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Comment by LatteLazy | Hacker News Reader

Facebook did this back in December too before admitting a "mistake" and reversing it. Get it together please FB.

I tried to see what the SWP comments on covid were. They seem pretty mainstream (not covid denialism). Ironically their "demands" from December are now government policy...

https://swp.org.uk/schools-are-not-safe/

I'm not sure where I stand on Facebook's (etc) right to remove legal content, but I would like a requirement for any platform to specifically state why they removed content. Too often things are taken down for no reason and get put back up based on twitter outrage rather than any logical basis. YouTube are getting infamous for this...

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Any time I see one of these "mistakes" I read it as "content got flooded with reports and our automated system took it down"

I think that would be fine as an initial reason. Having had that back in Dec, you'd think they would put SWP on a safe list? Who knows, I guess. And that's the problem, not so much the taking down as the taking down with zero reason or discussion...

This is how the right has been feeling for a while. This is nothing new behaviour-wise for Facebook, the only difference is this gets more favourable media attention.

There are some big open questions for us as a society on this.

I don't approve of calls for violence and I thought Facebook etc were doing well at free speech until the last year or two. It seems like no one is happy with that anymore.

Please, don't draw a false equivalency between a major political party that does not play host to violent rhetoric, on the one hand, and groups that where plans (very real, actionable, and actioned-on plans!) to subvert the government are incubated, on the other.

Put another way--let's not turn sedition into another us-vs-them political game. That's how democracy ends.

The SWP is not by any stretch of the imagination a major political party.

ETA: to quantify that a bit, in the 2010 General Election the SWP ran as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. Nationally that coalition received 0.04% of votes cast. I can't find any indication that they even put up any candidates in subsequent elections.

Does this actually affect the correctness of their point?

Acting like a reaction to a politically charged breach of the capitol building is equivalent to a page sharing views about COVID and workers rights getting removed?

It actually feels absurd to type that sentence out...

I was correcting what looked like a significant misapprehension about the subject of the thread, not arguing for a comparison.

Although I can't see anything in throwaways885's comment to suggest that they were talking about the post-Capitol-breach purges. If anything, "for a while" suggests the opposite.

The "this gets more favourable media attention." definitely implies they're referring to the flurry of media attention towards alt-right removals we've been seeing

And my point is it's not really a "significant misapprehension" at all, at least not significant to their point.

They could be a party of one guy in his underwear and the point would still stand

Per the sibling comment to yours, no, they aren't referring to that. "The point" is attacking a strawman.

As a general takeaway, "It actually feels absurd to type that sentence out..." can be a useful warning sign that you're projecting an absurd interpretation onto a reasonable statement instead of applying the Principle of Charity.

The sibling comment is confirming my interpretation, that they were referring to the deplatforming!

The deplatforming thing that ramped up in 2018 has overwhelmingly been about things like white-supremacy and neo-nazis... so it hit the alt-right very hard.

This is like conservative politicians complaining their followers are being deplatformed when Twitter decides to take a harder stance against white supremacy in the wake of an attack on our capitol which featured the alt-right/ neo-Confederates/ neo-Nazis... you're not confirming what you think you're confirming.

The conservatives is not being targeted per se, but it just so happens a lot of neo-nazis are conservatives. Take it as you will.

They're also ignoring the fact the "deplatforming thing" has recently kicked into high gear because of a certain set of events

This would be like someone from the Branch Davidians saying "We've always felt persecuted" in March 1993.. there were, but also a little thing happened with 4 ATF agents the month before!

That's the point being brought up, those events are very relevant if you're talking about deplatforming today. You don't brush such a major occurrence under the rug if you're arguing in good faith.

Even them saying it ramped up in "around 2018" is disingenuous. It ramped up with Trump and his actions.

And there was as a lot of gnashing of teeth over if that was right, if Trump was actually building a hateful support base or if this was just political lynching...

And then the Capitol breach occurred and removed all doubt and now we see it accelerating.

Also you read the sibling comment, you should have realized it makes the last part of your comment complete non-sequitur... sometimes it's a useful sign the argument being made just lacking self-awareness

Yes I'm referring to the deplatforming that's been going on for several years now. Things really ramped up in 2018 or so.

Yep when those rioters broke into the capital building and rummaged through nancy pelosi's office we were very close to that guy in the bearskin becoming our king.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. The rioters should stick to non-seditious activities like burning down police stations and declaring autonomous zones in the middle of major cities.

There is no false equivalency. Deplatforming is wrong, left or right, rich or poor. Disenfranchised people not having a voice is a cause of radicalisation and violence. If you don't believe me then talk to the Black community in America.

I defended Parler in another thread and I'll defend the SWP here, despite not particularly liking either group.

I'm black. I don't believe hate speech deserves a platform.

And you're insulting me and black people everywhere trying to create equivalence between Parler being deplatformed for deciding to not moderate hate speech insofar as it didn't amount to a civil tort... and the systematic oppression of black people based on their skin color.

It's disgusting you'd stoop so low to try that.

> this gets more favourable media attention.

The "favourable media attention" you are talking about is here the Socialist Workers' Party reporting about itself on its own website.

I'd wager the BBC will not cover this at all, in contrast to acres of free promotion for Parler etc.

As someone who used to watch the BBC, but stopped in the last year or two, the BBC has for the last 30 years been more interested in giving a positive voice to right-wing movements than it has been left-wing.

See: how Farage was treated by the BCC, versus Corbyn

Right, the victim in this case self-reporting it is "favorable media attention", unlike the mostly false whinging from the right, which only gets repeated national legislative attempts in the US and endless media repeat on national outlets.

(second reply)

Are their some good examples of censorship from before the last 2 weeks I can cite?

It might help a more friendly discussion too, people are already down voting randomly it seems...

I remember when Joe Rogan went to Spotify and there was something of a backlash inside the company. I vaguely remember some of his episodes (discussing trans athletes rights) weren't hosted for a while.

> "content got flooded with reports and our automated system took it down"

I assume this plays a role. I really like facebook meme groups, but every single one inevitably gets "zucced" because of overzealous reports by people who genuinely don't get the problem. They even moderate themselves now to avoid reports.

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