US politicians quoting JK Rowling for why we should restrict trans rights. The bullshit spreads. It doesn't matter that JK Rowling almost never quotes any sources, and the one she does has been well disproven and largely retracted. People still read what she says, ignore the corrections and continue to spread the hate.
The number of times I've heard someone going on about how we are giving children surgery. It is ridiculous how ill-informed yet completely certain in their opinion people can be about trans healthcare. I'm not more intelligent than anyone else, I just have an invested reason (my very life) to be well informed on the topic.
Somehow you completely missed the point of the paradox of tolerance.
You cite it as if it wasn't completely contrary to what you are saying. Facebook's acts are being intolerant to beliefs they disagree with.
The paradox of tolerance states that "society must be intolerant of intolerance" thus society must be intolerant to Facebook's intolerant actions here.
You're just using abstraction to move the subject from the first incidence of 'intolerance' to the second, ie suggesting that FB's choice to target content is the epitome of intolerance, rather than considering the nature of the content they are attempting to socially sanction.
Eliding context to reframe a specific action as a general behavior is misleading, although you may not have realize this.
Then you are not arguing that OP missed the point of the Paradox of Intolerance. You are arguing that Holocaust denialism is not intolerance.
How many people publicly deny the Holocaust but are otherwise tolerant of Jews, homosexuals, etc.? I'm really curious what you think that Venn diagram looks like.
If you're posting actually intolerant views, yes, be intolerant to intolerance. That's not this though.
Banning views that may be associated with otherwise intolerant people but aren't themselves intolerant is just a road to hell. It's literally stereotyping.
You could draw a lot of very hateful venn diagrams against most major religions. That shouldn't stop people from expressing their faith because you can draw a line.
Holocaust denial is inseparably bound up with being intolerant of the right for Jews (and Roma, and Homosexuals, and so forth.) to exist.
If you are a holocaust denialist, then you are by definition absolutely intolerant, and I am perfectly fine with you being expunged from any community of the civilised.
I disagree with your premise. Just because a belief can be associated with another belief by a venn diagram of people who believe them, doesn't make the two intrinsically linked.
I am a person of jewish descent, and I find the action of silencing people far more disturbing and closer to that of the reich, than those of the people being silenced.
While I agree that this is a good move, I still think it's a great pity when certain topics are ruled unquestionable.
An elderly relative recently went down the youtube rabbithole and came out on informationclearinghouse. A few months later and he's now a full-blown conspiracy theorist.. I mean everything from 9/11 "truthism" to antisemitism-lite. I mean this person's entire personality changed. Lifelong relationships with friends and family have been lost because of this change. It's extremely sad to see.
In trying to debunk these theories, I tried to gather answers to the questions he raised. But every single one I posted on reddit was removed. These were real questions that I couldn't find the answers for anywhere, and I wasn't allowed to ask them.
I think people arguing against the fallacy clearly didn't read it or aren't arguing in good faith.
There is an important line, where it only applies to ideas or arguments that can't be addressed logically. If you have an intolerant idea that can't be addressed logically then it should be censored. If you ignore facts, you can't be argued with based on logic. Your intolerant opinion should be censored. This idea isn't that sinister.
How, in any way, is censorship in the spirit of free speech. I get that fb is private and can do what they want. But you are saying that removing speech that you disagree with is 'in the spirit' of free speech. That couldn't be further from the the spirit of free speech. The truth is that measure like this can and will be abused. Free speech is all or nothing. It's as simple as that.
> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant.
That's hilarious. The intolerant are justifying their acts by labeling the others as intolerant. It's the basis of all tyrannies.
"where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant"
It's ridiculous to say that abhorrent Holocaust deniers are drowning out tolerant voices. They have no place in mainstream media, so they are forced into some weird corner of FB. I have never personally encountered a Holocaust-denier opinion anywhere (including the internet), probably because I've never looked for one. I only know they exist because they are brought up as weirdos, like an evil version of a flat-earther.
That would be like saying some transcontinental ham radio morse code is drowning out your music on FM radio. It just doesn't interfere; you have to have a crazy antenna to even get the signal.
Let's not pretend that this somehow fits into the spirit of free speech. This is about making it hard for people to find these crazy messages even if they are looking for them.
You can debate that. Maybe some messages are too dangerous -- like DIY H-bombs or something. But arguing that is clearly in contradiction with the spirit of free speech.
(Note: I am not claiming that it's illegal censorship. FB is a private company and can do what it wants.)
I don't agree.
Facebook should stop applying these ridiculous algorithms which are promoting content to you which makes no sense at all and serve the only single business Facebook has: Advertising.
If facebook would solely serve you with content originated from your friends and maybe some random ads then all this conspiracy bullcrap stories won't have a chance at all and will remain in their small user circles.
Also besides the usual fake content (deny of holocaust, environment etc), there is also a lot in the gray area. Think of articles about health. Articles about how to get rich. Articles about a new revolutionary cleaning device. Probably all fake. But in some cases maybe not.
Its not up to Facebook to decide these matters.
Facebook should change into what it should be. A social network for friends. Not a crappy advertising agent. In the latter case it's best to forbid the entire business called Facebook.
I'm not in agreement that they must show a healthy level of intolerence towards groups [...]
Where they've gone wrong is that they haven't segmeneted and created a concept of different groups. They've managed to make a platform for where they want to put every group up front. (Unlike reddit, where it's specialized into individual sections)
The more extreme groups now seek to get public acknowledgement and their platform is putting it in front. (It's a winner take all scenario). Reddit isn't perfect, but at least there is dedicated groups and there is some interference detection that is being fought against.(To prevent the extreme groups from trying to take over other groups)
I'm fine with censoring holocaust denial content, but I dislike this "Paradox of Tolerance" reasoning. It's too easy for someone to convince themselves that another group is "intolerant" and therefore give themselves moral license to deplatform, harass, or even assault their "intolerant" target. This isn't just a theoretical concern; in practice this is virtually the only context in which I've seen the Paradox applied. Views that are pretty commonplace and understandable are flimsily branded "intolerant" by authoritarians as an excuse to commit their own intolerance. I could get on board with this Paradox of Tolerance reasoning if we had any sort of reasonable if not objective standard for what constitutes 'intolerance', but it seems like >90% of the time it's "someone who disagrees with me".
Not only is it too easily abused, but by resorting too quickly to censorship the compelling, valid arguments against abhorrent points of view are suppressed. If someone is wondering why racial profiling is bad, we should talk about how American society aspires to treat people as individuals and not fungible tokens of their race--any given individual doesn't deserve heightened scrutiny simply because people with similar skin tone are more likely to commit crimes. By not addressing these questions rationally first, a lot of people miss the opportunity to be persuaded--especially when we are outright hateful toward people who ask these kinds of questions--we risk sending them into the welcoming arms of people with unsavory, pseudo-scientific explanations that vindicate profiling (censoring isn't going to stop these people from finding each other). Of course, not everyone is going to be persuaded by rational explanations, but most will be and we shouldn't deprive society of the opportunity to have fewer racists.
Lastly, this quick-to-censor precedent is only good for as long as the "right" people are in charge of determining who is intolerant, and already the people who are the quickest to cite the Paradox of Tolerance are often the people who espouse racist points of view--ideas that society should be segregated (each race should stay in its own lane, no cultural mixing ["appropriation"], no interracial marriage, no-$race-allowed spaces, etc), that some entire races are guilty of crimes against other races, that race tells us all we need to know about a person ("ugh, the teacher is a $race man. What am I going to learn from another $race male?"), etc.
So yeah, I don't have any sympathy for holocaust deniers, but I worry we're gifting these kinds of unsavory groups a weapon to be used against us in these Paradox of Tolerance precedents.
Does free speech really apply to proprietary platforms in the first place?
You are not prevented from saying whatever you want to whomever you want, you just can't broadcast it throughout their platform. You will not face legal sanction, only have your content be removed from the proprietary platform by the platform's owner.
I'm seeing people complaining that they should be able to run their platform however they want and promote/ban whatever they want because of their freedom of speech. And then later I see people arguing that you shouldn't ban anything from your platform because freedom of speech. Hopefully those are distinct groups, but I can't shake the feeling that "freedom of speech" is mostly use dishonestly to try to justify one's actions no matter which direction they go.
Of course, some people who are "unmistakably intolerant" make references to, and promote holocaust-denying material.
Holocaust deniers as such aren't "unmistakably intolerant" though; disputing the facts surrounding the holocaust doesn't ipso facto make someone intolerant, let alone unmistakably.
Is everyone who disputes facts intolerant? Is someone who believes that the world was formed 7000 years ago intolerant? Are flat-earthers intolerant?
No tolerance for the intolerant is actually a wrong approach. That realization was even true for the giver of the idea. It is something that has justifiably been derided and ridiculed.
Holocaust denial is illegal in my country. I personally prefer people state their opinion. Tells you who you are talking to, although they tend not to be the smartest people around, so it might not be helpful to orient yourself towards their ideas.
The issue is, who is deciding where the freedom of speech ends and necessary actions to restore balance in the force start.
I think the real issue is education. In a better educated society people would understand that II WW did happened and would more or less know what it was about and what Holocaust was. In case the society did not know, it could turn to experts for advice. In any case, deniers would be shunned, belittled and generally not heard seriously.
I still think freedom of speech should accommodate people who want to embarass themselves by claiming obvious falsehoods and this move is just a part of slippery slope to complete loss of what should be universal right.
The response should not be administrative action by private company but ostracism by general public.
Now, this is of course impossible in a society where almost half of it declares would want to reelect a person that lies about everything even when he doesn't need to and who doesn't care about anything other than his own interests.
Assuming you support facebook's move to remove this content, would you not also support the removal of similar content that you also consider objectionable? Do you not hope that this leads to more content removal or is this the only piece of content that you consider necessary to remove?
By my estimation -- and there are certain individuals where this might not be true -- if you support this you likely _want_ this to be a continued effort to remove objectionable content.
Surely, you can see how objectionable things can be different?
I find most religious content to be objectionable. But for the most part, it is benign. In general, someone's religious beliefs don't affect me. Once it starts to call for the ill treatment of others, though, I think it should be removed. So religion-based anti-LGBTQ content should be removed (for example).
Holocaust denial stems from a long history of anti semitism, which in itself tends to advocate the poor treatment of others and enbraces a certain amount of dehumanizing language. All for something they cannot help and doesn't actually affect others. We know that hate groups embrace this. We also know it happened - we have pictures. It is simply lies to get folks to treat others badly. So, removal.
Sorry, but Newtonian physics, the particle nature of photons, and the simple existence of god are not examples of intolerance. If censorship on the basis of intolerance is, in fact, a slippery slope that is connected to these benign topics, you'll need to show how they're actually connected
Edit: oh, I see. You're one of several responders who have latched onto OC's use of the word "reasonable" and are disengenuously attacking that word outside of the actual context. Excellent example of attacking the weakest form of somebody's argument and applying the slippery-slope fallacy from there. We can do better than this, folks.
Well, if you believe in the First Amendment, then Facebook itself gets the freedom to decide what does and doesn't go on its platform.
If you want something more generic, you could start with hate speech laws in Australia, Belgium, Canada...Spain, Switzerland, the UK, etc. Or even more generally, the UN's International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
So, there's plenty of established frameworks to base your work off of and they've been around long enough that we can measure what the impact is.
Facebook could be considered a public square, where they would be required to protect it's users free speech and lose their own ability to censor by choice. This would be similar to the central area of a mall or when companies provided housing to workers to prevent unionization efforts. Both places were upheld as places where the First Amendment must be upheld, despite private ownership.
If you ban Holocaust deniers, then you're in the business of drawing lines, proclaiming what is truth. This is a powerful position and many will wish to use it for more than just the Holocaust. They will initially do so by presenting a variety of outrageous content which maybe should be banned, applying public pressure, and their initial targets will be reasonable.
But the outrage industry is big these days, and its targets are many. I shall present some recent evidence of its working. Consider a figure like, say, Bruce Gilley, who I was just reading about this past week: he's an academic who says non-mean things about colonialism. A public outrage drive, started by Maoist philosopher Joshua Moufawad-Paul (author of "The Communist Necessity") got his publisher to cancel a biography of Sir Alan Burns; similar outrage drives have previously attempted to see his doctorate revoked. I have not read his scholarship and have no reason to suppose his work to be excellent; however, I should prefer that academic degrees are not revoked after the fact for failing to conform to any particular orthodoxy.
Yet these are the times that we live in: we are increasingly censored by the mob. Facebook content moderation is an obvious target and there is no doubt will be targeted. The categories will expand. Facebook's resistance to such measures will either be heroic, or profoundly inadequate.
So consider: Is the Republican party under Donald Trump a hate group? Is it legitimate for them to have Facebook operations? Surely if you work in Silicon Valley you know someone who considers it a hate group, and believes it should not be permitted a Facebook presence. That is where this ends up. It is not a long and tortuous path. And as hateful as Holocaust denial is, it is possible that Facebook might make the world a better place in the end by allowing it, that they may say, "We are not the content police. No one is."
There is such a thing as factual truth. That we, as a society, have reached a point where we lost the basic concensus of that is very troubling. Denying the Holocaust is like denying gravity. Both things, the Holocaust and gravity, are factually true. We have to be able to call people out for denying that. And while denying gravity is just stupid, denying the holocaust is outright dangerous.
