Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others

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354 pointsaestetix697 comments

Every time this subject comes up, someone inevitably says something like "Facebook is a private corporation, the first amendment only applies to the government, and if you want to use Facebook you have to play by their rules. No one is owed a platform."

Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies. They are the only services in their class to take seriously if you're looking to gain a following. If they didn't exist, alternative services would spring up. But alternative services know they can't compete with FB/YouTube/Twitter, so none exist. When people say "if you don't like FB's rules, use another service" it ignores that Facebook is the reason there isn't another service and thus has some responsibility to uphold values we've collectively decided as a society are important.

The issue is not whether Facebook is breaking the law but whether philosophically the market leader in a category should get to decide who can use their product when their product category is fundamental to modern life. Saying "no one is owed a platform" brings us no closer to an answer.

> Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies

Monopolies of what, exactly? I admit to sometimes looking at entertaining videos on youtube. About an hour or maximum two hours a week worth. I'm not sure what you're suggesting that facebook and twitter are monopolizing. I haven't used the former in years and the latter just about ever -- aside from maybe five tweets over the course of twitter's existence.

Monopolies of online discourse? Attention? Entertainment? Clearly we're not using any of those platforms now.

> Monopolies of what, exactly?

Monopoly on platform reach. The reach of facebook, or the reach of youtube, twitter etc, is so high, that if you want to disseminate a message, those _must_ be the platforms you use. It's as if they own the radio spectrum, and you have to acquiesce to what they demand to use said spectrum.

Of course, i am free to use smoke signals to send my message, but who will receive it?

If you can use facebook, youtube or twitter to reach lots of people, how could any one of them be a monopoly on reach?

> If you can use facebook, youtube or twitter to reach lots of people, how could any one of them be a monopoly on reach?

Even though they are competing for attention, they each use different mediums. As an analogy, it's like only having one radio station, one TV station, and one magazine. There needs to be dozens of each for there to be a true marketplace of ideas.

This isn't what the previous poster said - reach is something you can get on any of these platforms (and more), yet that was pointed out as what each has a monopoly on.

Can you define a market each of them has a monopoly over? There are many popular video apps and many popular social media apps. Exactly what does each of them have a monopoly on? A network effect is not a monopoly. Being the exclusive provider of convenience for some specific group of people is not a monopoly.

For example, in some religious town, it's possible that the only way to reach a certain group of people on a Sunday afternoon is to go to the church. This does not mean the church has a monopoly on reach. Likewise, it's possible that where you live, the only place you can get a meal at 2AM is Aunt Ann's Diner. This doesn't make them a monopoly. Nor is the only sushi restaurant in town a monopoly. We live in a world of differentiation - every service provider that has a reason to exist provides something that others don't. This doesn't make everyone a monopoly.

Also, on none of these platforms is it trivial to build a large audience. And it's certainly possible to build a large audience through other means. For any given platform to have a monopoly on reach, people must be spending so little time outside of this platform that it's impossible to reach them otherwise. That's not a world any of us lives in. Even Youtube accounts for a very small fraction of time spent on watching videos and Facebook and Twitter are two of a large number of popular social networks. Snapchat, WeChat, iMessage, Weibo, TikTok, QQ, VK, Reddit, LinkedIn and Line to name a few.

There are many many video content hosting sites, there are countless twitter clones, and there are a crazy amount of sites doing things like Facebook with profiles and such. Because people are choosing to use mainly those doesn’t stop anyone from using others. This isn’t like a utility or phone company where people literally had no alternatives. No one is stopping any of us from connecting to Mastodon for example and even better, no one is stopping us from setting up our own Mastodon servers and connecting that very server up to the wider Mastodon network... There is no Monopoly here.

Because more people choose to eat McDonalds burgers than the local dive bar burgers, does this mean McDonalds has a monopoly on burgers?

Again, it's about reach.

My local dive bar can serve me burgers whether it has a customer base of 1.000 or 1.000.000. A social network, however, cannot function without hundreds of millions of users. Otherwise it's an anti-social network.

As a result I can post my video to DailyMotion instead of YouTube but how am I going to build a following without engaging with Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter?

These networks require mass user engagement to be effective which precludes a myriad of competition. I don't think breaking these companies up as Elizabeth Warren suggested is the correct solution because it fundamentally handicaps their ability to function. But I think there does need to be regulation around how they do business which sadly does not exist.

> There are many many video content hosting sites, there are countless twitter clones, and there are a crazy amount of sites doing things like Facebook with profiles and such.

I think the point is yes there are alternatives however given the size/reach of FB, YT, and twitter even those alternatives really aren't competing with them. They own the market share for what do and even many of those alternatives (ie mastodon) post on twitter or FB news or service updates. I'd say the alternatives don't even make up 5% use over FB, YT, or twitter.

Is it a monopoly in the normal sense of the word probably not, but the issue remains that alternatives are niche and truly don't directly compete. I think though as things like people being banned, creators being demonetized or the numerous other things that have happened in the last year to show users of these platforms the problems; we might see these alternatives pick up ground as these people with followings and clout get kicked off or decide to find alternatives. They get too big for their own good and in the process they will end up fragmenting their communities causing some to take alternatives serious.

The claim is that Fb is most definitely not a monopoly on access to political speech. People are not stuck in an information vacuum the moment Facebook bans their favorite content. People who want to access Alex Jones can still do so easily.

What Facebook IS a monopoly of is getting your content to go viral. I argue this service is not speech. Which is why I oppose web hosts and cloudflare censoring content, but support social networks banning users. When web hosts do it, users who WANT that content can't get it anymore. When social networks ban people, they merely can't find new eyeballs that never specifically requested that content.

>The reach of facebook, or the reach of youtube, twitter etc, is so high, that if you want to disseminate a message, those _must_ be the platforms you use.

This isn't true though. Alex Jones can disseminate his message through countless other websites, which have their own users. This is really just advocating for equal exposure of opinions, which isn't a free speech issue.

it's not equal exposure at all, it's equal opportunity for exposure.

i can post a comment on FB and get 0 likes, that doesn't give me equal exposure to the latest nike video on their page.

denying opportunity for exposure is giving that platform the ultimate authority on what shouldn't be able to be exposed in society, if society is reliant on that platform.

i don't want alex jones to have exposure, but i don't want an exec deciding what's next on the chopping block. a page suggesting publicly available employee salaries? they shouldn't have that power

Society in the United States is in no way reliant on that platform. If it were, then we would be in agreement.

If we're talking about internet providers, that's a different issue, since they are a user's conduit to the entire web. Those absolutely should not be able to choose which accounts to favor.

Not free speech but open platforms.

There are plenty of places on the internet more lenient than the biggest websites. Check out voat and see what happens when people banned from other platforms go to the same place. It isn't pretty but at least they aren't a blight on other groups.

So if I wanted to play basketball professionally in the US then the NBA should be obligated to hire me because no other basketball platform has the reach they do?

I'm not fully thought out on this, but I think a decent starting analogy would be to a public square or space in a city. These companies hold a monopoly on the online equivalent of that because of the way network effects work.

USENET was the equivalent of a public square on the Internet. It was overwhelmed by spam.

These networks have been curated from the get-go, for no reason other than to control spam. Then, to keep people hooked, they emphasized virality and controversy. These aspects make them quite unlike a town square.

> USENET was the equivalent of a public square on the Internet. It was overwhelmed by spam.

Our situation is even better than this, the entire internet is our town square, anyone can spin our own metaphorical soap box online and say whatever we want, and the entire worlds internet connected public can hear us if they choose to do so.

A king's court, then.

Even worse.

In someway these social networks amplify voices by their sharing and recommending and suggesting based on what users do, a normal city square doesn't amplify your voice.

So this is different from walking past a demonstration or assembly in the city, it is more of an Inception movie-like warping of the entire city to bring everyone closer to these peoples voices.

> these social networks amplify voices by their sharing and recommending and suggesting based on what users do, a normal city square doesn't amplify your voice.

Actually, a city square does exactly that, amplify your voice to all those that pass. The difference is that there are many city squares to stand in, whereas there are only a handful of social media companies. The problem here is Facebook's monopoly power, not the medium of communication.

> The difference is that there are many city squares to stand in, whereas there are only a handful of social media companies

I’m just not sure this holds up to any kind of scrutiny. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of forums online where people can speak.

It’s a problematic analogy anyway, Facebook is not a public space, if we’re going insist on applying a real world physical analogue, they would be much closer to a city’s incredibly popular nightclub with a stage, which of course would never be required to give extremists or provocateurs free-reign of their equipment or stage. But even this analogy has problems.

I think the real argument is whether or not a company is free to associate its brand with whatever it likes.

> Monopolies of what, exactly?

In many smaller countries Facebook is nearly synonymous with the internet itself.

Don't even have to be "smaller". Many have huge populations. They're just less developed than the likes of the US.

Monopolies may be divided into four kinds.

I. Where the monopolist lies not the exclusive power of production but only certain exclusive facilities as a producer, and can increase, with imdimimished or even increased facility, the amount of his produce....

II. A second kind of monopoly is in the opposite extreme. It exists where price is checked neither by the hopes nor by the fears of the producer, where no competition is dreaded, and no increased supply can be effected. The owners of some vinyards have such a monopoly....

III. A third and more frequent kind of monopoly lies between these two extremes, and is neither so strict as the last, nor so comparatively open as the first. This comprises those cases in which the monopolist is the only producer, but, by the application of additional labow and abstinence, can indefinitely increase his production. The book trade affords an illustration....

