Facebook Bans QAnon Across Its Platforms (nbcnews.com) 302
AmiMoJo shares a report from NBC News: Facebook said Tuesday that it is banning all QAnon accounts from its platforms, a significant escalation over its previous actions and one of the broadest rules the social media giant has put in place in its history. Facebook said the change is an update on the policy it created in August that initially only removed accounts related to the QAnon conspiracy theory that discussed violence, which resulted in the termination of 1,500 pages, groups and profiles.
A company spokesperson said the enforcement, which started Tuesday, will "bring to parity what we've been doing on other pieces of policy with regard to militarized social movements," such as militia and terror groups that repeatedly call for violence. "Starting today, we will remove Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts for representing QAnon. We're starting to enforce this updated policy today and are removing content accordingly, but this work will take time and will continue in the coming days and weeks," Facebook wrote in a press release. "Our Dangerous Organizations Operations team will continue to enforce this policy and proactively detect content for removal instead of relying on user reports."
A company spokesperson said the enforcement, which started Tuesday, will "bring to parity what we've been doing on other pieces of policy with regard to militarized social movements," such as militia and terror groups that repeatedly call for violence. "Starting today, we will remove Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts for representing QAnon. We're starting to enforce this updated policy today and are removing content accordingly, but this work will take time and will continue in the coming days and weeks," Facebook wrote in a press release. "Our Dangerous Organizations Operations team will continue to enforce this policy and proactively detect content for removal instead of relying on user reports."
About time (Score:5, Insightful)
This group should have been shut down a long time ago. At least Facebook is finally doing something useful on this.
Re: About time (Score:3, Insightful)
And they'd achieve precisely nothing....
Re: About time (Score:5, Insightful)
False. If anything it has become clear in the past 10 year that the ease of which information is disseminated has been a large contributor to the expansion of this fuckwittery. If we can ban them from everywhere popular and put them back to circle jerking in their own chan board, or leaflet dropping, or newspaper subscription we'd have done a good job in relegating these nutjobs to their status of 20 years ago: a curious niche to be mocked.
At the very least I won't have to hear my mother repeat their incorrect bullshit. The less we can expose weak minds to bullshit the better. People don't actively go out of their way to seek this shit out until they are committed.
Re: About time (Score:5, Insightful)
Phoenix321 is a satanic pedophile, and this is why we must vote for the AntiPhoenix party which will incarcerate all people with usernames containing "Phoenix" indefinitely and put their children in cages too! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
It's only funny if it doesn't turn into a giant fascist movement.
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I don't dislike your opinion because it's honest, I dislike it because it's racist and fascist. Honesty in itself is good. It's good that you honestly outed yourself with your repugnant opinions.
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Denial of systemic racism is racism, even if not a particularly active form. Everyone except for wilfully blind white people can see that it's real, and the reason some people are wilfully blind to it is because they don't want to address it for some reason. And there is no non-racist reason for that.
Painting BLM as believing that "cops are out to just murder people" or arguing that their protests aren't mostly peaceful, which is an objective fact, are obvious blatant lies told in the interest of destroying
Re: About time (Score:2)
If they were merely discussing politics then Iâ(TM)d agree with you. But they spread misinformation and promote violence. And foreign powers weaponize the movement to destabilize US democracy.
Re: About time (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not BLM or Antifa.
Which are not banned discussion groups at all.
Watch the Social Dilemma - the most interesting part was how places like Facebook happily pushes people into their own bubbles in order to keep them coming back for more outrage, solely because they get better ad dollars for this.
Bannin Qanon will have the lefty bubble-dwellers log in to gloat, and the righty bubble-dwellers log in to express outrage, and facebook will count the money all the way to the bank. That's what they do. That's all they do.
Re: About time (Score:5, Informative)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Q-Anon has basically been a bunch of larpers running their mouths, and nobody on Q-Anon's account has been shot, kicked in the head, beaten within an inch of their lives, burned to death, etc.
He was far from a pinnacle of society, but if Frank Cali had survived being shot, he'd correct you, because you are wrong.
https://ctc.usma.edu/the-qanon... [usma.edu]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Right, right, the "fundamental evil" of antifa is that they succeeded at driving out the people from another State who came to my community to wave weapons around and try to frighten people.
