Facebook Bans Far-Right Groups and Prominent Hate Figures
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Much of the media also promotes a rather conservative economic agenda, constantly does smear pieces against Sanders, pretends that single payer means the same as throwing people off of insurance etc.
Yes, corporations do have a 'liberal bias' when it comes to social issues, (guess what, gays are also potential customers), but they tend to be conservative on economics.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/clarity-on-israel-anti-boycot...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-time-to-update-a...
- Kathy Griffin and her famous bloody head photo
- Jim Carrey and his gruesome drawings
- Chris Evans attacking the Covington Catholic high schoolers (along with others)
- The racist Democrat Virginia governor (still in office)
- etc.
So why publicize only the right siders? It seems to me there's room to ban some on both sides.
That's social vs economic left for you. Being socially liberal is logical, gays are also your customers. It's a different story when it comes to economics.
One thing is constant though, it's a subject that inflames tempers.
The dominant faction of the Democratic Party has for decades been center-right. (There are signs that a center-left faction may displace it soon, but that's uncertain.)
> and are still supported by the left-wing media,
Neither HuffPost nor, especially the Washington Post are “left-wing media”. WaPo is right of the dominant center-right faction of the Democratic Party, HuffPo is pretty much in line with it. And neither of those pieces you cite from those sources is even an editorial from the media outlet stating their position, they are outside opinion pieces of the type print and print-like online outlets that aren't narrow propaganda outlets tend to carry from a range of viewpoints that the outlet itself doesn't necessarily endorse.
The actual left-wing, or even center-left, media doesn't support anti-BDS laws, and it's not even clear to me that the non-left outlets you try to suggest do even support them.
While the Democratic Party, WaPo or HuffPost might not seem particularly left-wing relative to, say, Europe, they certainly are left of center in the US.
And what you're calling center-left or actual left-wing is far-left in American terms.
And yes, it is relative, but that just shows you how right-wing the 'center' really is. The Democratic Party in the U.S. is called the Conservative Party in the UK.
Not really. I mean, you can use them that way and it has some value for some uses, but you lose a lot of insight particularly into natural strategic rather than tactical political alignment.
The left favors the interests of the working class, the right favors the interest of the capitalist class. The “center-” of each does so while still favoring preserving some protection for the distinct interests of the opposing class; there is a natural strategic alignment across the right (and similarly the left), even if there might be a tactical alignment between, say, the left and center-right in a nation with an electoral system favoring duopoly and a somewhat right-leaning political culture.
But the left made healthcare worse for people who have health insurance. They lower wages for American workers by expanding immigration. They raise taxes to pay for benefits for people who choose not to work.
That's not favoring the American working-class.
No, it doesn't. First, because It's quite possible to recognize that people fail in what they seek to favor. And, second and more importantly, because it leads to noticing that there's virtually no leftist policy in the US, since the dominant factions for the two parties have for decades been right and center-right.
> But the left made healthcare worse for people who have health insurance.
No, the left didn't. Aside from the question of whether the ACA made healthcare worse for people have insurance (which is a complicated mixed bag), the ACA didn't come from the left, it came from the center-right faction of the Democratic Party, following an outline earlier used at the state level by Republicans, and which actually was first suggested by a group of Republican politicians and insurance industry figures as a better (from a conservative standpoint) alternative to the (also from the center-right faction of the Democratic Party) Clinton healthcare reform effort in the 1990s.
> They lower wages for American workers by expanding immigration.
When and how have leftists fine this?
> They raise taxes to pay for benefits for people who choose not to work.
What are you talking about?
I will add that most working class people I know make too much money to qualify for benefits. They already earn more than minimum wage. They make too much to qualify for expanded Medicaid, or grants for college.
Also, fifty years ago, working class people made good money in construction. But even thirty years ago, those wages were already depressed by illegal immigrant labor. And when working class people complained, leftist journalists and politicians whose jobs weren't threatened by immigration dismissed those complaints as racism.
Most leftists know nothing about the real concerns of working class people.
The left wants single payer/medicare for all, which polls extremely well, not crappy compromises. There should have been at least a public option, but precisely because Obama was no leftist, he took even that out.
Bernie Sanders actually polls well among the working class people you're talking about.
