Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mirioron | Hacker News Reader

>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!

I think most of the people were interested in it for entertainment, just like people are interested in horoscopes for entertainment. Or would you argue that all these newspapers that had horoscopes in them pushed fringe conspiracy theories on the level of flat earth?

>They're dangerous in the same way that, say, anti-vax views are dangerous [3].

You have to show some evidence for a wild claim like that, because you're insinuating that Paul Joseph Watson and Milo are getting people killed.

>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.

Until it inevitably comes back to bite you or something you like.

View on HN

Horoscropes don't have a victim. Stuff like elders of zion portrays jewish people as villains, to real and tangible consequences (did you know anti-semitic hate crimes are up around 300% of the last two years?).

How about white supremacy? Islamism? Communism? Westboro Baptist church? The more radical parts of Black Lives Matter?

I don't think Facebook needs to host people who's political opinions they don't share but it can be tricky the draw the line.

Why not, just allow everything that is legal?

There is no need to be the arbiter of what is right for the world.

That's Gab's approach. Allow everything that is legal, and crack down on what is illegal. Unfortunately, Gab being perceived as a haven for the alt-right is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The incessant media coverage against it and platform bans (Google and Apple banned their app, Chrome and Firefox banned their browser extension) are designed to scare normal people off from using it (and makes it even more notorious and alluring in the eyes of racists).

If the wider population actually started using Gab and Minds without hesitation like they use Facebook and Twitter, the extremists would be immediately drowned out and only constitute a tiny fraction of 1%, the same as in reality, and their threads would be filled with counter-arguments rather than reaffirmations.

> the extremists would be immediately drowned out and only constitute a tiny fraction of 1%, the same as in reality, and their threads would be filled with counter-arguments rather than reaffirmations.

no they would still be by far the loudest and stupidest, while all the mentally stable people realize that there's no point in arguing with the deranged and find better things to do.

What about Madeleine Albright spreading the idea the killing hundreds of thousands of children is `a price worth paying' on every media platform in the US?

What about the relentless promotion of capitalism and growth which is ultimately going to see us all as victims?

I detest the right-wing in all its forms, including its Democrat and Republican wings but I cannot see any ultimately positive outcome in banning their views.

(Yes, private corporations have a right to do as they like etc, etc , etc)

For what it's worth, I agree*

*I know that "me too" comments are discouraged here, but when I see someone so downvoted I'd like to show my support, even though it doesn't really offer anything.

>I detest the right-wing in all its forms,

>but I cannot see any ultimately positive outcome in banning their views.

Careful there, that might be a right wing view depending on who you ask.

True. Or left-wing, depending on who is downvoting. It's the one thing the authoritarians have in common.

>Horoscropes don't have a victim.

they don't? it's a multi-million dollar industry that sells non-information to people; some of these people so stupid that they ingest it as factual gospel and use it to run their lives.

I'm not against it, but it doesn't take a lot of mental gymnastics to see the harmful aspects of horoscopes. The victimization of Andy Kaufman and Steve Jobs using psychic quackery, although different than a horoscope, comes to mind right away -- it's just not that safe an idea to sell confidence in quackery.

I think the difference is, if a horoscope writer started giving truly dangerous advice, like, "Today's a good day to get bitten by a snake," they would be be considered more dangerous to those who believe in them.

How's this for starters?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Yiannopoulos#Violence_aga...

I think this is good pointing to specific examples and incidents.

What worries me is that these bans are so vague. If you say someone is dangerous or needs to be removed from a platform, you really should back that up with the why. Getting very specific as to the reasons people are dangerous.

If we don't do this you're going to get conspiracy theorists looking at bans as some big plot against their ideology.

I like Tim Pool's take on this. There is a clear anti conservative bias in the rules these platforms enforce, that's fine just acknowledge it.

Did you actually read his comment?

How is saying "I can't wait for X" the same as asking for X? The statement means that something is going to happen. It isn't a threat nor a request.

If I say "I can't wait for the pendulum to swing the other way" it doesn't mean I'm going to affect the pendulum in any way. So I don't see how that statement makes him dangerous.

I definitely understand your perspective and such mirrored mine for a long time. I will also be the first to concede that if the first amendment doesn't protect this kind of speech, then really, what does it protect?