Of course fascists dislike anti-fascists.
You weren't supposed to like them.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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How about we just keep the status quo where the corporations that own these platforms make some minimal effort to police the content on them, for the sake of image and advertising revenue?
It's highly imperfect but it doesn't require the government to set limits (beyond things like images of child abuse) and people have a choice of many different services with all kinds of content.
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I suppose you're against spam filters too. A Facebook feed is a limited resource - there is only infinite space so much as people spend infinite time on the platform.
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So putting state- or monopoly-owned and controlled filters in all communication lines between all people is the solution to keep America free. Got it.
You'll find that most of the world doesn't have freedom of speech, and gets along just fine. Arguably getting along better than the USA.
That is a form of vote manipulation, because with you (or your pawns) manipulating the information to and from voters
So banning lies is the voter manipulation rather than allowing the lies to spread unchecked? Got it. Yes I'm mocking you. It's one thing to come up with a counter point, quite another to go full retard in the other direction.
You are the kind of politkommissar that would gladly throw people in the Gulag for "spreading disinformation about the revolution".
Fuck off with your hyperbole. There's a big difference between not giving people a platform and locking them up, and an even bigger difference between
Re: About time (Score:5, Insightful)
My God, I hope to hell you are NOT a US citizen.
Freedom of speech is one of the cornerstone building block of the country, and one of the single most important tenants of citizenship.
If you are a US citizen, I am completely flabbergasted that you could even entertain the thought of voluntarily giving up one of the main ideals that makes America America.
Re: About time (Score:4, Insightful)
Lots of Americans believe in limiting free speech. Hate speech, for example, is a frequent target. Many other countries do fine without these free speech protections. I personally am alright with the status quo, but it's not un-American to want to get rid of hate speech.
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Sure Facebook is, but is Slashdot? Why or or why not?
Would anti-spam bot measures be considered blocking free speech and therefore not allowed?
I'm not saying your idea is bad and wrong, just asking about details.
Re: About time (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you name a single thing they're contributing to society?
Carbon dioxide?
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Not if... they're a plant!
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While I understand where your comment comes from...
I have to point out that contributing to society is NOT a prerequisite to being a citizen of the USA, and holding all rights that comes with citizenship, including voting.
I the US, you are supposed to basically be free to do something or nothing that "contributes" to society, nothing in the country's founding mandated interacting with society at all.
Sure, it's a nice thing to do, but you are no
Re: About time (Score:5, Insightful)
So yeah it will achieve something, certainly more than allowing this shit to run rampant.
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QAnon is the dumbest shit I have seen in a long while. It's almost as if it is done deceptively to wage a war of an over-inflated ideology for people with anosognosia.
It's a fascist apocalyptic death cult... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's an enabling fascist apocalyptic death cult for people with fascist and apocalyptic ideas and beliefs... and other mental issues.
As such, clashing with reality and demanding that reality is wrong somehow - is its core feature.
Much like how the flat Earth believers see the world.
Dan Olson (Folding Ideas) has a good video essay on that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Thank you, finally some booth goodies I'd appreciate.
Yes to the AR, but you can keep the MAGA cap (Score:3)
As far as MAGA, it seems that the movement seems to be focused on Making America Second Rate Again. However, I will admit that MASRA is a bit harder to pronounce, let alone to rally behind.
Oh, those "Q" characters, there has always seemed to have been one banner or another that the nutters hav
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Good luck with that.
With the double whammy of the pandemic compounded with the rioting...you can't find a gun or ammo anywhere for purchase.
They've pretty much completely SOLD OUT of all firearms, including AR's and the like.
I have to wonder if with this many new gun owners, if the push for overreaching gun control and confiscation plans will be met with more opposition from the citizenry.
It ain't just conserva
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This group should have been shut down a long time ago. At least Facebook is finally doing something useful on this.
Why? The best they can do is publish all the people who participate. Same for 5G.
Good list of people who are so mindbogglingly dumb that they cannot be trusted with a job.
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Same for 5G.
Meant to say "5G conspiracies". It is obvious from the context anyway.
