Hacker News Reader

Comment by ENOTTY | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty onboard, but uneasy, with the framing that private entities should have broad discretion to decide how to govern the use of their spaces.

But Facebook (and Google, Apple, and many other "platforms") are such an indispensable part of our lives that we should have difficult conversations about what individual rights look like in these quasi-public private spaces. (It's worth noting that the explicit business model of many of these companies is to create gigantic platforms/walled gardens.)

I personally do not believe that many of the norms and common law relating to physical public/private spaces should be transferred to the modern age of digital oligopoly.

View on HN

> But Facebook (and Google, Apple, and many other "platforms") are such an indispensable part of our lives that we should have difficult conversations about what individual rights look like in these quasi-public private spaces. (It's worth noting that the explicit business model of many of these companies is to create gigantic platforms/walled gardens.)

I don't agree, I think the opposite. The government should be working to make them more dispensable. Every company you listed needs aggressive antitrust action from various worldwide governments.

I also believe that aggressive antitrust may address the concerns I raise.

But at the same time, I am sympathetic to arguments that aggregated platforms have efficiencies that are passed down to the everyday consumer, or network effects that make the platforms more competitive against similar platforms elsewhere in the world (e.g., data for training ML models).

Respectfully, I just can't understand what the exact argument is here. Are you and others saying that- because Facebook is huge & used by many Americans, it can't have rules of behavior on the site? 'Facebook is very popular, thus it's not allowed to moderate content'- try saying it out loud to yourself. Is that what you're saying? Asking in a non-snarky/good faith way- like what is the actual argument?

If you accept that Facebook, like every platform in Internet history has content moderation rules- then Trump violated them, hence his suspension. Here's my logic chain, I'm open to a critique:

1. Facebook has content moderation rules 2. Trump violated them by inciting a riot or insurrection 3. The penalty for said violation is a suspension

Where is the problem in the chain? That Facebook isn't allowed to moderate content, that inciting a riot isn't punishment-worthy (??), that the punishment is too harsh.... Where is the exact issue?

The problem in the chain is that conservatives don't think he was inciting a riot and/or that it wasn't a riot and/or that it wasn't composed of his supporters, and/or that it was justified to enforce democracy.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-disinformati...

Therefore, Facebook is just exerting their market power to push a partisan narrative.

That article is a litany of false talking points that leftists repeat as dogma. Case in point:

> known white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys

The Proud Boys were headed by a man named Enrique Tarrio [0]. Enrique Tarrio is of Afro-Cuban descent [1]. How many white supremacist organizations are headed by people of Afro-Cuban descent?

And before you suggest that he's a token figurehead, how likely do you think it is that an actual white supremacist would join an organization led by a man of Afro-Cuban descent? Do you think that leader would attract many actual white supremacists? Aren't there plenty of other white supremacist groups led by white men?

No, it's simply not believable. The claim fails. Reuters is willingly participating in a disinformation campaign.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique_Tarrio

Is your argument that only white people can be white supremacists?

"We will no longer cuck to the left by appointing token negroes as our leaders. We will no longer allow homosexuals or other 'undesirables' into our ranks. We will confront the Zionist criminals who wish to destroy our civilization.

"We recognize that the West was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race."

https://www.newsweek.com/proud-boys-based-stickman-enrique-t...

Proves my point.

An actual white supremacist rejected the non-white leader of the Proud Boys and split off to form his own group.

The Proud Boys were not a white supremacist organization. Attempts to use this despicable man's quotes to smear the entire organization (which he rejected) are naked appeals to guilt by association.

My argument is that because Facebook is huge and used by many Americans, there should be limits on what Facebook can do to its users.

Now I personally don't know what all of those limits should be. But I think there needs to be more open discussion from all corners of American society about that. I also think that the platforms should approach this problem with open arms.

As an example of one situation that needs to be limited is that a platform like Google is allowed to ban someone entirely from their services, with 1) no appeal to an independent party and 2) no ability to (quickly) recover data stored with that platform. Every so often, someone posts to HN saying that they lost all access to decades of email and photos because Google's algorithms banned them, and they have no idea how to talk to a human to explain or correct the situation. I think that kind of action from Google needs to be regulated out of existence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com