It is factually true! And yet there are many disputes over the facts in our world, and the "Fact Check" is an entire genre of opinion journalism these days, and Facebook is already applying censorship based on these opinions.
I have little traffick with John Stossel's work, and will not attest to any specific claims about wildfires, but Facebook's idea of "fact checking" this specific video involves groups like Climate Feedback, who are apparently empowered to lie about Professor Stefan Doerr of Swansea University reviewing his video.
This is not about Stossel, whose work I will not condone here. This how much you should trust Facebook to be an effective arbiter of Factual Truth, which should be very near zero. And there's a word for enforcing the "Factual Truth" like this: it's called Orthodoxy.
I am being downvoted by the enforcers of orthodox opinion here. Which brings me to the real reason that you shouldn't worry about a slippery slope from Facebook becoming the arbiter of Fact: Because you actually want the slippery slope to happen! You are confident that they will use their power to censor your political enemies and enforce your orthodoxies on the world.
The labeling of "slippery slope" as a "logical fallacy" versus a "consequentialist logical device" is becoming quite the political statement. Check out the history and the talk page of the wikipedia article for slippery slope.
For the record, I disagree that it is a logical fallacy in all cases.
How would you have them weigh in on the Armenian Genocide, Holodomor, or Tianenman?
Each of those conflicts has deniers of various levels, some of whom are states. And, if Facebook gets it wrong (and perhaps decides the Tianenman square massacre was a hoax by the West to discredit the CCP) - how should we respond then?
This is a company that was censoring pictures of mothers feeding their babies, but still has content promoting the use of bleach to cure Down's and autism. Do you really trust them to engage in censoring at all?
I'm not sure why this is downvoted. There are many people, particularly in Tukey, who deny the Armenian genocide (hell there's a even a podcast named after the people that did it). Tiananmen is also downplayed by CCP officials outside China and denied within China.
There are several ways to respond. We can take the absolutist position that Facebook should never censor - and that may be OK if Facebook actually holds to that positions and trains their audience correctly ("Hey, everything on your feed is unverified and you should never consider anything you read here as having value").
Facebook has a long history of engaging in censorship of some kind though, so that's very unlikely as an actual outcome. They could try to form a coherent policy ("We shall censor nudity, things that disagree with US history books and anything that shows violence that isn't a cartoon") but those policies are probably impossible to write.
They're probably in a ditch they can't rescue themselves from so they're going to stick to the "Well, we'll censor it based on how our censor feels at the moment and their individual preferences, and if we don't agree with that later, we'll fire them and make up a new policy" which is what they've been doing for a while.
I don't imagine Facebook would say, allow the Snowden disclosures under pressure from the US, so I don't see how they can claim any moral ground on what they would or would not censor. Everyone hates Nazis, but the interesting cases are beyond that. Never assume a practice run is in good faith.
The CUP faction of the Young Turks were in power in 1915 when the genocide began.
From the page you just linked to:
> Around this period, the CUP's relationship to the Armenian Genocide shifted. Early on, Armenians had perceived the CUP as allies;[citation needed] and the beginnings of the Genocide, in the 1909 Adana massacre, had been rooted in reactionary Ottoman backlash against the Young Turks. But during World War I, the CUP's increasing nationalism began to lead them to participate in the genocide. In 2005, the International Association of Genocide Scholars affirmed[16] that scholarly evidence revealed the CUP "government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its Armenian citizens and unarmed Christian minority population. More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches.
Rod Steward isn't running a political podcast, so our expectations are lower.
> How would you have them weigh in on the Armenian Genocide, Holodomor, or Tianenman?
Let's not forget any of them!
> Each of those conflicts has deniers of various levels, some of whom are states.
Keep reminding our politicians.
> And, if Facebook gets it wrong (and perhaps decides the Tianenman square massacre was a hoax by the West to discredit the CCP) - how should we respond then?
Let's not hesitate doing the obvious right thing today because of ifs/buts and whens in the future.
I googled for Facebook, Turkey and the Armenian genocide; one of the first results was a page titled "Armenian Genocide Lie" so there's some improvement to do there.
Not sure about Facebook in the Ukraine; I googled it and an information page came up first, not sure if people in the Ukraine can actually access it.
Facebook is banned in China, so that's not an issue there.
Anyway Facebook is far from perfect, and in cases like this they have to push their own agenda; they try to look neutral and an open platform but in some cases it's difficult.
I want to mention something about facts vs government denial, but in some cases said facts / history itself is rewritten, to the point where we can no longer be sure. I wouldn't be surprised that if the right-wing gains more power, we'll see another modern biblioclast with e.g. historical records of the holocaust and/or slavery removed. The (failed) Confederate state's remnants already tried that by writing their own elementary school history books wherein slaves were depicted as well-treated helpers (look up the Daughters of the Confederacy, or e.g. https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how-conf... ).
The effects of the losers writing the history books in the South are still felt today (it's only been a few generations, and the pro-Confederacy history books were still being used up until the boomers generation).
You either have free speech or not. When Facebook censors something, it means that there's no free speech on this platform. Whether you're censoring holocaust denial, global warmth denial, Stalin is evil denial, BLM denial, spherical earth denial, it matters not. You can't define what is beyond reason.
> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant.
Where is the evidence that this is true? Sounds like wishful thinking to me.
In many European countries, Holocaust denial is literally a crime, yet de-facto Neonazi parties are more popular than in the US, where no law stops you from brandishing a swastika flag.
Just by comparing the position of the GOP with some positions of, say the AfD and the former FN (Germany and France respectivley), I could make the case that right wing parties have a much smaller voter base in these two countries then the US.
I don't think it's useful to conflate anything right of center with fascism. I was thinking of parties like NPD or Golden Dawn, which aren't just "right wing", but thinly-veiled Neo-Nazi parties, attracting hundreds of thousands of votes.
The NPD all but ceased to exist in the last couple of years. The AfD had one internal group dissolve itself because it was classified as an unconstitutional radical group (Der Flügel). High ranking party members want to shoot migrants and are borderline denying, yes, the Holocaust. Right of center would be parties like the CSU and the right leaning part of the CDU.
> groups and ideologies that are beyond reason and recall, especially when those said groups are overtly and unmistakably intolerant themselves.
I think all leftists and most conservatives are intolerant, and some of them probably think my libertarian ideology is intolerant.
If we didn't think our political opponents were intolerant, we wouldn't be their opponents in the first place.
You may say "not all leftists and conservatives are intolerant" but the only difference is that your definition of intolerance is more lax. In the end it all boils down to "those that disagree too much with me are intolerant", where "too much" is defined by your subjective perception.
I could propose a ban on all speech that calls for tax increases, because high taxes are unfair and harmful, just like holocaust denial, but that would be extremely arrogant (besides being against my principles).
> "..isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society..."
a necessary impediment? no reasonable person denies the holocaust, but it's also not reasonable to try to suppress denial, no matter the desire, because that has its own paradoxical consequences.
it's the same overbearing fear-driven irrationality that gets us into lockdowns that destroy lives and livelihoods rather than accepting that heightened risks are not going away no matter what we do, providing accurate (not politicized) information widely, and then trusting people to act appropriately (and diversely).
the drive to the same application of force and authoritarianism you're trying to deny is astonishing.
Unless I'm mistaken, Facebook is not a government and ignorant, uncivilized people getting whats coming to them features heavily in his works. While he certainly frowns on censorship, people intolerant and incapable of behaving themselves are usually thrown out an airlock or otherwise completely ejected from society to roam the surface Mars alone. If you're going to argue the Heinlein route, perhaps Holocaust Deniers need some frontier justice instead?
The issue is not that people can't listen to holocaust denialism or general nazi apologia. Issue is they do and then take action based on that and other people then suffer consequences. Including violent action.
Also, given that Heinlein fiction can be also quoted literally in defense of military dictatorship, it is not like random quote of him was any argument on this topic.
Or any other old big name. The whole "I cut good sounding quote of someone famous or of context" thing is not an argument.
"especially when those said groups are overtly and unmistakably intolerant themselves"
To me that seems like a pretty clear line. Some groups will invariably try to straddle it, but plenty of groups on Facebook make it quite clear their level of hate for others.
So if someone says "yes, Hilter wanted to kill all the Jews, but he only killed 5M, not 6M" is that intolerant? Because in many circles that's regarded as denialism or revisionism.
This is the exact issue - what doesn't "intolerant" mean? It's a subjective label.
> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant.
Could easily be used to ban Islam on Facebook. Or Scientology. Or far left / far right governments. Or Antifa / Proud Boys / other vigilante groups. Or popularly supported groups with a fringe element (BLM). Or free market capitalists, or communists.
As one should already gather from reading above, I am not suggesting that Facebook should ban any of these.
Ultimately every group doesn't tolerate something, and this argument could be used to ban them.
That's the thing with neonazis. They are 100% in agreement about ethnic violence. It isn't a side effect of their belief system. It is the core of their belief system that undesirable people should be murdered.
I feel like any given region's propensity to say not like a particular sexual orientation is dramatically different from say holocaust denial that is straight up rooted in antisemitism.
So you're making a narrow case that holocaust denial is specifically bad and not endorsing more policing by facebook in general?
There's certainly precedent for holocaust denial being considered specifically and uniquely harmful, although it feels a little dated in the year 2020.
That's a reasonable answer, but note that's it's a different answer from the OP - you're not proposing to ban intolerance per se, but rather any group whose purpose is solely intolerance.
Somewhere. Usually what happens is that it's drawn at the place that makes everyone unhappy. It's far enough in that some will cry censorship make casual dystopian insinuations, but well short of anything that actually makes in impact leading others to say it's ineffective because they can see obvious hate being allowed. And it happens because line-drawers are terrified of type 1 errors thanks to the media shitstorm that happens whenever it happens to someone with an audience.
This pattern happens everywhere: It's the same story with Google and obvious-spam/scams, and Amazon with fakes. Until a company has the balls to say that you're gonna have to suck it up and deal with false positives the cycle will continue forever.
To quote Oscar Wilde: "Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace."
I think that drawing a line between reason and unreasonableness is a reasonable place to draw the line.
If our understanding of Holocaust history is correct, which overwhelming evidence supports, it is reasonable to believe that the Holocaust both occured, and was absolutely awful. Given that, denial of those events is unreasonable, and damaging to society as a whole. Much like the slavery of African Americans, it needs to be acknowledged and accepted as fact, and those who try to hide or dispute these facts must be challenged.
And how can anyone call themselves an adult if they need some third party to come in and censor things for them? You can block, you can mute. You can stick to trusted groups. You can also learn self control and not feed the trolls.
If we want to control intolerance effort should be put into making the systems by which we personally and purposely block it from our lives more robust. And if they're going to try to create a universal bubble, it should at least be possible to leave it.
> And how can anyone call themselves an adult if they need some third party to come in and censor things for them? You can block, you can mute. You can stick to trusted groups. You can also learn self control and not feed the trolls.
I'm sure many HN readers are perfectly capable of reading, researching and filtering. But let's face facts: many people are gullible at best, and at worst put themselves in an echo chamber where they take everything at face value. I don't want to make this about politics, but a prime example is Trump. The POTUS makes several verifiable lies on a daily basis, and a large segment of people just lap it up.
The paradox of tolerance completely falls apart when you get into the details. Who decides what shouldn't be tolerated? There is no objective measure of that.
The USSR didn't tolerate certain speech either because it was a threat to their system. They used the exact same rationale that they needed to be intolerant to prevent the system from falling apart.
The premise of the paradox of tolerance is that if you tolerate the wrong people, they'll take over and end all tolerance.
You have to make that case every time you invoke it to call for censoring things you don't like. Are they a realistic threat? How much of a threat should we tolerate?
If you don't make the case, you're just calling for total conformity with all non-conforming thought assumed hostile.
In a semi-related tangent, The Economist recently had an article about the unintentional destruction of evidence when deleting terrorist propaganda.
The content should be removed from discourse, but I think there is value in making it a silent ban instead of deletion. Keep the post visible to only the poster, no one else can see or interact with the material once it's been flagged. It's effectively deleted, evidence maintained, and the user loses their behavioral dopamine fix once their content no longer generates any support or any controversy because it's fallen off into the void. I'm not sure what the unintended consequences would be of such a strategyth.
I do believe the propaganda should be archived though, for research purposes, fingerprinting, and like you mentioned, evidence. I hope Facebook is handing everything over to the right authorities (internationally).
Of course, there are some people who are given the extremist / terrorist label - e.g. Antifa - where the brand may not be warranted. Antifa is not a real organization though, just a name abused by the anti-antifacists (?) to try and make protesters the boogeyman.
Antifa is very much a real organization (with [1] being only one of the cells), made up of very real people committing very real acts of violence[2]. The "terrorist" label is completely warranted - a terrorist is someone who attempts to enact change through the use of fear, which is exactly what these people are doing, by literally killing, injuring, and threatening[3] anyone who doesn't agree with them, and by wantonly destroying property[4]. There's nothing "antifacist" about these people, nor are they "protestors" - they're looters, rioters, and terrorists.
