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Comment by iMerNibor | Hacker News Reader

> “It’s a tricky issue,” she says, because once the companies decide they’ll do hands-on work for political groups, “it’s hard for them to say we’ll help these groups, but not others.”

Exactly this, if you help one you gotta help all of them unless it's against the law for them do to so (banned parties).

Stop with the stupid policing of "hate speech", this will just lead to anything even remotely questionable getting deleted/flagged (see current youtube ad issues, where basically everything gets demonetized and you have to appeal that to maybe get it back)

> The issue gets thornier when it comes to working with groups on the fringes of the political spectrum.

NO it does not get thornier/worse or anything like that, just let the parties advertise like any other party would be able to. Voters will decide if they want that party to represent them - that's not up to media or other any entity.

Edit: formatting, clarification

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As someone who grew up in Germany I can tell you that banning some hate speech does most certainly not lead to "anything remotely questionable getting deleted/flagged". Holocaust denial and racism are not normal political views, and pretending otherwise is disingenuous.

While I agree with your sentiment -now-, it is a slippery slope. As recent as what...50 or so years ago, racism was a 'normal political view' so to speak, in USA at least...depending on your definition of normal. What's to say that someone in 2070 saying 'Speaking out against communism and AI leadership are not normal political views'. Normal is always going to be a 'moving target', and banning everything outside of 'normal' doesn't seem conducive to a free environment.

There’s a false dichotomy here between the status quo and banning ads. My preference is for letting anyone run whatever, provided it must be publically accessible for anyone else to view and debunk. Political ads before the Internet weren’t necessarily more honest. Their dishonesty was just more-openly debated.

I’m not dead set on this proposal (if one can call it that). I was hoping for that discussion more than this cake or death.

But nobody is suggesting banning "everything outside of normal". This is not an all-or-nothing proposition, there’s no reason for the slope to be slippery. You can ban holocaust denial and nothing else, or ban hate speech that fits a very specific set of criteria.

Did banning shouting "Fire!" in a movie theatre lead to all speech being banned in all movie theatres?

If only.

> Did banning shouting "Fire!" in a movie theatre lead to all speech being banned in all movie theatres?

No, it led to people calling for the resistance to the WWI draft being imprisoned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

> This is not an all-or-nothing proposition, there’s no reason for the slope to be slippery.

I think that if you draft your country's constitution to say, "We have freedom of speech, except for calling for genocide and/or denying the Holocaust," then that can work reasonably well, and it won't necessarily turn into a broader ban. If you actually write a short list of exceptions into your constitution, then that can work.

But the US constitution isn't written that way. We have very broad freedom of speech, and the only way to curtail it is via the Supreme Court deciding that certain kinds of speech are somehow an exception to rules. Libel and slander are, of course, exceptions, but they're ancient ones with a lot of case law explaining exactly what's forbidden. There are other exceptions, mostly involving things like angry mobs.

But if you want to start saying, "This speech is forbidden because it promotes bad ideas," then you need to fundamentally change how the Supreme Court interprets the first amendment. And once we go there, then we have no idea where we're going to wind up.

> Did banning shouting "Fire!" in a movie theatre lead to all speech being banned in all movie theatres?

No, because we never banned shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater; the idea that such a thing was unprotected speech which could be banned is non-authoritative dicta from a Supreme Court ruling which did, however, uphold he criminalization of core political speech in the form of protests against the WWI draft, which has since been overturned and is widely recognized as a major failure when it comes to free speech. Which was worse than a content-neutral ban on all speech in theaters.

Shouting "Fire!" isn't hate speech, it's basically a kind of social fraud: as a member of society, if you scream that some emergency is happening there is an expectation that such an emergency actually exists or could have been believed to exist. Especially in a case like this where the response is likely to injur people.

Free speech is about being able to state your oppinion. The person shouldn't "Fire!" in your example doesn't have the oppinion that there is a fire.