P.S. The notion that there is some significant amount of people who 'choose not to work' is... laughable. Life on benefits its not the comfortable sort of life you seem to imagine it being. In fact many people on benefits DO WORK, and they're struggling despite it. You can blame them for working minimum wage jobs, (like everyone can be an entrepreneur), however the real problem might be that the minimum wage has not kept up with the increases in productivity and inflation.
I've known many people who prefer to live on benefits and take pride in their ability to work the system. That life may not seem comfortable by SV standards, but they like it. They have no intention of working hard and earning a more expensive life.
Of course, I've also known many poor people who worked hard to improve their lives. People who advanced by going to night school while working full time, or through hard work and loyalty for an employer, or by living simply and investing what money they had. But I rarely see policies that help that kind of person from either party.
Yeah, sure, but there's always going to be people taking advantage of any system. Does that mean no system is worth having? I mean there's a tremendous amount of waste at the Pentagon, for example, yet the right always seems to rather be focusing on punching down, rather than up.
The system we have helps people who don't work but does little to help poor working people and IMO isn't worth having.
I actually 100% agree with this. I am pleasantly surprised you support this, since many on the right tend to protest taxing wealth more.
Absolutely. The Democratic establishment does not represent the views of the left in this country. Certainly not on economic issues. Paying lip service to social issues.
On many issues, the Democratic and Republican parties in Washington are actually pretty aligned, their views on BDS being one of them.
> are still supported by the left-wing media
Which is why I tend to use the term 'neoliberal'. Left-wing they certainly are not, as the articles show. They're only left on social issues, not economics. The media tend to be pretty closely aligned with the Democratic establishment, which then gets conflated with left-wing, but figures like Nancy Polosi don't support leading left-wing economic priorities such a single-payer at all.
I'm not sad that some of these really hateful people are blocked, that's a given. But choosing sides is dangerous. Not every conservative is spewing hate speech, in fact many from the left (even celebrities) post what could be considered hate speech.
I agree. I don't think it's being done out of malice, just that tech is so politically homogeneous that not enough people realize this is out of line to keep these sorts of projects from going forward. The ball gets rolling and there's not enough people voicing a strong enough objection to stop it. I think in the future we'll see this as a failure to acknowledge that tech is not as diverse as the population in general. Car companies aren't stupid. They know they don't know everything so they do customer research, get focus groups, etc, etc, to help them determine how to tune things to be attractive to the target audience. Tech's target audience is the global population but tech mostly fails to account for all the customers that don't live on the West coast or Northeast of the US. We saw the same thing when music was somewhat democratized by the internet in the 2000s. Country and hip-hop surged in popularity because a bunch of well of white music producers in a few cities on the coasts didn't have the perfect picture of what everyone wanted.
Tech culture is somewhat homogeneous, especially in LA and SF - but I certainly wouldn't say tech itself is homogenous.
I'm fairly extreme politically, as an anarcho-capitalist - though it's important to note that despite the "anarchist" root, I'm as peaceful a person as can be and my views are literally founded upon the premise that forcing others to do something is immoral. I'm also happy to discuss my philosophy and do so under my real name. If you search me, you'll find years of posts across multiple communities where I actively discuss my views and the views of others. It's enough of a part of my life that I've decided that I can never completely separate it from my profession life because it influences the way I think about the world so thoroughly. As a result, I've even been asked about it multiple times in job interviews.
I give the above as background; my point in it is to say that I've been approached privately by many people who are outside the mainstream orthodoxy of tech. Some want to say they approve of some parts of what I profess, others want to pit their ideas against mine in a private and safe way. Others still seem to just want to be able to admit to someone that they feel that they have to hide who they are at work.
There is absolutely something of a chilling effect on political speech in tech. One of the reasons it's so difficult to discuss is because the people who are made examples of seem to go one of two ways - they flee the scene of the controversy and try to minimize the impact of the controversy (e.g. Brenden Eich), or they embrace it and push hard in the opposite direction, which makes them end up being seen as skewing very hard to the extreme right (e.g. Andrew Torba).
I don't have data to support my assertion, but my experience leads me to believe that there are more right-wing people in tech than it appears, and that there is a significantly higher number of libertarians of all flavors in tech than the general population.
