DominikR

Who is "we Austrians"? I'm an Austrian and I have no problem with Facebook not censoring that video!

Just so everybody here knows why the Austrian government wanted it banned: It showed how Muslim immigrants beat up a 16 year old girl and broke her jaw, reportedly as punishment because she dared to pull the veil off a Muslim girl.

That doesn't sit well with our government that wants to invite all of the Middle East here!

And probably the same is true for jakobegger, who enjoys freedom of speech only when it is an opinion that he isn't offended by, otherwise censorship is very much appreciated.

"good for business", which translates to "bad for consumers"

I know it's trendy to be left leaning so you easily get away with such generalising statements but ask yourself these questions before hating on all businesses:

Would you buy an iPhone or a laptop designed and built by a government agency? A car? How about a pair of shoes or pants. Would you prefer sending your children to private or public schools. Same goes for universities. Would you rather participate in evil Capitalism to earn a living or live under government social security regimentation, possibly even with a job provided or forced on you by government.

Is there even anything where you would prefer the government option over something offered by private businesses?

If you don't want private businesses to offer products and services, and government products and services suck, then who is going to provide this?

It doesn't mean that I don't have a responsibility to my neighbors and community to provide upkeep to my house and ensure it's aesthetically pleasing.

Can your neighbours sue you if you paint your house in an obnoxious color? No? Then there is no responsibility.

Why is it that I, for whom English is only my 4th language has to explain to you what the English word responsibility means?

If for you responsibility is just a fuzzy term with some feelings attached then we don't need to discuss this matter as FB can't be held accountable to that kind of responsibility anyways.

Similarly, I believe social media and the media has a larger responsibility to our civic discourse even if they are a private company

I do not doubt that you believe many things, but first you have to show what responsibility actually exists and then show if and how that applies to Facebook if you are going to make such an argument.

I'm not going to answer such a question pretending you are a 3 year old that really doesn't know how media + government collude and operate to control society.

You are incapable of seeing how it poses a threat to freedom of speech when all major media combined call for censorship? There's no point for me to engage in a discussion with you.

A private company censoring the content on their platform is not a violation of freedom of speech

It's not, but a third party forcing FB to censor or me to shut up is censorship.

I believe that the point being argued is that they have a responsibility to filter out automated messaging.

No, there is no responsibility whatsoever. Users are free to not use the service if they don't like it.

If you see this different then we have different views on what private property is.

Well I would say that is up to Twitter, Facebook and Reddit shareholders to decide since it is their property.

You don't get to cancel property rights because you don't like the reporting there. You also don't get to cancel freedom of speech because you don't like what someone is saying.

This is the second NYT article I see here today that is calling for more censorship because of some unsubstantiated claims. These people must be completely out of their minds.

So what? That's what FB can do when they find an issue. You are free to sue them if you feel that you have lost money because of this. Go ahead, that's what courts are for.

But I guess what many really want is for government to step in and use government force to punish FB until people feel that some kind of justice has been done. (burn the witch!)

That's why democracy is fundamentally incompatible with liberty.

On a side note: The media is attacking FB because they feel that FB doesn't censor and steer public opinion in the way they would like it to be. They are all up in arms claiming that Trump is FB's fault after they themselves have reported 24/7 on Trump. (but so biased, even Stalin would have cringed) That's the only reason why this article even exists.

Look, I'm a Libertarian as I stated before, I do not even want a government to exist as they are oppressive by nature but I recognise that there's brutal geopolitical competition among world powers.

I can't say with the little information I've got if it is necessary or not but I understand the rationale whereby someone might implement this because they are not willing to bet the survival of their people or their nation on the goodwill of others.

They already have the passwords

Which is a good reason to let them continue collecting them indefinitely?

Also, Russia doesn't and won't force any company to store users' data exclusively under their jurisdiction, as this would not allow any foreign company to operate in Russia, making your arguments incorrect.

You state this as if it was a fact, but there is great uncertainty among lawyers and businesses if the law requires data to be stored exclusively in Russia or if that's not the case. In any way you'll have to ask for permission which they might never grant you if you are a company like Facebook that's storing very sensitive information.

That was my point. As a libertarian I would in general tend towards not having the government involved with this stuff, but Russia and the US are two countries which have bad relations at the moment and there's uncertainty if they might have a military conflict in the near future.

Here it's hard to say if it is justified as I do not know what the US secret services and the US military might be able to do with this kind of data in a conflict. (having the passwords of XX million Russians could be devastating in a cyberattack as many will do the stupid thing and reuse the same password everywhere)

Why should Russia allow a US company to mine private data about its citizens on a large scale when it is known that the US government basically can force any US company to hand over any data it desires.

