Facebook Continued To Identify Users Who Are Interested in Nazis -- and Then Used the Info To Let Advertisers Target Them, Investigation Finds (latimes.com) 261
An anonymous reader shares a report: Facebook makes money by charging advertisers to reach just the right audience for their message -- even when that audience is made up of people interested in the perpetrators of the Holocaust or explicitly neo-Nazi music. Despite promises of greater oversight following past advertising scandals, a Times review shows that Facebook has continued to allow advertisers to target hundreds of thousands of users the social media firm believes are curious about topics such as "Joseph Goebbels," "Josef Mengele," "Heinrich Himmler," the neo-nazi punk band Skrewdriver and Benito Mussolini's long-defunct National Fascist Party.
Experts say that this practice runs counter to the company's stated principles and can help fuel radicalization online. "What you're describing, where a clear hateful idea or narrative can be amplified to reach more people, is exactly what they said they don't want to do and what they need to be held accountable for," said Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League's center on extremism. After being contacted by The Times, Facebook said that it would remove many of the audience groupings from its ad platform.
Experts say that this practice runs counter to the company's stated principles and can help fuel radicalization online. "What you're describing, where a clear hateful idea or narrative can be amplified to reach more people, is exactly what they said they don't want to do and what they need to be held accountable for," said Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League's center on extremism. After being contacted by The Times, Facebook said that it would remove many of the audience groupings from its ad platform.
Sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
I support freedom of speech, even for scum like this.
Re:Sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a freedom of speech issue. Facebook is a privately-run platform, not a government-run platform. Abide by the TOS or get tossed, simple as that.
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"Facebook is a privately-run platform, not a government-run platform. Abide by the TOS or get tossed, simple as that."
And if all technology companies apply similar restrictions barring free speech contrary to our national values it becomes a monopoly issue. Also, if they do so and it is possible we should toss them, simple as that. Fortunately, facebook really doesn't offer anything that can't be easily replicated with a low investment.
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Your other point could be applied to any group. I could target people who are pro-abortion, anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-gun, etc. and get them riled up. You'd need to explain what's so special about neo-Nazi skinheads that makes them different. I'm not particularly sure that they are that special and anyone t
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Hold on there a second partner, just because you referenced something does not mean you want to do it. Youtube is a real pain with regard to that. An odd video with some disturbed individual, what is going on here, wow, that's fucking stupid, don't want to see that again, WTF Youtube, now all the videos you present are about that stupid shite, fuck you YouTube. Erases youtube history to stop getting those videos.
I have an interest a huge range of subjects, involving all sorts of human interactions, good, b
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So the government should compel private companies to carry their views on their private held servers, and connect advertisers to them?
Anyhow, there's very little danger of a monopoly. A weblog is easy enough to set up, if Storm Front isn't your cup of tea.
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facebook really doesn't offer anything that can't be easily replicated with a low investment
How do you propose to get the user base with "low investment"? A FB clone with no users is worthless.
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It doesn't so long as that is true. However if the 'majority' of suppliers of a thing collude to control the market that is actually a problem.
However, I do believe any laws that could be used to apply that kind of logic to speech or ideas ( equal time etc etc. were removed from the books in the 70's) I'm not entirely sure why.
Easy replacement does not invalidate monopoly (Score:3)
That makes no sense. How does it become a monopoly issue if you're able to replace the service with a low investment?
That was Microsoft's argument and they lost. A switch may be easy but when all the incentives say don't make the switch you still have a monopoly. Apple did not nullify Microsoft's monopoly. Google Plus did not nullify Facebook's monopoly. Basically the ease of switching is one thing, the cost of switching is something else entirely.
Re:Sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
Nazi's? Who cares about the Nazi's, I'm talking about people who believe that ideas should be freely expressed and debated without censorship in the light of day. Anyone who believes in free speech. Free speech isn't something we should only support when we like what is being said.
