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Comment by lucisferre | Hacker News Reader

It's good to see Facebook has it's moderating priorities straight. Just for the record its:

Holocost Deniers: Tolerated

Breastfeeding Mothers: Not OK

This is an incredibly important point. There are two stances to take. First, FB can claim they are a “common carrier,” does not censor, and not responsible for what people post (just as the telephone company is not responsible for what people say on the telephone). Second, FB can pick and choose what is allowed but bears responsibility for what it allows to be posted.

Whether you like or dislike their particular choices, the very fact that they censor breastfeeding mothers means that they are accepting moral responsibility for what they decide not to censor.

I do not accept the statement that they “Abhor Nazi ideals and find Holocaust denial repulsive and ignorant. However, we believe people have a right to discuss these ideas and we want Facebook to be a place where ideas, even controversial ideas, can be discussed.” Where was that line of thinking when they censored breastfeeding?

From Facebook's standpoint I would imagine that these are viewed as completely independent policies. On one hand Facebook does not want to censor discussion, on the other Facebook does not want to host explicit images. The distinction that you draw above simply has to do with their definition of what is an explicit image.

Would you make the same argument if we were talking about Holocaust deniers and personal pornography? Because I am pretty sure that is the distinction that Facebook is making. You just disagree on what constitutes pornography. (I am not agreeing or disagreeing with either of you around that definition either way, just saying that I think you are arguing a different argument).

Yes I absolutely would make the same argument. The moment you begin to moderate your medium, you accept responsibility for it. I’m not saying anything in this discussion about whether FB is right or wrong to allow hate material, just that they cannot hide behind “We abhor it but believe we should not censor discussion.”

UPDATE: I have no idea, but I am curious: Can you write porn on FB? Soft-core? Hard-core? As suggested by another respondent, I’m pretty sure you can post a picture of yourself with skinhead tattoos. Can you post a hateful picture? Is this just words vs. pictures? Or is it ideas vs. so-called porn?

Since facebook allows US users under 18 years of age, don't they have a legal obligation not to host porn?

They could host it behind age checks. It seems like it would be easy enough for them to perform automatically.

In fact, Facebook's age-check would be 10,000,000% more effective than every other age-checked page on the internet.

coughSteamcough

They could, but then they'd lose a large chunk of users who don't want to be even remotely associated with such a site.

And this doesn't apply to Holocaust deniers because...

Because people don't care about Holocaust deniers as much as they care about 'indecent' pictures.

I don't think written porn is covered.

So maybe it's a photo/text distinction. Is anyone posting Nazi/skinhead photos on FB? Are they getting blocked?

I think you are still missing what I meant. I think it's a Content vs Pornography distinction. If we wanted to test it, I think the question to ask would be are they blocking explicit text as well, say erotic stories, or even just swear words? I know that some portions of their platform do automatically censor certain words (for example website comments), so it would be interesting to see to what level that policy is policed.

Oh---I did miss your point then, but I think the text/photo distinction would actually be somewhat easier for them to defend than a content/porn distinction; as I understand it, porn is content, as a matter of very well-settled caselaw.

> Whether you like or dislike their particular choices, (...) they are accepting moral responsibility for what they decide not to censor.

Less charitable explanation: FB knows that basically nobody cares about nazis, especially after you've trotted out "free speech", while there is actually a measurable number of people who'd give up Facebook over breasts.

As far as I understand it, the "censoring" starts when someone flags a photo for review. So if I see a photo of my friend breastfeeding and find it to be in bad taste, I flag it- it then goes on to FB for review and perhaps a takedown. No one seems to mention that in the breastfeeding scandal, SOMEONE had to flag the photo for review, which means that someone found it offensive. So it's not Facebook going through every single picture ever posted to find ones to take down, it's Facebook responding to user requests to take pictures down.

I wonder what the ratio of flagged pictures to removed pictures is. I imagine it's pretty high.

However, the original argument is flawed. Holocaust deniers fall under First Amendment rights, breastfeeding falls under obscenity law.

Or, more to the point, American culture finds sex far more obscene than violence, racism, or anti-semitism.

Breastfeeding mothers are just fine: https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=340974655932193#Does-Face...

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