Facebook's Uneven Enforcement of Hate Speech Rules Allows Vile Posts To Stay Up (propublica.org)

ProPublica has found inconsistent rulings on hate speech after analyzing more than 900 Facebook posts submitted to them as part of a crowd-sourced investigation into how the world's largest social network implements its hate-speech rules. "Based on this small fraction of Facebook posts, its content reviewers often make different calls on items with similar content, and don't always abide by the company's complex guidelines," reports ProPublica. "Even when they do follow the rules, racist or sexist language may survive scrutiny because it is not sufficiently derogatory or violent to meet Facebook's definition of hate speech." From the report: We asked Facebook to explain its decisions on a sample of 49 items, sent in by people who maintained that content reviewers had erred, mostly by leaving hate speech up, or in a few instances by deleting legitimate expression. In 22 cases, Facebook said its reviewers had made a mistake. In 19, it defended the rulings. In six cases, Facebook said the content did violate its rules but its reviewers had not actually judged it one way or the other because users had not flagged it correctly, or the author had deleted it. In the other two cases, it said it didn't have enough information to respond.

"We're sorry for the mistakes we have made -- they do not reflect the community we want to help build," Facebook Vice President Justin Osofsky said in a statement. "We must do better." He said Facebook will double the size of its safety and security team, which includes content reviewers and other employees, to 20,000 people in 2018, in an effort to enforce its rules better. He added that Facebook deletes about 66,000 posts reported as hate speech each week, but that not everything offensive qualifies as hate speech. "Our policies allow content that may be controversial and at times even distasteful, but it does not cross the line into hate speech," he said. "This may include criticism of public figures, religions, professions, and political ideologies."

Comments

Re:We need to brutally murder nazi traitor faggots

[Z80a]

By my definition you are a nazi, so time to bludgeon you to death with a baby seal.

do it

[BrandonGinn]

censor all the things

Use more SJW and help support big government

[AHuxley]

The US university system graduates so many SJW every year. They would enjoy the feeling of power to censor the internet for a social media company.

Just list all the terms, music, art, culture, music/movie reviews, cartoons, blasphemy to be de ranked, banned and removed.

SJW can also report users, accounts, art work, history to EU and US law enforcement too.
Just hire a lot more SJW and let them censor social media.
Social media's got what governments crave. They crave censorship. It's got social justice.

Re:Use more SJW and help support big government

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair SJWs worming their way into worthwhile positions are few (compared with how many get their "degrees".) Most end up serving coffee to people of actual worth, or writing fake news for free as interns while living in the places their hard working moms and dads' bought or rented for them.

Remove Illegal, Leave The Rest

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything else means that you're getting in the way of somebody's Freedom of Speech.

In fact, it might be nice to know that Fred Bloggs can't go three posts without using the N-word.
It will inform me when I'm making decisions about who to invite to a party, recommend for a job opening, etc.

Re:Remove Illegal, Leave The Rest

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree 100%. It's really unfair to SJWs how this thing works. Their speech gets left alone and so employers can only filter them out and not the nazies that get censored.

Re:Remove Illegal, Leave The Rest

[fustakrakich]

"Remove illegal"

I'm sorry, what?

Re:Remove Illegal, Leave The Rest

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

And yet, posts on Facebook don't qualify for any Constitutional "freedom of speech" protections. Facebook wasn't formed by Congress, and that is the entity referred to in the Bill of Rights. They don't even receive and government funding, so technically they can censor anyone they want. That would probably be a really bad business decision, but totally legal.

Re:Remove Illegal, Leave The Rest

[jon3k]

At what point do we admit that Facebook (which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp) has a monopoly on social media and require government intervention? My (probably naive, incorrect) understanding of the laws in US vs EU is that in the US they must abuse their market position to harm other companies but in the EU merely having a monopoly could invite government intervention.

Personally I couldn't care less, I'm 35 and I haven't logged into Facebook in years and everyone younger than me is using it even less.

Re:Remove Illegal, Leave The Rest

[computational super]

Maybe, just maybe, the concept of "hate speech" is so vague that no two people will ever agree on what it constitutes, so nobody should be removing anything for violating it? Nah, that's just crazy talk, take down everything that somebody disagrees with.