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It says a lot that the Republicans aren't seriously trying to stop QAnon. It looks bad for them but they don't care, Trump is already so divisive it doesn't matter any more.
Re:About time (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't say anything at all about the Republicans other than a hands-off approach to private speech - there's a million people coming up with theories of all kinds, and the Republicans aren't seriously working to stop any of it.
It rather says more about the Democrats that they leave virtually all insanity alone, other than making a massive deal about whatever is politically convenient to pursue or threatens their power.
Re:About time (Score:5, Interesting)
Why don't prominent GOP people denounce it as nonsense though? When people turn up to their events with QAnon banners and start repeating those wild conspiracies they don't exactly distance themselves. In fact some of them seem to buy into it.
Re:About time (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't they denounce it? Because QAnon is a disinformation campaign BY and FOR Trump.
The bullshit they spread is no accident, it's not an organic grassroots movement of fuckwits saying and doing fuckwitted things.
It's astroturfed propaganda with the purpose of mobilising and radicalising fuckwits.
It's not entirely under their control, but that doesn't matter. In fact, it actually works better for Trump, by bringing in crackpots from a much wider variety of conspiracy theologies and indoctrinating them into the Trumpist MAGA bullshit too.
Re: QANON is an Idea, not an Organization (Score:5, Interesting)
Right, because a guy heavily armed didn't walk into a DC pizza parlor, shoot up the place, and demand to see the basement holding the Clintons' child sex slaves.
Or when a guy brought an armored truck and ammunition to block traffic on a major bridge connecting Arizona and Nevada near the Hoover Dam.
Or when a guy in Staten Island killed a guy because he thought President Trump wanted him to.
Or the woman who live-streamed her drive to New York in an effort to "take out" Joe Biden due to the QAnon "Frazzledrip" conspiracy theory.
Or the guy in Seattle who liked the Proud Boys and killed his brother with a sword because he thought he was a lizard, another conspiracy theory popularized by QAnon.
A Texas woman tried to attack two strangers with her car because she thought they were child predators (for no good reason other than the QAnon conspiracy theory that this is EVERYWHERE).
-
Now let's compare with BLM. How many cops have been killed by them? Where are the BLM message boards with detailed plans to shoot, "disappear", and torture folks? What is the BLM version of "lizard people"?
Yes, some statues were torn down. Yes, in the first weeks there was vandalism and fires set, which BLM organizers explicitly condemned by the way. Yes, years ago that one time in one town five people chanted "fry em up like bacon", which again BLM explicitly denounced. How about the many demonstrations for months that haven't erupted in any violence or, which is common, only become violent when the police show up in riot gear and start kettling folks?
So how many police shootings are clearly tied to BLM in the last 10 years? How many murders, rapes, kidnappings, etc. are in the FBI database linked to BLM?
Trump's own FBI director...the guy Trump himself hired to replace Comey...says that's Antifa's an ideology, not an organization AND that QAnon and other violent white supremacist groups like Proud Boys and Boogaloos are actually the biggest domestic threat in the US.
So yeah, take your false equivalence elsewhere.
Re: QANON is an Idea, not an Organization (Score:3)
No one ever died from a Confederate statue coming down. No one lost their livelihood because a park statue was taken down. The fires were started by provocateurs, not folks who care about Black lives. You'll notice that after the first week or two (the protests have been going for months), basically all of the news footage about "fires and looting" showed that first couple of weeks instead of live feeds.
On the flip side, Twitter and IG are full of video where the police instigated the violence.
Hundreds of t
Censorship? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup (Score:3, Insightful)
It is censorship pure and simple. Its one thing to ban hate groups who threaten violence against people, its quite another to ban a group because they have silly beliefs. If thats the criteria then most world religions should also be banned too. A man rose from the dead and saved the world? Seriously?
This is the problem with the left leaning metro liberals who are the majority in old and new media - they only believe in free speech if its speech they agree with.
Re:Yup (Score:5, Informative)
> It is censorship pure and simple
No, it's not. Their platform, their rules. It would be censorship if the government decided what speech is allowed/disallowed.
