Comment by throwaway5752 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway5752 | Hacker News Reader

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This is sophistry. If I have a business, I can say "shirts and shoes required". We have laws about protected classes that are vulnerable to discrimination as exceptions, but on _my private property_ I can - within proscribed legal limits - dictate acceptable behavior, and ask people not adhering to those rules to leave.

You can dress it up, but Facebook is a private website. They do fancy stuff with information they collect about you and use it to sell you ads. They have terms of service that define acceptable behavior, and they have no SLA / guarantee about what you share reaching others or what others share reaching you. That is the deal.

If you don't like the deal, Facebook is not a right, and you can choose to not use Facebook or not, depending on your morals.

Now, what the article described, "Facebook does not intend to suppress the posts itself. Instead, it would offer the software to enable a third party — in this case, most likely a partner Chinese company — to monitor popular stories and topics that bubble up as users share them across the social network, the people said. Facebook’s partner would then have full control to decide whether those posts should show up in users’ feeds." <- This is completely censorship. Governments censor.

Facebook saying it doesn't want a bunch of Macedonian fake news click bait stories crapping up it's platform is a business decision by a private company.

Is it sophistry?

What is the definition of censorship?

>Censorship is the suppression of free speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.

How does this not fit under said definition? Whether or not the act is done by a "public" or a "private" entity is irrelevant to the definition.

Many will say that "free speech" is a negative right, and as such it only means anything in the context of governments: in other words, it is something the government cannot take from you.

Government can use force (the very real threat of jail, fines, etc) against you to suppress your speech. All Facebook can really do is prevent you from using their site, in the end. Naturally, if they work with a government, Facebook becomes a kind of arm of the government, but that's a separate context (but it is also what this article is about).

>Government can use force (the very real threat of jail, fines, etc) against you to suppress your speech.

Is free speech a thing worth keeping or not? If it is, than anything that realistically threatens it on a global scale needs to be kept in check.

Now, let's not pretend that the only way to suppress speech is to use violence. Governments have a long history of using much subtler and sometimes more efficient tactics like blacklisting. For example, in Soviet Union many "inconvenient" people were free to live as they chose, except they had no chance in hell of getting decent housing or a good job, and were ostracized by many out of fear of "political contagion".

So it's not about violence. It's about power. And companies like Google and Facebook have "soft" power rivaling many nation-states.

I wasn't aware that Google or Facebook were required services. You can easily make the choice to use a different email or search provider, and can opt-out of social media. On the other hand, I am not aware of a way in which I can similarly opt-out of what the government of my country does, or even being forced to pay for what they're doing.

There are concerns that I have about the level with which some of these companies cooperate with state actors, especially when we're unaware of it. When these companies become partners of government in secret, the state security apparatus is accordingly expanded in ways that do threaten us.

Does that mean if I'm the editor of a newspaper I'm required to publish every letter to the editor I receive? Even if it's inarticulate neo-Nazi barf?

Censorship is something the government does. The First Amendment doesn't apply to private entities. Private entities are not obliged to provide a platform for whatever opinion you feel like spewing.

This topic has devolved into ridiculous flamewars.

>Censorship is something the government does. The First Amendment doesn't apply to private entities.

The first amendment is not the definition of censorship.

So, if the government asks nicely and Facebook "decides" to delete all your posts, you claim that's not censorship?

No... if the government is getting involved at all I definitely think it's censorship.

The Chinese case is obviously censorship. I don't think anyone disputes that.

> if the government is getting involved

How do you draw the line? What would you do if a politician ask you nicely?

"Fuck you, bring me a court order."

Yeah, this is actually government censorship, under the guise of a state-owned company being given the tools to execute it.

We're well past "shirt and shoes required" sophistry spin.

It's sophistry because under your definition it is impossible for Facebook to apply any form of control over the content on their platform, which they are clearly entitled to do.

Your definition (accepting for a moment the opening paragraph from the Wikipedia article on censorship as a "definition") can be logically reduced to, "Suppression of information which may be objectionable by a group". That, for instance, describes HN comment and article moderation. It is so overly broad as to be able to describe practically anything.

When companies have wide-ranging impacts on real-world events (governments, economies, land use, etc) they tend to get regulated. I would be shocked if the large tech co's weren't subject to increased regulation 10y from now.

So why is taxi a regulated industry?

Why is a Hispanic lady selling her home made dish is subject to regulation and jail term ?

I still don't really see your point. OP is saying that they are censoring. Yes, they are legally allowed to censor whatever they want on their site. But it's still censorship. Just because they are allowed to do it doesn't make it not censorship. And it can still be morally and ethically wrong, but legal.

> If you don't like the deal, Facebook is not a right, and you can choose to not use Facebook or not, depending on your morals.

No one in their right mind thinks Facebook policy's are their rights. Facebook can openly start censoring news if it wants to. I view Breitbart as a publication that actively censors leftist news and NYT as publication that censors libertarian news. They are both good businesses but albeit far tinier than Facebook.

The moment facebook starts "dealing with fake news" I am going sell off my FB shares. Just like I sold my twitter shares long back once they banned account of my favourite blogger for criticizing Islam.

I think you've lost the thread with you NYT and Brietbart examples. These companies are publishers, and since when is publishing censorship? This makes as little sense as saying Comedy Central censors dramas because they choose not to show dramas.

> Comedy Central censors dramas because they choose not to show dramas.

Yes that is my point. It is indeed and absurd way to look at it yet the underlying principle is the same i.e. a business selecting only specific type of things to show because it makes profits for them. Facebook can use the exact same principle to deny their platform to some group of news just because it reduces their profits.

Facebook is a different beast than The NYT and Breitbart, and to a lesser extent Comedy Central. The later are creators of original content. Facebook is not.

I take a very dim view of saying that a creator of original content is censor by simply choosing not to create something. Censorship inherently is a veto over someone else's work. Facebook, because it is the middle man between the creator and the audience, is in a position to censor.

You can think that this is bad to expell people that way from social interactions with others. That it is bad for a minority to decide the news a majority should have easy access to.

And therefore, you could decide as a society that you want to forbid Facebook to do that.

It assumes you are in a democracy. China obviously is not. But if you're lucky to live in one, then you don't have to accept what Facebook does, at least in your country, because they are a private company.

When you run a global communication platform, you should be held to a higher standard.

Communication platforms are an oligopoly. When they each have censorship baked in the cake, the free-market-user-choice argument doesn't hold up very well.

The government wouldn't do it. A private company, perhaps even a Facebook-owned subsidiary or a partner, would do it, according to the government's guidelines. Does that make it not censorship?

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