"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Internet speech is not the same as freedom of speech. Facebook is a private platform and when you sign-up and use them you abide by their rules. This is not censorship. Facebook can ban whatever they want. They are not censoring anything. They are just denying the use of their platform to spread absurd anti-semitic ideas that have no place in an educated and civilized society.

I have said this before in HN, but I'll say it again. There seems to be this idea that freedom of speech comes with an automatic and superseding right to distribution. That's 100% wrong. You can believe whatever idiotic ideas you want but you can't claim freedom of speech to force other people to give you a platform for your beliefs.

Feel free to argue that Facebook should be allowed to censor others. But it is still censorship.

It is perfectly possible for someone to both think that Facebooks actions should be allowed, and are also censorship at the same time.

It would have a pretty small effect on other people's ability to engage in speech. But it is an effect none the less.

If you owned a huge amount of property, though, then this would be a larger amount of censorship.

It absolutely has something to do with the general concept of freedom of speech, actually.

Freedom of speech is a concept, not just a law.

EDIT: (At least, that's how it works in the US. Other nations, other laws.)

Either way, I think people have also a wrong idea of what censorship is. If I tell you can't take a shit in the middle of my living room and you claim that I'm censoring you, then maybe you should reconsider your logic and definition of censoring. This is basically the same.

There's no one who would advocate complete and total freedom of speech in every arena. Whether it's social, legal or self censorship, the question isn't about whether a line exists, it's where we place it.

I'm not changing what "freedom of speech means". I'm telling you that freedom of speech doesn't come with extra rights to give you the ability to disperse your thoughts and Facebook is also well within its own freedom of speech rights (as a Corporate personhood) to enforce whatever content rules they want.

Either way, I'm not even trying to argue here. You believe this is censorship. Fine. I respect that and really don't see that as an irrational thought at all. There's some sound reasoning around your idea that this is censorship. I just think that trying to create blanket definitions for "censorship" or "freedom of speech" is an easy escape to allow people to behave like shit. That's what I think. Totally a personal opinion, though.

Some people are better at compartmentalizing than others. They can hold freedom of speech as it applies to the government in one thought-bucket, while holding corporate-enforced limits on their ability to say whatever they want in another.

But others can't (or won't) compartmentalize. To them, the whole freedom from the government versus freedom from private corporations distinction seems arbitrary and distracting, especially in the US, where many government roles have been subsumed by private corporations.

I'm not saying your point is invalid, just trying to gain some perspective on the issue. Personally, I'm a compartmentalizer so I see your point.

In many ways, the unified absolute freedom of speech camp, no one should ever prevent nazis from posting on hacker news because it is a limitation on the nazis “freedom of speech” are arguing for a substantially more invasive understanding of freedom of speech: I am required to support, fund, enable and amplify speech that I find abhorrent and destructive.

By that logic, deleting spam from my blog comment section violates their conception of “freedom of speech”.

I would remain free to speak, just not on hacker news. Forcing hacker news to host content (spam, nazis, Holocaust deniers, assholes, etc.) is a much much more invasive position.

Would the mods banning spam violate free speech?

It is until it isn't. The big question here is: Is it a common carrier in which people use it, or is it responsible for content on there?

When they start sticking their hand in it to determine what is and isn't acceptible content on there, imo they violate the claim that they're a common platform/being a common carrier.

> Facebook can ban whatever they want. They are not censoring anything.

That's literally exactly what censorship is...........

Also reference the 14th amendment. Prior to it's ratification the bill of rights was construed only to apply to the federal government. It's ratification brought application of the bill of rights to the states, and then to private entities.

(I'm not arguing that Facebook shouldn't remove holocaust denial. I just disagree with this new and extremely narrow interpretation of "free speech" that has popped up like mushrooms everywhere and is being used to curtail free speech in many social and business contexts.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

... in the vain hope someone reads the first one or two sentences.

> They are not censoring anything.

Technically untrue. It isn't that much fun to defend holocaust denial. Maybe even illegal in my country, I don't know the details. But you do what you have to do. Ignorance is still the most potent weapon of facists.

lki876 is clearly referring to a philosophical principle, not whether Facebook's policies violates the U.S. constitution. There was probably some law legalizing Trump's murder of Qasem Soleimani too, doesn't mean it wasn't also a dick move.

The fact that the government isn’t violating an obligation to not restrict free speech does not mean that the principle isn’t being violated by other parties.