> This is the problem with the left leaning metro liberals who are the majority in old and new media
Problem? What problem? Perhaps ask yourself WHY a large percentage of the media is liberal (and they are only left leaning viewed from the perspective of a US conservative) in one way or another?
> they only believe in free speech if its speech they agree with.
Seems they are exercising their right to free speech then. Free speech doesn't mean the right to be heard. No one is entitled to use a platform they don't own.
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In your theoretical universe, the existence of "freedom of speech" is defined fully and solely on whether the GOVERNMENT takes actions to repress speech. Let's define this as the "Government-Freedom" universe.
This is opposed to a universe where freedom of speech is defined based on the actions of governmental and non-governmental powers. Let's call this the "All-Freedom" universe.
In the GOVERNMENT-FREEDOM universe, you could have people killed in the street for criticizing the local overlord, and whether th
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Have you considered that the all-freedom universe would require the government to take control of all private means of communication to ensure that censorship is not taking place? It could get even more messy and ridiculous if it extends to things like boycotts. Speaking of scope creep, I don't know how murder got into a discussion about speech, obviously murder isn't speech.
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It's not a bad-faith argument, you can consider private control over private communications platforms to be a bad thing all you want, but actually enforcing it would require pervasive government investigation or even constant surveillance of those private platforms. And then you have to consider if any lines are drawn for terrorist content etc. or if we'll have to allow jihadi beheading videos too.
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In your theoretical universe, the existence of "freedom of speech" is defined fully and solely on whether the GOVERNMENT takes actions to repress speech. Let's define this as the "Government-Freedom" universe.
This is opposed to a universe where freedom of speech is defined based on the actions of governmental and non-governmental powers. Let's call this the "All-Freedom" universe.
In the GOVERNMENT-FREEDOM universe, you could have people killed in the street for criticizing the local overlord, and whether the killed people had "zero free speech" or "completely full free speech" depended solely and exclusively on a highly academic discussion about whether the local drug overlord or gang leader should be defined as a "government" or not. You could have a pile of protester bodies in the street, and a bunch of academics would argue whether the dead had FULL or ZERO freedom of speech based on citing various definitions of "government".
The "academics" can argue all they like about "FULL or ZERO freedom of speech" the "local overlord" would still be facing criminal charges for murder. I'm not sure how your example even really deals with free speech other than the forced way you tried to add it in.
In the ALL-FREEDOM universe, none of this would take place - the degree of freedom of speech would be independent of who did the killing, would not flip between zero and hundred based on political recognition, and would align with the Press Freedom definition.
Again it doesn't really matter if you are in an "ALL-FREEDOM universe" or a "GOVERNMENT-FREEDOM" universe the matter would come down to murder not whether the person was exercising free speech.
To me, the GOVERNMENT-FREEDOM definition seems insane and antihuman, probably by the same personality type to organize show trials in the Soviet Union. Knowing that there's people supporting the GOVERNMENT-FREEDOM definition makes me want to buy a gun, and prepare myself mentally that I may have to use it against people in my lifetime.
Not even sure what this rant has to do with free speec
Spin it how you will (Score:2)
But it if its a public forum then its censorship regardless of how its owned and funded.
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> This is the problem with the left leaning metro liberals who are the majority in old and new media - they only believe in free speech if its speech they agree with.
"Woke Supremacy" may be the term you're looking for.
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Why does it have to be Facebook? What is wrong with Gab, Parler, Voat, Mastodon and all the others? Why is it not enough that there are websites which cater to QAnon, why does every website have to give up control over content?
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If thats the criteria then most world religions should also be banned too.
That's not such a bad suggestion. The indoctrination of religion has done more damage in this world than Qanon has so far. So let's censor away.
The world is full of weak and easily influenced minds. Maybe we should help protect them rather than just feed them to an endless array of bullshit.
they only believe in free speech if its speech they agree with.
Not quite. They only believe in speech that they can't get away with censoring. Banning a conspiracy nutbag group is more palatable to the general populace than pointing out that their skydaddy isn't real.
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It is censorship pure and simple. Its one thing to ban hate groups who threaten violence against people, its quite another to ban a group because they have silly beliefs. If thats the criteria then most world religions should also be banned too. A man rose from the dead and saved the world? Seriously?
