An interesting twist on free speech on the internet is that almost all speech on the internet is being done on private companies' websites.<p>No private company is considered required to promote or protect free speech. Each forum is able to say "don't like our policies, then go somewhere else".<p>This even seems quite reasonable. Why should any particular forum be forced to allow any particular kind of speech? Should Facebook be forced to allow porn as something that is protected by freedom of expression?<p>On the flip side, as more and more of meaningful speech occurs on these not-really-public forums of Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, there exists quite a bit of unease on my part for these global companies to insist on narrowing expression on these platforms to that which they deem acceptable by whatever internal process they desire.<p>Facebook's study that showed they could manipulate people's feelings by altering the feed algorithm indicates this is an awful lot of power handed to a company focused on making profits and staying on the good side of governmental organizations.<p>YouTube recently started changing their policies that has started to create problems for people using their platforms.<p>This would likely be okay if there were real public space on the web, but it currently operates more as a series of visits to other people's private property. The release valve is a persons ability to create their own corner of the internet, but even this must leap through various ISP and web host providers terms of service. Additionally, is it really speech if you're just doing the internet equivalent of talking to yourself on an island in the middle of nowhere?<p>Cases like this photo will only become more apparent as time goes on. I'm not sure how society will negotiate these ideas, but at present, the commercial interests are leading the conversation in their favor.
> In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time.<p>Translation: if you document any of the numerous real human rights atrocities that are happening today then expect to get banned. If anything, the fact that this photo is already 'historic' and 'iconic' means that it's less important than what's being captured today.
Too little too late? They've set the tone when they deleted a post made by the democratically elected leader of a country.<p>That must surely be a tipping point?
I'm not a facebook user, so I've never run head-long into this policy, but why doesn't facebook allow photos of nude children?<p>It seems awkward and creepy to consider all photos of nude children to be pornographic.<p>The vast, overwhelming majority (surely more than 99.9%, maybe more than two nines) of photos of nude children have no plausible sexual tone whatsoever.<p>And, similarly, I presume that many images that are indeed pornographic depict children who are clothed.<p>What does one have to do with the other?<p>For adults, I kinda understand: sex is one of the main reasons adults take their clothes off. But kids, especially young kids, run around naked all the time!<p>Does facebook not permit pictures of birth?
Would we say:<p>1. The process worked. Facebook looked it over, reasoned about it, and changed their minds. Kudos to them for admitting a mistake.<p>2. It took a media uproar to make a change like this. The process is broken. There has to be a better way to make these changes.<p>3. There was no right objective answer in the first place, so the process is inherently political.<p>I am leaning towards #3. Want to know what the HN community thinks.
Devil's advocate: I don't see why Facebook isn't allowed to choose what is or isn't displayed on their site. The only reason Facebook is a platform people choose to use is because of the editorial decisions they have been making. And the problem was that the policy was too consistent? That they were not making enough exceptions to the rule for important people?
I agree with the comments that having public forums controlled by single companies like Facebook and Reddit can be problematic if they start censoring what people are allowed to post.<p>What I do, and what I encourage family and friends to do, is to have your own blog and post substantial writings on your blog and use social media posts to reference your blog. I still use social media for posting vacation pictures, commenting on other people's posts, and links to interesting stuff to read on the web.<p>I think this is a good compromise.
I wonder, do these restrictions also apply to Instant Articles? Because as much as Facebook wants to deny being a media company, if it is providing (and censoring) a platform news organizations publish through it most definitely is one. And it's worth stopping to think about what that means when compared to the open web.
Oh...so Facebook "backs down" after another one of their censorship cases blows up on the Internet.<p>But how many thousands of similar cases don't find the same outrage online, but are still just as dangerous? We don't hear about those. That's the problem with censorship - most of the time you don't even know what you were supposed to be able to see, by the time it's censored.
Why can't FB do like Flickr and deploy a system where people self classify their content and then subscribers can set whether they want all content or safe content as well as provide the "take me back to the kittens" if an image offends...
Am I the only one concerned here about the posts with links requiring to sign up just to read?<p>for people like me, here a link not requiring a signup to read: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/09/facebook-reinstates-napalm-girl-photo" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/09/facebook-...</a>
It would have made much more sense to say "no nude children" no matter what and consistently apply it. Naplam girl's photo could have been blurred a little and still be shown to convey the exact same message.<p>This sort of exception based polciies would lead facebook into same trouble as the way they were censoring conservative news.
One thing that I don't understand is why all these people that complain about Facebook don't just switch to an open source, distributed Social Network platform.<p>It's not like anybody is forcing them to use FB or that there are no alternatives.
previous discussion of the aftenposten editor's response, poster of the photo: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12457004" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12457004</a>