Facebook bans a whole bunch of alt-right groups

Exactly!

Helluva statement, eh? No doubt a decade from now things will look very different.

It is all somewhat repetitive. You can take a break and come back to the right wing echo chamber and it is just the same thing when you get back. when it is Alex Jones and his outright lies why bother listening when you know even if he says a true thing it is a complete mistake and he came to it through faulty logic and delusion. There is too much bullshit for a mortal person with less than a hundred years to be bothered with giving every lie a chance.

Facebook is a privately owned company, it can censor whomever they want.

Having said that, its interesting how many views were different when we were talking about companies that baked cakes.

It brings up an interesting question about giant corporations, their proper role in society, and how society should deal with them especially if they've become something of a defacto monopoly in some way. We can debate if that last part is effectively true or not for many internet giants.

My personal take is many of them are effectly defacto monopolies which are indespensible to modern life, much like the telephone, and therefore they should be regulated as a common carry without the right to alter people's posts. If you do not agree that individual companies/sites are effective monopolies then, surely, you would agree that at least most ISPs themselves are and so some form of net neutrality is needed so that people are at least free to visit which ever websites they wish without be restricted or limited by service providers.

In short, treat them and regulate them like any other natural monopoly such as the electric utility or the water company.

I have not heard any far left people shouting about re-education camps. There is some consequences for being a crazy liar or bigot, but no one is throwing them in jail for it. I will say that if you go from spouting hate to planning to harm people or assaulting people over it then we have legal consequences for it, and companies may not want a known hatemonger to be harassing their customers or employees, but the only people claiming the left is making camps are crazies like Alex Jones who were claiming Obama was going to come for their guns and then throw them into FEMA camps and hurry them in plastic boxes. We are still waiting for that bullshit to even come close to happening.

Of course, we do have a president who is threatening journalists, comedians, and other politicians at the moment, but he seems to either be failing miserably or easily distracted and just mouthing off like the spoiled toddler he is. I don't see any real attacks being done yet.

well, if you want something that allows for free speech you should probably look for something regulated by the first amendment like a government provider. But that is socialism and you would not want your platform to be run by the government who would be regulated by the first amendment to allow all the crazy. So you get what capitalism offers.

For years bllack people, Hispanic people, women, and the GLBT community have had to deal with private media companies either not showing them or showing only the white male view of who they were. If you watch the history of our media and news you find some very big stereotypes. Women are only interested in fashion, dating, and babies, and are all boobies and a thin waste. Black people are criminal thugs or idiots. Gay people are all effeminate pansies if they even exist. Trans people are all drag queens or confused tomboys.

Welcome to the club white racist sexist twat. Now the media is cutting you down to size. Now some of the media does not want to portray you as you wish. It is called capitalism and when other people gain money and power you don't get special treatment. Now mop up your drips mr. snowflake and go cry somewhere else.

Also:

You are not Facebook's customer.

You are Facebook's product.

I said fuck Facebook a long time ago. It happened when they started enforcing their policy of having to use your real name and contact information to verify your identity. I know a few trans people who were forced to remain banned or enter their personal information as a result of being reported by right wing people looking to identify them. I know a ton of professionals who only keep professional contacts on their facebook page because employers were checking them for signs of homosexuality and going to a party every so often.

It is amazing how long they let the right wing terrorists use their platform to harm others without doing anything. Banning is a rather small price to pay when you see racists getting fired for their postings. Facebook is doing them a favor by stopping them from harming themselves.

Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Periscope, Youtube . . . there are plenty of other available services. Hell, there are still blogs and discussion boards. Reddit? 4chan? No shortage.

Perhaps you missed the entire 20th century and leftist "liberation" movements that swept places like Russia, China, VietNam, Cuba . . .

Theoretically true, but no longer factually true (or in "effect") since there is no alternative public forum.

I didn't call 'monopoly.' I called 'no public analog.' Yet they are no longer acting as neutral platform, given they are now explicitly regulating content. That is a quasi-governmental role.

MySpace disagrees!

Your Boy Donnie has made you so rich and successful; start your own.

Not really.

There's a fundamental difference between discriminating on the basis of someone being a thing and someone believing or endorsing a thing.

Homosexuality is not a choice, it is not a political position, it's not an opinion, it's simply a state of being.

Hold on, I thought "regulating content" is exactly what government wasn't supposed to do according to the first?