Re: Sorry (Score:2)
Absolutely. "Free Speech". Should apply equally to calls for Jihad, calls for [marginalized/minority group] to be killed, and pumpkin pie recipes. I mean it's all just appreciate, it's not like any of those things often lead to talk world actions, right? I mean who cares if a bake a pie?
(If this needs a sarcasm tag you clearly don't understand my intent...and you sick at sarcasm.)
Re: Sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
"Absolutely. "Free Speech". Should apply equally to calls for Jihad, calls for [marginalized/minority group] to be killed, and pumpkin pie recipes."
Yes, it should.
"it's not like any of those things often lead to talk world actions"
Leading to talk isn't a problem. Leading to action also isn't a problem. If you mean violent action the fault lies with the mental instability (potentially with a cause) in the one who commits it not the speaker. Outlawing the speech is akin to outlawing violent video games or movies. I'll invoke Hitler to signal the end of this thread. Hitler wasn't the problem in Nazi germany. The problem in Nazi Germany is that the large class of abused and impoverished citizens who were as a consequence of extreme desperation mentally unstable enough to be receptive to what Hitler had to say. Don't focus on the speaker to solve these issues beyond using your own right to speech to introduce reason and calm. Focus on what makes people listen.
In the case of current events, stop supporting measures that put the poor white majority in the countryside at extreme disadvantage, that cause them further taxation while marginalizing their representation and that racially discriminate against them. There needs to be room for them to disagree with such measures and not automatically be seen as monsters. Without that basic philosophical charity they are left only with bitterness, hate, and disenfranchisement and very little reason not to become what you are calling them anyway.
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"If you think that speech and action are that disconnected, why would you care about free speech in the first place?"
If Edison had given up on the light bulb and published his work someone else could have picked up where he left off or seen flaws in his reasoning. It's possible two people who are disconnected could fill these roles with one being critical an another taking the initiative to move forward. The free sharing of information, ideas, and philosophy expands the source material one has to reach deci
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"It's up to you to inform yourself about what you believe and why you believe it"
Exactly, and you are denied that opportunity when denied the ability to find and either agree or disagree with the views of others. Facebook is not a megaphone, this information isn't broadcast, it is sought and every user has the freedom to censor.
"not misinforming people or stirring unrest by hate speech, aka "yelling fire in a theater""
Those things have nothing to do with each other. As you said, it is up to you to inform y
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"The difference between free speech and hate speech is a fine line"
Not at all, neither category excludes the other.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white
"you mean, given we know there are dumbasses and mentally unstable people out there that we can go chat about how much the theater should be fire bombed?"
Of course we can go chat with anyone who will listen about anything. Personally, I'd wouldn't be chatting about how much the theater should be fire bombed but then I might flippantly say something
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I live in the USA and am well aware of the origin. This is a court of public opinion and not the law, ultimately the Supreme Court will in time be bound to us not the other way around.
"So no, it is not an abused example! It is a reference to the Supreme Court Decision that to this day is used as precedent for determining the legal bounds of free speech in the USA."
One does not preclude the other. That supreme court example is cherrypicked and is a poor example of "speech" except in the most literal sense. T
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And I suppose video games turn people into monsters?
The ideas don't turn people into monsters the resentment, discontent, and their own mental instability does that. There are millions of kids who play Nazi during a rebellious phase in school for shock value. And apparently they don't come along very often, despite how often people talk about all this hate crime in the US I went digging for statistics and the actual number of people harmed and killed across several years were single digits and in almost all
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"And that is why children need to be properly educated, thank you for putting the idea in perspective.
The ideas are poisonous and toxic."
It sounds like your idea of education is to tell them what to think. That is brainwashing. Education is exposing them to many ideas and teaching them to think more critically and effectively via abstract concepts divorced from the actual ideas.
"You have been severely misinformed, the biggest problem is in drugs, mostly outside prison, though not entirely."
