Facebook takes down Britain First ads
bbc.com
bbc.com
> The three ads and the page on which they originated have now been removed, after BBC News contacted Facebook.
I think it’s safe to say that the “to stop a mosque being built” is the important phrase here.
Because it's a Muslim church and you don't like them?
Because you're an anti-theist?
Because you don't like the noise?
Because you think their application for a zoning exception is shaky?
They should be allowed to speak but they ain't borrowing my megaphone. Good on Facebook for feeling the same (at last).
I mean the French, British, Russians, Spanish, Germans, Americans, Italians, etc. are all extremely different but they nonetheless get lumped into 'White (which is damn-near the same thing as ethnically Christian).
> nonetheless get lumped into 'White (which is damn-near the same thing as ethnically Christian).
you said it yourself, it's lumping everything together. This never leads to anything good, just look at Jugoslavian war, same people or at least closely related ethnically and nevertheless so atrocious; that's what religion, hate and envy for patches of lands could lead to.
How does that work? Russians are ethnically Christian I presume, but they are Orthodox Christians so do they get a license to rail against the Catholic church or would that be "hate speech". What about railing against Mormons? Or does that only extend to the religious sect that is traditionally associated with that ethnic group in that particular area?
I see the idea I think, but it seem it needs to be defined a bit more precisely to be useful.
I don't agree with islam's stance on gays and women and adultery. Hence no more mosques.
Am I a hater?
No, you are intolerant of hate and prioritize human rights about superstition, custom, and tribalism.
Preventing the construction of mosques and churches does not actually help women and gay people. All it does is hurt their enemies, and that is not the same thing.
They got banned a while back, not relating to this specific advert.
Yes. What business is it of yours what people do behind closed doors?
(EDIT: assuming that behavior is otherwise law-abiding, in compliance with building codes, etc).
Besides, there are valid reasons to be against the building of a church near your house - noise for example (church bells, prayer songs).
Religion has historically always been used as a tool to assert political power. Mosques often get financed by undemocratic regimes, in particular Mohammad bin Salman's Saudi-Arabia, which most definitely funds Mosques in a political influence operation.
Ie, I can't sit behind closed doors and commit horrible crimes against humans and then claim "What business is it of yours?".
That of course is not to say that we don't have some right to privacy, to independence and etc. Yet, standing behind a claim of "what happens behind closed doors is none of your business" seems to willfully ignore so much.
I agree with the point about state religion though.
Why do you think it's that and not the fact they were banned before?
"We don't hire ethnic Muslims" vs. "We don't think you're a good culture-fit for this company."
I remember when the UK banned Sinn Fein from appearing on TV, including their actual elected MPs, resulting in the ridiculous "words read by an actor" workaround.
And talking about actual elected MPs being replaces by actors, this is a fairly common tactic since you can't use footage from the House of Commons for comedy or satire. So it's worth remembering censorship doesn't need a reason once rules or laws are put in place.
parodied beautifully by Steve Coogan in The Day Today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOUeauLWEaE
Or even AntiFa who bill themselves as anti fascists engage in violence, on occasion. Not sure they buy ads though.
(or are we talking about Britain First? They are sort of associated with the murder of Jo Cox: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jo-cox-murde... - while they denied responsibility there's a stochastic terrorism thing going on there, and related group National action is on the ban list: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... )
France has banned the veil.
Switzerland banned the construction of minarets (not mosques) via popular referendum in 2009.
Austria bans mosques from receiving foreign funding.
It would appear that Facebook considers the majority of the populations of many important European countries to be engaged in hate speech, and presumably their governments too?
So I'm not sure we need to look to nascent independence movements to encounter difficulties with the consistency of Facebook's position although, it is an interesting thought experiment.
In what way?
A quick look at their "No More Mosques!" campaign should suffice to provide the insight you seek.
What if I don't want Saudi funded mosques in particular, is there any nuance allowed. There is no racism or exclusion based on a person's ethnicity here.
Should we lock up Richard Dawkins for being anti catholic?
Because there's this thing known as "freedom of religion" which is recognized both in UK and European law (to which the UK is still bound) as fundamental and inviolable.
Meaning: no you can not "vote" on the question of whether a certain group is allowed to practice their religion (yes, in your neighborhood) -- and advertise this fact. The size of the building, or the width of the signage can be regulated perhaps... but the very fact of that house of worship being built -- sorry, no.
What if I don't want Saudi funded mosques in particular, is there any nuance allowed?