IV. The fourth and last class of monopolies exists where production must be assisted by natural agents, limited in number, and varying in power, and repaying with less and less relative assistance every increase in the amount of the labour and abstinence bestowed on them.

-- Nassau William Senior, An Outline Of The Science Of Political Economy, (1836, 1872) pp. 103-106.

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.59405/page/n11...

Arguably, FB are a monopoly of all four types.

Let's take your argument that these corporations are monopoly as truth for a moment, there are still rules.

In the USA, just because we have the first amendment doesn't mean you're not responsible for your words. Fighting words is a thing (it's actually a term), verbal harassment is a thing, etc...

Alex Jones from InfoWar sic his followers to harass the Sandy Hook victims' parents. He was free to say what he wants and then he got ban for inciting unsavory actions.

To be real fair here, I'm pretty dang sure in Facebook's ToS, they have something like no porn allow. Nobody blink an eye on that because that make sense and it's probably some where in the ToS (terms of service). Yet here we got a guy that's advocating his listeners to harass people and a vocal minority of Americans are all up in arm about it. He most likely violated some rules in the ToS.

>Alex Jones from InfoWar sic his followers to harass the Sandy Hook victims' parents.

Thats a skewed depiction of what happened. What happened was the biggest conspiracy theorist on the internet ran a few articles about the hottest conspiracies on the internet (crisis actors, etc) just asking questions. Alex Jones notably believes just about everything is a conspiracy. This naturally led to people deciding to "find the truth theirselves".

Alex Jones really hurt those families but I don't believe he had intent. I think he just didn't quite realise what the consequences of his actions would be.

Ironically the people criticizing Jones for spreading this conspiracy have popularized the conspiracy more than Jones himself. while critizing Jones for spreading this conspiracy. Media coverage is thought to be one of the primary drivers of schhol shootings.

I just don't see a great deal of consistency in the excommunication of Jones. Which isn't to say he shouldn't be banned. He's the epitome of fake news. Yet I notice how facebook itself gets away with providing a service that helps mass murder go Viral. Jones at least doesn't have blood on his hands like Facebook does.

Harassment is illegal as is conspiracy to commit harassment. Since we all view harassment to be illegal, a case where there is evidence that a person "sic their followers" to commit harassment should be sent to the legal system, or if that fails we should make a law so that future cases will be addressed through the legal system.

I think the reason we don't is simply because we want to allow speech that result in "bad" people getting harassed but not "good" people, and since different political sides define good and bad differently, what we get is platforms making the decision for us. Personally I would prefer a law instead.

that was ages ago. he has apologised for questioning sandy hook and talked about it many times, including the recent joe rogan talk. can people not make mistakes? once we're wrong, are we always wrong?

> he has apologised for questioning sandy hook and talked about it many times ... can people not make mistakes?

Of course people make mistakes, and as adults, they should know that there are consequences to making mistakes. A stock trader that bets on the wrong stock has to deal with the consequences of losing money. A murderer who shows remorse must still serve their sentence.

Similarly, a conspiracy theory peddler who popularizes false accusations needs to own up to the harm they caused. Alex Jones has harmed a lot of people in very serious ways.

"I'm sorry" is not enough.

> can people not make mistakes?

I'm sure everyone make mistakes.

I'm not entirely sure if people have made mistake where they stated the the death of children were just a plot to take away guns, that those where child actors and then before I continue I would like to briefly talk about my InforWar products. Buy this rape whistle to support InfoWar. Oh where was I? Right, making money off of the dead kids.

And you're saying this as if this is the only outrageous incidents he have done.

I want you to say it with your real name instead of a pseudo name.

Like how I'm stating my belief on this subject with my real name. Because I'm sure as hell you wouldn't be defending Alex Jones' actions.

Alex Jones knows he's wrong from the start and does it anyway until he gets to a point where he has to either apologize or make excuses. "Can people not make mistakes?" is such a horseshit question when you're talking about Alex Jones or any of his ilk.

It wasn’t a mistake, he did what he did quite deliberately. And yeah, not everyone deserves a second chance.

> In the USA, just because we have the first amendment doesn't mean you're not responsible for your words.

Translating into English: "your words incur a great debt that you will pay dearly for." Being responsible for the consequences is just a euphemism for debt collection.

Monopolies do not get to just call themselves a private concern, able to do what they want. We only tolerate monopolies with suitable regulation. For example, we do not allow water, electricity, or other things provided by monopolies to be cut by a company when the company disagrees with the customer's political or other views.

In addition, the US federal government only exists to protect the innumerable rights of US citizens. Some of these rights are enumerated in the constitution. It is therefore well within the scope of the federal government to protect citizens against bully companies like Facebook who are infringing on these rights.

it's the other way around. Facebook has always been a private concern. At some point it became an effective monopoly. That doesn't stop it from continuing to be a private concern. The process of going from private concern to public concern is called "nationalisation"; the government forcibly buys out the shareholders of Facebook and runs it as a public asset.

The shareholders of Facebook are entitled to run their company as they see fit. Because they own it. Like you can paint the walls of your house whatever colour you like, and if visitors don't like it, then that's their problem.

If we think that Facebook has grown too powerful and intrusive into society to be governed by its shareholders, then nationalisation is completely the correct way to go.

Of course, which nation gets to buy Facebook is another concern... given its global reach, is it really appropriate for the US government to own it? Should the UN "globalise" it instead of the US "nationalising" it?

If 4 billion people are in your house, is it really still your house?

> The shareholders of Facebook are entitled to run their company as they see fit. Because they own it.

That isn't entirely true when we are talking about "customer discrimination"...we'd be having a completely different conversation if Facebook came out and said "we're going to ban Filipinos" or "we're banning those who express anti-war sentiments"...it's a lot easier when the people being persecuted are right-wing nationalists, anti-Israel, or conspiracy nuts...

>should get to decide who can use their product

Semantically it's not a question of "who can use their product" it's a question of in what fashion are users permitted to use their product, what behaviors are/n't allowed on that platform. Facebook didn't institute or enforce a "no Louis Farrakhans" policy. They set boundaries on what kind of behavior is or isn't acceptable for continued membership and participation on their platform, e.g. no anti-semitism.

Even a free-speech shithole like 4chan has a distinct moderation policy for each individual board. There have to be rules for a social/discussion platform to serve an intended purpose, otherwise the platform becomes repurposed by its users or ceases to have any purpose to anyone. If Facebook can't dictate its policies they can't dictate what shape the platform takes.

But the fact that it has dictated its own form is why it's Facebook. That is to say, perhaps Facebook couldn't be the platform on which people wanted to post anti-semitic content, if it didn't actively purge such content from its platform. If Facebook can't dictate what kinds of content are healthy for their platform then there could very well not be a Facebook at all.

> The issue is not whether Facebook is breaking the law but whether philosophically the market leader in a category should get to decide who can use their product when their product category is fundamental to modern life. Saying "no one is owed a platform" brings us no closer to an answer.

By acceding to public pressure, doesn't that demonstrate that these "market leaders" don't actually get to decide what content they host? FB/YT/Twitter/Reddit have consistently dragged their feet on removing extremist content. I think the last couple years have been proof that a laissez-faire model of governing the online public sphere has been a spectacular failure.

> ...to public pressure, doesn’t that demonstrate that these “market leaders” don’t actually get to decide what content they host?

This is a strange way to frame what businesses do every single day. If a business believes a certain product is unethical or that the product wont sell very well, they choose not to peddle that product. This is a determination just about every business deals with on a regular basis.

I don't care if Facebook is a monopoly -- they are an advertising business and their incentives are fundamentally misaligned to serve as a public institution. Even if they weren't a monopoly, if they were the darling of the world in terms of PR, they're still the wrong organization to serve public needs.

If people think we should have digital public spaces, then we should be paying for it as a public. We have parks and plazas where people can congregate, so why not government funded servers for hosting chat?

Nailed it. Fundamentally, this is the first thing that needs to be said about the subject.

Anyone can set up a website, create an email list, etc., do some guerrilla marketing the old fashion way.

If their followers were truly that in love with them, surely they can find a way to fund their own website.

Until the their payment processors refuse to do business with them due to political pressure. I guess they could accept money orders or cryptocurrency, but services are centralized to the point that "just create your own website" isn't a simple solution any more.

Even though I don’t care either way about these people, it does bother me that ISPs could take away their access. If I had controversial views where I couldn’t find anyone to host my site, I could set up a few servers in my home. Someone somewhere would give me basic DNS. I guess they could still make money via personal appearances? Farrakhan at least has shown he knows how to get his word out without the Internet.

Or their domain registrar drops them. And their hosting company. And their ISP doesn't allow them to self host. And then they're effectively blackballed from the internet.

I might be playing the devil's advocate a little bit now, but If what these people are saying is truly that toxic that they can be excluded from facebook, twitter, podcast directories, etc. If they really do incite violence and harrasment and spread misinformation.

What's stopping them from ending up like the daily stormer, being "deplatformed" from cloudflare, or ending up like the pirate bay, being blocked by a lot of ISPs world wide?

Or maybe they just deserve it if they can garner enough attention and infamy to get themselves blocked from a hosting company.

> ..when their product category is fundamental to modern life.

FB/YT/Twitter are not fundamental to modern life.

They aren't even fundamental to gaining an audience. Lots of businesses[1] manage to turn handsome profits without advertising on those platforms.

[1] And that's what infowars/milo are -- businesses looking for make a profit by producing social commentary and then selling ad space / books / videos / merch for more than it costs to produce the commentary.

>FB/YT/Twitter are not fundamental to modern life.