Edit: "protestors", by definition, do not threaten or attack people, or destroy property.
The points are all valid, and grey-balling content like this is a common pattern to prevent abuse; if it is clearly deleted, it will just be re-posted.
That being said, I'm not sure I understand the destruction of evidence concern... are we to believe that Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc ever actually delete anything? Even if it's totally removed from Facebook externally, I have 0 doubts that Facebook could product the content if required.
How are they going to determine what is HD? Some scholars get labeled denialists because they have different estimates for the number of Jews killed in concentration camps. Seems worrying to have FB moderators determining what's acceptable historical debate and what is wrongthink.
Holocaust denial is banned in Germany (same as swastikas by the way). It works really well. The only people complaining are literally people trying to twist perception of the arguably worst crime in the history of humanity, to make Germany look like a victim. FB is clearly doing the right thing here. Free speech has limits.
A cursory search reveals your characterization to be inaccurate. Note: I had no real interest in this topic until I read your critique which just sounded totally outlandish to me. The ONLY people complaining about this limitation are people with terrible motives? No legitimate philosophers, political scientists, free speech activists exist with valid critiques? They're all just evil historical revisionists, eh? Doubtful...
Sure enough, plenty of well-reasoned critiques exist from Jewish groups, Noam Chomsky (hardly an anti-Semite), Christopher Hitchens, and others.
> Sure enough, plenty of well-reasoned critiques exist from Jewish groups, Noam Chomsky (hardly an anti-Semite), Christopher Hitchens, and others.
Are these armchair critiques? Or are these people/groups putting in serious effort to change things? That indirectly indicates their priority for the issue for them.
1. ephimetheus: The only people who have a problem with these laws are bad people with evil intent
2. me: I just looked and there are a lot of people voicing problems with these laws who are good and have noble intent
3. you: But are they prioritizing the issue enough or are they just saying stuff?
...Uh, what is the argument you're trying to make here? That if people aren't making enough of an "effort" in some way, that their critiques should not be taken seriously? Maybe you're serious, but it sure sounds like an extreme moving of goal posts to me. Presumably I would then link to you some activist group or other pushing to change these laws -- I expect you'd then come back with some variation of "oh well, that's not really trying /hard enough/, look at all the /other things/ they care about more." Just... very strange.
If you don't think sticking your neck out as a prominent intellectual like Chomsky or Hitchens to defend neo-nazi's right to lie in the public square.. if you don't think that constitutes a "serious effort" in and of itself, then YES I guess you can go further and look at Human Rights Watch's statements or whatever else.
I doubt you will. But maybe other readers of this exchange will leave better for reading my comment here.
> ...Uh, what is the argument you're trying to make here?
That if they are not putting in some serious effort then "That indirectly indicates their priority for the issue for them."
Seeing how I am uninformed on what they have said as of yet I was interested in getting insight into their position and priorities.
> That if people aren't making enough of an "effort" in some way, that their critiques should not be taken seriously?
They have to prioritize, there is nothing wrong with that. I have to prioritize too. Knowing their priorities is useful information while evaluating their critiques.
> If you don't think sticking your neck out as a prominent intellectual like Chomsky or Hitchens to defend neo-nazi's right to lie in the public square.
There is definitely a difference between writing a critique and working consistently towards changing a law. It has no bearing on the seriousness of their crtique, but it does on the seriousness of their commitment and priorities.
Not sure what you dug up, but I’m not aware of anyone with an interest other than proving “see, we weren’t the bad guys”. Since the Holocaust is a historical fact, historians without revisionist goals have no reason to debate its existence. Research into the extent and details of the Holocaust are perfectly acceptable. Side not, the absolute vast majority of German society is on board with this limit of freedom of speech. It’s part of the constitution even.
You fail to make the distinction in holding the opinion and allowing people to have the opinion. I would a tiny minority of people complaining about speech restrictions hold the opinion or even want to make it socially acceptable.
Most just argue that people themselves should be the ones to cast the judgement, not Facebook. These are very basic comprehension issues and your insinuation on those that disagree are fairly similar to reasoning you see in plain fascism.
I’m very much able to make the distinction, but there are opinions so vile they can’t be tolerated. That’s just a fact.
The line is also pretty clear, at least as far as the German law is concerned, so the danger (see slippery slope argument) is well worth the risk. The slippery slope argument is more applicable the other way round: if you tolerate this, it normalizes or rationalizes the Holocaust, and that’s the first step towards another genocide.
There are several examples under "Commentary" section on the Wikipedia article. This isn't hard, I don't see how you can dig your heels in on this. You really CANNOT fathom how someone would be against strict speech laws for good reasons? Outside your imagination entirely? Come on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Holocaust_denial
I should have added “in Germany”. Of course it’s not outside my imagination, but I think the idea that freedoms without limits should exist is super misguided and one of the central flaws of American democracy.
It’s like allowing someone to claim something that is an absolute fact like the existence of the sun was a lie. But that’s ok because it doesn’t invalidate the unspeakable suffering of millions at the hands of industrialized slaughterers.
That’s also why the slippery slope doesn’t apply. The line is clear as can be.
It take "It works really well" as a response to the parents claim:
> Some scholars get labeled denialists because they have different estimates for the number of Jews killed in concentration camps.
I am not aware of any case where a legitimate scholar was convicted as a holocaust denier, so there is a proven track record that renders that point mostly moot.
> I'm reminded of Iran's leader claiming they have no gay people. Of course he would think that, because if they were openly gay they would be jailed.
Sure, it forces the people that deny holocausts into hiding instead of eliminating their belief, but that's also not the intention of those measures. The goal is that they can not openly spread those beliefs and create more holocaust deniers in an uncontrollable fashion.
Iran's leader has the same idea regarding gay people, just that it's a stupid idea, because contrary to holocaust denial, being gay is not a chosen belief (though in their mind they might think it is).
The Weimar Republic did have hate speech laws, that were vigorously enforced and similar in spirit to modern-day Germany's laws.[1] Not only did that fail to stop the rise of the Nazi party, but the legal machinery was actively co-opted post-1933 to censor anti-Nazi groups.
In contrast, in the 1930s the most ardent pro-free-speech countries were the America and Britain. (Contemporary British hate speech laws not being created until well after the war.) Yet unlike almost all of continental Europe, any nascent fascist movements in the US or UK remained extreme fringe groups that never gained any political traction.
The historical record is pretty clear. At best hate speech laws, do nothing to disarm extremist groups. America's 250 year history of free speech absolutism, with virtually no extremist groups gaining widespread traction is evidence of this. At worse hate speech laws are a dangerous single-point of failure for liberal democracy.
Large parts of the constitution are explicitly designed to stop a repeat of what happened in the Weimar Republic. It’s not perfect, but so far it’s doing it’s job.
> America's 250 year history of free speech absolutism, with virtually no extremist groups gaining widespread traction is evidence of this.
Ku Klux Klan?!? QAnon? There are plenty of extremists groups with varying number of members and activities.[1]
The US has also plenty of domestic terrorism [2] the majority was committed by right-wing or religious (christian + muslim) extremism.
Most 'modern' terrorists are also self organized+radicalized. Social media and access to more and more extremist content plays a crucial role in their radicalization process.
They did not censored racial hate speech, only religious one. Lucky for nazi, their ideology was based on race. The few censored nazi journals issues crossed the line to religious hate. Overwhelming majority of them was hateful against race and thus allowed.
So no, their censorship did not even attempted any meaningful limitation of nazi. Also, in 1933 Hitler gained complete power, was also supported by veterans who worked in civil service and talking about "co-opting" censorship is almost absurd. At that point, first concentration camp was created and political opponents were put in. The censorship machine was not that much important at that point, violence was.
Also, German censorship was quicker against communists then right wing groups, because right wing groups were seen as patriotic.
Germany is also not that successful in not becoming a dictatorship less than once per century. The US approach is certainly more successful and there are reasons for that.
Not in America, it does not. You folks have "hate speech" laws, banned symbols, banned words, banned expressions, and used to have banned video games, music, and movies. The core of your legal system has the concept of "honor"/"dignity", which is inherently subjective.
The justification is always a variant of your thought, saying that it will only affect "bad people", with the very definition of that being heavily influenced by the aforementioned concepts.
Germans tend to defend the concept of filing charges against an individual for the crime of "insulting them" with similar logic - it's generally a nasty thing to do and only "bad people" will do it, therefore, it shall be punishable under the law.
Any limits to free speech are by definition on the famous "slippery slope". As others have called out, once the legal precedent is set, nothing stops politicians to expand it at their will, given that it is based on subjective judgment - history can be a great teacher - and I'd like to remind you that a much harsher version of the current German "social media hate speech" law just made its way through international media earlier this year. This law was justified with "a rise in right wing extremism".
I've said it before, I'll say it again: The ACLU, an arguably left-leaning organization, has famously defended KKK member's 1st amendment rights for those very reasons. They don't argue about the content - as an analogy to the HD topic, it should be easy to debunk with massive amounts of historical evidence - but rather about fundamental human (and, in the case of the United States, constitutional) rights.
Naturally, all those points apply to governmental censorship and not to a private entity. That being said, I don't believe in limits to free speech.
>Holocaust denial is banned in Germany (same as swastikas by the way). It works really well
In what way does it "work"? What do you actually gain by silencing those people? It seems like you're lending them credibility. As in "these things that I'm saying are so dangerous that the government wants to shut me up!" You can't control what people actually believe, you can only control whether or not you hear about it. Using the state to do this for you instead of a block button is dangerous and inefficient.
>Free speech has limits.
No it doesn't. Free speech with limits isn't free speech. The simple expression of an idea w/o the intent to cause harm to another party, and the sole intention of discourse should be protected no matter what. No matter how distasteful it is, holocaust denial falls into this category.
The problem is that you can’t realistically fight Holocaust denial and the idea behind it with arguments at some point. In the interest of “proving” Germany wasn’t the bad guys after all, these people won’t stop sowing doubt that it occurred, and that’s exactly how you would allow it to happen again.
The German democracy is designed to defend itself, and this is one of its tools.
Interestingly, the American sort of overzealous defense of freedom of speech no matter what misunderstands how freedoms need to work. Every freedom has its limits (you don’t have the freedom to kill someone for example), but they need to be well defined. That’s all.
> The simple expression of an idea w/o the intent to cause harm to another party, and the sole intention of discourse should be protected no matter what.
Right, but the thing is that simply voicing this supposed opinion does harm by invalidating the crime against millions of people. That’s the whole point.
>The problem is that you can’t realistically fight Holocaust denial and the idea behind it with arguments at some point.
It sounds like you're a holocaust denier. If they're wrong, then show they're wrong. (not saying they're right). If they refuse to believe, then ignore them. They are a fringe.
>these people won’t stop sowing doubt that it occurred
Diversity of thought is strictly a good thing. The very thing you are worried about is a lack of diversity of thought. A world where questioning the superiority of certain groups of people is tantamount to a crime. Let them sow doubt, it keeps the marketplace of ideas healthy by giving people reasons to articulate the truth.
>Every freedom has its limits
This is sloppy. Either you embrace free expression as an ideal, or you don't. Anything short of free speech absolutism will decay back down to suppression and censorship. I don't think it's hard to separate out expression from incitement, and I believe the former should be unbounded.
People on the far right want to provoke. Engaging them isn't how you deal with them.
10 years ago they were ignored and we had far fewer problems with them. It was actually funny seeing them trying to connect to groups. Anime fans, gamers, they even draw my little pony shit. But they made little inroads into these communities. Only as those groups were also accused by the self declared inquisition of good is when lines were blurred. Of course they reacted poorly. You don't need science or studies here, it is self evident. Helping a self fulfilling prophecy isn't in my interest.
Look what Germany has caused with its laws to enforce speech codes (NetzDG). 2 weeks later Russia had its version ready to suppress dissent.
>The simple expression of an idea w/o the intent to cause harm to another party, and the sole intention of discourse should be protected no matter what.
The point is Holocaust denial is often used as a foot in the door to spread racial animosity, which has caused harm. It can be hard to determine what's legitimate research and debate versus racist dog whistling. But people recognize it's having a real effect in the world, and the marketplace of ideas hasn't quashed it over the past 70 years.
I'm all for Facebook removing anything like Holocaust denial or debate over it's existence. That's a good trade-off: prevent a gradual acceptance of racism at the cost of not being a good venue for Holocaust history researchers.
But I'm not for the government taking action. Just my anti-establishment American streak.
I always assumed you didn't need to be very good at moderating to make a certain type of content meaningfully unwelcome. For example, you can't put pornography on Youtube, but it's still reasonably easy to find a video with nudity. It's easy to lose a lot of time trying to craft the perfect definition, but you can get 80% of the benefit with a rigid and conservative definition. So I don't think you need to remove content that "arguably" breaks a policy, you just content that "explicitly" breaks it. This hopefully causes folks to the extremes will take their content elsewhere (to a hopefully much smaller audience).
Human judgement is how they'll determine it. They're deciding what's "acceptable debate" only within the confines of their own website, there are plenty of other venues friendly to Holocaust skeptics and deniers.
Citation needed? Which scholars, what are their claims / papers, and who reviewed their work?
I mean I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers used now are not entirely correct, but if there's unscientific work being done to downplay it, they're in their right to brand it as holocaust denial.
