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Comment by arcsin | Hacker News Reader

It's remarkable to me that people think this is a bad thing. I feel like everyone agreed freedom of speech is a good thing until one day I woke up and they didn't. I don't mean whether or not it would be unconstitutional to censor certain topics on facebook. But facebook is a one of the largest communication platforms today. It's bad enough that Zuckerberg actually has the power to decide what can and can't be communicated on that platform, at least he's deciding not to use that power (at least in this case).

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What about the cases outside the US where politically-motivated fake stories have led to innocent people being murdered by mobs? That must seem like "a bad thing" to the victims.

I hear what you're saying, but Facebook (and good-forbid, Twitter) are profit-making enterprises, governed by all sorts of rules. Free speech has never meant that you can do or say whatever you want, wherever you want. It means you can speak or write your thoughts without going to jail. That's all it has ever meant.

EDIT: To be even more clear,

-you can't hold-forth in a synagogue about how evil Jews are, and wouldn't expect to.

-You can't do it in your office, either, and expect to keep your job.

-You can't use the free speech argument to get responsible news organizations to publish your demonstrably false beliefs.

If Facebook is really such an important cultural resource that free speech matters there, they should ensure they're actually doing good on-balance in important matters.

Exactly, I'm surprised there isn't more concern about facebook's proposed use of AI to remove/censor posts.

Zuckerberg has championed AI as a more fair way of performing this censoring, however it is easy for AI to pick up biases (Microsoft's Tay bot for example) depending upon the training data. AI also provides scapegoats and plausible deniability: "we're constantly working to improve our algorithms" "the algorithms aren't perfect". Since news feeds are personalized & private, it is difficult for anyone who isn't facebook to audit or even detect biases.

It's a tough problem, but I believe 'fake news' is best fought with truth & facts, not censorship. Censorship has a long history of abuse.

I think the issue that we are all grappling with is the amount, speed of dissemination, reach, and substance of all the speech that Facebook allows is something humanity has never grappled with.

We generally agree that speech should be free, but obviously we put limits on it. For instance we do not allow yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. The reason is that people are directly harmed by that speech, and it has no upside.

It’s perfectly reasonable to consider much of what goes on, on Facebook in the same vein. If holocaust denial, or other types of hate speech or misinformation are spread rapidly, and cause moral panic, possibly harm to others, should we not consider limiting it?

It’s not a black and white issue of “speech should be free at all times”.

Facebook and social media is fundamentally changing (has changed) how humanity communicates. Thinking though and questioning the ethics and moral obligations of those services is quite important.

Obviously we should -- particularly for people that advocate for abortion, whose voices need to be suppressed. The cost of their speech is too high.

Abortion is same as Holocaust denial ? One is a medical issue and the other one is literally denying facts that is used as propaganda to recruit extremists.

This is a brilliant comment that shouldn't be down voted, whatever side of the abortion debate you might be on. It exactly highlights the danger of suppressing free speech. While you'd be hard pressed to find reasonable people that deny the Holocaust, there are plenty of emotionally-charged political debates where the numbers are less lopsided. Shortsighted people might want Facebook suppressing that "hate speech" as long as it breaks their way, but what about when it doesn't?

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