I mean, the headline talks about far-right hate groups, and not about conservatives in general. Why is it that a lot of conservatives seem to take it personally when hate groups are banned? I think this victimhood complex is unhealthy. Facebook is not choosing sides by banning hate groups.
The other issue is that the approach these days to minimize or eliminate opposition by making them a “hate group.”
So I apply the same to feminism and rewrite every mentioning of men to immigrants and women to nationalists. Simple word for word rewrite. Hate being hate, if the rewrite look like hate speech then the original text must also be hate speech.
If Facebook is not choosing sides then such test should work to determine if something is hate or not.
I'm no conservative, but I definitely see their point when "I love America" is hate speech, yet "Straight White Men should die" is not. Look at Twitter as an example.
"X loves Y" - not hate speech.
"X should die" - hate speech.
Now, context to these could change it. But the question is, can two random person proficient in the same language tell apart similarly the two kinds of speech?
If a human can perform the task with pretty good accuracy, then it's doable.
Now if we're saying that even people can't tell apart hate and violence, we're in more trouble. But as of now, I think it's a pretty strong claim to make that people can't actually decipher hateful tones in text.
Here's an example, how about instead of "X should die", it's "lol, can all X just die?". They give it a little jocular spin with the "Lol", but it's effectively the same comment.
Here's the deal: if X in that comment is "black people", you get banned on Twitter. If it's "white people" you don't get banned.
Now personally, I don't mind the comment in either form. I don't believe it's an actual threat to anyone. It's kind of edgelordy, but whichever. And beyond that, I'd be very unhappy if someone got banned for something like that, because it just stomps over whatever other, more legitimate commentary they might've had.
I'm interested in having conversations, even imperfect ones. All conversations are imperfect.
But OK, let's move past "X should die".
But it's not just that. Any discussion where one side can be spun as a vulnerable minority (merit be damned), that minority status can be used to silence the other side.
So for example, consider transwomen in women's sports. There's a not-insignificant push among trans activists to claim that transwomen are "biologically female". I think the logic with that is: 1. sex is fuzzier than most people realize (debatable) and 2. hormone treatments are sufficient to tip someone over the line into the other biological sex (also debatable).
Referring to a trans woman as male for the sake of argument runs you a serious risk of getting permabanned from Twitter if the person you're arguing with is particularly ornery.
I'm not saying it's not the case, I don't use Twitter and don't know their processes.
That said, in my work, we deal with similar scenarios. Normally, you look for trends and you have different levels of enforcement for different risks.
So say you have automated systems doing monitoring which flags and alerts of possible bad behavior. Normally these are scored and categorized. For some score and category, you might take an automatic actions. Say, block the comment from posting at all and tell the user to reword in a non hateful manner their idea. Or you delete the comment. Now these infractions go towards the account. When there's many if them, indicating a trend, it promotes the account for manual review.
At that point, a person does a holistic overview of the account and its infractions. If they can reverse some if them, feeding back into the automated monitoring and alerting to improve its false positive rates, and they can confirm them, to add weight to those labels. Finally, they can choose to contact the account holder to justify themselves, give them a warning, take partial enforcement like deleting certain posts, or outright ban them.
Even the ban has degrees. You could have the account ban, but be allowed to create a new account. Or you can be banned with cross account detection, so your IP, email, address, credit cards etc. are all banned to make it hard for you to even sign up again.
And the processes in place and their rules are constantly adjusted and reevaluated. And there's even backfill mechanisms, so if rules are relaxed in the future, prior enforcement can be reversed if they no longer hold against the new rules for example.
Would you find that if say Facebook or Twitter were to operate in a somewhat similar fashion that it would seem reasonable?
The American Revolution was a nationalistic revolution. Heck, some folks got together to found a new nation! There's nothing more nationalistic than founding a nation.
Also every nation on earth is nationalistic, by pure definition of what a nation is. What do they mean when they say they would ban nationalism? Nationalisms without state-backing? e.g. Basque nationalism?
We certainly have a problem with hate speech and social media, but even though I have no idea about how to solve it I fear this might not be a step in the right direction.
Edit: sigh - downvoted already without a reply. Fanatism is so damaging to democracy and debate.