Edit: Note that he doesn't deny the holocaust at all, and his estimate is around 4 million. Which is still quite large. I'm not arguing that he is correct, but it seems absurd to call someone saying 4 million Jews were killed a "denialist".
In that case, it wasn't just the total numbers, but also his views on:
- Hitler's preeemtive strike against Russia (total Nazi-revesionist BS)
- Russia overstating the numbers in their reports on Auschwitz (which goes into the HD direction, as this is a common first step in getting people to believe HD theories).
I don't think your second claim is correct. As far as I understand he believed the Soviet numbers are the most accurate, not that they were overstated.
There you go: "He criticised the evidence for the accepted number of about 6 million victims, claiming that it was a propaganda figure of the Soviet leadership for which there were no evidence.[7]" from the above wikipedia article. Again, the whole line of argumentation matters, in which case he is misusing numbers from some sources to discredit other to come to a different total number.
If you are going to challenge a global research concesnus in any field, you better have a stringent, logical reason for doing so. If, on the other hand, you are bascially pulling numbers out of nowhere, misquote other out of context, all while writting the other stuff he did, you are on shacky ground.
It also says a few sentences later "He came to the conclusion that the Soviet commission examining the concentration camp Auschwitz (which did not find any of the German paperwork) had made the best estimate the number of victims."
Edit: I also want to clarify (again) that I'm not arguing that he is correct. I am arguing that he is labeled a denialist for his claim about the number of Jews killed, despite his believing that a large number of Jews were killed in concentration camps.
I'm not sure David Irving can be called a scholar or a valid source considering he has been firmly debunked, and lost his libel suit because he lied and made up sources.
To quote one of the expert witnesses at his trial:
> Irving (...) had deliberately distorted and wilfully mistranslated documents, consciously used discredited testimony and falsified historical statistics. (...) Irving has fallen so far short of the standards of scholarship customary amongst historians that he does not deserve to be called a historian at all.
To save free speech, we have to destroy free speech.
In the future, some historian is going to write the seminal work on the decline and dissolution of the United States - and there's going to be an entire chapter dedicated to social media.
The missing step is deciding that, in the human world, it is better to make all evil illegal, no matter the level of evil and no matter the cost to good or neutral that might get caught up in it.
Since its inception facebook has not had completely full free speech. It doesn't allow targeted bullying, scamming, or any other way of causing material harm to another person. All this is doing is admitting genocide denial causes material harm to another person, which I'm sure you would agree with.
This usually isnt the best course though. The U.S. for example after invading iraq squashed any anti west/american speech. It lead to members going underground instead of having discussions in an open civilized way. This lead to a further radicalization of Muslims and an even deeper hate for Americans and lead to the eventual terror attacks across the world. Let these ideas get tackled and shunned in the public and be exposed to what they really are.
You will find that Holocaust denying specifically has been banned by law from a number of European countries for a very long time. And free speech is still doing just fine.
This might not be the slippery slope you believe it is.
I believe the citizens of those countries might respectfully disagree.
The US is somewhat absolutist relative to the global average on this topic (and even the US isn't complete freedom of speech---pornography law exists, as do various extremely tight constraints on pedophilia imagery).
As a citizen of a European state I can guarantee you that close to everyone here is very aware that we don't live in a legislation that permits free speech. If america decides that they're limiting their speech as well I wouldn't know where to go to discuss. The darknet, presumably, or maybe some shell company on an island nation that rents servers.
> You will find that Holocaust denying specifically has been banned by law from a number of European countries for a very long time.
European countries were never a bastion of freedom. That's why nazi germany existed in europe, not in america. I love people bringing up europe as some example that we should follow. They most definitely are not.
> And free speech is still doing just fine.
No it's not. That's the point.
Free speech exists to defend offensive/fringe/hateful speech. Popular speech doesn't need free speech protection after all. If free speech exist to protect anything, it is holocaust denial. Think about it. What good is free speech if it can't protect the most offensive speech?
lol do you think the criminalisation of holocaust denial is a new invention that somehow needs to be studied by future historians? Most democratic countries on this earth, except for the US, not only ban holocaust denial on private platforms, which is insidious historical revisionism, but punishes it by law.
I have absolutely no idea how someone can be so childish as to not see that rights have their limitations to be preserved. Yes, to protect truth and the ability to speak freely we need to put limits on the damage someone can do by abusing free speech, in the same way we have highway speed limits, have a police that can do arrests and sometimes can use violence to stop other violence.
The US actually is a successful democracy. Compared to that Germany performs abysmally and state regulated speech doesn't work. It is just isn't enough to cause issues. That is the reality of things.
If our ministry of foreign affairs actually would look at the big picture, maybe they wouldn't have inspired autocratic governments worldwide to extend content controls.
> Most democratic countries on this earth, except for the US, not only ban holocaust denial on private platforms, which is insidious historical revisionism, but punishes it by law.
Pretty much only Germany and bordering countries actually. Democracies outside of Europe pretty uniformly do not ban Holocaust denial. See e.g. India.
India flat out has laws that prohibit hate speech and creation of racial disharmony of all sorts. I'm not sure if an Indian court has ever dealt with holocaust denial in particular, probably because there's barely any Jews in India at this point, but Indian limitations on speech go far beyond the genocide-speech laws that exist in Europe. Same of course is also true for Singapore and most other Asian countries.
Other than one dissenting view in 2014, that page indeed does document decades of enforcement of the Indian penal code, which is very clear, and cited on that page.
"Whoever (a) by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, promotes or attempts to promote, on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any other ground whatsoever, disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities, or (b) commits any act which is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities, and which disturbs or is likely to disturb the public tranquillity, . . . shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both."
That is without a doubt very explicit and much further reaching than any European legislation. And from the cases actually given in that article also practised as such.
Just to take one example, but there are many more in that very article
In 2007, R.V. Bhasin's Islam - A Concept of Political World Invasion by Muslims was banned, and house raided, in Maharashtra on grounds that it outrages the feelings of Muslim section of society.[12][13][14] In January 2010, the Bombay High upholds the ban imposed by the Government of Maharashtra.[15]
In that case, the wikipedia article also gives examples follwing that opinion
>On 20 September 2016, a blogger named Tarak Biswas was arrested for criticising Islam under Section 295A and 298, besides 66, 67 and 67A of the IT Act after a complaint about hurting religious sentiments was lodged by Sanaullah Khan, a Trinamool Congress leader.[39]
On 25 February 2018, two people were arrested for allegedly making derogatory remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, and Hindu gods. Four people were booked under section 295-A.[40]
Contrary to what you seem to believe a single decision in 2014 has shockingly enough not upended India's entire framework on legislating hate speech, that is not how the law works.
Are India's high court precedents not binding? It's certainly how law works in the United States that when the high court rules that a law violates the constitution, that law is struck.
History isn't written by the victors. This is a common if pithy misunderstanding. For example, there has been explicit effort among historians over the last 40 years to give voice to previously silent actors throughout history. Examples include women, the poor, and the colonized.
I don't think it's a misunderstanding so much as a tautology. "Giving voice" is something victors decide to do on their own terms, they're still the ones writing history.
History professors come from a variety of backgrounds. Many of them are from groups that are still struggling in the US (ex. trans people). The definition of "victor" must become so amazingly broad that it becomes useless if you want to encompass modern historical narratives.
The Holocaust indirectly lead to (a the abolishment of centuries old anti-semitic laws (from Magna Carta) (b the establishment of the state of Israel. I'm not implying 'they won', but they are in a better place now than they were at the beginning of the century.
N'ah, there's plenty I don't know. I'm just using my free speech to make my preferences known regarding this service I use and support via my attention.
My grandparent's families were mostly wiped out. We lost over 300 on my Dad's side, and there's no number for how many we lost on my Mom's side - everyone was killed. I grew up listening to my Grandmother screaming when she had panic attacks and night terrors, and the stories we heard were horrific. I'm so so glad that Facebook has done this. Maybe it hurts freedom of speech, and maybe it's overreach - I don't know - those are large and complex subjects. From the subjective point of view, it just makes me happy that they are putting a stop to it.
Same here. My Jewish German grandfather's father was taken by the Nazis and beaten. Somehow he managed to escape.
They lost the family bakery on Kristellnacht.
His synagogue was burnt down that night as well.
My grandfather routinely got beaten up at/after school by Hitler Youth.
Not to mention many other things.
After immigrating to the US he was drafted at 16 to fight in WWII and landed in Normandy on D-Day, where he almost drowned because his landing vessel opened too far from shore and he didn't know how to swim. And his unit was also captured later and he could understand the soldiers who'd captured them debating in German whether to kill them or not.
Crazy stories.
I know some people are desensitized to it by now, but whenever classmates in school would throw up the Nazi salute at me because they knew I was Jewish or make other anti-Semitic comments/jokes "in jest" always made my blood boil.
I still feel this way and don't think I'll ever be desensitized.
Even in middle school two decades ago I understood there was a huge lack of Holocaust education.
I hope someday that changes.
I'm just glad my grandfather is still alive for now and that he was able to share his family's story in a Shoah Foundation interview (I recommend anyone curious to look them up [0]); Shoah Foundation was able to gather a plethora of interviews of Holocaust survivors specifically for this reason of educating about what happened.
>> Maybe it hurts freedom of speech, and maybe it's overreach
That you are even willing to say that is both admirable and shows just how far out of control the concept of 'freedom of speech' has gotten; and how unfair it is - when you, whose family actually died from the Holocaust - allow room for these perspectives, while they would look you in the eye and tell you, point-blank; your family didn't die / you're making it up?
I think freedom of speech needs to have some sort of intentional hate speech clause.
Theoretically within the space of such a clause diplomatic discussion should be able to take place.
People are equating freedom of speech with freedom for hate speech, and since there are laws against hate speech, we have seriously conflicting laws.
I understand not everybody is fully supportive of liberal ideas like free speech. But there shouldn't be any confusion about what it means. Telling somebody that the Holocaust didn't happen is indubitably an example of free speech.
> I understand not everybody is fully supportive of liberal ideas like free speech. But there shouldn't be any confusion about what it means. Telling somebody that the Holocaust didn't happen is indubitably an example of free speech.
One of the disputes that exist within the group supporting the liberal idea of free speech is it's boundary; there is general agreement that some range of speech that is both false and harmful is excluded, but the boundary of the kind and mechanism of harm that qualifies is disputed.
> Telling somebody that the Holocaust didn't happen is indubitably an example of free speech.
It's both false and in many contexts quite arguably harmful; whether it (in any particular context) involves the kind of harm that take it out of the realm of free speech is very much a dispute within the liberal, pro-free-speech community.
This may feel like a no true scotsman, but it really isn't - those that oppose free speech are not true liberals. The heart of liberalism is individual freedom, responsibility, and culpability. True liberals believe that speech that does not directly evoke violence (such as Holocaust denial) is not violent. If somebody hears that speech and decides to become violent, that's on them.
Believing that we need to restrict what is said in the town square because people will get bad ideas, believing that people are not free but just a confluence of the ideas around them, believing that people need to be led by an authority - these are the classic arguments against liberalism.
You're trying to say that liberals are reciting anti-liberal talking points within their community regarding whether this kind of free speech is good. I think it's far more likely that these people are not really liberals, and just consider themselves to be liberals because it's the most popular political ideology of the day. We should not call those that recite anti-liberal talking points "liberals" - to do so is to rob the word of any meaning at all.
> Telling somebody that the Holocaust didn't happen is indubitably an example of free speech.
Not only is it an example, it's the best example. Free speech rights exist to protect the most offensive speech. It doesn't exist to protect popular benign speech.
This is what so many people here, mostly foreigners without a doubt, don't understand. If you find something offensive or hateful, that's what free speech exists to protect. If it doesn't, free speech rights are worthless.
They (and Google, Youtube ...etc) should reprogram their recommendation engine to ignore political content altogether (not just the hateful content).
If a person clicks on video by whatever party they shouldn't be immediately bombarded with propaganda content from that side of the political spectrum.
It's amazing to me that people don't see the irony that a major tactic of the nazis was quelling free speech.
We are so scared of the nazis that we act like them. This is of course how they framed it too. They would have claimed they needed to protect themselves from the dangerous ideas, literature, art of the Jews.
By the way, companies _can_ take the easy road and allow absolutely everything. _Nobody_ wants to use such a service though. Visit reddit clone Voat, and see if you want to revisit it again.
This is not a ban of these ideas at a societal level. You are free to post on your blog as much as you want, you are free to make a newsletter, you are free to speak as much as you want about the holocaust.
I finally watched Hamilton the other day and the contrasting narratives of Hamilton and Burr offer a good comparison of how Facebook sets policy. Facebook has the choice to take either take their shot and speak their mind or to talk less and smile more (i.e. leave people guessing as to what their position is).
What this position essentially shows us about Facebook is that they are more interested in policy only after watching which way the wind is blowing. White supremacy and hate groups have always been around on their platform, yet only now they decide to ban it? I think it’s really important to think about the timing of this: less than a month from Election Day, and after 4 years of divisiveness, controversy, and conflict invading their platform. I can’t imagine it took 4 years of analysis to make this decision, but now they themselves can/will claim some moral high ground for a new political atmosphere.
