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Comment by beedogs | Hacker News Reader

I left facebook last month. I don't miss it, I'm happier for it, and articles like this kinda vindicate that decision.

It's nice to see that the things I was observing there are, in fact, exactly what the company is okay with: racism, sexism, homophobia are fine on Facebook as long as you craft your posts and comments with surgical precision. It explains how, nearly every time I reported one of the assholes making those types of posts, nothing would happen.

Edit: and, as usual, downvotes instead of replies. Never change, HN.

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I suspect you're being downvoted because your assessment of the issue to "Facebook is okay with racism, sexism, homophobia" etc. is seen as an oversimplification, no different than someone from Germany/Israel saying the U.S. (and the 1st Amendment) is OK with neo-Nazis, or China thinking America as a den of smut and anarchy.

Except Facebook being okay with discrimination and hate speech is literally spelled out in the slide deck. As long as you don't tickle the right combination of "protected class" by using an appropriate modifier (e.g. "black children" instead of "all black people") you can say whatever the hell you want about people.

It's not my fault so many users here are being willfully obtuse about this.

Why shouldn't I be able to say whatever I want about people, even if it deviates from the norm. Norms change, "Gays are people" and "Women should be able to vote" were 100% norm-violating speech until recently. In fact, there's a few countries where those are still unwelcome speech - should we bow to their social norms?

Shouldn't I be able to say things like that? Aren't you happy people did? Do you believe that our current worldview is perfect and cannot be challenged by concepts outside of the Overton window?

If you diss the community in a pompous way while being part of it yourself, of course you're going to get downvoted. Rightly so.

Since your comment distorted the hard problem Facebook faces with uncharitable snark ("okay with"), there were other reasons to downvote as well, even if one disagrees with Facebook.

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