They said history is a circle, but this is just so blatant.

I'm not understanding how this is related?

> But, the deregulation of media companies is allowing anti-consumer practices. > Even the video game industry is starting to receive backlash for its "non-gambling" practices and the lootbox.

The implication is that it's standard to implement anti-consumer practices like gambling (not called gambling) into consumer products (games). The VAST majority of games now, in a trend starting since circa 2005, has been to milk the customer via chance-based microtransactions, aka the "freemium" model. Games that do not use this, are heavily criticized by industry and critics as oversights or even unfair. i.e. You mean I might pay $X for a game and what if I don't like it? Now I'm out all $X!

And they're not as comparable since game progression isn't "sped up" by putting money into the machine.

Also, with those, your paying for a random chance of more valuable products that, in addition to using in play, you can resell for cash. It's quite a bit more like gambling with and for money than lootboxes are.

Some people consider it gambling because you are preying on the same tendencies in people for your own gain. People also don't get any real value for their "gambling". Other people say this makes it not gambling, etc. That's a very simple oversimplification of the subject - there's a lot of articles out there about it right now.

The counter-argument goes that people "should know" and be responsible with their money, but I'm not a fan of that argument. It relies on people being perfectly rational actors that they just aren't.

I'm personally in favor of instituting regulation for these things. Even if it is just purely from the "we have to protect the children" angle - children are arguably the main market for these strategies after all.

> With facebook actively suppressing certain ideologies

The only ideologies I've heard of Facebook suppressing lately are Neo-Nazi and alt-right groups following the Charlottesville stuff. I don't take issue with these ideologies being suppressed.

Am I missing something?

EDIT: Apparently so because someone just went through my history and down-voted all my comments...

Yep, both Facebook and Twitter regularly plop up on media for shutting down or suspending left-wing sites. For example, "Kein Mensch ist illegal" was even awarded a prize by FB (2014) and in 2016 their admin got suspended (https://www.mimikama.at/allgemein/facebook-sperrt-admin-von-...). Problem here is that the alt-right (ab)uses the reporting features combined with sensitive anti-spam measures at the providers. Given enough reporting Nazis, even the biggest accounts are easy targets. That the Big 3 (FB, Twitter, Youtube) don't have a way to reach a human or file an appeal at a court of law (which I can do, for example, if my telco provider shuts down my internet access and with it my email account) doesn't exactly help either. Big-ish accounts with media influence or people with connections to employees of the companies may help, but this is a luxury only a few people have.

> EDIT: Apparently so because someone just went through my history and down-voted all my comments...

Don't worry - had the same thing happen to me recently, I believe after the Charlottesville murder.

Conservatives put up a fit when they accused Facebook employees of censoring or otherwise biasing the "Trending Topics" feature to prevent conservative stories from appearing there.

Last I heard, about 2 FB employees were suspended or fired over the story, but that's just from memory so I could be completely wrong. As a result of the accusations, FB reportedly converted Trending Topics to be completely automated. It was probably easier to abuse for coordinated troll armies once it was automated.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Suppression of opinion implicitly violates the Bill of Rights.

NO.

The Bill of Rights are enumerated protections FROM THE GOVERNMENT.

The concept of "Freedom of Speech" is different and more broad than the First Amendment to the US Constitution, but a private entity not protecting it is not a violation of the First Amendment or any other 9. Yes, the double-negative is important.

Facebook's content policies are not subject to the Bill of Rights, which constrain only the government.

For a historical viewpoint, simply look at how often the German Nazi party would change what classifies as being a Jew or "undesirable". It was only ever about putting fear into people and maintaining control. They had no real opinions on why these people were undesirable - those could be made up after the fact.

If Nazism was an opinion, I would be willing to defend it. But it's not, and it thrives when it's given the legitimacy as such.

EDIT: To try and tie this back to the topic at hand, are blatant lies still "opinions"? What about death threats and hate speech? My point is simply that we already make distinctions about what kind of speech is free, so I feel that Facebook instituting policies that align with these existing rules makes sense - even though I feel that they are becoming too large to be the de-facto source for information on the Internet.

Can you provide any links? My google-fu is failing me.

That happens to me a lot these day. Just try saying anything about Russian propaganda on Twitter, and watch all your old comments get voted down.

It should be easy for the admins to find and promptly IP-ban the creep who did this.

Anyway, HN has always tended to the libertarian side of things, doesn't surprise me that there is also quite a bunch of radical libertarians. Thankfully, there also seem to be some Antifas in here, if only to provide some counterweight...

That does not neccessarily mean that they support fascism itself - in fact, I have yet to see a libertarian who does not say that he/she despises fascism.

I'm not sure if they're wrong or right.