One issue I find is often the people who promote this sort of content don’t sit in their private groups and discuss it among themselves, but go out and actively court confrontations by posting to forums of Jews and others directly victimized by the actions of the Germany in World War II. I see it all the time on Twitter —- and on Hacker News.
I don't think that's the best approach. I like it better how it can be done at e.g. reddit: make other groups able to link to the content/discussion and show this link to the reader of the original content. Then the reader gets to notice that the topic is controversial and discussed in other places and can make up their own idea based on different views. It shouldn't be difficult to convince a naive reader of conspiracy theories.
This has many advantages:
1. It does not force groups into underground forums
2. It raises visibility to everyone that there are people with strange ideas and how many of them there are (which I personally think is a problem if it grows too big)
3. It removes the potential argument of such a group that they are suppressed or that online content is moderated by people that "try to hide the truth"
4. It removes the ability to easily censor valid criticism/movements (Hongkong?) because the censorship infrastructure is already in place
5. It leaves some really strange and sometimes funny content that I can dive into if I get really bored, such as believers in flat earth. It can be good entertainment
I believe that if such content really has to be banned, we have already lost the war
> Following a year of consultation with external experts, we recently banned anti-Semitic stereotypes about the collective power of Jews that often depicts them running the world or its major institutions.
Given that Zuckerberg is Jewish and by extension 'Facebook is run by Jews', you can see how White Nationalists will frame this.
I feel this is a good thing, it is a clear line and not something open to free speech excuses IMHO in much the same way that what side of the road you can drive on is not open to free choice, however some will feel it will eventually curtail what destinations they can drive too, when it will not.
“But it’s ok, we’re the good guys and doing it for the right reasons”, says every tyrant ever.
Never let speech get censored no matter how good it makes you feel in the moment. It’s the worst precedent you can ever set.
I’ll try and give an example here that might be safe to give because it rips the Republican Wing of the Military Industrial Complex.
If Facebook was one of the world’s primary communication channel in say the early 1990s, the people who would have called BS on tearful made up testimony about Saddam unplugging babies from respirators that was used to sell the war to the public wouldn’t have even had an opportunity to challenge the official story. Facebook would have blocked their opinions as hateful content and if they persisted just conspired with the rest of Silicon Valley to completely remove them from the Internet. A chain of events that have cost arguably millions of lives and trillions of dollars can be tied to some of that testimonial propaganda and would have been unable to be talked about critically with Facebook’s current rule set.
Now we want Facebook in charge of determining truth? Be careful about what you wish for. You applaud today, but now the precedent is set. What’s next on the chopping block might not be something you’ll like.
You call it "digital book burning", and you call Facebook a "primary communication channel", because your argument necessitates that you exaggerate so. If you see Facebook for what it is --- not an arm of the government, not the only voice anyone has, but just one of many communication platforms --- it's clear that this is no violation of free speech.
Facebook isn't determining "what is true"; it's just determining what it is okay with hosting.
> If you see Facebook for what it is --- not an arm of the government
I find it easy to see Facebook as one of the arms of the government. It's not the only arm of the government, and it's not the only thing Facebook does, but one could consider Facebook (and other social networks and tech giants) as an arm of the government.
> it's clear that this is no violation of free speech.
It is a violation of free speech. Just a legal one. For example, parts of europe, russia, china, saudi arabia, etc there are legal violations of free speech. Doesn't make it right though.
Your example doesn’t even make sense. This isn’t challenging the officially story, it’s making up a story and selling it to propagate racism.
But also rights and freedoms have limits. Unless you think private citizens should be allowed to own tanks and icbms, etc, then you agree.
Social media is, if not a nuclear weapon, certainly a machine gun of speech with its magnitude and velocity and certainly something unthinkable by the founding fathers and being weaponized by state actors against our institutions and ideals. Complaining about these restrictions without a viable other way to combat this ignorance and psyops -at the same scale and velocity- is just complaining.
Yawn. Facebook is not the public square, nor should it be. Imo it’s also the wrong platform for political engagement (because it structurally amplifies the wrong kinds of engagement), and I couldn’t care less what editorial power they exert. There are other, real public forums (where speech is constitutionally protected) where fringe groups can peddle their ideas.
If the next thing on the chopping block isn't something we like, we'll decide whether this private company's media service is something we want to keep using.
YouTube modified their content model to make it harder to find trans-friendly content. We've already had this fight over YouTube. People complained and they adjusted the model.
But the complaints that were heard were that being anti-trans is bad, not that YouTube has no right to maintain a model.
That's just a slippery slope fallacy. The holocaust is a non-recent and well documented event, and its denial is clearly a masquerade for hateful speech. Holocaust denial is outlawed in Germany for good reasons.
Not to mention Facebook is a private company and it should be free to censor whatever it wants to censor; book burning is a real issue only when its state sponsored.
>book burning is a real issue only when its state sponsored.
Strong disagree from me. These corporations are becoming an increasingly large part of how people communicate. Imagine if phone companies started deplatforming people the way social media sites do- it would become incredibly hard (perhaps impossible) to live a normal life in 21st century america.
If holocaust denial, flat earthers, plandemic, and qanon is the kind of stuff we get when FB does nothing, then I'll take my chances on them removing some content, thanks.
Besides, with a disinterested moderator you don't automatically get pure free speech. Others step in to influence the system, to push their "truth" to their benefit.
First, that wasn't a hyperbole. Second, you don't have to be a holocaust denier to be pro free speech, and the guy you're replying to probably isn't one.
Holocaust denial is a very bad thing, why would you smear someone with it just because they love free speech more than you do?
You are assuming that a simple free market of ideas actually works. As it turns out it really doesn't because people are stupid and when you let people self select whom to attend to stupid people choose other stupid people to attend to and soon mistake constant repetition of falsehoods for truth.
These spreading piles of human bile attract people who are peripherally socially connected on the social graph some of which grow the pile o poison until you reach a critical mass of poison and your society derails.
You advance the fallacy that if we censor anything we must censor everything that powerful parties desire. This isn't so. Facebook has actually been very reluctant to censor anything at all and even now and is only now choosing to censor things that are harmful uncontroversial falsehoods.
In the case of the holocaust denial they are hateful lies that have festered for decades. Nothing in particular forces us to slide down the slope and start covering for the powerful.
This will do the opposite though I think - most of the "antitrust" arguments targeting Facebook seem to be upset that this type of content is being removed / Facebook (and YouTube, Twitter) have too much power in what we see/read.
You choose to type h t t p facebook dot com into your browser.
They have absolutely not power in what you see or read, you go there voluntarily. Just stop going there.
True, but that's for people who are awake; in this case, we're not actually dealing with (sane, rational, critically thinking) individuals, but with statistics. Nobody cares about individuals denying the holocaust or whatever, but when it becomes a movement, or a feeling, or a suspicion in enough people, it becomes a statistically significant trend that can influence politics, elections, votes, etc.
I mean there's tons of anti-intellectualism going on now wrt anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, corona-deniers, obama-is-a-kenyan-lizard-man, trump-is-immune-to-the-rona, etc. These are rational individuals, they may not be on Facebook or they may, it doesn't really matter because in the end it's a numbers game.
Facebook has made a habit of pandering to conservatives. This is more likely a result of increased public scrutiny combined with internal employee revolt.
It’s also the least they could do, quite literally. Holocaust denialism is both extremely fringe ideologically, and extremely visible to rich westerners. It’s the easiest and lowest hanging fruit to show that they’re doing something. But I genuinely doubt that it signals a willingness to tackle either more difficult content like misinformation, nor tamp down on the coordinated behavior in less visible (to Americans) places where FB has been central to enabling genocide and other similarly bad things.
In short: it’s a good move, but I suspect it’s more PR than anything else.
Yes. “The Nazis were bad” is, generally, a pretty easy PR statement.
Here, let’s spin up a really hard one. “Given the historical discrimination against Catholics, Facebook should delete all posts that discriminate against Amy Coney Barrett on account of her religion.” Not such an easy PR win there, eh?
About time fb started taking this kind of misinformation serious. From the article I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact
>>According to a recent survey of adults in the US aged 18-39, almost a quarter said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, that it had been exaggerated or they weren’t sure.
Like how does something like this even happen in a first world country, as someone from outside the US someone who grew up thinking the US had an excellent education system and kids there had more access to data the world and almost everything, I honestly am having a very hard time processing the fact that this many people believe the holocaust didn't happen or was exaggerated. Is this a failure in the education system? Like, what the hell is this?
That survey question seems psychologically primed to get people to doubt themselves enough to agree with the third option (weren't sure). A better statistic would be just the number of people who believe it to be a hoax.
I hope that number is much lower than 25% but the past four years have showed me there's a much larger threat of bigotry and fascism in America than I could have ever imagined.
> Institutions focused on Holocaust research and remembrance, such as Yad Vashem, have noted that Holocaust education is also a key component in combatting anti-Semitism.
This is a good, important point. But I also think it is important to understand how this generalizes. The Holocaust is a vivid example of how authoritarianism inevitably leads to human rights abuses, both of a nation's "own" people and often some Other selected by the authority as an enemy to get people to rally around. Learning about the Holocaust is not just a reminder that the Nazis were bad, but that every fascist or authoritarian government has that same potential which is why we must be vigilent against them.
Is this an international policy change? In Germany holocaust denial is straight up illegal, so I imagine posts are have been required to be removed since the inception of Facebook. It's kinda weird to see that this is only now a thing.
Not an "admirable" move as the previous commenter "ignoramous" states. All historic events can be debates. Nobody ought to have the power of political censorship. It's about time White people realize that the holocaust is used as a mind fuck to demoralize us and beat us down into submission. The last thing to do is to compromise on letting a crappy Silicon Valley company dictate what is/isn't legitimate free speech and/or thought crime (a la 1984).
Imagine if every bar in town had swastika flags and racist epithets on the walls, and patrons who uttered slurs and intimidated women and gays. And when the bouncer shows up they kvetch about free speech.
No amount of good patrons in those bars makes the bad patrons tolerable.
There will always be shitholes dominated by meth-cookers and Nazi bikers. But most bars choose to be enjoyable places.
Social media are privately run spaces. The lowest level of discourse sets the tone. Clean it up.
Facebook is a private entity and there should not be any concern about such rule. The idea that this practice can be "normalised" and extended to public institutions worries me though: holocaust denial does not have a place in history however expressing opinions should be part of speech freedom and should not be censorable.
As a reminder, in an interview with Kara Swisher in 2018, Mark defended facebooks approach to free speech and light moderation. He said that FB does not wish to moderate certain kinds of content including Holocaust denials as he felt many people denying the Holocaust where not doing so maliciously or intentionally
I’m glad to hear Facebook has come around on this policy but hearing the interview I was a bit floored and it definitely strengthen my resolve that Facebooks’ executives aren’t equipped to handle the complexity of the machine they have created. If Mark can get it wrong on a topic so obvious how can we trust the rest of their content moderation policies in every geo and world conflict.
I find it interesting (/ sad) that even on HN, we have a bunch of people saying things like "This is a bare minimum which should've been done a long time ago.” as if it’s an obvious fact that this is a good thing with no bad side effects; and people saying things like "Never let speech get censored no matter how good it makes you feel in the moment. It’s the worst precedent you can ever set.” as if it’s an equally unquestionable fact that this is a bad thing with no good side effects.
I’ve spent 20 minutes scanning the discussion, and didn’t see anybody saying “there are both pros and cons here, but on balance, I think this is mostly-[good/bad]” - only 100% one way or the other :( (Feel free to correct me if there’s a ton of posts like this that I somehow missed)
How can we be so sure we know what’s best for a platform of billions, when we can’t even stop our own community of thousands from being so polarised? D:
Facebook runs a walled garden and has full authority to censor all they want within it. They can make rules and enforcement as arbitrary any forum admin or subreddit mod. I think this is as it should.
No company should have authority over personal communication or public debate.
Facebook only has the power users hand over to them. IMO it's clear that no company should be in the position that they are in. The answer isn't solidifying Facebook's role as central arbiter of free speech and regulate their role as moderator over public debate and private communication alike, but to transition to a state where the application, protocol, social graph and mode of communication aren't coupled with moderation by a given entity.
Decentralize and federate.
There's work to be done, but we need to fill the gap.
Let’s say I own a bullhorn shop. In fact, I have purchased every bullhorn shop, distributor, and manufacturer of relevance in the world.
Someone, a self proclaimed Nazi, comes to me, the owner of every bullhorn, to buy a bullhorn in order to convince others to be Nazis. I, a Jew, refuse to sell the bullhorn to the Nazi.
Am I being overly simplistic? Probably, but I don’t see where my analogy fails. I fail so see the strength in the “Facebook controlling the content of the platform it owns destroys our constitutional rights” argument.
There's also the consideration to be made that you knowingly had been selling bullhorns to the nazi in the past, and are continuing to sell bullhorns to other folks of questionable beliefs
Define Nazi, define “in order to convince others to be Nazis”. Your analogy is dealing in extremes only. In practice it’s not a clear cut. That is missing in your analogy.
For context, here are Zuckerberg's comments, from July 2018, defending Facebook as a platform for spreading misinformation. He specifically uses as an example that he would not censor Holocaust denial.
