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A comment on Facebook to ban white nationalist content. Parent comment

Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content by bilbo0s on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @01:32PM (#19503427)
>But that runs both ways. Not only do I think that almost all (to borrow a mathematical term) speech should be permitted, but also that the onus is on the speaker to make themselves heard or to find an audience. No company or platform owes them anything...

This!

A thousand times THIS!

People seem to think that free speech absolutists were saying that Facebook should be forced to host extremist content. For my part, I wasn't saying anything of the sort. Facebook has rights too, and as a free speech absolutist, I will jealously defend Facebook's rights as vigorously as I defend the rights of the Nazi/Confederate/whatever you want to call them.

(I think I agree with you on the "almost all" part though, because I do think pedophilia should be stamped out wherever we find it. But that's just MY line in the sand. Others may draw the line somewhere else.)

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Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content by commandlinefan on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @01:50PM (#19503719)
You're misunderstanding (or deliberately misrepresenting) what free-speech absolutists are saying. Nobody is saying that Facebook should be "forced" to host any particular content, any more than anybody is saying that homedepot.com should be forced to host any particular content. What we are saying is that Facebook is no longer a platform for free and open exchange of idea and is engaging in censorship - and it's open season to point out that everything that they _don't_ censor (e.g. calls for violence against politically unprotected groups) is something that they explicitly condone.
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Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content by _dczq on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @02:01PM (#19503890)
==What we are saying is that Facebook is no longer a platform for free and open exchange of idea and is engaging in censorship==

When was this ever not the case? Violent imagery and sexual nudity are already not allowed.

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Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content by bilbo0s on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @02:02PM (#19503912)
>What we are saying is that Facebook is no longer a platform for free and open exchange of idea...

???

It never was.

I couldn't watch porn movies on Facebook.

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Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content by alexandre_m on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @06:58PM (#19507091)
Yet you probably can find a public FB page for some porn distributor publishing updates about their new movies and stars.

Point is, even if you find the content questionable, it's still allowed to be shared, as long as it's within the laws obviously.

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Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content by anigbrowl on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @02:15PM (#19504106)
s/explicitly/implicitly ?

I mean this was the approach they were taking to White supremacist material until now, which was why people were giving them a hard time.

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Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content by sparkie on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @01:39PM (#19503531)
Facebook and others are not responsible for what their users upload and enjoy the legal protection that comes from it.

If they decide that they are going to be curators of content on their platforms, they are no longer a mere service provider, but a publisher. They might find those protections vanish, which would more or less destroy their platform.

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