And most of that
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A company is nothing but a collaboration of people. A collective of corporations is effectively one giant entity with regard to the impact is has on the market. This is true without regard to any policies on the law books.
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It's not a freedom of speech issue. Facebook is a privately-run platform, not a government-run platform.
Freedom of speech should apply to all public platforms, just like all public accommodations are prevented from racial discrimination.
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Not all, just the ones that want common carrier protections from liability for content on their networks.
I'm fine with that being their private business decision.
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I'm not seeing a law here.
Imagine for a moment that our rights precede law and are more important, and that law should change to increase our rights.
There's no constitutional issue here: publicly traded corporations have no such rights.
It's also not a freedom of speech issue (Score:2)
This is a privacy issue. Facebook Identified people interested in Nazi's and gave that information to advertisers. I can come up with lots of scenarios where that information could hurt somebody. And all it would take to get it is some money and a phony ad agency.
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You're doing what so many do. Freedom of speech doesn't necessary equal the First Amendment.
This isn't a First Amendment issue. It IS a freedom of speech issue.
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The question of been a utility to allow the publication of users comments is also raised.
The social media site is not the publisher of its own approved content. The content belongs to the users.
Over many decades legal questions in parts of the USA got looked at over free speech on private property eg shopping malls.
ie areas regularly held open to the public.
AC some US states really allow for the full right of fre
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Agreed, entirely and my "scum" remark wasn't targeted at WW2 academics. It was even too broad otherwise. The groups and ideologies are scum. The actual humans are misguided and ignorant and classifying them unilaterally as "scum" because of disdain for the ideas they currently hold and the way those ideas get associated with me when I try to defend myself against racism is wrong.
There is no shortage of rational reasoning and logic that could change the minds of individuals in these groups and in some cases
"Academic" is a poor threshold (Score:4, Interesting)
... "scum" remark wasn't targeted at WW2 academics ...
That's a rather poor description of those attempting to learn and understand history. You don't need to be a university professor conducting research; a young school kid trying to understand history, maybe understand the war their great-grandfather fought in, is acting just as honorably at the university researcher. The history of these terrible events and these terrible people is not some off limits thing that only certain accredited people should be allowed to see. To the contrary, the public at large needs to understand what happened, how it happened, so that it is less likely to happen again.
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A young school kid trying to understand history is an academic. The term is not merely for university professor. Anyone who is engaging in scholarly pursuit. History in general is merely academic or scholarly rather than practical therefore anyone studying it is a scholar or academic. I suppose some might try to throw the doomed to repeat it line but actual historians tend to hate that claim, history never repeats, there may be similarities but the world is very complex and small differences result in very
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Learning from mistakes, learning cautionary tales is one thing, "doomed to repeat" is something else. The next time may not be the same but it may be heavily influenced by. A convenient WW1 example, the failure to occupy Germany led to the creation of the myth that they were not really defeated. Similarly the lack of coalition forces in Iraq after the '91 Gulf War let Hussein perpetuate a myth that the Iraqi military had not
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"That is a quite similar outcome, a cause and effect "repeat" to a degree"
Certainly, but it doesn't always work that way. See X number of ways not to make a lightbulb. Something that hasn't yet worked will always have a history of failure or negative outcome until other circumstances are such that it works.
It really is less about history per say than life and the world are very complex things and people making these sort of predictions based on history are almost always dramatically oversimplifying somethin
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I literally pointed to the definition in the Oxford dictionary.
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See 1.3. https://en.oxforddictionaries.... [oxforddictionaries.com]
Regarding "noun" vs "adjective", see your own citation.
"NOUN
A teacher or scholar in a university or other institute of higher education."
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Very well. Can we move on from this pedantic debate on semantics now?
Designer Brown Shirts should do well ... (Score:2)
Neos are known to like these shirts. If I need to unload this big stash of brown shirts, why shouldn't I be allowed to target them?