There are no easy answers like 'just allow everything'. Should Facebook be sending embeds to 'legalize child porn' groups to help them focus their ads? What if they call themselves 'remove the restrictive and undemocratic age of consent laws' groups?

Embeds to 'make the US a purely Christian nation' groups, if they call themselves 'allow "traditional" values in the court room' groups?

You can't just wave your hands and say second order effects don't happen. There's not a slippery slope, just one long slog of difficult moral decisions, and we'll get some wrong and some right according to our inheritors, but you still have to engage and try to find the actual balance.

I fall on the side of allowing all speech that is not expressly illegal. It relies on the reader taking the time to educate themselves but it also allows for greater freedom of expression.

Yes, I'm well aware that deplorable people would be given a platform. I'm okay with that. I don't agree with them, but I can't justify not allowing them a platform to express themselves. No, Facebook is not legally obligated to provide that platform.

If it isn't expressly illegal in the host country, allow it.

Speech we approve of needs no defense. It was once offensive to suggest women should be allowed to vote. To think we are the apex of morality is hubris. So, I default to allowing everything that is not expressly illegal - as a moral view. I don't actually control the choices at the media giants or anything.

> Should Facebook be sending embeds to 'legalize child porn' groups to help them focus their ads?

Why not? I know it sounds horrible, but unless the ads explicitly serve child porn, a platform for legalizing child porn is merely a political position and covered under the first amendment.

You can go to a city hall, and start making your case for legalizing child porn and they can't do anything to prevent you from doing that (legally).

I know you're using this example as a rhetoric, but in US simulated child porn (like anime) is already legal and protected under the first amendment.

> Embeds to 'make the US a purely Christian nation' groups, if they call themselves 'allow "traditional" values in the court room' groups?

Either you don't live in America (or recently moved here) or you live in a deep bubble. I have seen ads about making America a Christian nation, similarly ads about putting traditional values in the courtrooms (check out the whole ten commandments in courtroom controversy).

It confuses the idea of child porn with literal child porn, similar to hate speech/depictions of violence with literal violence, neo-Nazis with literal 1940 Nazis, historical statues with racists. Free speech makes on sense in this regressive mindset.

A simpler way to say your accusation is that 'it confuses the sign with the signified', and I didn't.

I feel like this thread got a little lost.

There's a difference between something being legal and being societally encouraged. The original article is about companies working actively to help groups. I think 'age of consent' people should be allowed to shout it from the street corner of their choice, but I don't believe we as a society have to then applaud or patronize people who make a business out of selling them bullhorns.

"Some people say" Google refusing to run your ads or host your site (which I guess we've now slipped to from 'sending employees to help grow your business') is censorship, but that's only the case if you're a protected class.

And nope, born and raised in the good old midwest, and in fact had write essays on the ten commandments controversy in grade school.

> As recent as what...50 or so years ago, racism was a 'normal political view' so to speak, in USA at least

It still is. Never went away.

That is a pretty daring statement considering Germany just passed far-reaching anti-hate speech legislation with no precise definition of what hate-speech is, leaving it to social networks to interpret.

The law does not refer to vague "hate speech" (or a translation thereof) or extends any definition of illegal content. Instead it lists specific types of content for which there is decades of legal precedents. It extends the liability of platforms (which makes them more eager to delete borderline cases) but does not change anything about the legality of content itself.

(FWIW, I see many problems with that law and it should never have passed but there is so much misinformation being spread that it gets tiring to correct.)

No, now you are blatantly spreading misinformation yourself. The law has extended and modified the penal code.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz

Just check 'verabschiedetes gesetz'.

You misread the Wikipedia article. That section compares a draft with the final law. Between those two versions the list of laws that social networks need to watch out for has been changed. The law has not modified the Criminal Code, nor was it ever planned. Please read carefully before accusing others of spreading misinformation or you will do it yourself.