The "No More Mosques!" campaign clearly is not limited to foreign-funded mosques (or those funded by nasty regimes); it is explicitly aimed against building mosques in general. That's why there's basically no way to look at it as fundamentally anti-Muslim.
Should we lock up Richard Dawkins for being anti-Catholic?
No, and no one is saying anyone should be "locked up" for carrying those banners, or running those ads.
If you say that Saudi funding churches, businesses, housing, etc. is not good for Britain for a reason other than you have something against Saudis as a people then you're fine.
If you say you're against all churches because you're an anti-theist then you're fine.
There is absolutely exclusion based on ethnicity. It's extremely important to recognize that there is a difference between someone who is religiously Muslim and ethnically Muslim -- same with Judaism -- and same with Christianity too as well but we don't call it that because we're the default in the West. Saying there is no such thing ignores the dominating cultural impact of religious institutions.
Not wanting any more of that or institutions promoting that is reasonable political view.
You can be "against" a particular religion all you want.
But you have absolutely no right to prohibit anyone from practicing that religion simply because you don't like it. Including the "practice" of getting together with friends in a room or a building, and posting a sign outside the door saying this is what you do.
Then maybe the problem is the messed up laws providing that "special status" then. But that doesn't mean you can (even under those laws) category ban a certain group from building any churches, anywhere.
Which is exactly what Britain First is advocating.
You'll note that France does not, by any stretch, attempt to ban mosques outright.
So obviously there's not much of a comparison here.
The point I'm ultimately making is that the statement:
> But you have absolutely no right to prohibit anyone from practicing that religion simply because you don't like it.
Is demonstrably incorrect. Relatively liberal and progressive countries at times do prohibit people from practicing their religion, and France's restrictions serve as an example.
It's a question of "restrict expression to some extent" v. "prohibit outright". When I said "no right to prohibit" -- it's the latter form that I meant.
France does restrict some aspects of religious expression (such as wearing the burka in public). But this is very far from an outright prohibition of that religion (which we both seem to agree a ban on mosques would basically amount to).
Then banning mosques is not in the scope of your statement. Muslims can practice their religion without the presence of a mosque. Many do pray in the privacy of their homes or somewhere other than a mosque. Like France's face covering restrictions, it is only a restriction of a specific aspect of the religion. Such a ban does not, in your own words, "prohibit outright" the ability to practice Islam.
Hmm - I disagree, and I suspect most courts in the kinds of countries we're talking about would also.
US courts would likely agree that it is unjustly curbing religion - they'd find the bans on head coverings unlawful as well.
Like yes you're technically right but only by seemingly purposely missing the point -- that having a community center to gather and worship is central to most religions. The times when chruchmembers gather in housechurches are typically times when they're being opressed.
> you have absolutely no right to prohibit anyone from practicing that religion simply because you don't like it.
is just straight up not true. Several countries, including liberal democracies such as France with its laws that prohibit face coverings even when worn for religious purposes, do indeed prohibit religious practices. Attire and appearance is important to many religions, and liberal democracies do indeed prohibit those. drugme's claim that people (I assume people in liberal democracies is what's being referenced here) do not have the right to prohibit anyone from practicing religion is not correct. There are plenty of instances were people's religious practice is restricted by law.
Then the commenter tried to pull a pretty blatant moat and bailey by trying to claim that their comments only referred to those that want to "prohibit [a religion] outright" as opposed to only prohibiting certain aspects. In response to which, I pointed out that a ban on religious centers is does not "prohibit outright" a religion either.
You mean arab right? Not all arabs are muslims so please stop this bs spreading. Yes christian arabs and jews from middle east have a lot in common (culturally) with their neighbors who are predominantly muslim. Saying that one could be ethnically muslim means you are expressing support for religious (as well as ehtnic) cleansing that has been going on in the middle east for decades. I did say ethnic because there has been some other ethnicities (non-arabs) that suffered tremendously as well.
That’s my issue with corporations and media playing speech cop. Free speech wasn’t supposed to have carve outs. As long as you are not committing an actual crime, and not just a thought crime, put every vile idea out in the public and let people discuss it.
Censorship is never a sound policy, the scales slide, when old ideas are squashed, what happens when the victors of censorship disagree with eachother? Is their first impulse to actually debate or just continue designating more ideas as hate speech?
Sorry to be a stickler, but what exactly are you referring to here?
This statement is demonstrably false at the principle level, even in Mills' work, let alone in the enabling constitutional, legislative, or treaty-based implementations of Free Speech.
We can have a sound discussion about the optimal place a society should land upon on the more restrictions vs. less restrictions spectrum, but to pretend that the only way the system works is at precisely zero limits warps the conversation and prevents us from taking a deep look into the issue.
