Facebook Condemned for Providing Platform to Neo-Nazi Network | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Condemned for Providing Platform to Neo-Nazi Network

hfet.org

17 pointswikus26 comments

URL should probably be changed to https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/nov/22/facebook-...

Do closed groups make sense from a business perspective? I'm in a few just to experience festering hate and conspiracy with a made-up identity (INTP from Jung-derived MBTI psychology). They seem a net negative for Facebook, unless there is golden marketing data involved.

Engagement might be higher and therefore more ads to show. I definitely participated in groups quite a lot some time ago. I’ve always used an advertisement blocker but I could imagine I should’ve seen many from how many posts I read. Also, these posts can show up in your news feed where ads are always showing up.

But... the groups I participated in the most usually involved people with differing opinions and thus why engagement was high. Everyone had to argue a lot.

Nazis are awful, but one of the only good things Facebook does is support free speech. They get too much contempt for allowing bad people to communicate. The actual problem in this sort of case is the filter bubbles and aggressive engagement algorithms that tunnel people towards extreme or enraging content

The problem isn’t that they allow bad people to communicate. It’s that they give bad people a giant megaphone and tools to point it at the people most susceptible to their horrible messages. If they limited this then the actual content wouldn’t be as much of a problem.

I'll say again that Google and Facebook are being dragged kicking and screaming into the role of judge and jury of what is or isn't acceptable speech.

They don't like it now, but they may well grow to love it.

Hard disagree. “Free speech” does not include hate speech.

Those who tend to advocate for Free Speech have a very different concept of what free speech encompasses compared to those who advocate for hate speech based restrictions on speech. While there are sound arguments in both camps much of the discussion online is cross talk with each side misunderstanding the other.

Yes it does. What you can have, and usually do, is free speech with limitations, and this can vary greatly. What you have in the US is limitations, for example, regarding content that includes minors. In my country, racist speech falls under anti-racism laws, so our free speech has even more limitations, or, to put it another way, our speech is 'less' free.

Except it does - whatever 'hate speech' is supposed to be.

Yes it does. In the US free-speech does include hate speech.

Even in countries where there is hate speech, what and what doesn't constitute it is normally broad, subjective and is frequently misused by state to prosecute people that have no ill intent.

The most egregious example is the Chelseas Rusell case in the UK:

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/woman-wh...

Also not only that but it doesn't work. If you stop people from saying certain words they just end up making new ones to get around your censorship. It is already happening online, people will make up new words to get around any speech censorship e.g. "jogger" means black criminal and I will leave it up to you to work out what that is being used in place of.

Also banning certain words doesn't take into account regional dialect e.g. Faggot is a regional dish in England. They recently banned google ads for a restaurant that sold "Fanny's Faggots".

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/cafe-advert-fannys-faggots-...

Or this curious case that I just found while looking for the previous one:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7911927/Meat-lover-...

Hate speech legislation doesn't work and just causes people to start resenting law enforcement and have less respect generally for the laws of the land.

If the USA wants to support local racist terrorist groups, that is your problem.

But exporting that terrorist thread to the European Union should ban Facebook in Europe.

USA here, USA there. There are more countries in the world, Facebook should take that into account or be banned.

> If the USA wants to support local racist terrorist groups, that is your problem.

I don't think the USA supports that at all. They don't prosecute speech which was specifically what I was responding to. Not prosecuting speech is not the same as supporting said speech.

Also I am not from the US. I am from the UK.

> But exporting that terrorist thread to the European Union should ban Facebook in Europe.

You premise is faulty. The purpose of facebook is not to spread any sort of terrorism. It is a social network and communication tool. This would be like blaming the phone company for mafia organising a hit over a phone call.

In this specific example it does seem they were calling to violence which is not legal speech even in the US (IANAL though). So they should be removed.

> USA here, USA there. There are more countries in the world, Facebook should take that into account or be banned.

I agree I am in the UK and I don't like silicon valley trying to impose their set of values on the rest of the world either.

As for banning whole sites who purpose is not anything nefarious because some people do illegal acts on said platform is ridiculous.

>In the US free-speech does include hate speech.

Only in certain situations and there's established case law to this effect. "Free speech" in the US is not a blanket indemnification:

Fighting words are, as first defined by the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in Chaplinsky v New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942), words which "by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality."

Fighting words are a category of speech that is unprotected by the First Amendment

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fighting_words

I am aware what the caveats are regarding fighting words are. I think that is a sensible concession.

However what most people mean by "hate speech" is protected from what I understand.

Off topic, but is 'fag' still used for cigarettes in England?

Yes

It does.

It does, otherwise the laws against hate speech wouldn't be 'limitations of free speech'.

Pretty big leap you just made, to come in with the assumption that they are

So to censor your opinion, I just have to justify it as hate speech. A slippery slope if I ever saw one.

Facebook is a private company, and the privilege of having gratis access to someone else's broadcasting platform is not a tenet of free speech.

As a private company with their own free speech, Facebook is also free to enable the speech of controversial participants, regardless of whether you like who they have been enabling. That is free speech as much as their later choice to disable it.

If you do not like the corporation's policies, you are free to criticize them, much like how this article and American politicians of both parties like to do. This is all free speech.

Right, we are in agreement here; the person I replied to insinuated it was unethical for them to disable anyone, as it would be a violation of free speech. As you have just explained, it is not.

Free speech does not mean private companies need to provide platforms for Nazis and the like to spread their messaging. You're confusing free speech with free publicity.

If "support free speech" means "support Nazis" (as it does here), it's not a virtue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com