Facebook Collaborating with Israeli Government on What Should Be Censored

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/post/donald-trump-pepe-the-fr...

The point is that there now exists backchannels between governments and corporations who control modern communication, and those backchannels are being used to censor anything.

The content of the messages does not matter one iota, they could have the best intentions in the world. The slippery slope is that we have people in power making decisions without checks and balances, and especially without the checks and balances we already have in place. Even assuming intentions pure as driven snow eventually those backchannels will be abused. It is a matter of when, not if.

That is the slippery slope.

Wasting my breath because this comes up so often, but this is not in any way true.

"[G]uarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

Brandenburg v. Ohio

What about illegal actions like downloading copyrighted material? Depicting Muhammad? Criticising president Erdogan?

They don't. The government does. Which is why even that simple rule is submission to an external, uncontrollable force. The right approach is to sort out your own internal values (free speech, or rule of law, or whatever) and act accordingly to that internal principle.

For example, if you believe certain speech should not be censored, and officials in the country you operate in disagree, you can cease operations or fight back. This approach has been taken by many in China.

Or, if you acknowledge the legitimacy of the local government, and your values say that means ALL its edicts and claimed jurisdiction, then you might collaborate fully.

Or there might be something in the middle. The point is that your internal values guide, not anything else. Retain personal sovereignty and/or corporate responsibility.

What about a post that calls for women to vote? Or for black people to sit in the front of the bus?

That sounds like a recipe for abuse. It would be more reasonable to only ban enticing violence, for example.

Should blaming Islam, the religion, for disseminating hate be considered hate speech? Islam does exactly that, the Coran having passages that are hateful and truth be told, we can all see what happens when such a religion ends up being followed by extremists with the ability to buy guns. Sure you can blame those nutjobs, but then again, they wouldn't have such an easy time recruiting if we wouldn't be so tolerant of Islam being taught in schools.

Now don't get me wrong, because our own Old Testament also has passages containing hate speech and our religion is also guilty of crusades and murders, but thankfully we outgrew them. Religion, at least in the hands of the uneducated masses, is poison and should have no manifestation in public life outside the places of worship. And on Israel I have nothing against them, except that I think the oppressed became the oppressors, being guilty of unjustified crimes against Palestinians, financed by the tax-payers in the west no less.

Now, should I be allowed to say any of this? Isn't this hate speech? And if it should be censored, then why?

Just because it is illegal? Illegal for whom? In many countries you're allowed to say the above, whereas in other countries it is illegal. Should Facebook just ban everything that's illegal somewhere in this world?

They are clearly doing just that. You know, in Europe pictures of nude children aren't so taboo. In fact I bet most parents down here have pictures of their children nude and you can see nude children aged six and below on most beaches.

(I will add: if you could plausibly argue that media owners tended to be Catholic, or vegetarian, or Scottish, or whatever, I think you should be able to express concerns about how that would affect discourse without being called a bigot; and likewise here. So I do not condemn your comment. But no group of people are a hivemind.)

And "jewish control" sounds really negative.

While the enterprises named were founded or headed by individuals with Jewish ancestry, there is not much else of significance being said. The statement implies that "Jewish control" is a meaningful idea, but it is not.

First of all, Jews are a very heterogeneous group and vary considerably ethnically, religiously and politically. There is absolutely no central Jewish "authority", and Jews hold very diverse views on all topics. Secondly, imagining there's communication among the 5/7 CEO's to coordinate their corporate policies on the basis of any "Jewish agenda" is in tinfoil territory, and absurd in the extreme. Finally if the commenter is implying there's some kind of built-in, genetic "Jewish worldview" that predisposes to disfavored corporate policies, that's obviously fallacious.

The motivation for making such assertions is unclear, indeed what the writer hoped to communicate is equally foggy. However, the comment emits an aura of antisemitism, as if attempting to attribute undesirable corporate behavior to the mere fact of CEO's presumed Jewish origins. I believe that represents troublesome prejudice that needs to be discouraged.

Comparing the deaths of massive numbers of civilians to Facebook posts is tone-deaf at best.

So, when the POTUS is going to start drumming up support for the next war, Facebook should block him, her supporters, and the media puppet-show that will cheer-lead this adventure?

What about Israeli settler groups? They use violence to take land from its owners. Should they also be blocked?

This is a tug of war between cultures, all sides are culpable.

Wonder how much of that selective reporting is Omidyar vs. the journalists.

It doesn't matter what country it is.

Or put another way, if you support this, you also (whether you realize it or not) support China, Iran, the UAE, North Korea, etc. etc. etc. doing the same thing. Think you don't? Just wait for the arguments after one of those does something awful.

As Facebook stated, there is no way to please everyone on this. Even a simple policy of "we censor nothing" is bound to piss off huge numbers of people and many governments

As a Jew, active on HN for years, I have not seen this to be the case at all.

I have seen sporatic posts that appeared biased or racist on both sides of the aisle...definitely not more or less than exists in the real world... and certainly not enough to generalize about YC at all.

Really makes you think, huh?

That doesn't necessarily equate to antisemitism but doesn't exclude it either. Anti-Israel sentiment is often associated with strains of "social liberalism"[0] and related political positions, leading to anti-Israel comments being made in the context of policy discussion.

OTOH HN readers have shown keen interest in Israeli technological developments. At times praise for their successes has been evident, so obviously not all comments about Israel are negative. I've had the idea there are distinct subsets of HN users with different attitudes. Depending on the subject matter, one or another group is more inspired to add comments.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism

Edit: added reference

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12488743 and marked it off-topic.

Your second point is unrelated to the topic and runs counter to the opinion of the United Nations Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the International Court of Justice.