That's why they have passed a law whereby private data from social networks about its citizens has to be stored within Russia and must not be transmitted to any other country.

Linkedin knew that but they ignored it, probably because it didn't make economic sense for them

You can argue if it is acceptable or not for a government to step in and prevent foreign governments from acquiring such data about its population, but calling people stupid like you did frankly makes _you_ look stupid.

I'm pretty sure now that this mass psychosis in the West will most definitely lead to civil war.

There are just too many people who can't seem to accept democracy or liberty if it doesn't go their way.

This is _exactly_ how the Sowjets justified their own censorship.

It's all falsehoods by ideological degenerates or by Western saboteurs and other collaborators with the enemy and therefore must be censored in order to protect society.

Sorry, but I never got the news that it is now considered a good idea in our Western societies to censor information you do not like for political reasons.

I'm probably a racist homophobe bigot for writing these words and should be put in a correction camp, sorry.

Strange to see how Google, a company that once refused to do business in China in order to not have to engage in censorship, now openly seeks to implement censorship in the West.

And a bunch of "liberals" on a hacker news who in all other cases would rail against censorship on the Internet happily supporting censorship on the Internet.

I'm astonished that someone like Sergey Brin would even allow this to happen, considering that his family immigrated from a country that censored information it did not like for the exact same reasons in order to impoverish and control its population.

This is it for me, I'm moving away from all Google services.

Well that's a hard one to answer for defenders of the politburo.

The notion that there should be no prisons at all is nuts in my view, there must be a way for people to protect themselves from others who repeatedly act violently.

But the fact that prisoners frequently have to face rape is sick and shows how dysfunctional the current system is. I even read some time ago an article that stated that the US is the only country in the world where more men than women are raped. (due to the fact that so many men are raped in prison)

What I personally believe would be a good way to treat this issue is to have prisoners work in the private sector while their payment will largely be used to pay for prison and to repay their victims for the damage they have caused them. The prisoner is set free once he has paid for all damages. (or as much as is reasonably possible)

Prisons will have an incentive to make sure that their prisoners earn as much as possible (trainings and education), victims will receive payments for damages and the prisoners themselves will have an incentive to get out of prison as soon as possible. Of course this can't be done with every type of felony and there's the question if damages are always accurate.

Also with this approach some types of felonies cannot be punished. One example would be drug abuse. You are only harming yourself and since no third party can claim damages it also would not be punished. (this alone would hugely reduce prison population)

You could even make the case that selling drugs would be legalised since there's clearly a buyer willing to buy and consume it who's not hurting any third parties directly by his choice.

I believe it is more reasonable to have prison sentences reflect the damage caused instead of ideology and prison life be more about making it up to the victims (as far as it is possible) instead of creating the most nasty, brutal place imaginable and having people suffer there.

It's probably also a better lesson for an offender to have to repay someone for destroying his car than subjecting him to repeated rapes which will likely break him psychologically.

I have no issue with education and teaching without coercion, what you are proposing though is use of force to prevent spread of information you do not like or that might cause people to reject your ideology.

This is the real issue here. You are arguing in favour of using force (the basis of Socialism) while I'm arguing for freedom. (the basis of Capitalism)

And please don't tell me that censorship or regulating media isn't really using force. You go break censorship laws in countries that have them and lets see what they will do to you.

This has real effects that harm other people.

That's why we have courts where you can claim damages.

None of the big bad movements you mention were genuinely trying to make humans into better thinkers. In fact, they all relied on humans not being such great thinkers.

Oh really? The Soviet man, the Übermensch as understood by the Nazis and all similar Socialist concepts are then completely new to you? Some of these concepts are pretty close to what you described a person should be like.

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

So it seems to me that you basically share many of the views of a Hitler or a Stalin on questions like these.

It doesn't matter if I am rational or not, it is my freedom to consume information from whichever source I prefer just as it doesn't matter if it's justified to spend double the money on an Apple product over something from a competitor.

It's also irrelevant how you would like people to be (more rational, empathetic and so on), actually no one on this planet even cares about your opinion on that matter enough to actually change themselves. (and no one ever will, trust me)

What matters is that people are free to choose to be whatever kind of person they want to be.

Some of them choose to be persons that you don't like, well then don't be around them, issue solved.

You seem to believe that we exist to follow some great plan devised by other people who believe they are smarter and know what we should actually be instead of what we choose to be. This is not the case.

