Hacker News Reader

Comment by jachee | Hacker News Reader

I don't need to listen to the Qanon conspiracy theories, racist rants, gun worship, law enforcement deification, homophobia, transphobia and other dehumanizing speech of the far right.

There is literally nothing of value to be gained.

View on HN

The grassroots WalkAway group was removed from Facebook today. It was not about Q and had only encouraged rallies and protests, and did not condone breaking into government buildings. It was a repository of hundreds of thousands of video and text testimonials from ex-Democrats explaining why they felt alienated, often by seeing events/individuals they felt were covered unfairly by the media or by cancel culture in their private life, and their lived experiences of why they left the party. Is that not useful information?

I dispute your contention that it's a grassroots thing, that's one of the most astroturfed political campaigns I've ever seen. It's a formula: minor right-wing celebrity announces they're going to city X to 'clean it up' or highlight some deficiency, makes a bunch of posts about it on social media announcing their itinerary, inevitably attracting some opposition from annoyed locals. Then they livestream the local opposition and say 'look how unreasonable these people are, #walkaway.'

I believe you’re confusing Scott Pressler the volunteer cleanup guy with Brandon Straka of WalkAway.

I am not, because they work together. Search their names and you'll find plenty of examples of them pairing up to do this schtick. I've seen it in person.

A victim of the algorithm perhaps? Or too many links on the social graph to the more problematic elements.

I don't mean to rationalize its removal. It sounds like a project that should exist, one that serves as a mirror for introspection.

This isn't something new or that "the left" only does. In much the same way we see lgbtq groups closed because the algorithm or human moderator believes queerness == explicit sexual content rather than "a bunch of other humans"

I don't know anything about the WalkAway group, but from your description and nothing else it seems like it shouldn't have been taken down and that it could have been very useful.

But I don't see how Facebook taking down the group is the fault of the Left at large (or in the US). I don't know many serious Leftists who are fond of Facebook, not to mention feel the company represents them.

My comment did not intend to attribute the corporate act to Leftism, intent was to show the parent commenter that it is flawed to assume all banned speech is the result of impartial enforcement of basic rules against malicious toxicity. Because there is a slippery slope in action every day - moderators are human and algorithms are based on badly conflated example data and that leads to bans like this one.

This is a free country you can listen to whatever channel you want and let them listen to whatever they want.

Yup and if I owned a platform I wouldn’t be obligated to let them use it.

So what’s the problem?

Seems like the whole “you have to bake my cake” argument went out the window. Do I have to feed the enemy?

No food for "the enemy". No air travel. No payment processing for their businesses or political causes they support. You can earn your social credit points back by kowtowing to Xi the Great - wait wrong country.

Sexuality is a protected class like religion, gender, ethnicity, and so on.

Politics isn't.

This is a very simple concept, yet I find myself having to explain it to a lot of people.

None at all. When the democrats are in office you kick out far right. When the republicans are in you kick out far left. This way you avoid getting regulated. It’s a free country and your company it’s all good. It opens up opportunities for other companies to come in and take the business. Oh wait... are you a monopoly?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com