Neither are cakes. But people on left celebrating Facebook for doing what they want on their platform - seem quite similar to the people on the left also trying to get a baker forced to make a cake.

Can't have it both ways.

(edited for clarity)

To clarify, the baker had no problem providing a cake. The problem was compelling speech on the part of the baker to write certain things on the cake.

You can have it both ways. Positions can be motivated either by process out outcome. A process position is "businesses should/should not be able to deny service to people based on <whatever dispute>". An outcome position is "We should protect gay couples and not white supremacists". You might not agree with the particular position, you might prefer developing supposedly content-neutral process positions, but many people think that the design of rules and systems is merely a means to getting to what they view as correct ends.

Your position is a bit like saying "Some people claim they're OK with the US/UK having nuclear weapons, but not North Korea. Can't have it both ways." or "Some people want charities to be tax exempt but not businesses. Can't have it both ways." or "Some people want gun control for civilians but not for the military. Can't have it both ways." Yes, many policies apply differently to different people for different reasons! That's a good thing.

Good arguments can be made that both charities and businesses should be tax exempt. As a sovereign nation, NK should be allowed nuclear weapons if China has them. And the US shouldn't have a standing army, at least if we're being governed by the rules of or founders.

All your examples ultimately boil down to force and have little to do with what ought to be.

> But the people celebrating Facebook for doing what they want on their platform - were also trying to get a baker forced to make a cake.

Do you have any data on this question? Or is this just a blind assumption that "people who disagree with me on X probably also disagree with me about Y"?

> FB/YT/Twitter are not fundamental to modern life.

And, yet, content creators must upload their content to YouTube or someone else will--even if they host it somewhere else.

Therefore, YouTube is either a monopoly or a bad-faith actor--your choice--and we will, unfortunately, need laws to bring YouTube to heel.

You can pre-register with content-id and then aggressively dmca. I'm not saying it's fun or easy just that there are totally songs and artists that are completely scrubbed from youtube.

So, I, as a content creator, have to give my information to YouTube, whom I actively avoided in the first place, as well as spend an active part of my day policing rather than creating in order to prevent YouTube from monetizing my content?

And no part of this statement strikes you as a problem?

At least there's an option. Sure there's a problem but at least there's some level of ability to rectify. PDfs of my work show up on pirate sites who make money from ads all the time and I have little to no ability whatsoever to correct that.

That's just doing business in the current economy. You either have to ignore it or actively deal with it. Neither option will totally eliminate it.

the important thing everyone misses is that these platforms claim protection from liability on what is post because they claim they dont control what users post. So they user the 1st amendment and claim to just be a platform for everyone to speak but then they choose who gets to speak. If the new york times posts a libelous article written by a freelancer they still get sued because they choose to run the article. How is it different with facebook if they are choosing who can be members?

Exactly, they are either platform or a content provider, they have to decide rather than claim the benefits from both sides but not the obligations.

i think it sucks that people celebrate the bans. like loving big brother.

Freedom of speech != Freedom of reach

If you deny someone their freedom to speak then you deny others their freedom to choose to hear that speech. Hence, this is a freedom of speech issue.

When newspapers and nightly news were the main purveyors of news content should they have been forced to allow anyone with an opinion to air it publicly? I don't think so and I'm not sure I see much difference here. Those who weren't part of the establishment that wanted their voices heard made their own papers and shows, those banned from facebook/twitter/youtube can do the same.

My sentiments about this issue are mixed. I don't really like ISIS using our networks and our services for their propaganda. Should those who promote the sexual exploitation of children be given a free pass, too?

What concerns me isn't censorship, it's that LEGITIMATE speech is being censored. I'm not sure where Alex Jones falls on that spectrum, but labeling him as a hate monger is just an easy way to quell that speech and make it unavailable. I don't see that man as a neo-Nazi, although I don't think neo-Nazis are any big threat versus neo-communists or whatever the actually violent groups who have large numbers of followers are out there. One thing is certain, far right violence is not a problem in the US, despite what the media wants us to think. The truly violent mob behavior is on the left and it has the approval of the media and many large city councils and mayors. How else could ANTIFA have such free rein across the Western US?

> Freedom of speech != Freedom of reach

Can you explain what you mean by this?

You can yell whatever you like, but nobody is obligated to sell you a megaphone

No, they are not monopolies.

Traditional monopolies "control supply of a good or service, and where the entry of new producers is prevented or highly restricted."

In this case, the supply of a good or service (social networking, webpage indexing and searching) are not controlled by Facebook and Google because they aren't finite resources. Anyone can index the web and anyone can build a social network and Google/Facebook aren't going to crush you with lawsuits or some other nefarious tactic to maintain their position (AFAIK).

Entry of new producers of these services is not prevented or highly restricted. New social networks and search engines pop up all the time.

What Facebook and Google have is massive, large scale user loyalty. Despite alternatives existing (Bing, Mastadon, DuckDuckGo, Myspace, etc.), users are voluntarily choosing to use Google and Facebook. This is not a monopoly.

I think we may need a new term for this situation.

I have little sympathy for free-market-leaning personalities who feel the sting of market forces with regard to censorship. They essentially want these platforms to be regulated like utilities, all while they simultaneously disparage utilities.

A lot of people who support the notion of free markets also support there being some regulation, especially for things like monopolies (which end up distorting markets until they resemble unfree ones). It’s a spectrum, not black and white.

Just to make sure we're on the same page, by "free-market-leaning" I mean opposing government regulations in markets. Advocating for some regulation is generally not considered supportive of a free market; on the contrary, that's just supportive of a market.

Monopoly? Let's see how these platforms will hold up against all the distributed platforms like DTube, DLive, Mastodon, etc.

The tighter the rules get for these traditional platforms, the more push there is towards distributed platforms.

Do you want to earn your livelihood from a platform that can kick you out at any time with any rule they want?

The new EU rules of Article 13 will make the push even stronger. Because it's not only up to the platforms anymore. You want to serve EU citizens? You need to make damn sure to put in filters that lean towards false-negatives.

Interesting times up ahead.

In the recent case Packingham v. North Carolina the Supreme Court, in an unanimous decision, decided social media to be the new public square. See this article for why banning people from social media will be impossible in the near future.

https://humanevents.com/2019/05/03/platform-access-is-a-civi...

The people getting banned are famous, this is exactly the moment when another platform can allow those people their speech and make a dent in facebook's monopoly.

> Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies.

They're not monopolies, they're just expedient ways to reach larger audiences. There's a difference.

A lot of clones do exist. They would just leave it the content creator to bring their audience.

If anything, there's now a danger that the platforms that cater to the fringe now start to gain traction, as some of these figures do bring with them a sizable audience of their own.

> A lot of clones do exist.

Name three.

The answer is to break up the monopoly (assuming it really is one.) Then it doesn't matter so much if they boot people off their platform.

"Free software" people build whole operating systems, but Facebook owes you access to what they built because they're good at it?

I don't NEED Facebook for modern life, neither do you. There's PLENTY of competition for online social networks. Go use one of those. Or go outside, FFS.

I’m curious what definition of monopoly you’re using here

Let's not forget that the SCOTUS has ruled Twitter is an official communications platform of the White House. Therefore Trump is not able to block people. It's a weird legal ruling, and it's hard to imagine this doesn't have implications for the rest of us. Can Twitter block you from participating in official White House communications?

I think the difference is that you can still read Trump's tweets if you're banned from Twitter, but you cannot read Trump's tweets if you're blocked by Trump on Twitter.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCNIGiUUIAALZrR.jpg

What is the difference between viewing Trump's tweets while logged out because Trump blocked you, and viewing Trump's tweets while logged out because Twitter banned you?

But you cannot participate in the discussion, that's the point.

It's more than weird. It's a crazy ruling.

The press room in the Whitehouse is an official communications platform of the White House. With that ruling as precedent, can I barge in there? I can even behave better than Jim Acosta.

> Every time this subject comes up, someone inevitably says something like "Facebook is a private corporation, the first amendment only applies to the government..." ... Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies.

For this reason, I see Facebook's blocking of specific voices as a potentially positive trend. There used to be a credible hypothesis that social media platforms could be neutral, many hoped this would be the case. However, it's now becoming clear that the hypothesis is wrong.

Social media platforms are not neutral, nor should they be. If Fox News can cater to pro-Trump voices, and NY Times can cater to pro-democrat voices, Facebook and other social media companies should also be allowed to regulate the content on their platform.

The fact that Facebook is now taking an editorial stand, and rejects the premise of being the platform for everyone, will allow other companies to fill the remaining space. I look forward to the day when Facebook chooses to focus on sharing family photos and inconsequential personal minutiae, and delegates all politics and news to other services.

Hell, if Facebook can do that I might actually use it again.

I don't know about Paul Joseph but I believe Milo has had cases of publicly naming, threatening to name, doxxing, and mocking trans women that study on the campuses that he's spoken at. I belive this is dangerous behavior due to statistic that trans people are especially vulnerable for being murdered compared to the rest of the American population.

Indeed, Milo is not too different from Info Wars. These people use the classic tactic of saying something insanely outlandish, and when they are called out on it, they just use the "I was obviously sarcastic" card.

Even if they are just joking, their followers most definitely take their message at face value, and that's exactly why they are dangerous.

> These people use the classic tactic of saying something insanely outlandish, and when they are called out on it, they just use the "I was obviously sarcastic" card.

So, like, the 'Saturday Night Live Card'?

Do you not find a difference between a show that bills itself as comedy and satire and a site that bills itself as news and info?

SNL is a comedy sketch. You go in with the expectation of satire and sarcasm. Milo and InfoWars most definitely don't act like they are joking, they purposefully tread the line, and use the "joke" excuse for when they happen to cross it.