We've all seen the results of ideology that seeks to reach utopia by changing man into something elevated. (Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, North Korea, Rouge Khmer, Venezuela) It always failed in a catastrophic manner and caused often unimaginable suffering because of the authoritarianism inherent in this ideology.

That's just pure speculation because you do not like Trump or his policies.

Thiel is a very good person to advise on the tech sector and which direction technology might lead society to since he obviously called many major developments and made huge profits on these bets.

Thiel also happens to align with the Republicans on certain issues so why should Trump not ask for his advise or Thiel offer advise?

It's great that a true Libertarian like Thiel even gets the chance to influence the direction of the government.

Why exactly shouldn't it be beneficial if we let the market (the viewer) without any regulation decide which information should spread and which shouldn't?

If people prefer seeing outrageous stuff then let them have it.

The reason why governments and institutions want to control this is in order to control its people, all the other reasons given are just an attempt to mask this.

I fully agree, though I didn't know that Fox News compared Obama to Hitler (I'm in the EU so I don't watch US TV) - which is equally unacceptable.

But I'm a more of an optimist regarding the Internet and the availability of platforms to share information and express views.

While it is certainly true that some of the loudest voices are indeed the most hateful (Comments on HRC's and DJT's Twitter posts were unbelievable vicious) I also see that there is organically dissent organising on all kinds of issues which we didn't have to such a degree in the pre Internet era.

Of course dissenters also existed before the Internet, but it was much harder to reach an audience. And not all dissent is just hateful and stupid, a lot is legitimate.

I agree that it is a normal (but nasty) part of politics to paint an unfavourable picture of an opponent (both candidates did that), but inciting violence is where it goes too far for me.

I imagine how many people in the US are now fearing for their lives because the DNC made them believe that Trump will probably build forced labour camps. And how many of them are not just frightened but even read to use violence.

When I check my Facebook newsfeed it's full of posts from friends who seem to be very afraid about what has happened.

If something terrible happens then it might be that the DNC has created the illusion which justified the violence.

This is true, she didn't make a strong positive case for what her policies would look like. And if she did then she didn't spend her time effectively trying to convey this. (can't actually remember even a single policy of hers except for easier abortions and confrontation with Russia over Syria)

But what I feel is problematic is that Trump was painted as some kind of Hitler, which is ludicrous if you spent a few hours watching some of his rallies. He says things he shouldn't say, and some might say he's an a-hole, but he certainly doesn't come across as a Hitler, a fascist or a Nazi.

Why is it so problematic for everyone? It increases the likelihood of violence, not just against Trump and his family, but against everyone showing public support for him.

In some way not only the people engaging in violence are to blame, but also the media and the campaigns, because when you somehow convince a large chunk of the population that a candidate is literally like Hitler then many will use violence believing it's justified in order to prevent a new Holocaust.

Also the Hitler comparison is used today too often. I believe we currently have 4 Hitlers according to the political establishment: Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Duterte

Syria has been Russias client state for decades. We wouldn't have had Brexit, the flooding of the EU with migrants and now Trump if the US didn't decide at some point to try and flip Syria by supporting the most radical Syrian psychopaths it could find.

Well that one failed spectacularly. At least with Trump you can be quite sure that when he finds out who exactly gave the order to support these terrorist groups in Syria, and he will get access to that information soon, then he will lock these people up for life or they might even face charges for treason.

Pardon me, but didn't the Pakistanis show quite aggressive Nationalism for decades now towards all their neighbours except for China?

Hindu Nationalism sounds more like a reaction to me than anything else.

In my experience as an immigrant liberals are the only ones who have ever shown racism towards me in the West.

Usually it's the type of patronising racism where someone subtly implies that immigrants are basically stupid children at best who don't know what's best for themselves. So we need liberals like yourself as our teacher so you can tell us what to do.

This kind of aggression towards people who are different isn't only shown towards immigrants but also towards all who are religious, are not college educated, are conservative, are not politically correct, listen to certain type of music and so on

Depending on which group you belong to the aggression can be anything between treating someone as a subhuman to actual physical violence.

You comment is a great display for a liberal viewing all who dared voting against the second of two options as subhumans. You can be proud of yourself

On the other hand a conservative will just not engage with me more than necessary if he doesn't like me for some reason. I'm fine with that, who am I to tell that person what he should do?

Yes I know that many regulations are done on the state level and then there's gun free areas and so on, but I'd still say that this is something very unique about the US.

I can't name even a single example where societies, even if it is only at a state level, generally allow citizens to carry a gun in public (without having to acquire some special permission that only very few people have access to)

If there is some other society that allows this then it's probably an Anglophone country.