Here are the full four pages of the law as passed: https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Gesetzgebungsverfahren/Dokume... and this is an English translation: https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Gesetzgebungsverfahren/Dokume...

But wouldn’t people still have those ideas? My worry is that preventing their discussion you never know how many people think a certain way until it is too late.

I think it's disingenuous to claim that's all that's being removed from Facebook in Germany, even today. My wife is German and she's seen pages/profiles get banned that are just generally anti-immigration.

I’d love to see proof of that

Remember how in Josh Green's book on Bannon, Green describes how Bannon and Breitbart specifically targeted young tech employees for divisive propaganda? Bannon saw tech workers as a productive demographic to incite hate in.

The ultimate useful idiots: highly intelligent but generally insulated from and disinterested in the world around them.

It’s absolutely not against the law for Facebook to decide who it wants to help or not help. It’s a private entity.

Of course they'd be allowed to, where would we end up though?

Just from a moral standpoint a huge company, like google and facebook are, should not discriminate who they give advertising space to (in the context of political parties during an election)

From a moral standpoint, discriminating against racists is fine.

Having opposing political views does not a racist make.

Should people never make any assumptions about what motivates political views, even when it is obvious?

They should not actually, it's a gross disregard for personal borders.

Agree with me, disagree with me, don't try to poke in my head.

Actually I can't think of a worse form of bigotry than attributing motivations for behavior of others.

Really? Nothing worse than that? How about, I dunno Jim Crow laws.

Without derailing the discussion by saying why, I'm anti-mass immigration.

Not an ounce of racism motivates it. I absolutely despise the BNP and the alt-right.

You thinking it's obvious I'm a racist shows how close-minded people on both sides of the debate can be.

I made an abstract statement, I didn't enumerate the views I think are obviously motivated by racism.

Opposition to refugees (modest numbers, carefully vetted since decades, coming from real crisis situations) is at least motivated by dimwitted xenophobia. Opposition to mass immigration would be a different category.

What level constitutes "mass"?

Does this include foreign spouses? Students?

In the US, more immigration is a no-brainer. It's good for the US economically. https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2017/09/05/the-very...

P.s. discussion isn't bad if conducted in good faith and not a vehicle for propaganda. It's the lies and hate-mongering in the ads that are bad.

But then you have to define racists, and this prevents people who are not racist from speaking out of fear of being discriminated against. The cure is worse than the disease. Discrimination is bad.

That is a rock solid gold final sentence.

Like, I don't know if that was a carefully thought out zinger or an accidental numbnut of a line but bravo. Bravo.

Secret discrimination is bad.

Clear arguments from your core principles for why not allow something is nigh and day different from the chilling effects that blanket labeling has.

Yes, the problem is clearly very nasty, and yes it will inevitably have some marginal effects.

But the disease is ignorance, the cure is exercising discrimination AND providing the information to help ignorance. AND of course allow the debate of that information.

The debate can be as simple as the 60 piece twitter story about that Viking textile fragment with Allah that turns out to be not Allah. (Where the scholar pointed out that the dating is wrong, the person that claimed that the text is Allah is wrong because there was no space on the textile for that. End of story.)

And in case of the Holocaust, yes, there's probably a 0.000000001% chance that we're being bamboozled by the New World Order, but that's almost the same as end of story (because we have more pressing matters).

Is that really true? Is it OK for a doctor to refuse to operate on a racist or a police officer to refuse to protect a racist? What about a grocery store refusing to let a non-actively demonstrating racist shop in their store or a school teacher to educate their children? Racists are humans too.

However, you don't have a moral obligation to help a racist send their message. Otherwise, treat all people as people.

God, the moral equivocations you have to go through to get to such a puritanical humanist outcome must be quite something.

'Treat all people as people' is exactly the culture that allows these assholes to become POTUS. By not acknowledging the danger of some views you allow it to fester and, ironically, become a great threat to the safety of other humans/people.