I've heard people against seeing him on campus say that, but never seen any actual proof of him doing it or even threatening to do it.

Pretty easy to find multiple incidents of him saying threatening things, or inciting his unhinged fan base to do horrible things to people, and ducking under "I was joking", or "free speech". These trolls know exactly what they are type of harm they are causing when they walk the line of harassment.

I'm of the opinion trolls like him should be given zero media attention. Anecdotally after his twitter ban I rarely saw him in the headlines like a few years ago.

I am hoping media editors are starting to see when they are getting played for headlines.

https://www.dailycal.org/2017/09/21/uc-berkeley-students-har...

> Milo Yiannopoulos publicly posted the photos and identifying information of ASUC Senator Juniperangelica Cordova-Goff and campus doctoral student Adam Jadhav on Wednesday, spurring harassment from his supporters.

https://www.advocate.com/people/2018/6/28/milo-says-death-th...

> Milo Yiannopoulos said he was joking when he sent a text message to reporters, "I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight."

> The remark made the gay right-wing provocateur a trending topic on social media, following the Thursday shooting of the newsroom of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md.

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/01/27/24830371/uw-prof...

> In addition to internet doxxing, Weatherford says, his sense of physical safety on campus has been severely compromised:

> They have spammed my UW email account with listserve confirmations; they know where my office is in addition to my office hours; and I have started to receive packages to my departmental mailbox, some of which hinted to include Pepe the frog figurines (an image often sent to victims of online harassment). [...] There is even a post that is attempting to find the bus that I ride in order to further harass me. And, I later learned that night that they know my biological mother’s personal information.

If a group is marginally more likely to suffer violence, anyone mocking them should be denied access to widely used communications platforms? Doesn’t really make sense, does it?

Trans people are not marginally more likely to suffer violence. They're significantly more likely to suffer violence, on the rate of several times more than the general population.

In the USA this doesnt seem to be true. I just looked up the stats. 23 and 27 murders of trans individuals in US over past 2 years. Avg US homicide rate is 5 deaths per 100,000 per year. There are roughly 1.5 million trans individuals so you'd expect 75 or so. However margin of error and confounding variables are massive so my point is just that it seems roughly normal, not that it's safer to be trans. This despite 15% of female transgenders having worked at some time in the sex industry, more involvement with drugs, etc.

If you want some crazy (depressing) stats, look up trans suicide rates. Although I would speculate that only like 1 in 40 attempts succeeds.

I tried to find statistics for this claim by looking at homicide risk but was unable to find anything supporting it. Possibly this is true in non-western countries. For example here is a look at the data that claims tran people are less at risk in the UK. https://www.google.com/amp/s/fairplayforwomen.com/trans-murd...

I suspect there are lots of confounders if you wanted to isolate the risk that trans brings. For example apparently trans people have a higher rate of sex work which would increase the risk. On the other hand I wouldn't be surprised if trans were coming from higher socio-economic groups on average which would lower the risk.

And banning Milo from Facebook is going to somehow improve that situation is it? Milo the loud mouthed cretin’s tame insults are responsible for the incidence of violence against trans women?

That's not what the above poster said, and you know it. You say "marginally", "anyone", "mocking". But the people in question aren't anyone, and they aren't just mocking.

There are specific cases of them calling on their fans to harass private citizens. Anyone with some semblance of awareness of US law knows free speech is not without limits. No one is entitled to online speech, believe it or not.

I suppose you’re aware that it’s not unknown for members of the trans community to “call on their fans to harass private citizens”. Would you like them banned too? In fact, Milo has been the victim of many such calls for harassment.

To be clear, I had personal interactions with Milo many years ago when he ran a technology magazine in the UK. I’ve never met a more unpleasant individual and I would be happy to never hear from him again, but progressives working hand-in-hand with corporations to ban obnoxious individuals is a slope I don’t want us to start sliding down.

> There are specific cases of them calling on their fans to harass private citizens. Anyone with some semblance of awareness of US law knows free speech is not without limits. No one is entitled to online speech, believe it or not.

So will CNN, MSNBC, and the Washington Post be banned from facebook for setting hundreds of doxxers and activists on a high school kid who smiled in a red hat?

Man, the lack of introspection in this thread is astounding.

> No one is entitled to online speech, believe it or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access

Funny how most of you doesn't seem to understand that it's not the banned people who are dangerous. It's Facebook.

Stay off the platform and encourage others to do the same.

Read news from respected news outlets and remember that there are always multiple sides to a story.

Why not both? They're dangerous in different ways, but just because Facebook has its set of issues doesn't mean those people should have a platform to spread their non-sense to the masses.

I suppose we can assume you don't class yourself as one of the masses, those poor benighted souls who have to be protected from 'non-sense' as defined by you?

Can you explain to me how Milo is dangerous? I can see the case for Alex Jones, who spreads the kind of misinformation that leads certain individuals to "take action".

But Milo? He's basically a clown.

Speaking at universities with his clearly anti-trans message while projecting the photos and identities of trans students at those universities during his speeches is clearly dangerous.

At the surface he mind seem harmless, but he uses very similar tactics to Alex Jones behind the scenes. He will often make insane statements, and once he's called out on it, he pulls the "I was obviously joking, were you stupid enough to think I actually meant that" card. The issue is that his followers most definitely take him seriously, and that's exactly how he's dangerous.

That's exactly the problem. Facebook was intended to be a platform for fun, childish online interaction but soon media outlets hijacked it, and now it is a source of new for most of my friends.

And in Russia they ban instead this or that free speech advocate. And in China it is some other group of people that cannot speak. And in India, and in Brasil, Iran, Pakistan, UK, etc. There are always offensive people or sensitive subjects.

The only question is Facebook going to ban each group of people per country basis or globally. If globally, we are going to have a very limited, gray area of speech in Facebook.

We don't need free speech on Facebook, but we do on the Internet. That's the difference in Russia and China, etc.

So do share: most of the Internet is owned by corporations. Which part of that should be free speech protected? Should Google DNS be able to pick and choose? How about routing certain IPs? Why not? IPs are sold and corporations own those just fine and DNS is an open system, just set up your own and don't act entitled!

The cognitive dissonance plaguing most people in this matter is absolutely astonishing.

Sorry to sound like I'm trying to gotcha you, but how on earth isn't Facebook a large subset of the Internet?

Of course it is, but it’s not THE Internet and we don’t want it to be. It’s also a commercial emtity while the Internet May be considered more of a public good.

Only happy birthdays, congrats for graduations/wedding/babies/house, and condolences for deaths.

Jehovah Witnesses don't celebrate birthdays or any other holiday. To them it's wrong to single out any specific day among the majesty of all the days that God created.

I'm against Jehovah's Witnesses but that's a very pretty thought.

That isn't why at all. They believe it is of pagan origin and no birthdays were celebrated in the Bible that didn't turn out badly.

Hilarious. With the exception of Farrakhan, Facebook (and youtube, twitter, etc) is largely responsible for these people having such large platforms in the first place. But of course now they'll unilaterally censor them to widespread acclaim, deflecting criticism from the left for their participation and profiting off such demagogues, and whipping the right into a further frenzy about censorship and giving credence to these people's claims that they're censored "for truth".

Everyone wins except the common man, who now must deal with the chilling effects of media and communication monopolies having the power of judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to speech. No need to censor people you don't like if you just capriciously censor people without warning or due process... people will censor themselves for you after that.

Remember the problem isn't that these people had platforms, the problem is those platforms accepted money to promote and advertise these people. I'm sure facebook loved having these people churning around their recommendation engines, they probably drove engagement like crazy. But now the backlash isn't worth the profit, so we all have to pay the consequences.

Remember that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and "deplatforming" these people might make them as personalities go away, but their ideas and propaganda will surely fester and grow in the darker corners of the internet. Milo is a joke even among the alt-right now, but his vitriol and invective continue to grow in popularity.

Sunlight has repeatedly shown to be counterproductive. Some people use any kind of platform they can get, any sort of media attention, to spread their views. They don't care that they get ridiculed, because their followers just see that as further proof of media conspiracies and bias. It just confirms and reinforces their prejudices.

Deplatforming works. Free speech does not mean you have a right to use any platform you choose, nor does it shield you from the consequences of your speech.

The deeper and darker the corners where they hide and the harder it is to stumble across by accident, the harder it is for them to spread their viewpoints.

See Voat and Gab for relevant examples. Only the really hardcore believers went there when Reddit and Twitter said "that's it, get off our platforms".

I am sure there will be many people cheering. However people don't seem to realise that just because it isn't you getting censored now, it may well be you in the future.

What is deemed acceptable and what isn't deemed acceptable are quite transient. It wasn't long ago it was unacceptable/illegal to be a homosexual, but now it is at least (in the Western world) readily accepted. I wonder if facebook was around in the 1950s would they be banning prominent homosexuals?

It may be me in the future. In fact, it's already happened to me before! I've been banned from a few forums and IRC channels in my day. The people there didn't like what I had to say. Am I angry? No. Because I've also run my own forums, and relied on the ability to ban and moderate comments in order to maintain a useful discussion.

But wait, Facebook isn't the same a forum, right? Well, it is, it's just bigger. Way bigger. The problem is how big it is. And how, in some countries, it's the only game in town (Facebook Basics).

It may seem like Facebook is overly moderated, but given it's size, it's really the opposite. It's a big free for all where hatred, deliberate misinformation, and calls to violence happen all the time. (Example: Myanmar). If you post that stuff on HN, it will quickly get taken down. But Facebook is slow to moderate anything, their moderation system is opaque, and thus hate speech is allowed to fester.