It's almost as if you're unaware that a thing called "separation of church and state" was written into the constitution as a special clause.
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Its almost as if you're unaware that facebook is international and the US constitution doesn't apply beyond the US borders.
Re:Yup (Score:5, Insightful)
My opinion is that FB should be required by law to censor nothing.
Which is precisely opposed to the pure free speech that you seek.
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You are conveniently ignoring the part where Facebook has become the internet equivalent of a public square on the internet. That puts them in the position where exercising their free speech rights to control what's on their platform infringes the ability of others to express their free speech rights in that public space.
Imagine if all of the spaces where people can legally protest and have an audience were sold to a private company who then picked which protests they wanted to allow based on political ide
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If Facebook is a de-facto news source then wouldn't it make sense to treat them similar to other sources of news, like TV news or newspapers? They have a lot of regulation over content in most countries. Press standards, balance, right of reply etc.
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All specifically rejected in Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974) on First Amendment grounds.
So yes, Facebook is being treated like a newspaper in this respect. As a free press.
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I'm not talking about giving equal space to everyone. I'm talking about editorial standards, right of reply, limits on the content that can be published, standards bodies.
And this would be world-wide so the rules would vary from country to country.
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I'm not talking about giving equal space to everyone either. What you're talking about was all specifically rejected in Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974) on First Amendment grounds.
While I of course acknowledge that there are 195 countr
Re: Yup (Score:2)
Press standards... are not what they once were, if they ever were.
They stopped doing journalism because it costs too much. Besides, they pretty much all have decided that they have a message, a narrative to spread. That and âoeshock horrorâ sells. The press is by and large a joke.
Re:Yup (Score:4, Interesting)
> "private server, the owner censors what they want".
"Private lunch counter, the owner serves who they want."
If you're going to have Public Accommodation laws, they should be enforced against Facebook.
If Facebook wants to give up its corporate protections and operate as a Partnership then leave them alone. They can't have it both ways, though.
Re:Yup (Score:4, Interesting)
This is going to seem like a weird position but I think the CRA was both a good thing, and I also think should be ruled unconstitutional and struck down.
It was good thing because racism as was practice in the Jim Crowe era was tragic, stupid, immoral, and more generally EVIL. Force mixing allowed most of society to learn first hand that the content of a persons character, their talents, and their gifts do not correlate with things like the pigments, or creed. Government force was need to weed the garden of ideas so the more desirable plants could get a little sunshine.
That said its long past the time for us to swing the pendulum back toward actual freedom. We have the freedom of Association or we are supposed to have that. Nowhere in the first amendment does it say "unless you are offering a public accommodation." I would suggest freedom of association is meaningless if you do not permit freedom from association as its logical corollary.
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Opinions are a choice, not a protected characteristic that a person cannot change even if they wanted to.
Opinions get no protection, as it should be.
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Title II of the Civil Rights Act defines a public accommodation as ""any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests."
Your wish is granted, the laws can be enforced against Facebook. Pity that it still isn't a public accommodation.
The Communications Decency Act [eff.org] does not a
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Aww, I insulted a big scary QAnon and their terrifying response was to mod me down!
Clearly Fakebook is overreacting, these guys couldn't threaten their way out of a nutsack.
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But can you call it "news"? To me, news is provided by journalists, who went to journalism school and learned about things like ethics and standards [wikipedia.org], and who care about things like objectivity. No, journalists have never been perfect, but at least there's professional effort there.
When a person writes a blog post that's just making stuff up, or publishing a rumor they never bothered to find alternate sources for, that's not journalism, and it's not news. When CNN and Fox both argue that they're entertain
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Well, since the First Amendment forbids restrictions upon "the freedom of speech, or of the press," you're attempting to argue a pretty ineffective distinction, aren't you.
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You want to regulate speech based upon how much of an effect that it may have? That's not self-contradictory at all. "Free speech, but only if it's ineffectual speech."
Editorial or moderator judgment is speech as surely as the material subject
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Only that's bullshit: FB has become the de-facto news source for a lot of (admittedly not too bright) people.