Re:Remove Illegal, Leave The Rest

[RedK]

And yet, posts on Facebook don't qualify for any Constitutional "freedom of speech" protections.

He said "Freedom of Speech", not "1st Amendment rights". You silly people are so quick to say "Private entities don't have to support Free Speech!" based only on the Constitution. It's almost like you hate actual free speech.

Freedom of Speech is an old concept, dates back to Ancient History. The question is, do we as consumers value it enough to force our service providers to adhere to it through our wallets, and should service providers recognize it and support it on their platforms as a selling point ?

Or would you rather live in a world with corporate controlled speech.

Re:Remove Illegal, Leave The Rest

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Well, seeing as Facebook is a "free" product to the general population, that makes it pretty much impossible to use the wallet to force them to do anything. They "sell" their user's data to advertisers...in that regard, this "hate speech" is just as valuable as any other as it helps potential advertisers narrow down their target market promotionals. As someone who has taken several college-level marketing and promotion classes, I think that this is the real reason why FB isn't hard-core in their "policing" of content; and also why they are so keen on enforcement of their "real name" policy (so as to tie users to back-end data set profiles to sell). They are only doing ANY policing because they recently got hauled in from of Congress; censorship of any kind isn't part of their business plan and actually costs them profit in both staff to monitor and a smaller data set.

Re:Remove Illegal, Leave The Rest

[schitso]

"N-word" is such a cop-out. Just say n*gger (thanks, Slashdot, for forcing censorship!)--you're already implying it to everyone that reads your comment.

Also a big thanks to /. for their "lameness" filter automatically blocking my submission. Those scary words sure are better off blocked! Someone might be offended, after all, which is literally the worst thing that can happen to a white, upper/middle-class woman.

It's a hard problem

[HiThere]

I'm not saying that Facebook is making a good faith effort to solve the problem. I've never looked at it, so I have no idea. I'm saying that the problem as stated is a hard problem. It's easy to, say, ban certain particular words, but that doesn't accomplish very much.

I'm not sure that the problem as stated could be addressed by anything much short of a human equivalent AI, and even that would only allow some particular set of standards to be applied uniformly. It sure couldn't guarantee that the standards were fair.

As an example consider the text "You with a donkey's member!" This is apparently a violently abusive comment, but that depends on context that isn't present. I'm sure I could come up with a context where that would be encouragement. And every single word in that sentence is perfectly harmless. Or what about "Pepe the frog"? That was intended to be a humorous children's cartoon character....but it didn't stay that way, much to the annoyance of the creator.

That said, the evidence seems to support the assertion that Facebook encourages hateful posts, and is more reluctant to censor nazi-ish posts than those with an opposing message. Again, I have no direct evidence for this as I never visit that site, and am relying on material published by others.

Re:It's a hard problem

[AmiMoJo]

Facebook doesn't seem to have any particular political bias. TFA says they removed a comment stating "men are trash", for example.

Re:It's a hard problem

[drinkypoo]

TFA says they removed a comment stating "men are trash", for example.

Ha! I recently got blocked by a woman in a polya group shortly after telling her that it wasn't just men running out on families any more (even though mine did) and immediately after she told me "men are trash it's not my fault". I hope that's the comment they are talking about :)

Re:It's a hard problem

[BoogieChile]

> "You with a donkey's member!"

It's nice that I give that impression, thank you,. but it's really not that big...

Re:It's a hard problem

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

The problem with AI is someone has to program it, program the patterns for it to recognize. It's already been shown that many algorithms are developing racial biases. So most likely an AI would only go much faster, but not be much more accurate...at least at first.

Re:It's a hard problem

[HiThere]

Thank you. An excellent example of re-framing the context.

Re:It's a hard problem

[HiThere]

If it's an actual AI, the bias is not caused by the programming, but rather by the training data set. As to whether it would be more accurate, that's a separate problem from either consistent or fair. My assertion was that it could be more consistent, but that this wouldn't imply it would be fairer. Accurate is a yet more difficult problem when dealing with people, and it's one that human level intelligences have yet to solve.

To be fair, "fairness" is only a solved problem in the opinion of the person doing the judging. But accuracy is even harder, as most people realize that they don't really know what someone else meant, and sometimes realize that they didn't know what they, themselves, meant.