But not just fester. Facebook actually amplifies it. They see the engagement it gets and push it out to more people. So Facebook is not only negligent in their moderation, they are actively promoting toxic behavior. So long for Facebook being a "neutral platform."

Acting like the bans are the problem is the wrong idea. Moderation is important to any internet community, including this one. But when you get banned from a place, it shouldn't amount to not having a voice at all. Facebook is destroying the public square by maintaining a monopoly on internet communication. We should work to break them up, regulate them, or encourage people to leave the site.

I think many people do realise it, and feel like it's a worthwhile risk. The cost of avoiding a hypothetical future in which I'm censored is accepting the real damage they're doing in the here and now. And also, I may end up censored anyway for other reasons. Tolerating Milo et al. isn't really a bulwark protecting me.

> I wonder if facebook was around in the 1950s would they be banning prominent homosexuals?

Of course they would. There's even a bit of that happening today: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/03/faceboo...

And this is before we get into the question of malicious application of the "real names" policy to trams people.

Attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot in recent times. This is related to the rise of social media. The advent of social media had made it too easy to spread hate online. It started off innocently enough, with cat videos uploaded to youtube, but soon extremists were taking advantage of social media for radicalization purposes, and others even live-streaming mass murders. This has caused an upheaval in attitudes towards free speech. There needs to be limits. People started imposing limits to free speech. For example, consider that UC Berkeley, renowned for giving birth to the Free Speech Movement, is now making news for banning controversial/harmful speech, such as that by Ann Coulter. The people (as opposed to governments) have decided that some censorship is in order. This is a natural evolution of societal norms. This particular evolution was causated by the excesses seen in social media. It is befitting to see that a social media company, Facebook, is now in the news for censoring harmful speech. This type of censorship, as opposed to absolute free speech, will be the new normal.

I am very much in favor of Free Speech myself. But I think the annoying thing people forget is that it's the job of society to determine what is okay and what isn't. The government isn't supposed to decide our morals, we tell the government what those should be.

Society is deciding that this is not stuff we want. Society is rejecting these ideas, and Facebook or Cloudflare when they dropped the Daily Stormer, etc, are deciding that this isn't what they want as part of their society.

If a bulk of society does want these ideas, these people will move to a new platform that supports them, and people will use them and make the ideas mainstream.

Stop complaining that society is rejecting ideas they don't like. It's literally how it works.

Society isn't deciding, Facebook is deciding.

I personally think Facebook can do whatever the please with their website. However, if they remove the users they don't like then that implies they approve of the users that remain.

Facebook is deciding because society is pressuring them to decide.

Facebook doesn't care about shit, but their bottom line. They have proven that time and time again. This should highlight the social pressures, because they are not legally responsible as far as anyone can tell. Thus, society is deciding.

"Society is rejecting these ideas,"

No it obviously isn't. If it were, there would be no need for bans whatsoever, they would simply have no audience.

> bulk of society does want these ideas

This is completely unproven.

I agree. People tend to forget that their "rights" end where another person's rights begin. Every right comes with responsibilities. While freedom of speech is important, the right to live peacefully free from hateful invective is probably even more fundamental.

I'm very familiar with all of these banned people and institutions, and I'm not at all convinced they're "dangerous". I'm not sure what the benefits are, and I'm much more concerned that their exact misdeeds never seem clearly articulate, even by people who seem extremely interested in having them silenced.

The rationale is they have stupid followers who commit the actual damage.

I fail to see why they aren't prosecuted. You're not anonymous on Facebook. And you shouldn't be on twitter, and youtube as well.

> they have stupid followers who commit the actual damage

Then shouldn't we ban/punish these followers?

Punished by the legal system absolutely. Banned by court order yes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19814795

It’s only unfortunate that it took social networks this long to ban their toxic behavior and talk. These people did a lot of damage. A lot. All in the name of free speech. And to those saying, just because Facebook can, doesn’t mean they should. These people had the same freedom. Just because they can, they shouldn’t. But they chose hatred. And here we are. You reap what you sow.

Facebook doesn’t owe them anything.

Edit: a couple of words.

Some people like to have an unlimited variety of opinions available, and others like to live in an echo chamber. Facebook is very good at creating echo chambers.

This sets up a false dichotomy. There are plenty of opinions of a variety of flavors available after removing these people.

But only the variety of flavors the platform decides you should get to choose from. See the problem?

And anyone is free to click on the text box on the top of their browser and go to any website they wish.

And what percent do? Most of the US at this points uses Google, or even chrome directly to search google.

> These people did a lot of damage. A lot.

Like what? If this damage is so prevalent then it should be easy to cite something specific.

Alex Jones popularized a propagated the myth of "Crisis Actors" and that Sandy Hook was a hoax. Trolls on the internet telling parents that their children aren't really dead, that they should exhume their bodies to prove that they really died, that they are being paid by the shadow government, that their grief looked too fake - all of this is real harm. We can talk about the doxing and the stalking and the harassment, but inflicting pain and suffering on people in a terrible situation is real harm too.

When you have a platform and you use it to abuse people, real damage is done.

> Trolls on the internet telling parents that their children aren't really dead, that they should exhume their bodies to prove that they really died, that they are being paid by the shadow government, that their grief looked too fake - all of this is real harm.

Did Alex Jones specifically incite his fans or these trolls to do this? If so, then he's legally culpable. If not, then why place the blame on him? The legal system has a fairly robust and time-tested system for assigning blame.

The problem with assigning blame in "indirect influence" arguments such as yours, is that it can be used to blame almost anyone for almost anything. How indirect or how small does this influence need to be before you conclude that a person is not culpable for someone else's actions?

If you can't delineate some specific set of clear and reasonable conditions, then it will simply be abused to censor any unpopular views, including progressive agendas.

To be clear, you're not claiming that crisis actors/political theatre is a myth...right?

>In September 2014, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who runs the website InfoWars, which had previously claimed that the murders were a "false flag" attack perpetrated by the government, made a new conspiracy claim that "no one died" at Sandy Hook Elementary School because the Uniform Crime Reports showed no murders in Newtown for 2012, and that the victims were "child actors.

Gene Rosen, a Newtown resident who was reported to have sheltered six Sandy Hook students and a bus driver in his home during the shooting, has been subject to harassment online alleging he was complicit in a government coverup,[58] among other things.[59] Some journalists have cited such incidents as part of a "Sandy Hook Truther Movement" analogous to the 9/11 Truth movement.[47][60][49] A writer for the Calgary Herald reported that the movement self-identifies as "Operation Terror."[55]

In May 2014, Andrew David Truelove stole a memorial sign from playgrounds dedicated to victims Grace McDonnell and Chase Kowalski.[61] He then went on to call the parents of Grace McDonnell, proclaiming that he stole the sign and that he believed their deaths were a "hoax".[62] He was arrested on May 30, and the signs were found in his home.[63] Truelove was convicted of the theft and sentenced to one year in prison.[64]

Robbie Parker, the father of victim Emilie Parker – after doing a CNN interview on the day after the shooting – became the target of conspiracy theorists, who claimed the interview was staged.[65] Parker has been attacked by theorists who believe he is a "crisis actor" and was "getting into character" before going on CNN to grieve over the loss of his child.[65]

In April 2016, Matthew Mills, a man from Brooklyn, accepted a plea agreement with prosecutors on one count of interfering with police arising from an incident in November 2015, when Mills angrily approached the sister of murdered teacher Victoria Soto—who is regarded as a heroine for her attempt to protect her students from the shooter in the Sandy Hook attack—shoved a photograph in her face, "and began angrily charging that not only did the Sandy Hook tragedy not take place, but that Victoria Soto never existed."[66][67] Mills entered an Alford plea and was thus found guilty; he was given a suspended sentence of one year in jail and two years' probation.[66]

In December 2016, Lucy Richards, a woman from Tampa, was charged with four counts of transmitting threats in interstate commerce for sending death threats to Lenny Pozner, whose son Noah was the youngest of 20 children murdered.[68][69] Pozner has been particularly targeted by Internet trolls and conspiracy theorists because he has vocally fought back against them.[70] Richards had been expected to plead guilty to one count of transmitting threats, with both the prosecution and defense to recommend a sentence of probation and house arrest. However, in March 2017, Richards—who was free on bond—failed to show up to court for a change-of-plea hearing and sentencing. An arrest warrant was issued, Richards' bond was revoked, and she was soon apprehended.[71] On June 7, 2017, Richards was sentenced to five months' imprisonment.[72]

Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory#Ha...

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/john...

Thanks for the detailed review. It sounds like the people who actually committed harassment and issued threats are being charged, as it should be.

Alex Jones is himself probably a little unhinged, but why does the responsibility for what other unhinged people do fall on him? Did he specifically incite this harassment or violence? He's already being sued for his alleged part in this, so the law will decide his culpability.

But I still fail to see what this has to do with whether or not people with controversial views should have a right to use services like Facebook or Twitter, like any other citizen. I've expanded on the problems with these new norms here if you're interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19819584

I honestly feel this is a bit of a disingenuous thing to ask, considering the article in question actually discusses the kind of emotional harm that this kind of behavior has caused to a large number of people.

For example, Alex Jones didn't actually cause that harm did he? If he didn't actively incite his fans to harass those families, is he responsible for their harassment? He's being sued so I suppose we'll see where the liability lies, but a lawsuit is exactly the proper response here. Why should his speech also be censored?