Are they designer shirts? Hugo Boss branded shirts should do well as he was a full fledged Nazi. Chanel and Louis Vuitton should do well too since they were active collaborators. For budget conscious neos maybe Dior will do as he was a passive collaborator.
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Sure. I might be willing to fight for their right to speech but I'm not going to defend them from crappy ads.
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I support freedom of speech, even for scum like this.
What happened to "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" ? Sad that you label everyone interested in WW2 history as "scum".
Re:Sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
Racism is ignorant and irrational, race isn't even an objectively defined thing. Neo-nazi's operate on a blend of false science and outdated and debunked science and promote an idea of exclusion and violence. The people who fall it aren't automatically scum true, people are duped into stupid and irrational ideas all the time even good and intelligent people. There are no shortage of lies and propaganda being spread about neo-nazi's including the idea that they regularly engage in all sorts of hate motivated violence but their platform does still support those ideas and it doesn't just support a pro-white narrative, it supports an anti-everyone else narrative.
I happen to have white skin and if I oppose a measure that unfairly discriminates against me I get associated with all the historical baggage and evils perpetuated by the ideas of groups like Nazi's and the KKK. I should be able to oppose measures that would give a random non-white skin color child an advantage over my own or be proud of my heritage publicly in a fair and logical forum but I can't because these groups are the big ugly strawmen I get lumped in with.
Nobody does more to damage to "white people" than neo-nazi's, Klan, and confederate supporters because every time we try to defend ourselves against another racist policy targeting us we get compared to them. Every time we start a movement, those groups will support it and make it look shameful and dirty.
Re: Sorry (Score:3)
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"you belong to a Group that as a whole gets a disproportionately large chunk of every pie"
Which objectively defined group is that? Explain to me how lumping people you categorize into it together instead of treating them as individuals isn't racism?
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"Shaitan is a nutter, MRA and likely incel based on his post history."
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem
"He fancies himself a smart guy, but has innumerable logical fallacies in his broken down train of thought."
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof
"Look at Roger Stone and the sudden "backlash" from certain groups about how the cops arrest people. Trump doesn't seem to be saying Stone should have gotten his head slammed against the car door as he got put in after all."
https://yourlogical
Re: Sorry (Score:2)
Nope.
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Bingo
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"Sad that you label everyone interested in WW2 history as "scum"."
No, that was simply ambiguity in my writing. It is sad that you feel the need to be so hostile and inflammatory in pointing it out.
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Indeed and he is correct in that but it is a tangent from the content of my post and he was unnecessarily inflammatory in pointing out a simple clarification of that idea.
He could have just said "Agreed. But not everyone who looks for this information is a nazi or klan member. It is also sought out by any looking for information on the topic"
Although that could just as easily be an argument FOR censorship since they will find false information from Nazi and Klan groups when searching without censoring those
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Do people generally do historical research on Facebook now? Has something changed over there that suddenly made them a reliable reference?
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"Do people generally do historical research on Facebook now?"
They might. Why not? You don't think a high school kid or historian might post something about what they are looking at lately? We are talking about a hypothetical here. I don't spend a lot of time researching these subjects anymore or really since Facebook has been a thing so I couldn't say but people who claim they do pointed out the discrepancy without being inflammatory.
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Are you really asking me why you should't do historical research on the mid-20th century on Facebook?
When DID you spend "a lot of time researching these subjects"?
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"When DID you spend "a lot of time researching these subjects"?"
Mostly grade school and high school with a bit in college. We are talking about WW2 here, it isn't exactly changing or an area of special interest to me. If anything we spend far too much time on it in IMHO. We didn't have Facebook when I was a kid. If you limit yourself to what they teach in college and sources that would be college approved and accepted you are only exposed to one extreme bias. You might as well study WW2 via a holocaust muse
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Who generally searches for ""Joseph Goebbels," "Josef Mengele," "Heinrich Himmler," ...and Benito Mussolini's long-defunct National Fascist Party." " on Facebook?