No news source is required to report on anything regardless of how large it gets. Except state owned news that is. You haven't presented a counter argument, only a lack of critical thought.
My opinion is that FB should be required by law to censor nothing.
My opinion is that you should not be forcing others to give a platform to fuckwits they disagree with. Freedom of speech implies the freedom from speech. I.e. say what you want, but don't expect me to stick around and listen or welcome you into my house while you say it.
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I know, Facebook is a private company and can do what they want.
No, Facebook has been public since 2012. But WTF does that have to do with their legal and moral obligations?
I keep hear that sentiment - from Americans, to be honest - and it puzzles me. Only the government should be held accountable to a social contract?!
Private citizens cannot always do "what they want". We as a society create rules for the common good.
What exactly is the thinking here?
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one group with an agenda bans another ground with an agenda that the first group doesn't like, from using the first group's platform to further the second group's agenda goals. what'd you expect really.
the key question is: is Twitter/Facebook a kind of modern town hall? (in my opinion, they are.)
if yes - they need to be regulated in regards to freeze peach etc.
if not - then perhaps there should be a public alternative - which is not even that expensive to create and run these days, if done properly and not
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That stopped working a while ago. We've been hearing right wing complaints of censorship for so long that a "Boy Who Cried Wolf" effect has kicked in. Flooding social media with cries that you're being censored only works for a little while. The act got old.
Why is it that the loudest voices complain the most that they can't be heard?
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... not hidden in closed foras.
"fora" is plural
Not only that but unless you're a Roman orator the more appropriate pluralisation is "forums".
in before... (Score:3)
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> Just get out and vote. Doesn't matter who for.
Gives you a feeling of control, doesn't it?
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Gives you a feeling of control, doesn't it?
No. No it does not. Not while the electoral college exists. I'll vote anyway (just got my mail-in ballots yesterday) but it still gives me a feeling of futility.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Pizza parlor manager James Alefantis was ranked as one of the top 50 most powerful people in Washington DC by GQ magazine: https://www.washingtontimes.co... [washingtontimes.com]
James Alefantis' instagram page contained sexual language directed at infants and toddlers, like calling a baby a "HOTARD" (combination of "ho" and "tard"), and describing a guy carrying a baby as a "chickenlover" (Google definition: "An adult male homosexual sexually attracted to underage males.").
He then set his instagram page to private, but the post
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There are absolutely secret pedophile rings involving powerful people, but there's a world of difference between that truth and the full extent and specificity of QAnon's howling madness.
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Plausibility is not the standard. In fact, every great troll has plausibility in common. If you want to get people riding your crazy train, it has to look like it's going somewhere.
Re:QAnon is more plausible than you might think (Score:5, Insightful)
Said that they never saw a single working class guy.
Well yes. Working class guys just have to molest children the old fashioned way rather than having them couriered to their house.
Don't pretend that this is some rich = evil, working class = pure bullshit. Pedophiles do not have some magical arbitrary income threshold, and while your friend may be involved specifically in bringing down some of the big dicks, there are plenty of smaller ones to go around. They just often get caught by local police rather than a coordinated national effort. Both myself and my wife worked with people (who seemed perfectly normal) who are now doing hard time. One was a school teacher caught diddling a student, the other an operator at a refinery who was dumb enough to use a work computer to download copious amounts of child pornography.
People are horrible. Not rich, not poor, not black, not white, not religious, not atheists, but people of all possible descriptions.
Nice Free Speech Platform You Got There (Score:2, Insightful)
QANON is a bunch of conspiracy theory goofballs and FB is afraid of them?
FB's response speaks more about the insecurities of FB than anything else.
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Facebook isn't concerned about conspiracy theory goofballs, they're concerned about being regulated for giving voice to conspiracy theory goofballs.
Yup. It's Zuckerberg's standard token gesture so that when he gets hauled before Congress yet again in two weeks time he can say "what are you complaining about, we've already taken action". Lather, rinse, repeat.
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Who has ever said Facebook is a free speech platform? I mean I've heard it called a lot of things, but I've never heard them or anyone else claim that they openly support free speech.
I have heard that they support political speech, but that's something different.
