Undercover Facebook moderator told not to remove fringe groups, hate speech
theverge.com
theverge.com
Does that sound like a fringe comment? Do you want to have it deleted? If so, please do some research and think through the path that you are on of having opinions that make you uncomfortable removed.
It's important to put propaganda in a historical context. So I hope people will research the history of propaganda in America and realize it still exists and is even put out by our government. I hope people realize what a left-leaning ideological tilt much of the online world has and that some of what is defined 'fringe' is just a different worldview and also that people understand how dangerous censorship is and how careful we must be about letting third parties dictate acceptable worldviews.
> "Facebook refuses to classify fake news as a violation of its rules"
used as a denunciation in a mainstream news site, is quite disturbing to read in 2018.
Right now I think the best way to get news is just to toggle back and forth between MSNBC and Fox.
The best thing you can do is moderate as little as possible.
There's an argument to be made that even privately owned entities are to some degree still stewards of the public trust and therefore owe some duty to the public, especially if they benefit directly or indirectly from public subsidy, and/or if they are able to exert monopoly power. This is generally expressed through regulation.
There's another (albeit related) argument to be made that if a platform for speech[1] is provided to the public, that it should conform to the same standards of freedom as elsewhere, including government. I believe this is what is mainly being debated here. Attempting to comply with the spirit of such an argument can be challenging for a company whose platform spans multiple "elsewheres", but there is also an argument in favor of greater freedom of speech, no matter the local standard (which I personally happen to support).
[1] or, perhaps, anything, such as a space for gathering
Many people seem to often not notice how never before in human history has centralised communication existed, and it was never foreseen that a few "private" companies would control almost all of it.
It's why I always think of it as rather rediculous when people refer to the U.S. constitution and other literature and preach "but X says that only a government is controlled and private-company-hosted speech is defenseless!", and not realise that Facebook et al, if anything, _is_ a "government" to a 17th Century human (especially to those who drafted the Constitution).
If power is a measureable "quantity", then I'de say that FB alone has more of it than what 17th, 18th, and 19th Century Governments had. The laws are very outdated I think.
"No, no, we don't want to silence you; we just want to remove the hearing ability of everyone around you until you stop talking."
>> if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant
Karl Popper - 1945
Legend ≠ fact
In Silicon Valley (in either sense), the two right-wing factions tend to point to examples of the powerful center-right group in Silicon Valley as evidence that Silicon Valley is a hard-left monoculture, ignoring both their own prominence and that the faction they are pointing to isn't even a left-wing faction.