Some people willingly put themselves into buckets, yes. It's always been that, it will always be that way. But don't pretend for a second that this is the death of the Internet or a lack of free expression or censorship or any of that nonsense until you can't buy an IP address and host a web server on your own hardware. The web is free and open, and the existence of non-free and non-open parts of the Internet does not negate that in any way.
Domain providers are beginning to police content they deem as unacceptable speech or ideas. Are you going to remember IP addresses when the DNS system itself polices thought?
The problem is, tech companies are beginning to behave like a cartel when it comes to free expression. We don’t just see it in Facebook, we see it across all facets of the digital economy, from payment providers to hosting providers to DNS services themselves.
If your solution for someone getting the scarlet letter is to say they are free to build their own network, then we are approaching a major problem.
But beyond that absolutely ridiculous argument, yes. The Internet is free-as-in-freedom as long as you have an IP address. If you want to start your own competitor to the World Wide Web because a few private companies exercise their right to not to business with you, you can do that. The Web and the Internet work without domain names, and if you really need your message out there and your followers really need to hear it, is typing in an IP address too much work? If it is, then your message might not be as convincing as you think it is. But even still, you can host your own website or Internet service regardless. And you can start your own registrar and host your own servers and make your own payment processor. That is entirely possible and at that point only the government can stop you (and even then, you can choose your own government like The Pirate Bay did). If your movement is stopped by a lack of convenience, that's not Facebook's problem.
Saying "but Facebook banned me" as if Facebook was the entire Internet or even the entire Web doesn't fly. Only you can give them that power, and you can take that power from them whenever you want to. Being banned from Twitter/Facebook/YouTube is only a problem if you honestly believe that Twitter/Facebook/YouTube owns the entire Internet. But they don't. You're free to start a competitor any time you want.
Are tech companies across the board allowed to shut down, disenfranchise, silence, and marginalize people and businesses because they simply disagree with their lawful politics and ideas?
In the US, no. Title III of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race (among other things).
>Are tech companies allowed ban users because they disagree with their politics?
Yes. Political ideology is not a protected class the US. The government can't tell you what you can and can't say, but private businesses are completely free to moderate content hosted on their platforms.
But again, if you don't like the rules of Facebook/GoDaddy/Twitter/etc, of these private non-governmental for-profit businesses, you're free to start your own. You're making it sound like a global conspiracy when in reality it's more likely that Daily Stormer's talk of white supremacy and genocide is so distasteful across the board that major tech companies independently and simultaneously decided that these people were not welcome.
What if those politics and incitements aren't legal (or ethical) because, at a general level, they violate the law specifically but the harm principle more generally?
Would you be okay with taking action then?
While it may be tempting to reach for the most extreme label one can think of to try and inspire others to reject something that seriously distresses you, when it goes into the realm of hyperbole it mostly functions to decrease the crediblility of the point you're making and lessens the significance of the label you're using.
I am not referring to Britain First at all, and there is no hyperbole or reaching for extreme labels involved with my comment.
Gab was deplatformed amongst others in the same manner.
Facebook executives are disrespectful and duplicitous but this is hardly an existential contradiction of the concept of the free and open web. If people choose a corporate platform with corporate censorship then the real problem is that no one is offering a better alternative.
“Staffed”
They published the real name of the person who made the complaint! That's just asking for him to get death threats. This is one of those moments where "normal journalism" covers things which would be banned from most forums, in this case as "doxxing".
> A day later, when the BBC got in touch, it had changed its mind.
This happens a lot. They'll routinely leave terrible violent rhetoric up while censoring anything that looks like a female-presenting nipple.
I foresee a situation where we have multiple social networks, each with radically different social/political slants. Similar to what we've seen with things like Reddit and Voat.
Most of the time when I see people advocating for free speech, it's to be allowed to give controversial opinions, or say things that would otherwise be seen as totally unacceptable.
Any social media site that I'd personally like to be a part of would ideally be "intolerant to intolerance, although I cannot stress enough how I think that people with intolerant opinions shouldn't be restricted from voicing their opinion. At least not at a political level.
They are new and don't understand- Its time to move off facebook.
Same reason I'm here instead of reddit.
Online communities often feel ephemeral, but maybe that's healthy in the grand scheme of the internet?
I'm really thankful that we have good mods here on HN.
I think a certain amount of churn is unavoidable in this accelerated 21st century life, sadly.