With that said, we have to understand that large swaths of the American population get almost all of their "news" from the figures they follow on Facebook and it ends up codifying the belief systems by which they live their lives and make decisions. So when you say:

> You have to show some evidence for a wild claim like that, because you're insinuating that Paul Joseph Watson and Milo are getting people killed.

Well, I don't really understand how you can claim that anti-vaxxing views are not dangerous. We enter social contracts with each other when we enter into public spaces and we should have the right to ensure that others won't intentionally get us sick. I'm not sure whether or not the aforementioned characters have a specific stance on anti-vaxxing, but they definitely are responsible for spreading other types of equally dangerous ideology to millions in ways which have hurt and killed many (Alex Jones being the preeminent example here; my otherwise levelheaded friend bought an AK because of him to prepare for the upcoming class warfare). And this is in Seattle. Just imagine the kind of behavior you can expect to see inland when these kinds of nutty beliefs are bolstered by their local social popularity.

We have to understand that other members of our populace don't have the facilities to be able to separate fact from fiction and these people specifically are the most vulnerable to adopting beliefs that weaken the social fabric of our society, making our country more hateful and divisive. Again, I think free speech is important, but speech that is intentionally misleading and that sews hatred and violent tendencies needs to be examined closely.

I think Facebook has probably extrapolated the siloing effect that social media has on groups forward a few years and come to the conclusion that certain groups (namely the far and alt right) base much of their ideology on not only hate, but conspiracies and misinformation. This will eventually come to a headwind in which domestic national security in our country begins to look more like the middle east and that is something that we should try to avoid.

>Alex Jones being the preeminent example here; my otherwise levelheaded friend bought an AK because of him to prepare for the upcoming class warfare

Your friend bought an AK because people like Alex Jones are being deplatformed and there are people openly calling for violence (eg antifa). Your friend is afraid of a civil war. It takes two to fight.

>I think Facebook has probably extrapolated the siloing effect that social media has on groups forward a few years and come to the conclusion that certain groups (namely the far and alt right) base much of their ideology on not only hate, but conspiracies and misinformation.

What you need to understand is that these companies seem to have an anti-conservative bias. Notice how when antifa attacks people it seems to not be much of a problem. There are antifa chapters that openly sell merchandise. Yet we see people in antifa cause millions in property damages, attack people with bike locks and other forms of violence. Antifa has a long history of violence in Europe. What you need to understand is that many of these companies are partisan or at least tend towards partisan actions. Do you think people demanding the abolishment of capitalism and the intuition of communism are somehow the good guys?

Yeah, ideally, the perfect arbiter would be able to make objective decisions as to whether or not a certain individual/group violates the TOS of the platform and acts accordingly. But whether or not someone (or something, in the case of machine intelligence) can be truly objective is a subject of debate. So we have this imperfect system where some get away with murder and others are banned for as much as a peep.

I will cede that the anti-conservative bias is egregious. On the left, well, Kathy Griffin for one has invoked more than her fair share of controversy which, in my view, have been fair grounds for removal; and there are figures on the right who have been banned for far less inflammatory rhetoric than that of which she spews. It's not clear to me what the solution here is; but stricter regulation seems like it may be appropriate. These are the questions of the time for good reason.

Speech either has power or it hasn’t.

If it doesn’t, what are we all doing here? What is the First Amendment even supposed to protect? Meaningless entertainment?

Yet if it has power, it must be possible for it to be both good and bad, or otherwise we could improve humanity by just posting randomly generated text.

So the distinction between meaningless “speech” and somehow possibly malign “acts” is somewhat arbitrary.

>> >They're dangerous in the same way that, say, anti-vax views are dangerous [3].

> You have to show some evidence for a wild claim like that, because you're insinuating that Paul Joseph Watson and Milo are getting people killed.

I have no clue who these people are, but since I happen to have a young child I actually put some effort into figuring out the pros and cons of vaccination. Turns out that the people who don't vaccinate (for whatever reason be it religious or autism or whatever -- this is irrelevant) have outbreaks/pandemics of the diseases. It also turns out that the people who do vaccinate serve as protective shield for those who don't. Essentially, the people who don't vaccinate are like freeriders, leeches. They get the benefits from vaccination (less outbreak/pandemic) without the effort (getting vaccinated). The evidence is pretty simple actually.