If we ban this speech then how can we argue against these ideas?
The photos, evidence, eyewitness accounts demonstrate the Holocaust is undeniable. BUT we know that there are people that say the world is flat, moon landing was faked, etc.
If anything I’d like to engage these people and verbally smash them. If anything, Facebook should make posts like this unblockable, so people can’t defriend or block people with whom they don’t agree with.
But that is not what is happening instead they feaster inside their bubbles and grow even more convinced and dangerous. It should simply not be tolerated.
"You cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into."
Sounds like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and every other religion
If people want to believe something in their bubble, they should be allowed to.
Most, if not all of those belief systems have fringes which advocate harm.
By your argument, there would be no atheists, yet you see some people who were extremely religious becoming atheists.
It's factually incorrect and dishonest to push with certainty this idea that you cannot reason with people who have passionately held views. They are our neighbours, friends, family members, countrymen and fellow humans. To throw them out of our shared spaces is weak and pathetic. We are better than this.
A superior solution is to make these posts opt-in, hidden by default and mostly everyone on the platform will never see them or be disturbed by them, or become accidentally brainwashed by them.
Those who remain there can be engaged with by the rest of us, who have the patience and superior mental discipline to convince them otherwise.
> The photos, evidence, eyewitness accounts demonstrate the Holocaust is undeniable.
Yet it is still fervently denied. They cannot be "verbally smashed" because they are so much more invested in these ideas and because of this they are beyond the reaches of rational argument (i.e. you will be the one getting smashed). There are nearly 100 claims they will throw out such that no single person can know them all, here is a helpful academic source of these claims: https://www.hdot.org/debunking-denial/ Removing an accessible location of discourse is the best solution for this instance.
If I annoyingly posts photos of victims and eyewitness accounts for people who may be influenced can see, I believe that is far more powerful the driving them underground. While the author or the post may be unaffected, people who may fall under their influence may be.
Technologists, including what seems to be a large portion of HN, believe that those they view as beneath them are too stupid to evaluate arguments, so they've accepted the idea of having a ministry of truth. Rather than elevate their "untermensch", their egos drive them to exercise control.
If you can't educate people to separate fact from fiction, that is ultimately the fault of intellectuals. It's one thing to teach facts in school and leave out the nonsense, but deplatforming unpopular ideas is a form of control over individuals. Where does it stop? Do we create a standard where web hosts, ISPs, deplatform ideas outside the overton window? What kind of precedent is that?
Facebook is hedging hard these past couple weeks. Looks like they have decided that Trump is going to lose and so suddenly decided licking his boots is not worth it, just like Theil did. I don't trust FB is trying to do the right thing, I will only believe that they are doing this to make it seem like they are not targeting trump when they blocked qanon.
It's worth going into why this is something that is worth doing and also why FB has historically not done it.
FB's position for a long time was that they would not remove material just because it was factually inaccurate, in other words they treated Holocaust denial as being essentially ignorance. There is a truly cringeworthy clip of Facebook spokesdrone and former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg in a documentary on Holocaust denial, unfortunately I cannot find it online, where he lays this out. The problem, as David Baddiel shows in that documentary is that this is not actually a disagreement on a matter of fact where one party is mistaken. There is no mistake and the people who push this stuff know it.
I've often noticed that the people who most vehemently believe that the Holocaust did not happen are the people who really want it to happen again. You're not going to find people who deny that it happened and are not also raging anti-Semites. Here's why: they know that it happened. They know that you know that it happened too. They enjoy the agitation and the pain they are inflicting. When they say that they are just "asking questions" and trying to "educate themselves" they are using the language of academic inquiry which they know we are culturally inclined to treasure and protect above almost all else as a sort of cloak.
The reason, for instance why Deborah Lipstadt, probably the world's foremost scholar on Holocaust denial has always refused to engage in any kind of debate is for precisely that reason. Now, at first, one might say: "aha, but surely we should never foreclose academic debate? What is she hiding that she won't even debate them?". However this is to mistake their games for genuine inquiry.
It should be noted that there actually are debates among historians about the Holocaust but these are not over whether it happened but over where it should be placed in terms of historical context - is part of genocide studies, a sui generis event, part of a long arc of European anti-Semitism? and over whether it was always part of a Nazi master plan or effectively emerged as a consequence of bureaucratic manoeuvring and favour-gaming by Nazi officials who wanted to rise through the party. These are often quite intense as well, with people having some very strong views. There is no such thing as a historical debate about whether the events themselves happened.
Sartre is still very relevant here: Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
> There is no mistake and the people who push this stuff know it.
From my experience, this is not universally true. For Westerners, possibly. But already for immigrants from Islamic countries in Western nations, it falls apart. Many of them aren't like "yeah it happened, and it was great, I will now deny it to remove guilt from Germany and make Germany the victim", because they don't care about Germany's past. They simply don't believe it because that's what they learn from friends and family.
The same applies to most conspiracy people btw. They don't secretly believe that chemtrails aren't a thing and just pretend otherwise to get under your skin, they really believe what they say.
I think you're right about many casual sharers and comments from these backgrounds. It is still the case though that an awful lot of this material that gets shared is being produced by someone with a greater level of sophistication than casual sharers.
Holocaust denial is also a marketing strategy for fascists. The average person is repulsed by obviously fascist ideas because they know what happened with the Nazis. So fascists try to first convince them that actually, you were lied to about the Nazis. https://youtube.com/watch?v=HOHthnsuhPw
> It should be noted that there actually are debates among historians about the Holocaust but these are not over whether it happened [...]
Will this be allowed on Facebook? I don’t have an opinion either way, but I think the original concern with removing “Denial” content was that it would impact this type of debate.
Why would it, as no real historian denies the Holocaust. But that is besides the point, as these discussions propably don't need facebook to take place. And if they do, that in itself might be part of the problem.
The GP established there are legitimate conversations being had about aspects of the Holocaust that do not deny that it happened. This is a nuance that sets a precedent for other discussions of controversial topics. I think it’s important that common people understand the difference between Denial, Revisionism, and legitimate debate, and have a way of discovering this information without being lumped in with antisemites
I somewhat agree that it doesn’t “need” to happen on Facebook, and I think it’s OK to stake that out as a rule: Don’t debate anything about the Holocaust on Facebook, take it elsewhere. Meet with your history buff friends on Telegram and hash it out.
Given how much conspiracy shit happens on Telegram, I wouldn't advise using that.
That being said, as long as the discussion is based facts, primary sources as much as possible and doesn't cherry pick and stake up the Holocaust against other war crimes, I agree that we need these discussions.
Is there a crowdsourced, fact-focused social network that doesn’t depend on ad revenue? WT.social? We need moderation with popular support, and a values system that isn’t influenced by capitalist concerns.
Interestingly, the post has no attribution or by-line, and as usual, Facebook takes no responsibility for helping spread hate (the entire post is very passive).
Facebook could do better than removing the content, they could burst the Holocaust denial bubble that some people find themselves in.
We have video archives of the liberation of the camps and testimonies from survivors. Every Holocaust denial post could have one of the many evidence of the Holocaust just next to it.
It probably won't change the mind of everyone, but it would hijack the virality of the denial posts and use their targeting to reach precisely the people that need to be reminded of the real history of the Holocaust.
Zero credit for doing the right thing after years of profiting off doing the wrong thing.
questions for Facebook employees:
1. how much revenue did Facebook make off holocaust denying content/users, and what're your plans to donate at least that much, or otherwise fix the damage you've done?
2. how do you feel about your day job's role from whenever you started at Facebook till October 12, 2020 in promoting and proliferating holocaust denial and other morally bankrupt positions? do you feel you have any responsibility for the bad things your work is used for?
That anything in history is beyond doubt or beyond denial is anti-intellectual and should worry everyone. That's not history, that's religion. It is religion that demands absolute obedience and absolute acceptance.
Everything from George Washington to the dropping of nukes to even the native genocides are allowed to be debated and even questioned. Why is the holocaust the sole exception? Especially considering it isn't even part of american history and last I checked facebook is an american company.
If russia, china, north korea, saudi arabia, etc all said or forced their social media companies to remove content denying, criticizing or disputing X, we'd call that censorship. And yet, here we are, the top comment is praising this censorship.
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. If you'd please stop creating accounts to do that with, we'd be grateful, as we're trying for something else here.
As I see it, they suggested that removing content denying the Holocaust was telling someone what opinions to have on the matter. The Holocaust is not a matter of opinion, it is a fact.
I think potential for harm to others is probably more of a factor than truth for these types of bans, though if they ban flat earther groups then I will reconsider my statement.
Goodness. No need to quote them. They're responding to an article _on that very topic_ and framing it as a matter of opinion.
If it was meant to be some general snark about censorship then so be it, but the execution was poor and you're being quite disingenuous in claiming not see any connection.
Seeing as the holocaust was an enormous industrial operation i'm going to image there are many details about it that can be debated. But now that conversation cannot be had because fb will always take the side of the more abhorrent fact. Anything less is denial.
To summarize the major issue, we're taught in schools the results of something like Nazi Germany, 6 million died in camps, Hitler was a psychopath, etc., all the details of how horrible it was and how we can never let it happen again.
What we're not taught are the methodical psychological operations implemented over decades on at least 2 or 3 generations that lead up to a situation where an entire country could be fooled or intimidated into allowing such horrors to occur.
If we were taught the causes and not the symptoms then I dare say history would be harder to repeat. Go read Mein Kampf, 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, it's all there. The methods are extremely simple, it's just the level of psychopathy in our ruling class that is hard for people to accept.
I'll take that as a compliment. Indeed I was "taught" poorly and so educated myself. If you're trying to prevent repeating history it doesn't matter as much what the number is. It matters how you allow a society to get to those kinds of numbers.
It's curious that of the many actual genocides that have been well-documented since WWII, you happen to pick these two examples that aren't genocides. It seems like most genocides just don't get enough publicity.
People are entitled to their own opinions, but Facebook is not required to provide a platform for them if they want to voice them. Same with flat earthers; they are entitled to their opinion, but nobody owes it to them to provide them a platform.
I'm not sure if it's classified as hate speech, but it will be classified as fake news and false/misinformation.
Keep in mind that the forces behind these "post-fact" trends aren't average joes that happen to have an opinion, they're likely foreign government agents trying to influence people's relations with each other (infighting) and political directions.
Examples: Trump is friends with Putin and $400 million in debt; I wouldn't trust him as leader of a country with those influences.
A constant campaign of "immigrants are here to take your jobs" in the UK has led to Brexit, removing an important economic and military force from the European Union whilst crashing the UK economy. This weakens the EU whilst allowing rich people to get richer.
>People are entitled to their own opinions, but Facebook is not required to provide a platform for them...
Agreed. Is this not the purpose of a walled garden? Many people confuse the Internet with FB or other walled gardens. If a free and open Internet was a threat to media gatekeepers, walled gardens have nearly neutralized that threat.
If they're actively going to curate what is and isn't allowed, as far as perfectly legal speech goes, then they're no longer a common carrier and no longer subject to the protections afforded to such entities.
it is hateful speach, because it is like rubbing salt to wounds intentionally, and it has 3rd party victims. While flat earther, don't have any third party victims....
Instead of saying: they support the mass killing of particular group of people directly.
They say: it didn't happen
I do think holocaust denial is hateful speach, often used by neo-nazi groups. Should iy be illegall, like it is in Germany? No. As that is a step too far. But I think a particular platform is free to filter these idiots out from their algo and recommendations and FB is doing the right thing in this case.
The unchecked power Zuck and co have has global implications for every tiny decision they make. Who gave them this power? What makes them the best people to be making these decisions? Can we always trust them to get it right?
Facebook is a private entity. Facebook’s shareholders have given Mark Zuckerberg and his management team the power to manage the company as they see fit. If users disagree with the terms and conditions of using the site, they don’t have to use it.
There is effectively zero barrier to switching social networks. "Friends" that could only be accessed through Facebook I realized long ago were people I didn't actually care to talk to.
This is not true for billions of people for whom Facebook is the web. Their businesses run on it, their family only communicate through it, and giving it up would mean disconnecting, essentially, from their entire world.
I don't believe this premise that these people only communicate on Facebook.
Sure some businesses are forced on to the platform to communicate with a subset of customers but it's extremely rare that they aren't on all the social platforms AND have their own website.
Family members that are on Facebook have phone numbers and are on other platforms. Maybe you can't spam them with links to every conspiracy website you come across or an endless stream of your kid without them becoming annoyed, but you absolutely can communicate with them. Facebook has only stayed relevant because of the natural lag in popular websites (older folks always get on late) and by buying platforms people have switched to in recent years likes WhatsApp and Instagram. But people do switch and people also are on multiple platforms
A monopoly on what? Spamming users with cat videos / baby videos and various other irrelevancies?
I haven't used Facebook for many years and I can contact family and friends just fine. Granted I use WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, but WhatsApp doesn't suffer from censorship (to my knowledge).
There is no monopoly, but an oligopoly. How comfortably would you avoid all 3 of Apple, Google, and Facebook?
These 3 are very similar in their values, operate under the same legislation. The latter is especially worrying for people not from the US, because foreigners' rights are completely unprotected.
Try Telegram. I use neither Facebook nor Whatsapp.
