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Comment by jancsika | Hacker News Reader

> The whole concept of "community standards" for a worldwide communication channel strikes me as newspeak for centralized moral policing.

Moral policing? This article is about the opposite-- Facebook telling its "moral police" not to moderate posts from pro-government posters.

The article also features a claim that someone at Facebook guided pro-government posters in the government to use dog whistles to get around their filters. Hence changing "muslims" to "migrants."

Not much evidence is given for the claim, but it's there.

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Selective choice of inaction and complaints about that all play into the same tune, that facebook is the one doing the policing (sometimes). That's the root problem. If facebook were not the ultimate arbiter this article wouldn't have to exist in the first place.

>If facebook were not the ultimate arbiter

If people would stop using FB, rather than complaining about it, perhaps this would not be an issue?

If you know how to solve the network effect that would be great. Otherwise we might just end up trading one master for another.

Plenty of things have been popular and then gone out of style.

Perhaps the answer is to make the concept of social networks no longer cool; or even make them undesirable. I think it's pretty clear they are not, anyways.

I use whatsapp, line, email and photo sharing services that allow me to easily share and communicate thoughts and media with exactly who I want. It's more personal, not addictive, creates better relationships, and helps me focus more on who I am rather than how others perceive me. And of course I don't have to use facebook and be a part of all its oft-criticized problems.

If we don't complain about Facebook, how are the people still on it going to know all the reasons they should leave?

To stop spam we can stop using email.

For hundreds of millions of people Facebook is the messaging system. There's postal, telephone, email, FB messaging. It's also the most used. I think you need to come up with solutions that assume it, or an equivalent, will continue to be a principle and primary means of communication for billions of people.

> If facebook were not the ultimate arbiter this article wouldn't have to exist in the first place.

Just the myriad of other articles complaining about FB implicitly promoting hate by taking no responsibility for what is posted.

This still reinforces that they do act as "moral police" and are practicing selectively enforcement by mandate. That is not a reasonable communications policy for anything of any scale or importance.

Facebook should not be tampering with and editorializing private communications or the public square, which they have become.

Only after being pressured by the government. The problem is that the pressure needed to be applied in the first place. “Weak” people (i.e. those not backed by powerful organisations) have no recourse.

>Facebook telling its "moral police" not to moderate posts from pro-government posters.

Would be it more OK if it was about Venezuelan pro-government mafia?

>> This article is about the opposite

Well no, this article is about moral policing you do not agree with.

They're imposing Facebook's moral indeed: racism is bad, but not if it's from a famous person that makes your social network relevant.

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