Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Expands Online Commerce Role, But Says "No Guns, Please"
The New York Times reports that Facebook's newly staked-out role as a site to facilitate local, person-to-person sales (ala Craigslist) has a new wrinkle: the site has announced a site-wide policy restricting firearms sales that applies to personal sales, though not to licensed dealers or gun clubs. According to the story,
Although Facebook was not directly involved in gun sales, it has served as a forum for gun sales to be negotiated, without people having to undergo background checks. The social network, with 1.6 billion monthly visitors, had become one of the worldâ(TM)s largest marketplaces for guns and was increasingly evolving into an e-commerce site where it could facilitate transactions of goods. ... Facebook said it would rely on its vast network of users to report any violations of the new rules, and would remove any post that violated the policy. Beyond that, the company said it could ban users or severely limit the ways they post on Facebook, depending on the type and severity of past violations. If the company believed someoneâ(TM)s life was in danger, Facebook would work with law enforcement on the situation.
The policy applies as well to private sales that occur using Facebook Messenger, though the company does not scan Messenger exchanges and must rely on user reports.
Too many criminals were buying and selling guns by the thousands on Facebook.
The social network, with 1.6 billion monthly visitors, had become one of the worldâ(TM)s largest marketplaces for guns
I hate guns, also I have a tree in my yard that I have sex with
Still facebook is governments wet dream, citizens logging in reporting on themselves and others. Shadow profiles and communication rules...
facebook users are naive or wish to be enslaved; that is the future result; Control of content is manipulation of highest order; Direct 'votes and opinions based on preferences/type etc..
Facebook isn't alone, people getting all their news from google indexs etc.
What's going on with the comments here? It's like the Brady Campaign sent out an action alert and all their drones showed up to post.
In principle, I agree, guns shouldn't be sold to dangerous individuals. But that's far easier to say than actually do. Forcing gun sales off of Facebook, where they can be tracked and logged, means the transactions will be negotiated elsewhere. It's very possible the transactions will move to Snapchat or even some medium completely out of the reach of authorities. While background checks will prevent some criminals from obtaining guns, it's not clear that it would prevent many dangerous individuals from purchasing firearms. However, there are a couple of more concerning issues at work here.
From Fox News:
Facebook had announced some restrictions on gun sales and advertising in 2014, saying it would block minors from seeing posts that advertised guns. But the social network did not ban private sales at that time.
Licensed firearms retailers can still promote their businesses on Facebook, but they aren't allowed to accept orders or make sales on the site.
It's not clear to me why minors should be restricted from seeing posts advertising firearms. Why should Facebook censor content and try to take the place of proper parental supervision? Guns aren't inherently objectionable because they have plenty of useful purposes like hunting and skeet shooting.
Worse, though, is a quote from the NY Times article:
Because of Facebook’s tremendous influence, she said, its decision to ban person-to-person sales of guns will have ripple effects on gun policy nationwide.
“What they’re doing is sending such an incredibly strong, sentinel signal to the world that America is working in the right direction on guns,” she said. “For them to take a stand and do the right thing gives cover to other businesses to do the right thing.”
Facebook has many users around the world, many of which reside in countries with very different laws than the US. I think it sets a bad precedent to impose American policies on everyone. But Facebook has also indicated its desire to be a "town hall" in which people discuss issues among themselves. Using its position to influence policy runs contrary to the idea of open discussion that Facebook claims it wants but doesn't truly seem to support.
Guns don't kill, unregulated easy access to firearms does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_by_state
A list, state by state, showing the laws as far as guns go. Permit to purchase, registration, carry permits, and more--including background checks requirements for private sales. Most of the states on that list require absolutely no background check, license, transfer of ownership, paperwork, etc as far as face to face sales go. This is a state matter and 100% legal. What facebook is doing--that is, blackballing discussion of it across the board--is morally wrong, seeing as face to face sales are legal in most states. If they banned discussion by state residency, it would be justifiable. What they're doing, however, is publicly taking a stance *as a company* against gun owners, gun buyers, and guns in general. And while yes, it is their site and they make the rules, that doesn't make it any less of a shitty thing to do.
Guns don't kill, unregulated easy access to firearms does.
Um... actually...
Firstly, private gun sales are legal. Facebook is making a blanket policy which is politically charged, which could also be applied to arranging abortions, distasteful speech, consensual sex of any non-mainstream type, and a host of others that anyone can come up with after a few minutes thought.
So in effect, they are suppressing behaviour that is completely legal.
Secondly, although guns do seem to kill a lot of people, the overall statistic of importance to check is "average expected lifespan", which is much *higher* in areas where there is easy legal access to guns.