XKCD was wrong.

A threat of aggressive violence is a statement of intent to commit a crime. You're punished not for speaking what's on your mind, but for planning to commit a crime. (And I specified aggressive violence because self-defense is not a crime, and I think that stating "I intend to defend myself with violence to the extent permitted by law" isn't a crime either.)

A scam is also a statement of intent to carry out a crime—fraud, specifically.

With spambots, and also with what I'm guessing "abuse" refers to, it's more like harassment or stalking. You want to be able to say "I should be able to walk through this space without being constantly followed by people who are deliberately doing so and ignoring my requests to stop." That depends on exactly what "this space" is—if you own the space, then of course it's up to you, if your harassers own the space, then of course it's up to them, and if it's some "public" space, then it's not totally clear if it's owned by no one or by everyone or by the government, but at least in the latter two cases, it seems reasonable for "everyone" or the government to have rules against harassment and stalking (and I'm saying spam is low-level harassment). Facebook seems to be attempting to act like a "public space" in this regard, though not in all regards.

Hate speech, scams and spam are all speech and they should all be removed and not tolerated.

To clarify, are you saying that when threats are censored it's not an encroachment of free speech because they aren't "part of a dialogue"? If so, then how is holocaust denial any different?

When a handful of corporations determine the Overton Window in society, that is a cause for concern.

There are no 'first amendment' issues here, as no new law has been passed compelling Facebook to do this. It's simply Facebook saying they don't want this sort of antisemitic rubbish published and amplified via their platform.

We all keep going back and forth on these principled stances about how freedom of speech is some holy thing that should be protected at all costs no matter how much damage it causes.

That notion is absurd in my experience. This philosophical ideal of true freedom of speech doesn't even exist! 4Chan still has to censor child porn - and thanks God! Child pornography is horrible and no one should ever be able to hide behind the guise of "free speech" to get away with dissemination of it.

You know what else is horrible? A huge population of people were tortured, starved and gassed to death with numbers in the millions. But do you know what happened after that ended?

People tried to pretend it didn't happen at all. And they still are. Now, I'm not Jewish, but just thinking about that makes me sick. The idea that someone is out there gaslighting people into believing the holocaust doesn't exist is despicable.

If you proposed holocaust denial on this website you'd be in violation of its rules and be flagged or banned. The site is better because of these rules.

And finally, I'd like to pose a thought experiment -

If Hitler were alive today, how do you think he would gain power? Misinformation campaigns, appeals to white nationalism and racist dog whistles on one of the major social networks no doubt.

Of course, Facebook, Google, Twitter etc. are dealing with a very similar scenario right now with Donald Trump who has intentionally divided this country to its breaking point all while likely (indirectly) killing thousands of people by sending them confusing and false messaging about the coronavirus and don't let me forget he's literally stated his intent to steal the election if he loses. You know, basically just textbook fascism.

Ban them. All of them. Today.

Edit: Made things sightly less emotionally charged and rage-baiting. Apologies for the harsh (er) words. I understand it's not in the spirit of the discourse we want to encourage here.

A decent society considers even pieces of shit worthy of human dignity.

I mean, we both just called them pieces of shit. My version of the word "dignity" generally precludes people who have shown they have no dignity.

At any rate, I suspect you wrote this particular argument because it lacks nuance, appeals to our sense of decency and is emotionally appealing to those who already hold the viewpoint.

Were you trying to change my mind? Or just trying to find out how many people agree with you?

Its not a simple issue, but I don't think putting this power in the hands of a few for-profit corporations is the right solution.

Arguing with someone like that is risky because the moment you get through to them, their cognitive dissonance might decide to double down on the falsehood because they would have to come to terms with the notion that they believe something quite shameful.

I see this happen in other areas alot. Mostly white people who can't handle that they may have contributed to racism at one point. "I'm not a racist! You're all just social just warriors!" turns into "I'm not a racist but...[insert racism here]". Of course the deep insecurity over being actually racist is the common thread. Meanwhile there's a whole other movement of white people who are now willing to admit how privileged all of us are to have been in a system for hundreds of years that was a "democracy" for some, but a nightmarish dictatorship for black people. Was I insecure when I realized how tone deaf I had been? Sure. But I possess self reflection and have made efforts to change my behavior since then.

But yes, if I find myself in a conversation with a holocaust denier I'll do my best to convince them they're wrong. I highly doubt that winds up working though.