What I do want to get into is all this "why ban one side and not the other", well probably because one side is significantly more violent and is only becoming more agitated? Is that not completely obvious? They're not trying to ban a school of thought, they're trying to prevent terrorist attacks by white men on non-white and immigrant people. As has been literally happening. The most violent parts of the left are responses not home grown hatred, and they're not shooting up places of worship. Go ahead, find the like 2 bad examples of left leaning violence but it doesn't take much to find 10x that from the right. One is not like the other.
edit: to be clear, I think antifa etc should be banned as well and I do not condone their actions or think they are a good response.
But they didn't start the problem. They haven't killed dozens of people on multiple continents.
Right, nations can only exist as long as they use violence to fight (perceived) threats.
> What I do want to get into is all this "why ban one side and not the other", well probably because one side is significantly more violent and is only becoming more agitated? Is that not completely obvious? They're not trying to ban a school of thought, they're trying to prevent terrorist attacks by white men on non-white and immigrant people. As has been literally happening. The most violent parts of the left are responses not home grown hatred, and they're not shooting up places of worship. Go ahead, find the like 2 bad examples of left leaning violence but it doesn't take much to find 10x that from the right. One is not like the other.
We want the same and I agree we have a huge problem with right-wing extremism that does not mirror in left-wing extremism (sic).
My worry is: how soon until the same people we want to deplatform are the ones in charge of the platform? Get Twitter as an example: It is usually left-leaning and minority Twitter users the ones getting the shit end of the stick. Jack Dorsey is known for being, to say the least, accepting of nazis in his platform.
Edit: Again another bunch of downvotes without replies. sigh
He had some pretty nasty things to say about anybody who wasn't an Anglo.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-00...
> "And since Detachments of English from Britain sent to America, will have their Places at Home so soon supply’d and increase so largely here; why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion."
> "Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind."
I believe the modern response to that is "Big Yikes."
Heres a quote from, jack renshew, one of the people they’ve banned:
> Hitler was right in many senses but you know where he was wrong? He showed mercy to people who did not deserve mercy ... As nationalists we need to learn from the mistakes of the national socialists and we need to realise that, no, you do not show the Jew mercy. [0]
They’re not banning your kooky ol’ conservative grandpa, these are actual hateful people who’s movements have been using Facebook to spread racism and misinformation intentionally.
Facebook has become widely known as a site full of misinformation—I can’t blame them for wanting to change that reputation. If it were my web forum I’d certainly do whatever I could to change if my site were known as a racist infested misinformation brand.
[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Renshaw_(far-right_acti...
The people being blocked are right-wing extremists radicalised by hate speech, not just garden-variety right-wingers. And the reason they're being blocked is because they've been involved in an increasing number of violent attacks around the world. From Anders Breivik, to the murderer of Jo Cox in the UK, to the Christchurch mosque shooter, the extreme right is doing an outstanding job of persuading everyone else it's happy to house murderous racist kooks.
There's no equivalent - not even close - for anything that could be considered the far-left in the West today.
Whatever you think of Bernie Sanders, AOC, or Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, they're not known for threatening to murder anyone, or inciting anyone to murder. Nor - realistically - are they ever likely to be.
Free speech ends in US law - not just in opinion - where incitement to murder and violence begins. At that point it's no longer about civilised debate, it's about criminal consequences, and there's no constitutional protection for those.
It was a Bernie Sanders campaign worker who shot at Steve Scalise and other congressional republicans.
It's important to remember that the left does not promote the quantity or severity of violence that the right does. If you get left wing groups calling for the elimination by violence of all members of a religion Facebook (and other social media networks) will happily ban them.
The people being banned aren't banned because they are far-right. They are banned because they are spewing hate, or even worse: "Renshaw is a former spokesperson for neo-Nazi organisation National Front who plotted to murder West Lancashire MP, Rosie Cooper".
Far-right political figures that don't call for violence or murder aren't threatened of being banned.
Seems to arbitrarily single out the 'hate figures' du juor.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States...
I'd also say that it tends to be the oppressed who resort to violence first because it's there only option. For example, it could be argued the Black Panthers movement required some level of "violence" to make a point. If a group is resorting to violence it tends not to be because they enjoy violence, but because they feel they have no other option. I'm not trying to draw any moral comparisons here, just want to point out that you don't need to be violent when the state and ruling class are on your side. There's simply no need when the state (or in this case, private corporations) will restrict your opponent's freedoms for you.