To put this another way, if you let your kids play in the yard of a gun owner, their chance of being killed by that gun go way up, but their chances of death by *all causes* go down. If you can't maintain proper nutrition or medicine for a time because you got robbed, it affects your overall lifespan. If your neighbor has guns, it has a protective effect on you because criminals tend to go elsewhere, and so on.
Thirdly, if you like to compare England to the US, consider this Harvard study which finds (journal page 656):
[...] despite constant and substantially increasing gun ownership, the United States saw progressive and dramatic reductions in criminal violence in the 1990s.On the other hand, the same time period in the United Kingdom saw a constant and dramatic increase in violent crime to which England’s response was evermore drastic gun control including, eventually, banning and confiscating all handguns and many types of long guns. Nevertheless, criminal violence rampantly increased so that by 2000 England surpassed the United States to become one of the developed world’s most violenceridden nations..
To conserve the resources of the inundated criminal justice system, English police no longer investigate burglary and “minor assaults.” As of 2006, if the police catch a mugger, robber, or burglar, or other “minor” criminal in the act, the policy is to release them with a warning rather than to arrest and prosecute them.
Easy access to firearms actually protects people.
Personally, I dislike being mugged, robbed, burgled, and assaulted in *minor* manners, but
Another reason of many why I gave up on facebook.
"There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and
I love how a well thought out post that is backed by actual research is criticized by a bunch of anonymous cowards....
Oh, wait until the election.
Another billionaire with 24/7 armed security doesn't understand why anyone would want a gun.
In principle, I agree, guns shouldn't be sold to dangerous individuals. But that's far easier to say than actually do. Forcing gun sales off of Facebook, where they can be tracked and logged, means the transactions will be negotiated elsewhere.
like newspaper ads, craigslist, bulletin boards, armslist.com, etc that have been around for years? As long as people meet up in person, there's nothing stopping these transactions. Otherwise, firearms need to be shipped to a Federally licensed dealer who performs the background checks.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Please at least make some make better argument for gun ownership
I don't know what would make a better argument than citing research published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, by, you know, a constitutional lawyer and a PhD in criminology.
But I'm not averse to learning.
What would you recommend as a better argument? How would you go about it?
from women in tech to attacking self defense!
An informed argument is so refreshing. Bravo!
Firstly, you are citing news articles and not published research, and others might point out the gap in credibility between our arguments. For my part, I know that your sources reflect publish papers so it's all good.
The difference between our arguments is this: I claim that looking at *gun* deaths is misleading, because the vast majority of gun incidents resolve in favor of the gun owner and do not lead to death.
The statistic of measure should be the overall fatality rate (death from all causes), not the "death by gun" rate.
So for a counter example, note that the rate of "death by anaphalactic shock" shoots way up in areas that have lots of vaccinations.
Should we thus avoid vaccinations?
All of your sources are referring to gun deaths. We could ban guns in an attempt to reduce these specific types of death, but if it is at the expense of the overall fatality rate, it's not the prudent move.
One of the FB gun buying/selling/trading groups that is for my local city is now known as the "awesome pony trading group". And posts are all edited to reference equines, saddles (holsters) and tack (ammo)
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
The gun thing annoys me, but hey, Facebook is a private company. What I really want to be banned off of Facebook is any mention of any entity with any connection, no matter how tenuous, with anyone associated with the Kardumassians.
"I live in the middle of the ghetto and I have no guns why do you need a gun?"
How do other people know for sure you don't own a gun? One of the benefits of legal gun ownership is the possibility you might own a gun.
Porn magazine and otehr sex toy paraphenelia are legal to sell to 18+, roughly like guns, and yet some outfits refuse to stock them. As a private entity it is up to facebook to see what it wants to put up with. As such you can certainly see why a corp would avoid any non licensed sale, as it could bring them heat.
secodnely, the definition of violent crime differs in the US and UK. When you look at the crime which are considered violent in Uk they are not even in the stats in the US
US
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cj...
* And ehre is UK : https://www.gov.uk/government/...
So you get pushed and shoved, and hurt your ankle ? In UK a Violent crime. That would not even count as aggravated assault in US : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Basically when you look into it, the myth that there is more violent crime in UK than US is jsut a myth, usually misused to pretend gun are needed for self defense. They are not. They are escalation tools, they lead mugger and petty crime to escalate the force they use in their crime.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Facebook's leadership is strongly pro-slavery. It's a given that they would impose anti-populist measures on the public forums they control.
FaceGun the new social network aimed at you!
Did he use Facebook to sell guns to the Mexican drug cartels?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
the gun sellers and buyers. They have a huge database of gun owners as well as those iterated in buying waiting to be targeted. Advertisers as well as law enforcement might pay good money for that information.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Too bad, because this is a good way to track who has all these guns so we can track them and take them away when we can finally pass some sensible gun control legislation.