I don't know what Facebook is for, but I'm told that Telegram is a great replacement for Whatsapp and even people who both have Whatsapp seem to prefer Telegram between them.
One nuance being that while having access to an ISP is becoming more and more of a necessity to function in today's society, one can live a very happy life without Facebook :)
It's a bit hilarious to me, that people advertise unchecked unfettered capitalism for internet companies, while arguing for regulation of every other company, say oil company X, due to externalities. Nobody's forcing you to buy gasoline silly!
> What makes them the best people to be making these decisions?
Because rightly or wrongly billions of people entrusted their data to FB in exchange for services. There is no best or worst about it -- FB are the only people who control FB servers.
We gave them this power by using their platform. They earned it from us. If they'd been given this power by a government agency or something I'd be more concerned, but at the end of the day, we the people directly decided that facebook, and not MySpace or Google plus or whatever, should have this power. And as a non government agency they have the right to modulate speech on their platform. And as long as they're modulating it in this way, by pushing back against holocaust denial, i think they're showing that they are at least competent at making these sorts of decisions. If they eventually prove not to be - well - no social media company is truly too big to fail. There's no regulatory capture or unfair barriers to competition in this space. Their users and advertisers made Facebook, we can unmake it too.
Around a week ago the congress released the tech antitrust report and Facebook has been singing a different tune (first qanon, now this). Amazing what regulatory oversight achieves, once profits and power are on the line to be lost.
> According to a recent survey of adults in the US aged 18-39, almost a quarter said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, that it had been exaggerated or they weren’t sure.
That's exactly what it is. Denying the holocaust is about as dumb as saying the earth is flat. Not being sure about historical details such as how many people were killed is very common though. I don't remember either.
Outside the western world it's common that people are unfamiliar with the holocaust, unsure of the details or believe it's a myth. Given that the US has a significant amount of immigration from non-western countries, I would take that into account when looking at those statistics. It might be premature to think it's solely due to a rise in antisemitism.
when say 3 years from now, you can't criticize FB for their known co-operation with the surveillance programs of the government without having your content automatically detected and removed, you might have a different view.
This is only because of FB's refusal to let you more easily control what is seen on your feed. You controlling the feed settings would remove FBs power over eyeballs.
> when say 3 years from now, you can't criticize FB for their known co-operation with the surveillance programs of the government without having your content automatically detected and removed, you might have a different view.
If that were to happen, then you would take your criticism to a different platform or your own domain. Facebook isn't the Web let alone the Internet.
That's fair enough. If FB was purely what it originally was - showing updates from your own connections exclusively - then of course a measure like this would be nonsensical. Only people who were directly connected to people posting it would ever see it (and many such people would be beyond hope anyway) and there would be no need to stop any kind of content "propagating" since no content ever would.
To begin with, I think it's fair to say that it's doing something rather than leaving things as they are that requires evidence.
Secondly it is arrogant in the extreme to believe that you are critical enough to see deniers for what they are but others must be protected from having to form a reasoned opinion.
I don't have specific evidence but banning things, in general, is counter-productive. It drives the activity underground. Examples include prohibition and narcotics in general.
In the case of Holocaust denial it also suggests a lack of confidence by the establishment, that they fear that the deniers have a plausible case. I, like most people have seen mountains of evidence showing that the Holocaust did happen.
All bar a few cranks and simpletons having taken the trouble to look at both sides would surely come to the conclusion that the Holocaust did happen and see the promoters of denial for what they are.
Denying people the opportunity to hear the deniers' case promotes the suggestion that there is a conspiracy concealing the truth from the public.
"[W]e recently banned anti-Semitic stereotypes about the collective power of Jews that often depicts them running the world or its major institutions." – Mark Zuckerberg (CEO) & Sheryl Sandberg (COO) of Facebook
Look, I point out the above primarily in jest. (There is irony there, no?) But the other point that I'm making is the above will not be missed by conspiracy theorists.
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to see the dangers of monopolistic corporations controlling speech online. Sure, in this case, nobody can sanely argue with the reasoning, but on the other hand, the last eight years have shown how real the slippery slope "fallacy" actually is.
It's been shown that deplatforming and moving those nuts out of the mainstream social media channels reduce their influence. There was holocaust denier before Faceook, but their reach was much more limited. Remember that Facebook promotes groups and suggest you content that you're not following, so when holocaust deniers are part of the platform, some people with no exposure to the concept might start getting recommendations to follow this content. Banning it prevents it. They can scream on their small social network that reach 200 people but that won't convince millions of people of joining the movement.
Weird how the true evidence based comment is downvoted here. Regardless of your ideological priors the evidence we have shows deplatforming works to limit dis info spread. I have yet to hear an argument about why we should not deplatform holocaust deniers.
I got curious about it's current, banished form because I'd missed that bit of the story. It's about what I'd expect except they have a non-CCDA compliant cookie notice with no opt-out. Makes me wonder if that's because they have amateur web devs or if the management didn't want to include it because California and politics.
It's also been shown repeatedly that censorship has harmful unintended effects. For some reason Facebook saw fit to write a post about this, thereby letting lots of people know about the very speech they're trying to remove. The Streisand effect is already at work.
What should we do with content that glorifies or lies about the genocide of indigenous people in the Americas (e.g. anything that glorifies Columbus and the history implied by Thanks Giving Day)
Same goes for content that aligns with current day denial that racism is a huge problem in this country and across the globe?
In the end, it's the same net result: people die of hate crimes because of lack of awareness and the perpetuation of content that implicitly upholds white supremacist thinking.
Well, there's Columbus statues being torn down (https://www.google.com/search?q=columbus+statue+removed) and movements to change the curriculum wrt Columbus and the early invaders/colonists, so there's that. It took a while, but it's moving in the right direction. I'm sure that if it becomes a bigger thing, Facebook will add fact checking and additional information with regards to that as well. I hope so anyway.
I don't know about you but I have got posts in fb and youtube feed about each of the issue that you mentioned more than once, specially anti Columbus posts, and I am not even a leftist but on the centre.
“Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”
- From Noam Chomsky's (Chomsky's grandparents are holocaust survivors) on the foreword for "Some Elementary Comments on the Rights of Freedom of Expression" for the book of French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson.
... and Goebbels and Stalin were both part of the government.
Why is so hard to understand that government limitations on free speech are fundamentally different from private ones?
Freedom of the press means being able to print what you want, not being able to compel the printer. Facebook doesn't have to be complicit in publishing speech it finds repugnant, and why should it?
The concept of free speech has nothing to do with governments or private institutions. The legal differences between those entities has nothing to do with the general concept.
The concept, no; however, freedom of speech also covers Facebook's freedom to not provide a platform if they choose to do so.
You cannot make me say, write, or publish something I don't agree with; freedom of speech is also the freedom to NOT speak. This extends to individuals and platforms both.
In WW2, newspapers were controlled by the invaders; they were told what to publish, even if the people behind it disagreed.
This confounds the difference between a platform and a publisher. If you chose what to publish, you're a publisher. That means you chose to speak, or not to.
A platform does not chose, but merely let's people speak -- or if it doesn't it interferes with free speech.
>The concept of free speech has nothing to do with governments or private institutions.
But the manner in which governments can affect free speech is very much broader, because they can criminalize and regulate it in a way that is generally binding on all societal participants.
Saying that free speech has nothing to do with governments is like saying making contracts is nothing to do with governments: except that the government includes the judicial branch that decides disputes over contracts.
> Saying that free speech has nothing to do with governments is like saying making contracts is nothing to do with governments
The concept has absolutely nothing to do with governments. If you were the only person in the world living alone on an island, the concept would still exist.
That some entity deals with the concept, or doesn't, does not change this.
>Why is so hard to understand that government limitations on free speech are fundamentally different from private ones?
Because memories of the Cold War are fading quickly? Now in 2020 people (on both the Left and Right, mind you) are, with a straight face, trying to argue that social media should be seen as a "public utility", and regulated accordingly. We're rapidly on track to losing what is left of a free Internet.
> Why is so hard to understand that government limitations on free speech are fundamentally different from private ones?
Because Facebook wields more power than most countries' governments do. This would almost certainly be a lot less upsetting if it were a smaller site doing it.
That's a nice soundbite you've got there, but what does it actually mean?
Facebook can imprison people? Fine them? Revoke their permission to travel? Fire them from their jobs? Decide their contractual disputes? Determine the taxes they should pay?
Facebook can throw me in prison for saying the wrong thing? Facebook can issue notices to other publishers telling them they cannot publish what I write? Facebook exercises general control over which internet sites are available in my country?
Facebook choosing to try to censor something would be more effective at reducing the number of people who ever see it than most countries choosing to try to censor it would be.
Facebook makes your content available to a much larger audience than you might otherwise have access to, which is to say publishes it in the common English meaning of the word even if, under US law, it's not regarded as a publisher w.r.t user-generated content.
In your terms, Facebook might be a mere conduit of speech, but there is nothing that says it has to a perfect/unfiltered conduit.
I'm not saying Facebook is (or should be) considered a common carrier, I'm saying Facebook shouldn't get to have it both ways, as it currently does. The law hasn't quite caught up here yet.
I really appreciate what you've written here and I'm sorry you're going to get down-voted into oblivion. The down-vote button is sometimes used as a replacement for proper engagement.
Free speech is not what allows hate to grow, it's lack of it. Look at every awful event in history - it's always surrounded by misinformation, propaganda and a lack of free speech. The only way they can gain control is by oppressing the speech of their opposition.
Wish this would apply as well to the Armenian genocide denial content and other genocides in general.
Cause, you know, there have been many more other genocides throughout the history but apparently there is only one that fits the Western/Eurocentric view
If the Armenian genocide would have the same amount of "advertising" as holocaust does it would be on the same level of "notoriety".
The media complex creates a very disproportionate cult around certain events: the holomodor claimed 2x lives as the holocaust and yet it's hardly ever mentioned.
Everyone knows of holocaust but most will go "huh?" when you ask them about holomodor.
Funny how history can spinned to make certain events world famous and others to dissapear.
As far as I can tell it is a historical event that actually happened (just like the Holocaust), so I'm not sure why you're trying to marginalize it by associating it with neo-Nazis (and conservatives, who I notice you're trying to smear by association).
No Facebook, you don't get to use this as a PR win.
This is a bare minimum which should've been done a long time ago.
This isn't a free speech issue. Anybody can deny the holocaust, but Facebook should not be profiting from the propagation of fringe and deeply offensive views. There is no justification for doing so.
Facebook is not a library and it is not a repository of well-written, peer-reviewed ideas and thoughts. It's a machine designed to profit from outrage and polarisation.
OK, but when are they gonna remove communist-propaganda content?
Communism is not even mentioned in their Hate Speech Policy and believe it killed a lot more people than even fascism (90 million vs 10 million). Today this hateful ideology is spreading completely unchecked in Social Media.
The killing was done by our friends and neighbors who joined the state apparatus, you know. It is core to the ideology which promotes class "struggle".
As long as Facebook continues to recommend and target user-generated content based on engagement metrics, it will reward the sort of engagement generated by vicious deceptions such as holocaust denial. It is engineered to handle any post, including expressions of hate, by finding the most receptive audience possible for that post.
Rather than targeting a narrow swathe of Definitely Terrible content to censor, Facebook should target a wide swathe and rather than removing it, exempt it from the algorithmic feed, group recommendation input, etc. If my friend posts something hateful and I see it, I can respond and push back; if they post something hateful and only their friends who agree see it, and they also get a dozen different similarly hateful echo chambers in their group recommendations, that's far more destructive.
Regardless of my opinion on holocaust denialism, I'll never be comfortable with such a large communications platform having the power to decide what ideas are acceptable and unacceptable to discuss. Like all of us, I hold a number of opinions that many believe are incorrect or harmful so I feel the need to defend the principles of freedom of speech regardless of the issue at hand.
As for this policy change, I wonder what the limits will be here? Holocaust denialism isn't something I know much about, but my understanding is that there are different categories of holocaust denialism. A lot of holocaust "denialism" isn't strictly denial of the holocaust, but more the extent to which it happened. Many will argue that there were far less than 6 million deaths – which as I understand it isn't supported by the majority of academics.
However I do believe some denialism is academic in the same way a small handful of scientists disagree about climate change, there is also some academic disagreement about the treatment of Jews during holocaust and the total number of Jews killed. Are these kinds of discussions also off limits? Would I be allowed to share academic research which suggest 8 million Jews died, but not 4 million? Or is only discussion that centres on the 6 million number acceptable?
I suspect as usual any legitimate discussion that happens to fall outside the bounds of what's socially acceptable to those enforcing this policy will be removed and the bounds of what's acceptable will continue to shrink. I know Twitter and Reddit ban people for having the wrong academic views on race and gender these days so I assume this policy will be enforced similarly.
It does seem going forward only those with the correct views on race, gender, global warming, COVID-19, history, and social issues will be permitted access to digital communication platforms. I'm just thankful Facebook and Twitter weren't around to police wrong think during the gay and civil rights movements tbh.
> I'm just thankful Facebook and Twitter weren't around to police wrong think during the gay and civil rights movements tbh.