People seem really fond of jumping over a lot of steps to blame people for their indirect influence apparently without realizing how accepting this sort of argument makes us all culpable of fairly heinous crimes.

Pizzagate, gamergate, sandy hook hoax, subscribe to pewdiepie, ...

Thanks. I can’t stand those typical placating responses by normal people and those “isn’t it dangerous when a company can have company policies” types are so annoying.

Just because you disagree with Milo's opinions or consider him toxic is not a reason to ban him.

Ah so if something is deemed hateful by someone it should be removed from the internet.

I find your comment quite hateful /s

>In some instances, when Facebook bans an individual or organization, it also restricts others from expressing praise or support for them on its platforms

Will it restrict people from saying these things in WhatsApp?

If they already have the infrastructure for wholesale censorship like this, perhaps a China re-launch is right around the corner. They might be able to give WeChat a run for their RMB.

Yes, Facebook is taking some steps in WhatsApp to reduce the speed at which misinformation travels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings

Specifically, making it a bit harder to rapidly forward large numbers of messages to large groups of people.

https://www.vox.com/2019/1/25/18197002/whatsapp-message-limi...

That sounds closer to anti-spam than target censorship. WeChat (and even the messaging feature in DiDi!) have keyword filters that block messages with certain words.

That sounds like the direction Facebook is headed with this banning of people and talking about them.

Putting Louis Farrakhan first, when his relevance has faded a while ago, seems to be a way of trying to paint this as a "both sides" thing.

Farrakhan is a prominent leftist. He was at Aretha Franklin's funeral, seated next to Bill Clinton. The leaders of the Women's March are big fans of his.

For some context in case anyone is curious, here is a photo of part of the front row at Aretha Franklin's funeral, featuring (in order) Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Bill Clinton: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/aretha-franklin-funeral-ser...

He has a current active large social media following.

Farrakhan recently re-entered the spotlight due to the controversy over the Women's March earlier this year.

I think this is one of the more interesting and important debates of our time. As so much moves online, we realize that our speech belongs to these huge companies.

On one hand, it's great to see these toxic people kicked off, because deplatforming them works wonders in terms of stopping them from spreading their hate.

I think most of us have some doubts as to how it might play out in the future, though, and there are of course questions about how healthy it is for such huge corporations to have that much sway in the first place.

There are all kinds of other shenanigans going on with many of these companies too:

This is what we get for letting these shady social media companies get into the center of our discourse. Just remember even if you dislike people who are banned, it could be your people next.

Social media should reflect the first amendment. Let's get with the times here...

Equal exposure of all opinions is not a First Amendment issue.

Thanks for the social media company shilling. We all appreciate the overlords sneaking propaganda in!

Well done Facebook PR. You've successfully spun this to be about 'toxic' individuals, when the fact remains that it's the architecture of your platform that is tearing away at our social fabric.

How much longer will these money-printing giants remain unaccountable, unregulated, and a publlic health risk?

Ignoring for now the larger debate over censorship, Facebook's implementation of this ban is suspect. All of these accounts have been alleged to be in violation for months, if not years, and some already had been partially banned (Alex Jones was banned from FB but not IG). Why now? Were there new violations? And/or is it a new policy change that affects how FB will be banning accounts moving forward? Is FB going to do bans for a specific user across all platforms, instead of a platform-by-platform basis?

They've announced a little over a month ago that they're going to ban white nationalist content: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19503094

The problem is what is white nationalism and who defines it?

A lot of the opposition is labeled as white nationalism.

The timing isn’t suspicious given that they are increasingly late to this position.

Still waiting on them to ban antivax pages which harm a vast amount more people

So if some critical mass of the population find Mark Zuckerburg offensive can we get him banned?

I dislike them just as much as anyone else but banning and censorship is wrong and actually dangerous in the long term.

Facebook is not a public square. I love public spaces. Shouldn’t we pay for one? I don’t care if Facebook has a darling reputation; ought it run our public and private meeting spaces?

Are there any public spaces on the internet? I can't think of any. I'm not sure it would be possible to build one, legally, either.

I view government funded web presence as a digital public space, it’s just not a meeting space. To me the difference in funding determines who has power.

Ahh yes! And every real public space has its by laws and regulations too. Thanks.

There are many public spaces outside of Facebook, and they’re paid for with taxes.

Yes and what about digital meeting spaces; public-funded IRC?

It won't be long until we get this: https://www.whatsonweibo.com/chinese-media-warn-wechat-group...

“In some instances, when Facebook bans an individual or organization, it also restricts others from expressing praise or support for them on its platforms, the spokesperson said, adding that the company continues to view such action as the correct approach.”

Farrakhan? He's been around forever. He's 85. He's the guy who set up the Million Man March in 1995. Compared to other 1960s black activists, he's not that extreme. Also, no way is he "far right". Far left, maybe.

He's a rabid anti-semite and has been for most of his career. His hate for jews is on the same level as Alex Jones' hate for gay frogs

Yea, Farrakhan belongs on the censored list. He's absolutely a racist and show be disavowed by everyone everywhere.

In Jones's gay frog case... there are chemicals that turn frogs gay - that's the strangest thing about his critics... using that to point out how much of a lunatic he is, but... Atrazine [0]

IDK... Maybe I'm just bad at hating conservatives... but if I was trying to mock a personality for being crazy, I'd choose something a little less plausible.

https://www.livescience.com/10957-pesticide-turns-male-frogs...

Nobody is talking that it's not just the account that got banned but even sharing the content is not possible anymore. How is that not censorship?

I used to be against this sort of thing, but now I think the faster Facebook, Twitter, and Google make themselves irrelevant for public discourse, the better. Their ad-based business model is just incompatible with free speech, and the more obvious that fact is to everyone, the better.

I still think it's bad when non-branded content carriers like web hosts, CDNs, payment processors and banks ban clients based on ideology though.

If Facebook and Google are private companies and they can ban whomever they want, why can't they have a policy to not hire each other's employees? FYI, i don't like any of those stances.

I suggest a machine should be taught how to identify conversations about the merit of "deplatforming", and then use the ML to autoban those conversations in order to teach a valuable lesson in civics

Once again, I find it ironic to be holding an absolutist free speech view on a website that automatically deletes opinions the community doesn't like.

Turn on "show dead" in your profile. They aren't deleted; they're hidden.

Free speech has nothing to do with the right to be listened to.

But did Facebook force you to read Farrakhan or Jones before they got kicked out?

It won't be long until we get the following from Snaptubeface: https://www.whatsonweibo.com/chinese-media-warn-wechat-group...

There are some optical issues with a company that has widely recognized shortcomings in hiring African Americans banning the person who organized the Million Man March. (This is not an endorsement of Mr. Fartakhan’s politics. But man, that’s a hell of a sensitive subject for Facebook to wade into.)

I don't even know who these people are, but I do think that this is censorship, specially if it's true (as the article quotes about Loomer) that they've never actually advocated harm or the like.

It's always funny when these threads come up and people who ostensibly hold the progressive viewpoint that corporations have an inordinate amount of power and influence suddenly pull out their Ayn Rand books and Gadsden flags and argue that corporations should be able to do anything they want because they are a private entity.

It's also funny that people who ostensibly hold the conservative viewpoint that the government should not regulate corporations at all suddenly want the government to force companies and individuals to give away their property rights and host hateful speech.

People don't fit squarely into your simplistic black and white categories.

I dunno. I can certainly believe both, corporations do have an inordinate amount of power. But I also believe we should not take away any corporation's free speech rights either.

There are people that believe this isn't censorship?

Hmm, all Facebook is going to achieve is that they lose any influence on supporters/viewers of those they kicked out, instead of algorithmicaly managing them by some dark patterns. It's now trivial to set up an ActivityPub service on an own server that replaces 70% of FB/Instagram/YouTube functionality and that gap in useful services will be shrinking. So they will have a short-term win and long-term an ever larger group without any influence over as the window of acceptable discourse will be shifting further in its current trajectory, pushing more of previously accepted opinions over the edge, kicking out more users in the process.

They will achieve ensuring no ads appear next to a post from these guys.

Sounds fine to me. HN bans and threatens to ban people too and that's a good thing.

Exactly, nearly every online forum does the same thing. It's normal and healthy. Luckily, there's no shortage of forums to move on to.

Banning spammers and system abuse is one thing but it's probably not a good thing that HN bans people for other reasons.

At the very least HN should have a public log showing all administrative censorship so people can judge it for themselves.

Without transparency we simply don't know how this extremely influential social network is being manipulated by a tiny handful of people.

I have a very hard time getting worked up over deplatforming. Social media companies are private, if they want to ban odeous asshats that is their right. Those who dislike it can go to Gab.

I'm not a fan of either of these people, but how exactly are Milo Yiannopolous and Paul Joseph Watson "dangerous"? Maybe it's not good material for people to be watching, but to call them "dangerous" comes off like the religious right of yore claiming that video games depicting violence are dangerous and need to be censored.

I wouldn't normally step in to defend these people, but this article by CNN is a prime example of why people don't trust the media. Note the use of the word "fringe" in reference to people like Paul Joseph Watson, despite the number of views and subscribers(1.6 million) he has on YouTube alone. The word "fringe" used to mean something a lot more, well... fringe, but it's obvious that CNN and other outlets believe that they are official while everyone not sanctioned by Big Advertising is fringe.

Facebook used to be popular because it was, at one point, fun. If they're going to remove all the voices they think are "dangerous", what they're left with won't be fun or interesting. Just lukewarm, milquetoast, or worse... lopsided.

Sadly, I suspect that Facebook's stock will continue to climb despite how restrictive it is, how uninteresting it is, and how many people are leaving it.

