Facebook Employees Pushed to Remove Trump’s Posts as Hate Speech | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Employees Pushed to Remove Trump’s Posts as Hate Speech

wsj.com

13 pointsxname29 comments

I was in a discussion with someone here about Trump and "hate speech", and I'm curious if anyone can actually point to anything that Trump has said on record that would qualify as "hate speech" under US law.

Also, any nation's law regarding hate speech would qualify to give this idea more dimension. I know Germany has especially strict regulations around this, and wonder if anything Trump has said in this country would qualify as "hate speech" in that country.

Thoughts?

There is no such thing as hate speech in US law.

How embarrassing. Zuckerberg should clean house.

What do you find embarrassing and who do you think should be fired in this case? I see an organization grappling with its own ability to make the news, and which ultimately decided to overrule its users reports.

He should fire anyone who was "push[ing] to remove Trump's posts". Let them go embarrass some other employer.

What is embarrassing about that? Do you think all employees will always agree about what constitutes correct and ethical use of the employer's products? Do you strive for complete agreement of all employees? Or do you welcome critical internal discussion?

You have to draw the line somewhere, though, and this kind of proto-fascism is beyond the pale.

To be clear, you view individual employees asking if a user is using a product in a way coherent with the company's views and needs as proto-fascism? What about this is fascistic?

What line would you like to draw? How would employees know which questions they can ask about product usage without being fired?

>To be clear, you view individual employees asking if a user is using a product in a way coherent with the company's views and needs as proto-fascism? What about this is fascistic?

We're not talking about a guy who's trying to set up a porn business here. This is political speech. It would be one thing if Facebook banned all political speech, but it doesn't.

These are people who want to suppress speech by people who don't share their politics. I understand the impulse, but I think as a society the minimum we can ask of anyone in a position of power (commercial or governmental) is they suppress that impulse.

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