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Comment by knzhou | Hacker News Reader

This is yet another example of 'damned if you do and damned if you don't. If Facebook did literally no moderation whatsoever, then there would be (and indeed was, in the past) a furor of complaint over their callous indifference to society. The second Facebook censors anything, they are immediately hit with a furor of complaint that, under those standards, they are obligated to censor some slightly less objectionable thing. They resist for a while, then cave in, and the cycle repeats. For the past 10 years this has been a reliable mine of outrage porn, but not a cause of real progress.

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This is yet another example of you just dodging the problem. FB is arbitrarily demarcating a line of their choosing with no consistency. Politicians are no different from people, and should not be treated to a special "free speech pass" on FB. Free speech for all, or free speech for none. There's no decent reasoning behind this midway solution. The true reason for this is that the politicians have regulatory leverage over FB.

I addressed exactly this. This is what you are doing:

> The second Facebook censors anything, they are immediately hit with a furor of complaint that, under those standards, they are obligated to censor some slightly less objectionable thing.

This is like trench warfare. Facebook never drew an arbitrary line: it just kept being pushed back by public and media pressure here and there, retreating in bits and pieces. Obviously if you just ignore that history, it looks like an arbitrary line now, but it was created by complaints almost identical to the ones you're making.

Retreating in bits and pieces is a choice made by Facebook. No one forced them to do this. It's their choice as a company trying maximize their visibility/profits. I don't think people would have left FB if FB just decided to not moderate political content at all. Just like right now, there is no exodus of people from FB in spite of the outrage.

You are attributing very little agency to a company that makes its decisions unilaterally (sometimes even ignoring laws). This is a gross misrepresentation of FB's position. FB is not a victim here.

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