• Tommy Robinson banned from Facebook and Instagram
    19 replies, posted
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47371290 Tommy Robinson banned from Facebook and Instagram | UK news | Th.. Facebook has taken down anti-Islamic leader Tommy Robinson's official page and Instagram profile for violating its policies on hate speech. The former English Defence League leader was deemed to have been engaged in "organised hate". A number of posts on his page had violated the social network's community standards, Facebook said in a blogpost. It said that it had not taken the decision to remove his page lightly but added he would not be allowed back." When ideas and opinions cross the line and amount to hate speech that may create an environment of intimidation and exclusion for certain groups in society - in some cases with potentially dangerous offline implications - we take action," Facebook said in a post. "Tommy Robinson's Facebook page has repeatedly broken these standards, posting material that uses dehumanising language and calls for violence targeted at Muslims.
Deplatform that bitch
waheyyy cunt
If only our media would do the same. It's fucking vile how people like Tommy and Nigel get so much air time from the media yet people from like the green party or people on the "far left" are given no voice, simply because they don't stir up hate and act loud. Let's keep acting surprised at the rise of the far right though, I'm sure basically giving them a spotlight because they give you money has nothing to do with it.
And nothing of value was lost.
my gf was flicking through chanels on the tv and the news was on, its just a bunch of shit. nothing that affects your average person just fear mongering or feel good shit. the media does not exist to spread useful or helpful information, it exists as entertainment and to make money.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/230052/bc0ee359-e66d-47de-adee-d48c83b35fc8/image.png
Can someone explain this idea to me? This isn't necessarily in defence of Tommy Robinson and I'm genuinely hoping to learn something here But I've never understood the idea behind being okay with "deplatforming" someone and what separates it from my basic understanding of fascism and censorship Is it just trust in the media that they're doing the right thing?
An arsehole isn't entitled to a private company giving them a platform. I am strongly for deplatforming arseholes because I don't believe in """"~ the free marketplace of ideas~~"". Frankly I think "the free marketplace of ideas" is cowardice (scared of taking a stance/scared of the consequences for taking a stance), it surrenders moral autonomy, it's irresponsible and it's not even applied evenly (if a non white muslim did stuff similar to Tommy Robinson they'd be gone long ago); but worse than all that, it's easily exploitable. It gives power to sophists and liars (like Tommy Robinson and Steve Bannon). It's not about truth, it's about popularity. Maybe in some perfect world populated by rational actors (free markets? rational actors? this all sounds very familiar!) where everyone is well informed and educated it might work, but we don't live in that world though and pretending we do live in it is naive.
It's a action generally reserved to prevent the rapid spread of dangerous concepts, it draws from the assumption that most people will believe the ideas posted in media are at least some-what true, and perhaps most importantly, that the ideas are acceptable by society at a large. An example of this could be the anti-vaccine movement, a dangerous concept which has been normailsed through social media. As the more a concept is shown through media and the more it is "debated" the more credence there becomes that both or one side of the argument could be true. You see this in climate change debates, the reality is that there is no debate, climate change is happening and is anthropegenic. However there has been a popularised debate of climate change through media sources which has been showing both sides of this "arugment", leading to the normalistion of the view that climate change does not exsist. Because by giving people like climate change denalists a platform to argue on their view on, it gets seen as something which could be true but more importantly it gives their view power, it gives the impression and implicaiton that this view is popular and normal. Deplatforming aims to counteract that by denying the ability to convey these concepts, helping to preventwide-spread adoption. Deplatforming differs from censorship in one crucial way, that is speech is not surpressed. It merely takes away the platform, the ability to spread speech to the masses.
This isn't anything to do with "the media", its simply social media platforms denying him the ability to operate on their service, they are private companies with terms of service and use which he has breached multiple times. You can argue that he's being censored because social media undoubtedly gives him access to a huge audience, but they are under no obligation to let him use their service when he repeatedly breaks their rules. He's still more than welcome to go to any legitimate news outlet and spew his garbage, he's just mad because he knows that social media was his best shot at spreading his shit and now he's lost that and he's going to go back to being that nutter who occasionally shows up in the paper calling for all the muzzies to get gassed.
Addendum to this- his income is dependant on him getting publicity. Less publicity -> less money. Him whinging like a bitch is just a show to get more money from his followers
Media, if its profit driven, will never deplatform someone if it means less profits unless there's enough external pressure to it. I don't think there's anything wrong with deplatforming because media chooses who to platform and deplatform silently all the time anyways, so while it's great that someone who makes hate speech is being deplatformed, don't praise media too much over it and certainly don't be less sceptic towards them for it.