If you were interested in "WW2 history" would you be searching Facebook for those terms? Is Facebook now some repository of WW2 history?
Facebook group can be valuable sources of info (Score:2)
Is Facebook now some repository of WW2 history?
Perhaps not directly, but it is a repository of groups of people. This may include groups of history buffs. Care to investigate whether there are WW2 history groups on facebook? I'd imagine that if one finds a good group then posing a question can lead to a better collection of links to historical sources than a google search. I've seen such a facebook group in action. Images of old family letters and post cards, photos, newspaper clippings, souvenirs, etc providing more info on a historical topic than a lo
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So, like anyone else on Facebook, their interests are being noted and sold off to advertisers. So what exactly is the problem here? Should fans of Nazi memorabilia be protected from being targeted by advertisers when everyone else isn't?
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So, like anyone else on Facebook, their interests are being noted and sold off to advertisers. So what exactly is the problem here? Should fans of Nazi memorabilia be protected from being targeted by advertisers when everyone else isn't?
Those posting images of letters from a great-grandfather written during the fighting in normandy, france, holland, or germany; wartime newspaper clippings with information about units or ships a great-grandfather served in/on; etc is not quite the same potential market as that of nazi memorabilia. The one nazi flag I ever saw was only remarkable because it was shown to me by the man who had cut it down from a flagpole in germany and kept it as a war trophy. His family would not be shopping for a different n
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Who generally searches for ""Joseph Goebbels," "Josef Mengele," "Heinrich Himmler," ...and Benito Mussolini's long-defunct National Fascist Party." " on Facebook?
It's the scourge of the modern age: so many local in person meetups are on facebook now.
Ivory tower professors sometimes use FB (Score:2)
"Independent historians"? You're referring to holocaust deniers now, aren't you?
Actually honest-to-god professors at top universities have been known to write essays or articles that appear in the popular press rather than academic journals. The former is sometimes announced and linked to on their personal facebook pages.
During the recent controversy over confederate statues one such professor addressed the question of "did the confederacy fight to preserve slavery or was there some other motivation". This professor's essay published in the mainstream media answered this question by
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I support freedom of speech, i.e. freedom from government interference in my speech. I do not support the right to infringe on other's speech by compelling them to print someone else's speech on their privately-held platform. But we're not even talking about that here; we're talking about whether Facebook should be allowed to allow advertisers to target people with an interest in certain topics. That's a freedom of speech issue regarding what Facebook itself is allowed to say to advertisers. As such, I supp
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I do not support the right to infringe on other's speech by compelling them to print someone else's speech on their privately-held platform.
Do you support the right of a privately-held restaurant to turn away black customers? For a bakery to turn away gays? You run a business open to the public, you might be compelled to serve all the public.
Separately, Publicly-traded corporations have no right to free speech. There's no trade-off to discuss. The rights of one side are being infringed, the other side has no such rights, case closed.
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Do you support the right of a privately-held restaurant to turn away black customers?
Questions like this frustrate me because they're as (ir)relevant to the situation at hand as me asking when you stopped beating your wife.
Facebook isn't turning Nazis away from their platform: they're choosing not to make "advertise to Nazis" a menu item that advertisers can select. If we're putting it in restaurant terms, this has nothing to do with whether a restaurant is willing to serve black customers; it's instead about whether the restaurant can remove foie gras from its menu. That's it. No one is ki
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Publicly traded corporations have no rights. The whole concept is nonsense. They are allowed to do whatever we decide to allow them to do, but they start at 0. So, why is it in society's best interest to allow them to censor speech they disagree with? More clearly, why is it in society's best interest to allow an effective monopoly to censor speech it disagrees with, and thereby control political discussion? Lack of free discussion is the anathema of democracy.
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Once again, you're asking questions that are wholly unrelated to the situation at hand. Facebook chose to stop selling a product they previously offered. That's...