When it's Facebook, it's "quasi-governmental", when it's the arms industry, or big oil, you're a jealous commie faggot who hates freedom for pointing out anything wrong with how deep their dick is down Washington's throat.

Christians HAVE to believe that straight people can be bitten by an evil gnome that can turn you were-gay, or the whole "it's a sin", thing falls apart, and then the whole storybook falls apart.

Of course, there are a million other ways the storybook falls apart, because it sucks, because fascists are shitty authors, but the anti-gay thing is diabolically important for some reason, so they focus on that.

The proper term for weregay is furry.

I hate all political ideology prefer policies that work trough government studies only one I get picky on are civil, human and environmental stuff.

there's always minds.com and gab.ai ...for now anyway.

Look at this guy who doesn't use Friendster.

In some cases being gay is not a choice. That said, from what I have read most people fall some where on the continuum of sexuality and not at the extremes. That means most of humanity, the vast bulk of it at any rate, really are choosing to be one way or another. I don’t judge that and simply say it is a matter of fact not opinion.

Aside from nuke power plants, this is to me the most compelling topic of our era.

According to one smart guy whose opinion I respect, assuming he's reelected, Trump might be the last president selected by a (moderately uncontaminated) will of the people. Hereafter, our choices and opinions will be determined for by us by the collective algorithms of a few tech giants, that will steer society's choices, through bias-driven manipulation of information (without intent or malice). And I think each current 'algorithm' may be already beyond the control of a single individual at the entity that owns it, because it already has too many interdependent variables.

I already think the heads of FB Twitter and Google would be more powerful than POTUS if they chose to intentionally use the power of manipulating the algorithm in a particular direction and could exercise it without detection (e.g. for Google simply by dropping certain search results to p. 2).

Someone wrote a science fiction story once . . . might have been Isaac Asimov . . . where elections were determined by a computer after asking random questions of one single random individual. It was an interesting, if scary, concept.

I'm inclined to agree, my understanding is much the same, but there's a proviso.

A continuum doesn't mean a even distribution, or a "normal" bell shaped curve with the majority sitting in a middle ground categorised as functionally bisexual, I think it's fair to say a sizeable portion of people lean so heavily in one direction or the other their experiences of alternatives is the odd fleeting moment of confusion, a couple of experiments or an idle fantasy every now and then, not something you'd base life choices on

People who identify as gay by and large tend to be exactly that, they don't have a choice to be attracted to women and like the rest of us they don't get to choose when they fall in love or with whom. Even if someone is genuinely bisexual (and there are indeed many) they may still find their soulmate, true love, life partner, is someone of the same sex. Thus all they are doing when they marry is formalising something which comes naturally to them.

There's a lot of mileage between that and holding a political position. One is an essential component of who someone is, the other an opinion they formed. Discriminating on the basis of one seems, to me at least, to be cruel. Discriminating on the basis of the other is more ambiguous.

I'd never, as an obviously quite left leaning thinker, see any value in trying to stifle an alternate opinion merely because I disagreed with it. On the other hand if any political speech clearly leads to the risk of undue or even deliberate harm I'm more open to persuasion and that includes a lot of movements which are considered "liberal".

I wouldn't object to Facebook as a private entity blocking extremism in the form of animal rights activism, or anarchist movements such as the various "Occupy" groups promoting public disorder and violence. This isn't a left/right thing.

I don't like the violence bent that so many more extreme groups adopt. I know I'm in the far left, but any time some overzealous person says "bring out the guillotines!" they do get pushback, especially from people like me. I want a society where people are free, where they can prosper without fear of discrimination by groups that promote hatred and fear. Creating more hatred and fear doesn't solve that. To use an old expression, "you cannot use evil to cast out evil."

I believe education is a key solution to the problem of inequity, but there are too many vested interests that want critical thinking kept out of the curriculum. When it comes to prosperity, there are a handful of those who benefit from keeping everyone ignorant and poor. I want that wall to come down. I want a system built on equity rather than a structured form of "survival of the fittest."

The problem is that it only takes one asshole to put a wrench in the gears of a society working towards such a system.

Srsly.


SO far right.

I don't for a second believe elections have ever been unbiased by major media corporations, but if you are scared of private entities shaping politics (and I agree it's a daunting prospect) then how do you feel about the scale of influence the NRA has wielded for quite some time? How about oil companies?

Those of you who were worried you wouldn't be able to find Nazi shit on Facebook can rest easy.

I've been pretty consistently here the last decade...



I think it's because I had a fair amount of "strongly" answers.