So in my state, as a private person not engaged in the business of selling guns, I can sell any gun in my personal collection to anyone as long as I don't know that they are a person prohibited from owning a gun (felon, mentally deficient, etc...). However, I have no legal obligation to find out if they are a prohibited person. I don't even have to ask the person's name. I have bought and sold firearms from my personal collection to people from facebook group that I've never met and will probably never see again. I could literally sell a gun to someone on the FBI's most wanted, he could go out and commit a crime with that gun, they could trace the gun back to me and I could claim that I had no prior knowledge of his status as a felon and be in the clear legally.
If the law were changed so that the person selling the gun had a legal obligation to find out the status of the buyer that would go a long way towards preventing these kinds of transactions. Requiring an NCIS check for every gun transaction is over reaching because I already know the legal status of my friends and relatives. I don't need to run a background check to know that my brother, cousin, or close friend is or is or isn't a felon.
Getting really sick of yet more gun stories coming out of the USA. Just give it a rest. We dont need to hear ridiculous american rantings about gerns 24/7. It gets tedious after a while. Just keep the news here for people with a brain and let the sheep fap off over their metal penis extenders. Seriously, sick of it.
If i wanted to read tirades of hysterical and panicked abuse from brainwashed cannon fodder I'd post up a criticism of Dear Leader on a NK board somewhere.
Stop using Facebook.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Before the Revolutionary war, Americans were well armed and quite good with guns. This is why the British army worked so hard to locate and confiscate the guns - they failed. The American colonials not only owned guns and were good shots, but they were quite good at designing and making guns. Some of the earliest automated manufacturing in the US was by colonials making guns for the Revolutionary war. These guns were in many ways superior to the British army guns of the day because the American rifles, having been made in an automated fashion, were made with sufficient precision that their parts were interchangeable; A damaged American rifle could be quickly repaired in the field by replacing the damaged part with a standard part. A British rifle of the time, one damaged, had to go back to the gunsmith for repair as each one was just slightly different. This is no slight against the British, it was just an interesting moment in history where the absolute best from before a paradigm shift (the finely-crafted hand-built British rifle) ran up against an early model of the new (the mas-produced American model) and the benefits of the new were sufficient to overcome any areas where it was lacking.
As for Americans being unfamiliar with war before the Revolution, you are similarly thoroughly ignorant. Many American colonists, being British citizens, served in the British military in the century before the revolution. There was plenty of fighting in North America between British forces, French forces, American Indians, etc. Where do you think "General George Washington" came from???? The US Congress made him a General, but before 1776, he had been an officer in the British army.
Facebook is a left-leaning political outlet that has ties to the gun-hating Democrats and tracks all the details of its users. Its founder and boss, Zuckerberg, has created several political groups with phony names specifically designed to mislead right-leaning voters. Here's just one example. Among these are several "Super PACs" with the word "conservative" in their names, one of which was created to support unlimited cheap labor immigration and is running ads for Marco Rubio whom it backs because he was their tool in the attempt to get "comprehensive immigration reform" passed.
People who care about the 1st Amendment, the 2nd Amendment, or National Security should have nothing to do with the dirtbags at Facebook.
People who oppose things like gun registration, are effectively registering their guns and gun ownership if they are on Facebook.
Easy access to firearms actually protects people.
There's a WHOLE lotta correlation there, and very little causation there.
I don't respond to AC's.
Thank you.
That's a well-formed and unassailable argument, I won't be using that study as a reference in the future. If Slashdot had the "delete post" option I would use it.
Your post does not address the core argument (guns good/guns bad), but that's OK.
Let's pick this up again in the next gun control article discussion.
They are trying. To the point that people are threatened with expulsion from state run universities for committing such aggressive acts as asking "So, where you from?" (yes, they call it microaggression)
What's next banning all cars because they kill so many people on the highway, banning knives because people start to stab people. Lets go ahead and ban all alcohol and tobacco because they kill far more people and Guns do. Criminals are going to purchase Guns regardless of what laws are in place. The majority of gun sales Facebook are from hard working law abiding citizens why not go ahead and shut down the Internet or the country. #Your rights slowly being taken away
On what grounds would you confiscate private property? Any sensible gun law would be less restrictive than what we have today.
On the grounds that they are dangerous weapons. Do you think you have a right to own a rocket launcher or uranium?
That's fine, all the groups I'm a member of went Secret years ago. We are invite-only. As we are local California groups, we require all firearm sales to go through an FFL, as required by California law.
they have no God.
I am in a Firearms for Sale group in Australia.
All firearms sales must go through a licenced firearms dealer here, with Facebook just being a place to advertise.
can you liberal whackjobs and nutjobs that are so afraid that you piss your pants at the very mention of a gun ever discuss guns in a rational manner without making the claim that a .22 is a 9mm is a rocket launcher is an atomic bomb?