A) Their choice to make, not yours
B) Not censorship
So, why is it in society's best interest to allow them to censor speech they disagree with?
When did you stop beating your wife?
Again, no censorship is happening in the situation at hand. If you have different information, clue me in, but so far as I can tell your brain short circuited when it saw "censorship" mentioned in the comments, since you continue to talk about a hypothetical pr
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Their choice to make, not yours
Why do you believe that should be the case? You keep advocating for it, but you refuse to make an argument, or even answer any related questions.
Not censorship
You seem unclear on the concept.. When anyone chooses not to distribute content for any content-based reason, that's censorship.
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Why do you believe that should be the case? You keep advocating for it, but you refuse to make an argument, or even answer any related questions.
I think it as self-evident as the notion that you can’t walk into a French restaurant and demand sushi at a price you set. If you seriously believe that businesses don’t get to choose their own business offerings, what’s stopping you from walking into a bank and demanding that they give you all their money as a new form of “it all belongs to me” account that you just created for them? After all, it’s not their call to make, right?
You seem unclear on the concept.. When anyone chooses not to distribute content for any content-based reason, that's censorship.
And you have yet to point to a single thin
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If you seriously believe that businesses donâ(TM)t get to choose their own business offerings
We as a society have already decided it's not that simple. A baker can't refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding, even if that product offering goes against the core values of the owners. eHarmony was forced by law to create an entire new product offering and web site for gay dating. Heck, a game company was once ordered by a judge to create an entire new game for someone else in a trademark/copyright dispute.
Do you agree it's not that simple, or are you an absolutist, denying any complexity?
To me, one d
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Nothing to do with freedom of speech.
They are helping Nazis to target such people with their propaganda via their advertising platform. They are helping Nazis radicalize people.
It's one thing to support free speech on your platform and allow that kind of material, it's another to actively assist Nazis in their recruitment drive.
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Nothing to do with freedom of speech.
They are helping Nazis to target such people with their propaganda via their advertising platform. They are helping Nazis radicalize people.
It's one thing to support free speech on your platform and allow that kind of material, it's another to actively assist Nazis in their recruitment drive.
Nothing to do with freedom of speech.
They are helping Muslims to target such people with their propaganda via their advertising platform. They are helping Muslims radicalize people.
It's one thing to support free speech on your platform and allow that kind of material, it's another to actively assist Muslims in their recruitment drive.
Nothing to do with freedom of speech.
They are helping Socialists to target such people with their propaganda via their advertising platform. They are helping Socialists radical
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The difference being that Islam and socialism are not inherently violent or opposed to anyone's existence.
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Wow. Just straight up anti-Semitic now.
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You? Or the US Democratic party? Or our pet troll (but he's not new)?
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You said "you Jews and stockholders are vermin, not people?". In that context, "you" would be me, right?
You think I am Jewish for some reason, and then went on to suggest Jews and for some reason stockholders are "vermin, not people".
Do you need a mulligan?
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I have no idea what you are babbling on about now.
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RIght: your geek card, in the box by the door, on your way out. https://youtu.be/FQ5YU_spBw0?t... [youtu.be]
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The way people talk about Nazis, or whites, or Trump supporters, or increasingly Jews, in America is just like how the Nazis talked about Jews.
Totalitarianism always comes as an excuse to contain those dangerous vermin who threaten society.
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[Unhinged rant redacted]
Well, at least Slashdot still has freedom of speech.
Searching does not indicate support ... (Score:2)
Learning history, learning the lessons of history, requires reading about terrible things and terrible pe
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Does this include, say, calls to murder specific people and the like? Usually you place a limit on calls to criminal activity and for very good reasons.
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I support human beings and ideas. The more diversity of ideas, ideology, and people the better. We should not beat any ideas into hiding and the shadows but instead face them in the light of day and air them to logical scrutiny.