We don't really need the world's weakest minds exposed to endless conspiracies. True free speech isn't all that it's cracked up to be. I know that thought freaks out Americans, but true Free Speech is a rarity even in the western world, and most of
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QANON is a bunch of conspiracy theory goofballs and FB is afraid of them?
If I kick some Q-dickweeds off my porch, it doesn't mean I'm afraid of them. It means I'm tired of hearing their shit, and don't want anyone to be confused as to whether I agree with it just because it's happening in my front yard.
On the other hand, it is natural to fear a bunch of gun-toting racists who openly espouse violent solutions to imaginary problems.
Re:Nice Free Speech Platform You Got There (Score:4, Insightful)
QANON is a bunch of conspiracy theory goofballs and FB is afraid of them?
If there's anything this shows it's that FB isn't afraid of them in the slightest, otherwise they'd have taken the opposite action. Not giving someone a platform from which to abuse your customers does not mean you're afraid of someone.
Facebook tells them all where to go (Score:2)
What's their motto again?
Where one goes, the others all go - in this case to the Facebook trash bin.
Just wait (Score:3)
Someday these folks will find out all these "conspiracy" theories have actually been generated by the U.S. government in an effort to track the mentally unstable. Someday these folks will disappear and we'll find out there are camps full of those who are too stupid to discern fact from fiction and this has been the most elaborate social engineering experiment ever.
Next to the moon landings.
Re: (Score:2)
Someday these folks will find out all these "conspiracy" theories have actually been generated by the U.S. government in an effort to track the mentally unstable.
Why bother? It's not like the USA has ever given any care or consideration to the mentally ill. At least beyond sending thoughts and prayers to their victim's families.
Re: (Score:3)
Plus it would mean the US government would have to suddenly stop treating homegrown far-right threats with kid gloves. The sad truth is that the hilarious sport of conservatrolling finally caused the disaster it was always risking when the nutjobs took a post and ran with it.
Theatre (Score:2)
The ideas are already there. People already believe. They can create new groups and share related content without overtly mentioning the group by name, and I don’t trust FB to put a lot of energy into policing as long as they are not flagrant about it. After all, engagement leads to profit. Banning a type of engagement costs them money.
Re: (Score:2)
They can't spread their ideas anywhere near as quickly in private and closed groups, quarantining them into these is the goal.
Re: (Score:2)
Does this apply to private and closed groups? To group chats and individuals? If not, then I see this as theatre.
This applies to accounts. It says so right in the fine summary: "[Facebook] is banning all QAnon accounts from its platforms". Which word did you find unclear?
Re: (Score:2)
I can just picture rheir (Score:2)
Failing around trying to protect the cause.
It does not address the underlying problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Banning one brand and a few accounts will achieve nothing as the same crazy ideas will continue to spread under other innocently looking tags (such as Savethechildren). The real issue with FB and other social networks is that they create echo chambers where extreme views get amplified by algorithms, which are looking for messages that invoke more emotional response from users. So outrages claims and enunciation tend to spread very well, while impartial analysis of arguments tend to be ignored by algorithms.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. The problem is what do they ban? Another person has already posted here that in terms of damage done for falsifying information wouldn't it make more sense to ban religion itself? Qanon is an easy target. They aren't popular, their name is being dragged through the mud in the media, and Facebook can claim the side of virtue for banning them right now.
That's not the same as banning something more general. You start banning things people don't know about then you just start looking like an evil censor
Reminds me of the heady days of Usenet (Score:2)
Ah, the smell of blanket bans in the morning....
The precursor of social media, that pretty much killed itself.
Oh, hey, Facebook... (Score:2)
...let me get that barn door for you.
The long-term solution is... (Score:4, Interesting)
So, there needs to be a core subject in schools, right along-side math and science, to teach our kids to be well versed in picking out these flaws in arguments. Not just a part of science, like it currently is - because it's not reaching everyone. That way, they'll see right through the bad arguments before they are convinced. Probably wouldn't cure this problem 100%, but it should make a big difference. Gradually, society in general will become better and better at this as generations of kids grow up.
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"
Why? (Score:3)
I never got what the big kerfuffle was anyway. Why are Facebook so against Queer people staying Anonymous?