Whoever gets the power to define what's acceptable and not acceptable speech is given too much power. You might trust that arbiter now, tomorrow, but do you honestly believe their incentives will always remain pure?
It reads to me like "it's hard, so let us just do nothing".
Government is not an external entity which subjugates us, it is the tool by which we settle our grievances with each other without beating each other to death with rocks. To facilitate that, we give government the exclusive right to police us. And I would argue part of that duty extends to ensuring that the populace is informed and aware of the facts of the situation.
In our rush to condemn the reprehensible aspects of government we have lost sight of the goal, which is to promote civil society and respect for our fellow man.
There are (or were) comments on this page with people saying they deleted their Facebook accounts over this.
Of course I disagree and find it hilariously ironic that this would be the straw that broke the camel's back, but that's just me.
Ultimately you either think domestic terrorism is fine or you don't. I don't see a case for the media wilfully and knowingly misleading people and inciting violence.
I guess we'll see. They couldn't get it done after he obstructed a federal investigation. They couldn't get it done after he extorted a bribe from Ukraine. Now he's incited an insurrection, so who knows if that's enough.
We already have laws regarding inciting violence, and as far as I can tell, they work fairly well.
Do you have a better proposal?
"Oh but this speech is dangerous!" fucking. Bull. Shit.
The moment you start to curtail speech and ideas, you are making a decision on what is and is not true. Fuck that noise.
We are literally getting into the world if 1984 style though crime. The America I grew up in was not afraid of ideas.
One problem with this is that people do not have as much potential recourse through Facebook and Twitter as they might through the courts.
The penalties are different too. You might be facing a ban from Fb/twitter instead of prison time/fines from the courts.
Having skepticism in the arbiters of what is/isn’t protected speech is critical. We should be skeptical of them and challenge them if we think they are wrong. Organizations, like the ACLU, exist for this reason, to protect our rights.
Who gets to decide how much we pay in taxes? You? Me? The Government? Bloomberg?
Like if you think deciding what constitutes hate speech is too much power then the people who decide the conditions someone is locked up must be gods.
I think the fundamental misconception is that speech "cannot infringe other's freedoms" like physical actions can, so no tradeoffs of individual's freedoms have to be collectively decided for speech.
The idea of words propagating beliefs, drowning out others and inciting actions is just subtle enough to weasel out of whenever convenient in this world view.
The government is the ultimate arbiter of speech in the US, and their actions are limited by the 1st amendment as interpreted and implemented by our judiciary and legislatures respectively.
When groups gather on private property, we respect the property rights of those who own it.
Ability to censor top level politicians, deciding what constitutes acceptable and what needs to be censored is not the kind of power they used to have.
Edit: bit clarification
Facebook makes rules for what, above and beyond that, is not allowed on Facebook.
Twitter makes rules for what, above and beyond the government's rules, is not allowed on Twitter.
This...really isn't hard.
It's worth pointing out that Trump's videos yesterday -- praising the people who had just attacked and sacked the Capitol Building during a joint session of congress and conspicuously refusing to demand they leave -- were probably legally an incitement to violence regardless. Certainly normal prosecutors could get convictions on that sort of thing[1] in normal courts. The only reason it seems gray is because the speaker is the President.
[1] Remember that in context they were at the capitol because Trump himself, in person, had directed they march there just an hour before. I mean, really, that's pretty open-and-shut as far as mens rea.
Someone needs to do it, though. You don't get free license to incite violence anywhere, and no one thinks that's a good idea. You can't do it here on HN. You can't do it on Reddit. Why should you be able to do it on Facebook?
Now, sure, there's a question as to whether Trump's posts yesterday went quite as far as you think they'd need to be considered "inciting violence". But that's a judgement call. You don't want Facebook carrying a call to attack congress, you just think that's not what Trump did.
But if there is a call for a mob to sack the seat of government and attack a joint session of congress, I think we all agree that Facebook should be allowed to censor the fuck out of that.
Trump has incited terrorism, he has incited insurrection. The importance of his position in the government makes this situation even more extreme. This is not a routine situation, and if you want to argue there's going to be a slippery slope, then you'll need actual pattern of behavior, not just this extreme situation. Because if not now, then when? When are private parties allowed to say that they're not going to support Trump's treasonous behavior?