It's actually even worse than you say... It's not just that failing to acknowledge hate allows racist threats to fester. Failing to acknowledge hate allows outside groups -- whether other countries or the very wealthy -- to inflame hate to achieve their quite different goals (weaken liberal democracy, tax cuts for themselves).

And acknowledging hate apparently allows the haters to become POTUS, and subsequently "weaken liberal democracy, tax cuts for themselves". You have to admit, that skews the calculation somewhat.

I’d argue the danger of shutting down conversations you don’t agree with is much worse in the long run.

It doesn't take any moral equivocations at all. Immanuel Kant points it out as one of 3 moral principles that are always true, regardless of conditions. [1]

Once you accept a moral system that justifies no longer treating human beings as people, you've allowed yourself a system that can justify anything. Look at every genocide of the past century; they all start with classifying a group of people as sub-human and worthy of discrimination.

That is a view to be fought, not descended to.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#The_Sec...

> Look at every genocide of the past century; they all start with classifying a group of people as sub-human and worthy of discrimination.

Seems like those 'other' groups were generally defined by biological characteristics, not ideologies, no? I guess the 'anti-communist' movement would fall under ideology, not biology, but the majority of examples I can think of that you're alluding to have to do with biology, no?

> biological characteristics, not ideologies, no?

No. "Jewish" isn't biological, although there is some correlation, and America's red scare was soundly ideological.

"I guess the 'anti-communist' movement would fall under ideology"

I would think that's your 'red scare' unless you're talking about something else.

The "jewish" one - thinking specifically of ww2 - it definitely was more of a biological component, as "how much" you were jewish, and from what lineage, made a difference. "jewish" is both cultural and may have a racial/biological component (imu).

The Cambodian genocide had a definite ideological side, as well as the repression of Kulaks [1]. I'm not sure why it's not traditionally listed as a genocide since it's effects would squarely place it somewhere in the top 5.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization

The "cultural revolution" and Cambodia's "Year Zero" were explicitly ideological.

> Once you accept a moral system that justifies [slippery slope]

Quick question: does anyone defending the racists, sexists, homophobes, etc., have any other argument than "SLIPPERY SLOPE!!!"?

How do you formalize such acknowledgements? Majority vote? Appointed thought leaders?

Doctors, police officers, and teachers are individuals hired to do a particular job. They have responsibilities at those jobs. If they cannot or do not want to do them, they are free to quit, switch careers, or face the consequences of their actions. Outside of that job, they are free to associate or not associate with anyone they choose.

A grocery store is a private entity. Outside of banning someone for being a protected class, they are free to refuse service to anyone. Even if someone is a protected class, they still can be banned for valid reasons (i:e; stealing, threats, etc). Being a racist is not a protected class. Nor should it be. The grocery store has the right not to do business with them.

Facebook and Google are private entities. They can refuse service for any reason (with some restrictions). They have no ethical obligation to give service to everyone. No one has any obligation to use Facebook or Google's services either.

TL;DR: Outside of a few legal requirements, no one has any obligations to associate with anyone.

So how do you feel about Christian bakers?

> Is it OK for a doctor to refuse to operate on a racist > or a police officer to refuse to protect a racist?

Sure, why not? Racists want to deny people their rights; why shouldn't people get the equal opportunity to deny racists their rights?

> Racists are humans too.

Racists see other humans as lesser. I think that automatically disqualifies them from being considered human.

Define racism. If it's "discrimination based on skin color" then things like BLM are also racist. Is that what you want?

C'mon, you get to a position of equating anti-oppression movements with oppression only as a result of the most tone-deaf and pedantic mental gymnastics, by stripping out context completely.

BLM opposes discrimination based on skin color.

There have been a number of instances where people who claim to be involved in the movement, that is activists and not necessarily leaders, who have posted comments equating to suggesting harm should come to white people, how white people are evil, etc... There have been a number of them who have had their Twitter account banned because they did those things.

