Are we really so stupid that we cannot see through this kind of thing and need to actively censor it to have civilized society continue to function?<p>When do we just give up on democracy completely?
That's not censorship. It's Fb's and other social media's desperate attempt to appease new government to prevent strong legislation, such as being held liable for their user's content, forced real names, regulation, and breakup.
These are surreal times, to put it mildly. These headlines of banning/deplatforming would be ordinary if you substitute "CCP" for "Facebook", "Twitter", and "Amazon".<p>Facebook has even blocked Ron Paul?!? (<a href="https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1348704640486014982" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1348704640486014982</a>)<p>FAANG is the bakery, and Trump and everything associated with him is the same-sex wedding cake.
As long as Facebook is attempting to care about the spread of misinformation, can they nuke the various Flat Earth groups? I swear those people provide breeding stock for almost every other conspiracy theory on the planet.
Tell me how this is wrong:<p>The US is de facto converting to the Chinese model for the internet: All communication must be monitored, damaging content must be erased, and in serious cases, those responsible must be punished.<p>If Parler gets a foreign data center, I expect a "Great Firewall of China" with American characteristics will soon follow.
The “Arab Street” comes to America.<p>The term is apparently derogatory in nature, but imo it is an effective political metaphor for socio-political regimes that prominently feature bifurcated societies of ruling elite and voiceless governed masses: the palace and the street/market.<p>The “word on the street” has currency with the masses and nearly every utterance of the ‘palace’ is mistrusted, scrutinized, and parsed to the n-th degree to glean “the actual truth”. Conversely, the palace considers the word on the street to be irrational, volatile, and destabilizing, and dismisses it in its entirety as misunderstandings of “the common and the ignorant”.<p>It remains a minor puzzle as to why Soviet “misinformation” beamed via shortwave as Radio Moscow, Radio Peking, and other fellow red states were never, afaik, jammed in the West, yet in 21st century, western heads are deemed extra sensitive to bad information and need to be protected from exposure to content that poses some sort of social and moral hazard.<p>It is helpful to remember that the only states doing the jamming (“to stop enemy propaganda and misinformation”) were authoritarian regimes, and imho instructive to reflect on why that is the case.<p>Actions taken by the US info-tech cartel recently will only serve to deepen the national divide, and (per historic patterns) erode the legitimacy of establishment voices and institutions.<p>[edited]
Hm, I just posted "stop the steal" on my Facebook page (along with a disclaimer), and it's still there six minutes later. Maybe it takes 24 hours to get picked up? Or do they just cloak the posting?
Should the US government make its own social network? That would cut off all kinds of issues. Only content that is <i>literally illegal</i> would be removed. Everyone would be guaranteed access.
There is more to Section 230 than commonly mentioned. There is IMHO a nice tutorial at<p><a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml" rel="nofollow">https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...</a>
I get why Facebook is doing this, but suppressing the discussion of this false claim of election fraud is going to make it more likely that when an election actually is stolen, that companies like Facebook are more likely to stamp out the discussion to match earlier precedent.
im saying this because it seems like such an obvious point but i havent seen it here- why are people who want the government to be replaced by the "free market" allowed to be upset that private companies are silencing them? what is the rationale for squaring this circle
Sad to see this with the Adam Swartz post both on the front page. We need more powerful people who will voice, not for the proliferation of conspiracies, but for the right to speak ones mind on the internet. Even here on HN any attempt at putting forth the wrong opinion on the election will result in a ban. This will embolden and validate the opinions of Trump supporters. This morning, Angela Merkel voiced her own fears that censorship is going too far
Along with this, it seems to me media should not be referring to the terrorists entering the Capitol as 'storming' as that is the terminology used by the fringe groups of which they are proud of. I've read articles mentioning what these fringe groups call 'the storm' and I think distancing media reports from that is important.
wrong thought will not be tolerated and is to be actively censored.<p>boy, we've taken quite a turn from where we were just a few years ago with conspiracy theories spreading like wild fire regarding Trump and Russia.<p>it would probably be better to actively engage believers of "Stop the Steal" with facts about the election vs. removing content that they are creating.
a better idea - tell Trump he can have his Facebook back if he agrees to go on talk radio and cable news and tell his supporters that he was lying to them all along, there is no evidence of meaningful voter fraud, and it's time to move on. only when enough of the supporters are finally convinced of this can he have his account back (or 6 months, whichever is greater)
This almost makes me suspect that the Facebook executives behind this decision are secretly die hard pro-Trumpers.<p>Sure, it's definitely a bit spooky that people are going around saying the election was stolen when, as far as I can tell, there's no hard evidence of widespread cheating. (I'm open to changing my mind given sufficient evidence, I'm just saying that I haven't seen it yet.)<p>But this is the equivalent of Facebook saying "hmm, looks like there's a fire going on over there, better go and dump a barrel of oil on it to put it out". Of course people are going to notice that their posts are being deleted. And even if they didn't notice, Facebook is loudly and publicly announcing that they are removing those posts. This will naturally result in those people saying, "aha, this confirms that there is a liberal elite conspiracy against folks like me". It will only make them more certain that the election was stolen.<p>Honestly, I can't say I blame them for suspecting a conspiracy, given we've had similar moves by other tech companies. As a generally left wing person, what am I supposed to say? "Yeah, we know that all these social networks are acting all biased and stuff against people with your opinions, but it's not actually a conspiracy, just a bunch of people without the ability to predict what others will make of their actions all being idiots at the same time due to simple memetic contagion." I think that's actually what's going on, but I can definitely see how from the other side it looks like a conspiracy.
do they make it country specific - ie. would the posts questioning the integrity of elections in another country, say Russia (not that i personally question it, Vova, mind you, just a hypothetical), be allowed?
Does this put them in the unenvious position to take down any up-to-then unproven allegations?<p>Does it mean any group seeking remedy against BigCorp with slogans like “Stop the Stink” to oppose a new dump can be shut down through lawyers if the group cannot prove their allegations?
"Stop censoring the steal".<p>Note well: I do <i>not</i> believe that there was in fact a steal. But if Facebook wants to do this, they're going to find out that there are several ways to modify or paraphrase this, and they're going to have to block significantly more than one phrase.