It doesn't get as much publicity so few know about it. That's the problem with today's bias, and muting one side.
You are repeating a lie, and I think you know it.
There was a time that the scientific community believed the earth was flat and the sun revolved around the earth. People with different opinions should not be forcefully silenced. The government should not be able to decide which ideas are "lies."
In this case, Facebook can ban anyone they want, but that has nothing to do with free speech.
Here's what I believe to be a decent resource explaining a number of common misunderstandings that come up in such discussions.
https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-...
Hmm. Call me crazy, but I think that should be legal.
Certain lies definitely shouldn't. Denying holocaust happened is illegal where I'm from and it should be.
At least if private entities implement this kind of thing, those who wish can still discuss it someplace else.
Though pushing these things under the rug doesn't have the best reputation (see recent 8chan tied shooting).
Like - imagine if US was attacked and the attacker killed 60 million Americans. I can almost guarantee that no matter how strongly Americans believe in the 1st amendment, saying that it hasn't happened would be made illegal.
Why would scale change people's values compared to say 9/11? It's important to me that we're the deciders of truth for ourselves. I believe people fighting in those wars have fought for my right to believe what I choose and not what a government tells me.
Think about this in the context China, even today and I think you'll see why I feel this is an incredibly valuable right. Governments can lie too, the American one has many times throughout history and we should and do demand a right to question it.
200 years ago, I understand the need for free speech, particularly when powers were so evenly spread, socially, between the church and other powers. Limiting speech would have most likely meant limiting scientific and social development. That process has now reversed, I think, and currently unlimited free speech aids in producing one of the most sophisticated and powerful propaganda systems that has ever existed.
I don't think that humans can deal with this in any natural, social way. The parts of the human brain that it takes advantage of is so pervasive that without extensive personal training, most people can't actually work their way around it.
EDIT: I think I should clarify. I don't mind the person on the street saying whatever they please, but no one person deserves a soap box on which to lie. The powers of the FCC regarding propaganda need to be expanded so that news organizations are required to inform the truth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#...
Assuming we all support capitalism here, it should be a pretty simple calculus for Facebook. Does having (neo)Nazis on their site represent more users than they lose for having them.
What if they don't care for people who are gay, or from a specific country?
Could Facebook say, choose to ban all Christians or anyone who believes in a two state solution in the middle east?
First, you make a fantastic argument for regulating ISPs as common carriers, bummer that's up in flames, one step forward two steps back.
Secondly, at least in the US, the whole idea of the "protected class" is to combat over reaches just like most of your examples[0]. This is also why civil rights groups are general fighting to expand the definition of protected class (though I doubt fascists ever will be included) since private companies are very happy to act against gay and trans people, for example.
As for non-protected classes ( having opinions on Israel fall pretty firmly into that) Facebook has the opportunity for the same calculus as they have with neo Nazis and the other alt-right menagerie. Are two-state proponents driving away more people than their removal will?
Is this system perfect, I don't think so, but the idea of "forced free speech" is more distastful to me. Individuals or companies are free to curate the experience they want for their users (up and to current laws around protected classes). If the consumers don't like that they're free to set up their own network (this is why Im a huge proponent for federation).
Does Facebook have a meaningful alternative?
I realize that this is specifically talking about UK groups and that even in the US the 1st only applies to the government and not to any private person or entity, but it amazes me how many people complain about the massive amount of information Facebook has about them, complain about how Facebook has misused or sold that data, and then complain that Facebook hasn’t banned someone they find offensive.
Communication has become insanely centralized in recent years. Facebook can’t be trusted to have or use your information, but you’re fine with them being the free speech police?
I talked with some friends at the weekend over pints. We didn't need facebook to act as a middleman.
I don't need facebook to stand on soapbox either.
This hasn't changed.
This is why the internet was invented and why there were free and open protocols invented to communicate using it. Unfortunately then AOL and AIM started and it was downhill after that... now we all rely on Facebook or Google or Twitter to relay our messages and that’s not great for anyone.
