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Comment by caenorst | Hacker News Reader

Except that the "glorification of violence" depends on the interpretation. It can also be a warning that people will start to defend themselves with violence or that the military will intervene. If that's the case those warning are here to AVOID violence by discouraging people to engage in looting...

Facebook shouldn't make such decision based on the interpretation of some emotionally biased employees.

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"When the looting starts, the shooting starts" - quote from a segregationist who did some pretty despicable things.

"We have vicious dogs" - Who is this, Mr. Burns? "Release the hounds!"

"I'm wondering if we can't have some kind of MAGA-counterprotest here. MAGA-people like the black folk. They like African Americans. Maybe they can show up to counterprotest." - seriously? This is about as close to Cartman-esque chanting for a "race war".

Are we going to analyze every tweet for its historical usages? If AOC or Bernie Sanders tweets again about "Revolution", should we censor them if they quote Che Guevara? Something tells me they won't do that.

...but more fundamentally, the question is who gets to decide? Corporations or elected officials? ...can't vote out a corporation if you make them arbiters of truth and don't like the choices they make.

> If AOC or Bernie Sanders tweets again about "Revolution"

If generic, or as a principle? No.

If they say "pick up weapons and shoot those who dissent"?

Then they're advocating or threatening, and that should be handled similarly.

Ok, so it needs to be explicit when liberals tweet, it but we can evaluate the historical context when conservatives tweet, right?

What about that time De Blasio quoted Che Guevara "Hasta la victoria siempre"? Any problem with that? It's like quoting Hitler about victory.

The point here is that people aren't going to agree on the rules - so asking to hand this judgement process over to Corporations is lunacy.

I think generic quotations, on either side, is entirely okay.

I think comparing "ever onward to victory" to "when the looting starts, the shooting starts", i.e. "I approve of and will authorize the use of lethal force for property crimes" is a little of a stretch.

Or "vicious dogs" for people protesting at the White House. These are directly relevant.

"I will use the unlimited powers of our military" - so many problems with this statement.

This is someone making direct and focused statements of threat and intimidation, who has a history of racist and violence-encouraging statements, from "punch him in the face, I'll pay your legal bills" and on.

The challenge is that finding left-leaning populations actively, pro-actively advocating (sorry, "warning") of violent action is a lot more challenging.

>In 1967, Miami police Chief Walter Headley used the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" during hearings about crime in the Florida city, invoking angry reactions from civil rights leaders, according to a news report at the time.

> Segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace also used the phrase during the 1968 campaign.

While you might like to believe that the phrase could mean anything, it certainly doesn't. And in the context of Trumps tweet, which specifically mentions the military, it certainly means that he was threatening to have the US military fire on US civilians.

Now consider that in the context of the US threatening action against China using "tough" tactics to subdue protests in Hong Kong and you'll see the tweet for what it is. The same kind of rhetoric and threat of violence against protesters that the US condemns elsewhere in the world.

Yes, because never before have those words (or a variation of them) been spoken at all ever since they were uttered in 1967.

Give me a break.

That "the president is too dumb to understand the context of his words" is not a strong defense.

I prefer to live in the word where that man’s freedom of speech in 1967 means we get to remember and appreciate the progress we fight for. Censorship helps those who already have the most power by giving them an easy way to maintain it.

The concept of "looters will be shot" has been used outside race related riots.

Are we going to debate every tweet's historical usage?

Should we start looking at AOC's or Bernie Sanders' uses of the word "revolution" in their tweets too?

It's hard to mislabel "glorification of violence" given the militar culture in the US: just look of all the military propaganda more or less hidden into mainstream media (movies, tv series etc)

I can imagine a consistent "promoting violence is bad" policy - I think we can all agree that the general standards of e.g. a corporate office wouldn't permit Trump's statement. But there's no universe where "when the looting starts the shooting starts" glorifies violence more than "riots are the voice of the unheard", and 100% of the people complaining to Zuckerberg would oppose banning that second message.

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