I have tried to pick my verbiage carefully. Members of a group, for better or worse, are representative of that group but not in totality. Thus, generic statements are often not easy to make and leads me to point this out in response to your statement.

Also, I'm part black, if you're curious. I'm definitely not in the group most would expect to point this out. My white genes are a definite minority. ;-)

At any rate, some people who claim to be involved in BLM have made very, very racist statements that absolutely are discriminatory. Some have even gone so far as to suggest acts of violence. A search of 'twitter bans BLM member' should turn up some results, if you want citations.

Only racists? What about other forms of bigotry? And who defines which bigotry is unaccepted and which is accepted?

That's why FaceBook, having became so big, should maybe be regulated a bit (like banks, like press, like transportation, etc.)

Sorry but it does not seem like regulating banks has done much to improve the financial system. Why do you think regulations are the solution?

> it does not seem like regulating banks has done much to improve the financial system

Are you sure?

To me is looks like this:

Loosening the regulations on US mortgages was a strong contributing factor to a global financial crisis.

Since then, tightening regulations on global banking has led to banks being much less likely to fail and trigger another crisis.

> Since then, tightening regulations on global banking has led to banks being much less likely to fail and trigger another crisis.

you are in for a big surprise the next time a crisis hits the market. And even if your statement were true, only a few banks crashing would lead to a catastrophic domino effect, because everything is very largely inter-connected. What we have done since 2008 is largely insufficient to consider the current financial system as robust.

Regarding banks, non-regulation isn't a solution either, though.

I don't think we have even tried non-regulating the banks for several centuries or even more. Bank regulations have a very, very long history.

Well, as far as serious regulatory controls are concerned, we tried going without between 1830 and 1914 in the US; so 103 years ago.

Also, regulation doesn't magically fix the problem. But good regulation will fix the problem. The goal is to come up with the right regulation.

With regards to financial regulation, I think transparency and data reporting are hugely important. Much regulation can be done by counterparties if they can have better transparency.

Regulation isn't binary, as in something is either "regulated" or "unregulated".

The quality, timeliness and enforcement of the laws that establish regulation will determine the outcome.

Current regulation is weak, but society is better off with it than it was without it. A brief look at the history of the US financial system and its "crashes" may shed some light over this, perhaps even demonstrating that, if anything, regulation needs to improve (both in terms of coverage and enforcing).

I don't know how much you know about the history of the financial system, but it appears not to be a lot if you don't think regulating banks has improved it.

It is a private entity causing harm to society by facilitating the dissemination of lies and hate speech.

The point is that this should be regulated and/or disallowed, much in the same way that you (fortunately) can't go on TV to call for violence against specific groups of people or to run false advertising, or, in a developed/civilized country, you'll be facing consequences.

One way of doing this would be for FB and other media to be forced to provide authorities with official (and validated) company information regarding the entities that are using their service for this end, much in the same way as would happen to a company running false advertisements on TV.

> causing harm to society

I wonder if you know that under Stalin, you got executed for being "enemy to the society", and then your children were officially "children of enemy to the society".

Because, as maps say, "You are here."

I'd venture in saying that under any dictatorship, dissidents are referred to as enemies of the state/party/country/society, to justify their silencing. Still, I have no idea where you get Stalin out of my previous post.

I don't believe this story concerns citizens fighting for their freedom from opression, it's actually related to private entities fearmongering and spreading falsehoods, and media companies (FB) facilitating their work. Maybe you'd need to have a referendum to be convinced, but I think most people will agree that hate speech and lies are damaging to virtually any society, especially because these tactics are well known throughout history.

Why you are conflating those two issues is beyond me, perhaps even beyond you, but I decline the bait...

> Exactly this, if you help one you gotta help all of them unless it's against the law for them do to so (banned parties).

Do you? That's kind of like saying that 'if you donate to one party, you gotta donate to all of them'. Sure, it opens you up to attacks of being unfair, but as far as I'm aware, there's no case for asymmetric support of a political party by private entities being illegal.

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