They’re free to place any demands on their platform as they see fit. I have no problem with anything they’ve done.
The problem arises when you insist that Facebook do things according to your political leanings, but then suddenly your political leanings don’t line up with everyone else’s anymore and you’re the odd one out and now people are demanding that you be banned.
Yes, for 99.999999% of people that’s never going to be a problem. The crap they post on FB is so worthless I’m sure it’d be a negligible loss to the world if they were, but that’s the point - banning them isn’t the right way to get them to change their minds or to improve their posts.
Great, I'm glad we agree!
The problem arises when you insist that Facebook do things according to your political leanings, but then suddenly your political leanings don’t line up with everyone else’s anymore and you’re the odd one out and now people are demanding that you be banned.
Yes, for 99.999999% of people that’s never going to be a problem.
Including me, because I do not advocate for harming, killing, or stripping the civil rights from others, unlike the folks who are being banned. :-)
banning them isn’t the right way to get them to change their minds or to improve their posts.
Who wants to change their minds or improve their posts? I want them the hell out of my face, permanently, and I'm happy that Facebook agrees.
Everyone has a right to spout whatever crap they want. Online or on a soapbox on a street corner. You also have the right to ignore them. Exercise it and be happier in your daily life.
You’re stripping the civil rights from people you disagree with...
If you think deleting viral lies on the internet is censorship, then you're really not going to like how social media is going to develop over the next 5 years.
Facebook is shutting down what it considers the most prominent, aggressive, and dangerous of those who do such things. That is not, in itself, bad.
If they proceed to shut down the right but not the left, if they start deciding that mainstream right positions are "hate speech", that's going to be a problem. But if they have kind of a threshold, and anybody else who crosses that threshold (no matter what their position) gets shut down, that's a good thing. (The threshold may be higher than many of us like. That's probably also a good thing.)
But, someone saying transgenderism might be a mental disorder is not a threat, so should not be banned. Likewise saying capitalism has led to overpopulation, environmental destruction and cultural imperialism is not a threat and should not be banned, regardless of whether it is true or not.
I also think some sort of enforcement of etiquette that is content agnostic would be great, but that's a bit trickier to draw the line.
Noam Chomsky has this to say:
"It seems to me something of a scandal that it is even necessary to debate these issues two centuries after Voltaire defended the right of free expression for views he detested. It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers."
Well it's the UK isn't it? They're a little ahead of you.
You turn controversial ideas into forbidden knowledge. Alex Jones is probably more powerful now to his followers due to the fact that he's contraband
Now, as long as they keep to that, and steer away from partisanery, I think this is a good thing.
There's probably going to be some mistakes made, and some wrong bans, but Facebook is not the government, and other avenues exist to individuals who want to speak and reach an audience.
I live in a town known for its racial history, and there are two very vocal men here who are leaders of SPLC-listed hate groups. I just checked, and both still have active personal accounts. The only people I can think of off the top of my head who are more visible in those circles in the US would be Jason Kessler and David Duke.
Perhaps this action was motivated by political pressure in the UK?
This is actually censorship. However, I personally believe that groups that incite violence should be censored.
But when people talk about free speech it is not limited merely to constitutional rights, especially in an age where most communication happens in platforms under some company or another's direct control.
Having said that, I don’t like the idea that some people at Facebook decide what’s “spreading hate” or not. Are they banning extreme left wing groups too or not? Imagine Facebook was a company from China, Russia or the Middle East, where those governments could pressure them a lot more. Imagine the small group of people deciding what is “spreading hate” today leave the company and some political ideologies take over that position a few years down the line. Do we trust their judgement as much now?
The internet and politics in general seem to be a truly bad combination. I think it’s understandable too, because it’s just so much easier to say radical hurtful stuff when you don’t have to witness the devastating effect of your words in person. I mean, can you even imagine calling the parent, of a child who was mass-murdered, out to be an actor paid by George Soros face to face? You would have to be stone cold dead inside to do that, and I really doubt a lot of the alt-righters are that evil. On the internet though, it’s as easy as ordering a pizza.
I think platforms should be held accountable for the content they host, even if it’s produced by their users. I know that’s not a popular opinion on HN, but the fact is that Facebook has been used to organise genocide and that just shouldn’t happen.