EDIT: I do appreciate those who haven't taken my comment as a denial of wrongdoing by subjects I mentioned. My question was honest and I still stand by my comment on CNN.

You're being disingenuous! Paul Joseph Watson believes:

- 9/11 was an inside job

- The illuminati is controlling your mind with chemitrails

- Soy beans are making men docile and feminine.

Sounds pretty fringe to me. Don't care how many views he has.

He also incites hate against muslims, which I'd say, makes him pretty dangerous.

My opinion of Facebook's actions is a separate matter. But the narrative you're pushing to justify your argument - it's complete BS.

> Facebook used to be popular because it was, at one point, fun. If they're going to remove all the voices they think are "dangerous", what they're left with won't be fun or interesting. Just lukewarm, milquetoast, or worse... lopsided.

Honestly, I hope that Facebook becomes more restrictive and more censorship-oriented. That would make alternative platforms more viable and increase diversity in online media. I'm also 100% opposed to the idea that private companies should be permitted to or expected to function as the town square. That, more than censorship, is the real threat to freedom of speech and freedom of thought. Facebook, twitter, and youtube, by the nature of their ranking algorithms and the structure of the service, have a huge influence on what and how ideas spread without explicitly pushing or censoring content.

> The word "fringe" used to mean something a lot more, well... fringe

Did it? How many people do you think were interested in old school conspiracy theories like Area 51 [1] or the protocols of the elders of zion [2]? Henry ford printed half a million copies of the latter!

>how exactly are Milo Yiannopolous and Paul Joseph Watson "dangerous"?

I think "dangerous" is probably not quite the right word. They're dangerous in the same way that, say, anti-vax views are dangerous [3]. The views themselves won't hurt you or hurt me. They're 'just' opinions. However, at some point, allowing those views on your platform make you complicit in promoting pandemics. You're not directly responsible exactly, but you're involved somehow.

Where the "line" is and how we talk about it isn't clear, but I think there is a line somewhere and I feel pretty comfortable that the people Facebook banned are probably on the other side of it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51#UFO_and_other_conspira... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of... [3] https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html

Edit: I should note, lest anyone think this is all "in the past," that people still claim that "the protocols" is an authentically jewish document that describes real Jewish people.

Don't know about Watson, but Milo had been previously slapped for an Instagram post that was seen as cheering on an attempted mail bomb attack in October:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/instagram-refuses-to-pull-down...

By dangerous they mean dangerous to advertisers. Facebook's decisions like this have nothing to do with harm to humans. It's to profit.

Milo Yiannopoulos getting the bully pulpit on TV and university stages, to say, as though it were a fait acompli, that trans people are sick is dangerous.

Paul Joseph Watson spewing misinformation about the extent of the refugee crisis is dangerous.

> but how exactly are Milo Yiannopolous and Paul Joseph Watson "dangerous"?

They are dangerous to ad revenue.

Maybe they are also dangerous in other ways, but those discussions are a red herring.

Danger to ad revenue is the only danger large publicly traded internet companies actually care about.

Saying racist stuff constantly but playing it off as "ironic" and wearing a suit doesn't make it less racist. Good, they should have kicked these guys off years ago.

Agreed. Facebook and Twitter are private companies so they can do whatever they want as far as I'm concerned. But given their reach, it is disturbing that their censorship of content (and CNN's inevitable approval of it) is clearly political bubble motivated.

Recent examples are James Woods and the Unplanned movie. While far more egregious speech (assuming the same standard) on the other side is given a pass.

It would be great if they would list all those that are blocked (maybe only the high profile ones) so that we could have some actual data around it.

So, some guy I never heard of is not fringe because he has 1.6 million subscribers, but Facebook "used to be popular" because they only have 2.38 billion users?

Come on now. The numbers clearly show that to Facebook, 1.6 million subscribers is very fringe.

1.6 million doesn't even get you into the top 5000 on YouTube.

Milo calls himself "dangerous", FWIW. It was the title of his book. Now he gets to own it.

Milo is an "edgy" comedian. His shtick is to be provocative. I can't imagine he's dangerous in any real way. Offensive, yes, but not dangerous.

Safetyism

I'd highly recommend the book "The Coddling of the American Mind." I just finished it and it talks a lot about our current cultural migration to seeing words == violence. Words are NOT violence. Violence is violence.

Eric Clanton, a UC Berkley employee hit a trump supporter with a bike lock, causing a skull fracture. He got three yeas probation. I'm not a fan of Trump either, but he could have killed that man, and should have gotten at least 3~6 months in jail for assault.

Violence is violence. Words are not dangerous (with the exception of specific calls to violence--which are not protected under US speech). New Zealand is fining a man $10k NZD for distributing the recent shooters manifesto; which honestly just makes that Aussie loon's words even more valuable in the eyes of many.

As far as the article and social media, who cares. Maybe this will finally get people to start paying to host their own stuff again. Big centralized social media is the opposite of what originally made the Internet awesome. The big players are focused on money, making us cattle, and their services have been shown to make us more anxious and depressed.

FB can do what they want with their platform, and if these people are calling for specific violence (Jones sometimes does cause he's just a moron; the others listed are fairly careful though), well that's not even protected under free speech laws in countries that have them.

I extract my Facebook events via the ical link and use the messenger with 3rd party apps. When I do log in to Facebook, I go directly to my profile page and I have 50+ notifications. I want to try to hit 100.

> If they're going to remove all the voices they think are "dangerous", what they're left with won't be fun or interesting. Just lukewarm, milquetoast, or worse... lopsided.

Isn't it already?

> Note the use of the word "fringe" in reference to people like Paul Joseph Watson, despite the number of views and subscribers(1.6 million) he has on YouTube alone. The word "fringe" used to mean something a lot more, well... fringe

fringe noun

1. A decorative border.

2. A marginal or peripheral part.

3. Those members of a political party, or any social group, holding unorthodox views.

Nope, still means the same thing or are we not trusting dictionaries now also?

despite the number of views and subscribers(1.6 million) he has on YouTube alone.

I'm not saying that far-out views should be banned from the intarwebs, but 0.023% of the world's population sounds pretty fringe to me.

Heck, it's only 0.4% of the United States. Not even a rounding error.

>I'm not a fan of either of these people, but how exactly are Milo Yiannopolous and Paul Joseph Watson "dangerous"?

They don't adhere 100% to the established views of the 10% of "good people". Hence, they are, if not dangerous, bad.

Idk how HN will receive this but it's because CNN hard shills for the left. They're circumventing first amendment principles because of their power. They want to I censor anything that disagrees with their propaganda.

I've never voted Republican.

Wasn't Milo's book literally titled "Dangerous"?

do you think Louis Farrakhan is inherently dangerous or something?

Giving equal air time to falsehoods and inciteful language is in my opinion dangerous. An anti-vaxxer should not be given the same air time as a scientifically accredited researcher who has decades of research behind them. We don't give holocaust deniers a platform and I don't believe we should give any other racial or religious hate speech anything remotely approaching equal air time.

Facebook is a platform that allows children (13+) and families to share posts and content. I don't see how they can simultaneously provide an environment for religious and racial hate speech and anti-vaxxers to spread their FUD without compromising on one or the other. Either you're family friendly or you're a platform for 'edgy' content.

The right to free speech (in the US at least) is a tremendous and wonderful thing but there's no mention that every fool should be given equal air time in every newspaper, TV programme or now on private content platforms like Facebook. There are sites aimed at providing a haven for edgy or outright false and inciteful speech. Facebook and in my opinion Twitter are not it.

At the end of the day, that's for Facebook to decide. If Facebook decides they don't want to host content from them, that's their choice as the private company they are.

People keep bringing up "freedom of speech" when it comes to these trolls, like the world owes them something.

He's dangerous as he stokes the kind of fear, based on falsehoods, that cause a government such as ours to split up migrant families with no regard as to how to reunite them. And that's just the beginning of what will happen based on the kind of rhetoric Trump and Yiannopolous put out.

Milo is a known associate and darling of the alt-right.

Facebook by definition is milquetoast and that's part of what makes it great. This is like accusing Disney of being boring by not having an voice from the alt-right.

Your post borders on concern trolling.

> how exactly are Milo Yiannopolous and Paul Joseph Watson "dangerous"?

"Pizzagate," for example. Milo and InfoWars pushed a loony conspiracy theory until some guy believed them enough to show up at a random restaurant with an assault rifle, which seems dangerous. They did it to sell fake nutritional supplements.

EDIT: They're welcome to continue ranting away on their own blogs, but I don't see any reason that Facebook should give them a free megaphone.

The same “slippery slope” argument that’s used to defend GPL3’s extraordinary licensing reach and “don’t let anyone search your phone” activism applies here as well.

Is it a slippery slope from Milo to White Supremacy? Yes. Does WS endorse violence towards others? Yes. Therefore, is it dangerous to others to give Milo a platform? Yes.

If you don’t believe in slippery slope arguments, that’s your right, but there’s quite a lot of sociology contradicting you, and the various internet platforms are realizing that the sociology (and memeticists) were probably right all along.

There has to be some sort of US free speech legal action that could be taken to stop this crack down by an internet platform company on free speech. I'm not sure how many people actually take FB seriously as a 'news' platform, but it can be useful to discuss the way corporate entities such as CNN present information on their specific home pages on Facebook.

I'm wondering if a tipping point will be reached where so many people will be deplatformed that users will start to flock to uncensored sites (think of Gab, but it doesn't have to be Gab) en masse to be able to read what they want to read, to the point where those sites will have enough "normal" users that they won't be complete cesspools like Voat is.