But during that time, there were mass media. They didn't allow the now-considered-right-thinking viewpoint (in the case of gays) or were not consistent in support of it (civil rights). Those who were pro-gay and pro-civil-rights needed alternate means of communication. The same may be true today.
Fortunately, we have such means - email, phone, text, snail mail. You don't have to talk to people who think like you on Facebook or Twitter. If the mainstream media becomes too censorious, talk somewhere else.
Note well: This does not mean that I am in favor of Facebook censoring, especially if it goes several steps further than just holocaust denial. But if they do, it's not the end of dissent. Dissent just grows underground.
Yeah, see, that's kind of the point. You censor a movement calling for genocide (or, more precisely, denying a genocide in the past). But if you're going to do that, do all of them. Censor Turkey denying the Armenian genocide. Censor those who sweep Stalin's crimes under the rug. Censor those who try to minimize the death toll of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap forward. Censor those who say that the Europeans' conquest of the Americas was anything other than a genocide.
And, if we were 50 years ago, censor the communists calling for global revolution. That's not a call for genocide, exactly, but it's a call for a lot of death, and for destruction of a class of people, which is in the same camp.
But the problem is, once you do that, do you stop there? Or do you say, well, the Soviets are behind this "civil rights" agitation, so we have to censor that, too? And this "gay rights" stuff is corrupting the morals of our youth, so we have to censor that?
And even if you say, no, violence only, don't censor anything else, somebody else is going to push for it to go further. How do you know that your viewpoint (violence only) is going to win? You don't.
So be very careful about calling for censorship, even of things that you are sure are wrong. Soon enough it will be applied to things you're sure are right.
Some comments are calling this move intolerant censorship, when it is not.
Tolerance is accepting that another person has a different view. But the people who are pushing lies about the Holocaust or a flat earth don’t have a different opinion, they are lying about well-known, verifiable facts. Now, some may say that censors often hide behind “facts” to suppress ideas they don’t like. The difference is that the Holocaust was a global tragedy and the earth is round and other “points of view” are both harmful and nonsense.
Censorship is a dangerous tool but not a tool which ought never be used.
The essential problem is _how_ these curation decisions get made. At present, Facebook is making free speech decisions much like a government, despite not having representation from “the people.” While Zuck may be a benevolent ruler, his successor may not be. We need government-like separation of powers and popular representation in order to maintain social platforms for many generations. Otherwise, we risk digital despotism.
The slope is incredibly slippery. It starts with Holocaust denial, then pedophilia advocacy, then saying blacks are racially inferior to whites, then to plain old anti-Semitism, then to saying men have higher iq than women, then to militant vegans ("meat is murder you say, incitement!"), then to people wishing that Trump will die in Covid, then to people arguing that U.S. soldiers should be drone-striked.
Two weeks ago Facebook banned a seminar arranged by a U.S. university because one of the speakers was Leila Khaled. A 76-year-old lady who hijacked two planes 50 years ago. How can what she had to say be so "dangerous" that Facebook had to ban her? Sooner or later, this censorship will encroach on what you have to say too.
We are already well down the slope moving at warp speed. Facebook is obviously selectively choosing what is hate speech according to their leftist political stance. They don't remove hate speech that is anti-police and inciting violence against police (BLM) despite dozens of police having been attacked and maybe half a dozen killings.
They have shut down BLM pages? BLM irrefutably spreads hate, especially towards cops, even black cops, and their actions have gotten lots of cops killed. Many of them openly spread racial hate directed towards whites including the Dallas BLM shooter who killed 5 cops and said he wanted to kill white people and white cops in particular.
If they shut down a vague classification of people like holocaust deniers, which is like shutting down flat earthers, then clearly they should shut down an organized hate group.
See... you've downvoted this because you've decided BLM is "your team" because of politics and that is a problem. You can't think objectively about what political actors are actually doing in the real world, and that is very dangerous.
HN doesn't allow you to down vote replies to your own comments so that was someone else. Rather than accusing me of hypocrisy, you could read my other comments on this article to know my position on free speech.
"Unfortunately, even while the protests about the cartoons were still underway, a new problem about convincing Muslims of the genuineness of our respect for freedom of expression has arisen because of Austria's conviction and imprisonment of David Irving for denying the existence of the Holocaust. We cannot consistently hold that it should be a criminal offense to deny the existence of the Holocaust and that cartoonists have a right to mock religious figures. David Irving should be freed.
Before you accuse me of failing to understand the sensitivities of victims of the Holocaust or the nature of Austrian anti-Semitism, I should tell you that I am the son of Austrian Jews. My parents escaped Austria in time, but my grandparents did not. All four of my grandparents were deported to ghettos in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Two of them were sent to Lodz, in Poland, and then probably murdered with carbon monoxide at the extermination camp at Chelmno. Another one fell ill and died in the overcrowded and underfed ghetto at Theresienstadt. My maternal grandmother was the only survivor.
So, I have no sympathy for David Irving's absurd denial of the Holocaust-which, in his trial, he said was a mistake. I support efforts to prevent any return to Nazism in Austria or anywhere else. But how is the cause of truth served by prohibiting Holocaust denial? If there are still people crazy enough to deny that the Holocaust occurred, will they be persuaded by imprisoning some who express that view? On the contrary, they will be more likely to think that views people are being imprisoned for expressing cannot be refuted by evidence and argument alone."
It is avery strong way to publicly, and legally, counter that specific case of propanda and falsehoods. Extending that to social media can only be a good thing. It also makes it very clear, that everyone agreeing with people like Irving, and following them, is aslo most likely a Nazi.
And these claims have been refuted so often already, that not everyone making these claims has to be refuted on an individual basis.
It's always fascinating to me to see who will step up to carry water for Holocaust deniers being able to spread their nonsense on someone else's computer servers as if nobody can figure out how to make a new website.
Holocaust deniers can---and do!---make their own fora all the time. Their freedom of speech is not abridged. Nor their freedom of the press.
On the other hand, forcing Facebook to host content against the owner's wishes is abridgment of their freedom of the press.
People seem to forget the public responsibility to support media you trust. If you don't like that Facebook blocked holocaust denial, then stop using it. Use media you support. The whole point of the First Amendment is to support a marketplace of ideas, free from government interference.
And if there is a slippery slope and Facebook bans, I dunno, trans support groups tomorrow, then we can talk about not using Facebook because banning that content is anti-trans and that's bad by itself, not because they have no right to shape the communications ecosystem they pay for hosting on their servers.
It's the Internet. If you don't like the rules on someone else's BBS, stop expecting them to solve your problems for you and host your own.
Censoring opposition has not once yielded positive results in the history of the world. My personal conspiracy theory is that policies like these are subversively being used to push HD since no one could possibly be stupid enough to think this would help.
True. Great grand parent was pretty strong in their claim “has not once yielded positive results in the history of the world.” I only need to provide one counter example to disprove this, while they need something far more significant, like several examples and a sufficiently good description of some mechanism for why this is the case in general.
Surely it's up to the GP to bring at least some evidence for such a broad claim before the obligation falls on other people to spend their valuable time refuting it.
Idk what Facebook's decision will yield and I want a healthier discourse more than anyone else. The thing I would like to add to the conversation is that I think its important to know what people like Nick Cannon think or DeSean Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. Many prominent celebrities are followers like Snoop Dogg and P. Diddy.
When Nick Cannon came on air and said horrible things he got challenged and presumably (at least I hope), understands how his comments came off.
The main battle online is disinformation from not genuine sources. Many Holocaust deniers fit this bill and should be removed. That being said, there also needs to be room to discuss history and try to understand the events that led up to historical atrocities and I really want to know what the best way is to facilitate healthy discourse. I think the current method of upvoting and downvoting on the internet leads to an inorganic and not a serendipitous experience.
NYT and WSJ have sections for Featured Comments in an effort to put insightful comments at the top and eliminate recency bias. I just want to do anything to fight the tribalism happening in the USA.
Evidence is that when large social media sites ban hateful groups, they re-congregate somewhere else in much smaller numbers. So while the bans don’t eliminate all of them, they are actually fairly effective at turning the temperature down.
Consider people like Alex Jones. He’s still making stuff, his hardcore fans still subscribe to his stuff, but he’s lost all of his marginal followers as well as the massive on-ramp that YouTube provided him in the form of search and recommendations.
I don't know anyone who even knows what Parler is, let alone has used it. This is gonna be the next Voat.
Websites that are predominantly extremist content because the only people using them are those banned from all the major platforms don't tend to succeed.
I think that largely speaks to your bubble has blinded you, and thus the problem as a whole.
With people on the right, Parler is very well known. There are a pretty large number of celebrities and politicians - and unlike Gab not merely people who were dumped from other social media platforms.
Scott Adams, Rand Paul, Ron Paul, Sean Hannity, Ted Cruz, Mark Levin, The Daily Mail, a number of other conservative politicians I'm not particularly familiar with - That's just from a quick scan of the recommended people to follow.
None of these people have been banned from the major platforms though, and as far as I can tell all of them are still active on the majors. Parler is thus only one of many social networks that they use, and likely not the one with the most reach. So deplatforming them from the majors would have an effect.
Can it be done? Who's been banned from the major platforms and has then established a similarly sized platform of their own elsewhere? You have to admit that this is at least a huge roadblock for hateful extremists, no?
Let's take an extreme example of someone almost everyone agrees was a hateful extremist -- Osama bin Laden. Prior to his death, should he have been allowed to post on Twitter encouraging the murders of more people? Would Twitter have been a "hateful extremist" for banning him and other Al Qaeda accounts? Or -- and here me out here -- would it have been acceptable to ban him? If so, then there is a line somewhere. And if there is a line, then why shouldn't modern day Neo-Nazis calling for the deaths of Jews be on the other side of the line as well?
It seems to me that the normalization of Neo-Nazi Holocaust denialist content will directly lead to more deaths in the near future, so that's clearly beyond the line for me too. I mean, it already lead to the deaths of tens of millions, so we do in fact have an answer here to "What's the worst that could happen?"
And if you're willing to defer to Facebook's judgment here, then the problem is solved. Holocaust denial is banned from Facebook, same as death threats. Discussion resolved. We're in agreement.
The textbook definition of people not on your side is “hateful extremist”. Everyone who doesn’t agree with someone is the worst person ever. Attempting to claim that your censorship holds the moral imperative can be used to make dubiously ethical decisions under the guise of a divine mission.
Also this has recently happened with many Twitch streamers. Destiny, Vaush, Sargon, and others got deplatformed and moved elsewhere.
One could argue that Andrew Wakefield, the founder of the anti-vaccine movement, has found/made a stronger platform after losing his license and being publicly denounced than he ever had as a doctor.
What if 99+% of people agree that someone is a hateful extremist? Isn't "the only important moral imperative is unrestricted free speech above all else" itself an extremist position? Very few people agree with what you're espousing, so, just practically speaking, there's always going to be extremist views considered so far beyond the pale that they are always "censored" by society (pro-pedophilia would be a good example of one in the west).
If you live your life by moral imperatives such as utilitarianism/the veil of ignorance, then you will in fact be compelled by moral imperative to denounce people whose views do not lead to doing the most good for all (as e.g. is true of anti-vaxxers).
Such a person or belief should still be afforded due process or a reasonable platform to state their case. Otherwise, how else could it be evident to all that they’re truly wrong? I would hardly regard the ideas of due process or balanced debate to be niche ideas.
Also, to my knowledge, what you said is incorrect. It is perfectly legal to debate the legality and ethicality of pedophilia and vaccination. It is not legal to advocate for them, but advocation and debate aren’t the same thing. For example, the Wikipedia articles on Holocaust denial steelman the opposition quite well but no one would accuse those articles of advocating for denial of the Holocaust.
However anecdotally, I was a part of the occupy movement back in 2011. A large part of our spread was to stay on the street and deliver propaganda. After we were de-platformed by the police using various scare tactics (including arrest) our spread was heavily restricted and the movement quickly died. It seems to me that these tactics of stopping our spread by the police were pretty successful.
Such content should not be removed/censored but officially annotated (a red text aside of the original content would be a generic disclaimer and link to a full dissertation on why such kind of content is both erroneous and harmful to humanity). And of course such content should be ranked down in the recommendation system.
The Bill of Rights and the Civil Rights Act - must be respected by corporate interests and their employees.
In the USA the powerful wishes to dictate how much advertisement I have access to and from whom. The freedom of speech and freedom of association are not for compromise from anyone. when left on their own FACEBOOK discriminates (title two) and seeks to influence elections (by unchecked data collection) to that end, it now seeks to control your programming for their foreign interests, and in the process remove your bill of rights and access to the Civil Rights Act (under the cover of their absolute truth ) any American who is loyal to the Bill of Rights should end the Tierney of unknown elites and their attempt to deny your constitutional rights once and for all.
That would be amazing if I hadn't been blocked for posting obvious jokes and satire, and for using expressions like "white trash" (I'm white btw).
Then on my free time I report tons of people and groups sharing CP, and they're rarely banned, the groups seldom removed... simply because the pedophiles paint strokes over the snapshots of the stuff they share. You can't see the genitals and face of the kid? It's no longer CP for FB.
That kind of stuff is what later fuels conspiracy theories like pizzagate.
This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Similar discussions (re Cloudflare terminates 8chan): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20616055 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395