Quoting from [1]: "An aspect of Bible Belt society that has drawn the attention of the Dutch general public in recent years (when concerns of a measles epidemic emerged) is the suspicion of parents towards state-run vaccination programmes."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Belt_(Netherlands)

That's my point - if you want to say a person is as dangerous as antivaxxing then you have to show some evidence.

both of them pretty clearly are on our radar for their political speech (feminism is cancer, “free speech”, soros conspiracies, etc). Given what we know about social media and violence, entertainment value should be a secondary concern.

"Given what we know about social media and violence"

you mean how social media is akin to a pressure relief valve, and how actual violence has gone down since it took off? And how this is probably about clicks and stirring the pot than actual violence, and how this is just going to completely backfire? Shall we burn some books too?

was thinking more along the lines of this study, which shows that "right-wing anti-refugee sentiment on Facebook predicts violent crimes against refugees in municipalities with higher social media usage."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3082972

that study is a case study in selection bias by someone with a political agenda.

You can't just look at actions by one somewhat arbitrary group against another, and not look at the actions of anyone else, unless you are expressly trying to be misleading.

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

You can see that the other "group" here, whos actions are deliberately being ignored by the author and everyone else with an agenda, have brought a lot of violence of their own to the table. Or at least have enough conflicting data points to not pretend to "know" something about facebook and framed studies.

"The group represented roughly 2 percent of the German population by end of 2017,[10] but was suspected of committing 8.5 percent of crimes (violations off the German alien law are not included). The numbers suggest that the differences could at least to some extent have to do with the fact that the refugees are younger and more often male than the average German. The statistics show that the asylum-group is highly overrepresented for some types of crime. They account for 14.3 percent of all suspects in crimes against life (which include murder, manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter), 12.2 percent of sexual offences, 11.4 percent of thefts and 9.7 percent of body injuries The report also shows differences between the origin of migrants. Syrians are underrepresented as suspects, whereas citizens from most African countries, especially northern Africans are strongly overerrepresented. Afghans and Pakistanis are particularly overerrepresented in sexual offenses.[7][10]"

For anyone reading, I’m not responding to this as it doesn’t address anything I, the study, or the original article said.

> you mean how social media is akin to a pressure relief valve, and how actual violence has gone down since it took off?

I would love to see sources for this. It sounds very interesting and I want to know more.

All these people promote toxic communities that drive away users and lead to harassment and doxing.

Citation needed

You're taking an overall reduction in violent crime in the US to mean that hate crimes have also decreased.

The opposite is the case, and it is absolutely because extremist/fringe material has become increasingly and vastly more easily available.

50 dead in Christchurch, scores of Rohyinga in Myanmar, 11 dead in a Pittsburgh Mosque are all victims from what you call a 'pressure relief valve.'

"An FBI report released in November 2018 detailing hate crimes across more than 3,000 police agencies showed a more than 17% uptick in 2017, fueled by increases in attacks against religious and racial minorities. The count documented 7,175 hate crimes in 2017. The tally was 1,054 higher than the year before. It included a 37% increase in anti-Jewish crimes, a 24% increase in attacks on Latinos and a nearly 16% rise in crimes against African Americans."[1]

[1] https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-poway-jewish-hate-...

The likes of Milo are a pressure release valve? In that case, maybe they should be given a medal, since they're helping to prevent violence. Somehow I find that notion to be less than credible.

Milo, Coulter, Savage, and their ilk are extremist trolls, and I have no problem with them being banned from Facebook, just like trolls are regularly banned from HN. It makes for a more civil and less hostile community. The alternative is to let the site devolve in to endless flamewars with people who have no other intention than to get attention and stoke hatred.

This isn't a Freedom of Speech issue, because the First Amendment only prohibits the US government from censoring speech, while this is a case of a private entity refusing to let its platform be used to spew hatred. The First Amendment does not entitle one to have the use of any social media platform you like.

Incidentally, people who have a problem with this should advocate for greater decentralization of communications platforms, which his something that I am in favor of myself. Facebook and other Internet giants have too much power, and we should all oppose that and encourage other means of communication that don't depend on being in the good graces of any one company or even small handful of companies.

In the meantime, people like Milo should crawl back to Stormfront or Breitbart, where I'm sure they'll find no shortage of adulation.

There is nothing negative about free speech, it is the bedrock of democracy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com