What will come first is one of these companies (probably Twitter, Facebook, or Google) will overreach in some way (like nuking the President's account or something else equally outlandish) and force a legal fight on the matter.

The nature of free speech on the internet, when the internet is an interconnected series of other people's back yards, is not a fight that Silicon Valley would prefer to have. This idea carries some amount of legal precedent for physical locations [1].

They'd also rather not have their status as platforms vs publishers reevaluated - the more control they exert, the closer they come to that point of being a publisher, and therefore responsible for the content they host.

[1]: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/3d/23/...

This is awesome news. Deplatforming works and these guys are so blatantly harmful.

Deplatforming works to achieve what exactly?

WHY THIS IS CENSORSHIP:

I am seeing numerous comments claiming this is not censorship when it most definitely is. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a government, private institutions, and corporations.

From Merriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship), where there is no mention of 'censorship' being a government-specific concept:

> the institution, system, or practice of censoring

From Oxford (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/censorship), where again there is no mention of 'censorship' being a government-specific concept:

> The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

We know Facebook is a private corporation. That's irrelevant, as such actions are censorship regardless. So please stop repeating the false claim that this isn't censorship because Facebook can do whatever it wants as a private entity.

WHY FREE SPEECH MATTERS:

Proponents of free speech are pro free speech as a general concept and principle, beyond what protections are afforded under American law today. The idea of free speech predates the existence of the United States. Free speech is hugely valuable to defend, because what society finds acceptable or unacceptable is very much subjective and changes with time/location/culture/setting/leadership/etc. Having an open exchange of ideas is good and necessary for the long-term health and stability of society. Furthermore, making available ideas that challenge current understanding is necessary if we care about being a collectively truth-seeking society.

Free societies are durable over the long term when they protect these rights at all times, for all people, for all ideologies. As a rule of thumb, if the speech in question is not advocating for direct physical violence, it should be permitted. Getting into the business of censoring indirect or non-physical harm is a huge slippery slope. We could frame virtually any idea as having some downstream negative externality and suggest that it should be disallowed. For example, capitalism, socialism, and communism could all be attacked in this manner. Should books on those topic be dropped?

WHY PRIVATE PLATFORMS' CENSORSHIP IS CONCERNING:

Large privately-owned platforms carry so much discourse across today's society, that censorship and deplatforming in those spaces has the same impact as governmental censorship, for most intents and purposes. Even if these corporations do not constitute what we might traditionally call a "monopoly", they control a large-enough share of traffic to have significant impact when they take artificial actions. That is, they constitute a digital public square. That sizable impact is exactly why they are being targeted (not just on this topic but others) by activists or other agents pushing for deplatforming/censorship favorable to their causes.

The big risk is this: when only a few entities funnel so much societal discourse or control our communication infrastructure or process payments, those entities making arbitrary decisions about who they serve has similar impacts/risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law. These companies should not act as a thought police and should not impose their own personal governance above what is minimally required by the law. Nor should they rely on the judgment of an angry mob to make decisions.

Not giving a microphone to someone is not the same as censoring them.

Hate speech is still categorically speech and that's why this is censorship. Seems most people are OK with having some ill defined notion of hate speech and censoring that. Personally, I'm OK with being critical of what I hear and helping others be critical, so I'm generally OK with the existence of hate speech. I think we can mostly all decide who is an asshole without making laws about what assholes can or can't SAY. For the reasons stated in the parent, I would say having free speech is more important than not having hate speech.

...and nothing of value was lost. Facebook is not the government. They have no obligation to allow all speech.

I wish all users had your capacity for reason.

FB is private property. Play by their rules or GTFO. People who scream about censorship in instances such as these are being willfully dismissive of the property rights of others. And that's a dangerous road to start down.

Just wait till people on the other side of the spectrum start getting blowback because establishment left are done with them, then we’ll hear how speech is being kerbed in the interest of the establishment and corporatism.

-1j; Flamebait.

Legally they have no obligation but IMHO Zuckerberg does have an ethical obligation to uphold freedom of speech, particularly as a citizen of a country founded on the principle.

Facebook is as influential and dominant over information as the U.S. government has ever been. Responsibility comes with power and money is Facebook's only motivation here. They're worried about the financial repercussions of upholding this most sacred of American principles.

They fear the backlash from least principled people among us, people that simply can't comprehend the concept of defending even your sworn enemy's human rights.

Zuckerberg is compromising his own ethics for money, clearly proving once and for all that he truly cannot be trusted great power. An intelligent billionaire that is unwilling to stand up to a mob is truly a sad excuse for a human being.

> They have no obligation to allow all speech.

Their legal obligation is one thing, their moral/ethical obligations are another. So are you technically right? Yes. But are you completely overlooking the real problem here? Also yes.

Allowing these platforms to silence anyone at any time for any (non-discriminatory) reason is giving them an absurd amount of power. The least we could do is force them to be transparent - give us a list of who they've banned and exactly why they were banned so we can make informed decisions about supporting those platforms.

As it stands, we have no way of knowing if these bans were arbitrary or justified. And since we depend on private companies for so many fundamental aspects of our lives, it only makes sense that the obligation to protect fundamental rights should also extend to those companies.

I imagine the people who are happy about this event aren't very fun at parties.

I imagine people who say others aren’t fun at parties, are themselves not very fun at parties.

I don't agree with this at all. If they want to put a big warning on it, contain the posts, etc. that's fine, but banning is not cool. One person's radical fascist is another person's ardent hero. Facebook should support freedom of speech, not freedom from speech.

The only thing that the constitutional right to freedom of speech guarantees is that the government cannot arrest you for what you say.

It doesn’t give you the right to continue using someone’s platform as a megaphone if they decide you’re an asshole.

Being banned from Facebook doesn’t mean that these people no longer have the right or ability to spread their message. They can use another platform, or make (or host!) their own website, or print and distribute literature, or go stand on a street corner with an actual megaphone.

Facebook is not the government, and— agree with it or not— they can decide who uses their platform and how.

(For the record, I’m not a fan of Facebook.)

What Facebook actually supports is not pissing off their customers. Their business is based on advertising. Advertisers are their customers. I'm not sure why anybody expects anything else.

The ignorance in these comments is astounding. Facebook has already banned many anti-war voices that can in no way be construed as "racist" or bigoted. Its one thing to claim that private companies have the right to silence and censor people, and quite another to cheer on the practice as somehow being desirable.

It's alarming. I feel like the common sentiment on censorship, and many other issues, among my in-group has shifted under my feet. We have existing laws against harassment and terroristic threats, and in the case of Alex Jones it seems to me that those legal avenues are being pursued properly, so de-platforming serves only to create a dangerous precedent. As an anti-war leftist, I know that my group is next on the chopping block if it's not there already.

Yes these are private platforms, but that line of reasoning ignores the extent of the coordination between governments and these corporations. Do any of you Americans ever think how this kind of precedent will play out in smaller countries, where Facebook blindly does the bidding of corrupt governments? The internet and social media networks are the telephone and mail systems of the 21st century. At least until it is more feasible to have an online presence without going through multiple corporations as intermediaries, I think we need to be more diligent about protecting even the ugliest forms of speech on private platforms.

> "many anti-war voices"

Care to name some names?

Now let's proceed to people who are _actually_ causing harm, such as, for example, anti-vaxxers, antifa, etc. Alex Jones, chemtrails, give me a break. He doesn't even believe in that shit himself. :-)

In fact, let's also ban CNN from there. It has been peddling fake conspiracy theories and divided the country for the past 2 years pretty much non-stop. That's kinda harmful innit?

So they should ban all the people you want banned, because, you've got a better handle on what's "dangerous"?

All you guys using freemarket/private enterprise excuses to support this have no justification supporting net neutrality or any antidiscrimination 'public accommodation' laws ie (forced SSM cake baking, government interference in private business's choice of customer/employee). Either government steps in for the greater good or it doesn't. You can't have it both ways.

For years 'InfoWars' was promoted on YouTube, allegedly they now ban Alex Jones and his brand of media, along with - now - Facebook.

During the Bush years he did act as a 'gatekeeper' for people questioning the war. Rather than people get to useful facts they only got as far as Alex Jones rants. This had a useful effect of neutering anyone questioning the particulars of how the war started.

I would not say it is sad to see him banned from every platform but you have to wonder if he has outlived his usefulness.

The bigger problem is the recommendation algorithms, giving him the oxygen of publicity. People would never have discovered his content without these algorithms, unless a friend personally recommended 'Infowars' et al.

We should still have the option to read or watch content that does not agree with us in the realm of politics. I have not read 'Mein Kampf' myself, however I have listened to that one clip of Hitler actually talking rather than delivering a speech. I found it useful for understanding a little bit more about that war. There may be neo-nazis we need to protect from such hate speech but it is also at a cost to understanding history.

With Alex Jones there is that theory that he is the same person as Bill Hicks. That story does interest me and I would like the option to study some original Alex Jones content to see if that is a credible conspiracy story or just some entertaining hogwash. If every trace of Alex Jones is banned from the internet then I won't have that option.

Regrettable. Are they banning radical left types? Of course not.

Their criteria from the article:

> The Facebook spokesperson said such factors include whether the person or organization has ever called for violence against individuals based on race, ethnicity, or national origin; whether the person has been identified with a hateful ideology; whether they use hate speech or slurs in their about section on their social media profiles; and whether they have had pages or groups removed from Facebook for violating hate speech rules.

Who is a radical left type on Facebook that you feel have crossed boundaries?

Louis Farrakhan is leftist, right?

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