I think a lot of people hold this philosophical belief that social networks have some sort of responsibility to be fair on everyone all of the time, but I don't really see how companies are incentivised towards that in any way.
There is a sort of ethical question, that in the same way that in theory news organisations should be honest, diligent and accurate that social networks do have some sort of responsibility to be fair on everyone.
It's just not enforceable currently, and I feel like trying to force that sort of integrity onto social networks isn't currently viable.
Maybe sites like Facebook should try taking a "no politics" policy, or a policy where a political ad is always placed next to a free ad from the opposing side?
This is obviously a disaster, as it gives free rein to put lies on the same footing as truth. But adopting local rules on electoral advertising is a really good idea - UK print political adverts must have an imprint saying who's paid for them, for example.
To undo all that partisanship and try to pull people out of their comfortable bubbles would hurt FB's bottom line. They are simply not incentivized.
It's also concerning that Facebook has the power to decide who is right and wrong when it comes to the most popular form of free speech we have in the world today.
These aren't mutually exclusive facts- they can both be true or false and you can agree or disagree with them to different levels. And I don't have an answer. I'm not even sure any answer the majority would agree with exists. This is the great problem our generation must answer as a society, or destroy everything great we have achieved for having not solved it.
The EDL was the real worry with membership peaking at 184,000 but today virtually none existent.
The majority of both groups appears to have merged into UKIP.
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zm8zb3/tory-mp-with-histo...
(Sometimes people claim they were added to the group without their knowledge or consent, which FB lets you do - this is a massive misfeature of the system!)
Really, though, this is beside the point. Just like whether the Internet should be regulated under Title I or Title II was beside the point. The point is that, when you're at a point where it's one or the other one-size-fits-all policy, it's a symptom of too much consolidation: the telcos / banks / platforms / whatever have become too big. It's a cartel.
Look, Facebook is becoming something much different than college social networks, or a "utility". Isn't it time for open source software that we can all move to, like the Web instead of AOL, or like Wordpress instead of Blogger.com ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI
Why are we, in 2018, still relying on giant centralized corporations to connect us and "allow" us to have our own (shocker) chatroom on their servers?
We're not though, but why are you posting this in a centralized, censored / managed comment section while you could go to one of the decentralized open source alternatives currently being worked on? It's not about options, it's about what everyone wants - engagement, being where the crowds are, being heard, reading other people's opinions. As long as they align enough with your own, of course.
Would you also say "it's not about options" in other areas like net neutrality, telcos or banking?
"Facebook removes petition against Communist youth center"
It has a kind of 1950's ring to it and it still doesn't totally remove the smell of stupidity, but this once was a very common stance not only in the US but in most western countries.
"We want Britain to stay capitalist" is absolutely not a strange slogan.
I still think anybody should be able to be a Communist in a free society, as long as they don't plan a violent guerrilla or want to overthrow democracy with some kind of idealistic planned economy dictatorship.
That’s because Cambridge Analytical was the instruction manual
All the hearings and dockets are better free content than any marketing guru’s online course
https://www.fastcompany.com/40546816/obama-campaigns-targete...
Zuckerberg and Sandberg hosted events to raise money for Obama
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-harnessing-facebooks-soci...
The media called it genius and a good thing when obama used data and social media to win. Those dumb dinosaur conservatives were being left behind by tech savvy democrats. Now it's portrayed as evil when the reverse happened. Pure propaganda
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.htm...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-...
Cambridge Analytica is still the instruction manual
Its almost like your response was on your clipboard for anytime you saw CA in a sentence
How would you expect me to respond to that.. sorry that Obama’s team isnt getting credit?
1. The Obama for America campaign directly asked users permission to access their friend graph, which was allowed and stated in the permissions at the time before FB reduced app permission scope.
2. The action taken on that data was to cross reference publicly available voter registration lists to suggest those most likely to respond to an invitation to join the campaign sent by the first user. No consent was missed here either.
Whereas Cambridge Analytica:
1. Bought the data from a third party, who had slurped it down under the pretenses of "academic research" in a random quiz app. Already a couple layers of misdirection here. This was after FB had tightened up their data usage policy
2. Peddled the data for targeted harassment and voter manipulation with false or misleading info. The leadership pitched services such as staging blackmail by spreading rumors about an opponents sexuality, targeting them with prostitutes and then disseminating that info.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-trump-consultant-and-cambri...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-campaign-use-tactics...
And why is BBC trying to portray that a canned email response is an official statement?
I don't doubt the matter at hand, but this is very sloppy journalism.
Edit: Would be great to get a reply on why I'm being downvoted?