Censorship ends up keeping these ideas alive because there is little to no opportunity to debunk, debate, or reason with someone reading an underground pamphlet. For those, rightfully, distrustful of authority and the pleas to authority fallacy arguments that go with it the fact thos
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The more diversity of ideas, ideology, and people the better.
Utter bullshit. I'm all for freedom of speech and I'm going ot use that to counter that having more diversity of opinions on how and why I should be murdered is not for the better.
double-standard (Score:5, Insightful)
a clear hateful idea or narrative can be amplified to reach more people, is exactly what they said they don't want to do
Who determines what a "clear hateful idea" is? Oh, I see what they did there.
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a clear hateful idea or narrative can be amplified to reach more people, is exactly what they said they don't want to do
Who determines what a "clear hateful idea" is? Oh, I see what they did there.
Did they say it was a "clear hateful idea" ? I do not think so. It well could simply have been a "narrative" as stated one word after, no?
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But the point is still the same: Facebook builds a narrative (no matter what sort of ideas stated by the user) on it's user(s), then sells that narrative to anyone that will pay.
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The Nazi's did (Score:2)
Seriously. If you're invoking Nazis in anything except historic context, either directly or indirectly, then you're spreading a message of violence. Nazism is like Ebola, really nasty shit that needs to be handled with care.
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China about Taiwan been the real China.
China over any aspect of a cartoon bear. China over its Communist past.
Germany about any aspect of German news, culture, politics, art and history.
The UK on police actions over words used.
France over protesters.
Many nations with blasphemy laws.
US freedom of speech and freedom after speech is looking great.
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Sorta like how a used car saleman will (try to) sell you an El Camino. "You need a truck? Oh boy do I have the El Camino for you." Or, "You need a car?
Simple solution. (Score:3)
HA! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm gonna be the first to Godwin this threa... oh crap.
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I think that's the problem (Score:2)
Nazis suck (Score:2, Interesting)
while Communists rock. Thanks for clearing that up.
Well of course Communists Rock (Score:2)
Algorithms sometimes have unintended consequences. (Score:4, Insightful)
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curious or interested in a topic? (Score:3)
ingesting information on any topic does not necessarily mean advocating or endorsing it; if one is 'curious' or 'interested' in a topic -- including valid historical figures and events, it is disingenuous to then be portrayed as being 'for' it
keep in mind FB is not a government entity but a profit-oriented business; any and all of its power was handed to it voluntarily by those who feel okay with trading their privacy for whatever FB offers in return; also keep in mind that tolerance of differing viewpoints is a keystone of democracy... removing alternative viewpoints is tyranny and will have a much deeper negative impact than a generally unpopular topic running its natural course
expecting government to handle social problems only leads to more government; more of that can certainly be worse than letting social issues play out in society; government-mandated solutions should be scarce since they come with their own set of intractable problems some of which are worse than what they are 'solving'
I don't see anyone in the OP advocating gov't intervention, so perhaps I ramble a bit here; on the other hand, if this is an attempt to educate the general public about FB's practices so the public can make better informed decisions, then hell yes, let's hear it
it comes down to personal responsibility for yourself and children; make a stand and make it work... too many whiners think "someone should do something" but never themselves; "I want my FB but somebody needs to make it safe for me" is about as disgustingly weak-minded as it gets; it's unreasonable to expect gov't to solve all of life's problems and honestly, I wouldn't want it to
my life IS about my choices; if somebody else is making choices for me, then it's not really my life
In other news ... (Score:2)
Simon Wiesenthal is glad he's dead and doesn't have to suffer those Nazi-Ads.
In WWII.... (Score:2)
...the Western Allies permitted their citizens and military personnel to listen to Lord Haw-haw, Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose and more.
Leadership knew daylight is a fine disinfectant. They were tough, smart, and not afraid of speech.
They won.
Re: (Score:2)
What do they buy? Is there like a KKKmart or something?
KKKmart: good one. I did nazi that coming.