Okay, I can see your sides of it but I'm still not convinced One of the reasons being is, on company's exercising their power via terms and agreements. Sites like Facebook and Twitter should be treated as public utilities given that they're monopolies. I would understand if there were alternatives to the same type of social media but they don't exist right now. Even the company's that made these sites agree with this, the CEO of Twitter himself has said Twitter should be seen as a utility. So when you ban someone from these, you're not /directly/ suppressing speech but it can come across as censorship As for giving people like anti vaccination groups a voice, I can understand the danger in that. But what one of you posters said about not allowing them a platform because it implies there's room for argument is a horribly scary idea because of how easily that can be abused. You could apply that logic to to so many bad things like governments trying to brainwash the country hate these anti vaccination groups as much as the next guy and it's a tricky one where it involves people going beyond beliefs and taking action that can harm others. Ideally though, the evidence should present itself and people should be allowed to make their own decisions, if they're really so obviously wrong, then they'll be seen for that. I realise it's the idiots that ruin it for the rest of us here since their kids pay the price and I'm sure how I would deal with these groups specifically but IMO I don't think that should infringe over free speech
So I see two approaches for this. First one is the ~Free Market~ Bs. Either we do the free market of ideas or we don't. If we do then we must let companies decide who they can platform, if we don't then those companies have no obligation to platform these people. If a company has achieved a monopoly tier marketshare then it's a failure of the free market philosophy, proving said philosophy doesn't work so why should a provably flawed system be applied to force said company to platform some foolio? Second approach is regarding capitalism's motivations. We live in a capitalist and Liberal system/framework. So a company makes decisions within that framework. There are only two metrics deciding in a company/corporation survives. "Does it make profit?" and "Does is not break (too many) laws?" The company has no obligation to "be nice" to scumbags, there is no law demanding they platform idiots and clearly the company executives decided it would be more profitable (perhaps in money but also perhaps in social capital to "make up" for the PR hits from privacy lately) to not provide a platform for this gimp. So if it's not profitable and it's not a legal requirement then why should they do it? What justification is there for demanding private companies provide a platform to people, we don't have a justification in this current framework. If you want to suggest a new framework (perhaps by saying platforms are a human right (lol) or by having some centrally planned platform regulatory ministry (lol) ), then that framework must justify forcing private entities to provide platforms to people, if the company can't decide who it platforms then who does decide? Should facebook and twitter platform Islamic hate preachers? How about Holocaust deniers? If you're gonna draw legal lines then where are they drawn and who draws them? It's easy to say "freedurm of spurch" but decisions have to be made somewhere, modern Neo-Liberal capitalism has surrendered these decisions to private corporations and when those corperations gain monopoly market shares it's clear the elected government has effectively surrendered decision making abilities to unelected board members. Maybe the difficulty of making these decisions (along with the backlash and unpopularity when a decision is made not to platform a violent racist thug) explains why governments have chosen to act how they did, when an asshole is deplatformed and people whinge (or when a corperation does something actually bad, like pollute or fail to deliver an actual vital service) the government can wash their hands of it and say "not on us!" People aren't entitled to platforms anyway, why is that presumed to be a right? Freedom of speech isn't even a right (go to a police station and tell the people you plan on killing someone or yell fire a crowded theatre) so why should platforms be an entitlement? Should we put quotas on the minimum number of people our platforms can reach? hells naw
I don't see it as just a platform A platform implies a small amount of raised space where someone can broadcast their ideas over to everyone below and in this case, these spaces are owned by private companies who can kick you off for breaking their rules Monopolies outgrow these spaces and Facebook has grown from a platformed area into the very pavement we walk on with no alternative. It's more questionable to kick people off at that point and they should be under more scrutiny for doing it. This sounds dramatic but you know what I mean As for drawing lines of what's acceptable, I'm not in a position of deciding where exactly they belong, I can just criticise where they are. But I would say a few years ago things seemed okay, it just seems lately the goal posts are slowly being moved
We don't have time to sit around wringing our hands worrying about whether or not we should silence people, Anti-Vaxx belief is on the rise, the hard right is gaining ground, misinformation is rife in all aspects of society and the public simply cannot be trusted to question the validity what they read on facebook, because we know that most people just believe what they read. You can sit there and fight for the right of neo nazis and those that advocate for violence against minorities because you think that's the right thing to do, but I believe there are certain people who should not be given the opportunity to communicate easily with millions of people in a mostly unmoderated space. Maybe "ThAt MaKeS mE tHe TrUe NaZi" but I don't really care, you shouldn't fight on the side of people who are actively and maliciously trying to tear our country apart.
someone who continues to act in bad faith and purposely do shit just to rile up racists and start fights doesn't need or deserve a platform
That's not the case. This guy is complaining in all the newspapers (platforms) that he's being deplatformed. He is being paid to go to rallys and do talks, he's a "journalist" for Rebel Media. He can go into the street and shout like a madman. He's got loads of alternatives. Don't worry about him being denied any platform and don't worry about his livelihood either, he's fucking loaded. A few years ago nazis weren't openly having huge rallies (and killing people at said rallies) in the US. A few years ago neo nazis in the UK weren't plotting to kill politicians. A few years ago far right groups weren't going from strength to strength. A few years ago racists by the likes of BNP were openly ridiculed, now they're literally terrorists. A few years ago far right parties weren't winning elections and getting into government. A few years ago racists like Donald Trump running for president would have been considered a joke. Times have changed. The far right politics has grown stronger and more dangerous. These de-platformings are driven by a demand from users to de-platform right wing arseholes, that demand is a REACTION to recent developments with the right wing. I agree that "a few years ago things seemed ok" but for different reasons, things seemed ok for because the right wing was a laughing stock and not a genuine threat to our stability and safety. We need to fight back against the far right and while I don't much like facebook as a company I think they're doing the correct thing (perhaps for the wrong reason since it'll be ultimately motivated by profit)
It's evident to see that freedoms have started ending up being taken for granted by a lot of people, and that they aren't using them in a healthy or responsible manner either. As far as i'm concerned, conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods deserve no platforms except to be laughed at by those knowing better. I'm especially sore about the billions of dollars and the DALYs and lives lost thanks to fucking antivaxx. That man who spread his crackpot theory already said that he did it as part of a fraud to gain fame and wealth, that alone should've landed him behind the bars for the rest of his miserable life. The free marketplace of ideas has failed, it's time dangerous ideas were reined in, and if possible, disposed of.
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