Re:It's a hard problem

[HiThere]

If you say so. I never knowingly saw any image of it. I was operating off an article about how annoyed the artist was with the misappropriation of his work.

Uneven by design

[Anonymous Coward]

Arbitrary, subjective rules can never be enforced fairly. Create more objective criteria, or stop moderating altogether and let people do their own blocking like adults.

having an imperfect filter is good for Facebook.

[maybe111]

It means that they can filter whatever they want and blame it on the "automated" filter....

I miss Usenet

[mrsam]

There was nothing comparable to that -- no bureaucracy that needed to employ a small army to act as a thought police, enforcing vaguely-defined thoughtcrime. There were just a few, content-neutral rules one had to follow, to post on Usenet. You were free to write anything you wanted, no matter how vulgar or obscene. Complete and unrestricted freedom of speech. You could not be silenced. When some snowflake or a SJW got triggered, too bad, so sad. They could do nothing about it. In its heyday, I had a blast of a time trolling the snowflakes and giving them daily aneurisms. I miss those days.

Of course, Usenet's still around, if one knows where to find it. And, come to think of it, I think I will. The riff-raff, the millenial snowflakes can have Faceboot, Twatter, and the rest of that junk. They should stay off Usenet. They wouldn't be able to handle it.

Re:I miss Usenet

[Pfhorrest]

You could be "silenced" on UseNet, with a killfile. But the thing was, killfiles were user-specific. Each user could decide who they wanted to "ban" from the discussion, and to that user, whoever they wanted gone, was gone. Any nobody else had any idea.

I don't see why modern discussion systems can't implement something like that. Allow people to share "kill-lists" too, so you can get a list of all the known [the-other-side] trolls you don't want to deal with from other people who've had to deal with them. Everyone gets their own personal shadowban button, but it only shadowbans people from that user's perspective. Eliminate anyone you want from your view of the discussion and build your own personal filter bubble if you want. Nobody else will be any the wiser. Nobody gets censored, and anyone who wants to see the shitstorm of unfiltered content can, at their own expense and nobody else's.

Re:I miss Usenet

[AmiMoJo]

Block lists have been tried and don't work. They are too easy to circumvent and don't deal with viral posts well. Every user has to build their own from scratch, or if someone shares their list it gets instantly condemned. Then you end up with shitty "internet security" products promising to automate the block list for you, and failing.

From Facebook's point of view they want people to have a good experience. Telling them that they have to manually block the bullshit isn't exactly a great marketing strategy. As we have seen on Twitter where they do have block lists, they are ineffective anyway.

Re:I miss Usenet

[Pfhorrest]

Facebook (et al) can themselves offer prebuilt block lists of known-bad actors (like they already build), and allow people to choose between them, or choose none of them, and of course to make their own modifications to (their copies of) the prebuilt lists once they're picked. It's just like what they're doing now, except you can opt out of it if you want, and also opt into alternatives, and custom configure your own alternatives if you want. The default block list would just be the same list of people currently banned, and so give new users the exact same experience; but other users can choose different experiences if they want to.

Re:I miss Usenet

[Solandri]

Usenet posts could be canceled. That was a message distributed the same way as Usenet posts directing servers to delete another Usenet post (usually after discussion in one of the net-abuse groups). Only admins were authorized to send a cancel notice, and the admin of an individual server didn't have to set it to honor cancel requests (most didn't). But it's not exactly true that Usenet was complete and unrestricted freedom of speech.

Re: I miss Usenet

[Zero__Kelvin]

Killfiles are not a panacea. The person in question can still reply to posts and everyone else sees it. This leaves open a situation where people who don't know either party read the posts and think that the person in the killfiles made a point to which you have no counter-argument, etc.

Re:I miss Usenet

[computational super]

Nah, he hasn't called Donald Trump a nazi in like, 12 hours. He's due for another any minute now.

Re: I miss Usenet

[billyswong]

In this case facebook can do better (while they don't). If facebook users can block someone, with a tick of saying, "I want my blocking of this guy publicly known", then for trolls there will be a tag which people can see oh that guy has been publicly blocked by hundreds or thousands of people. But no, facebook choose to let users to only block/flag/report someone silently, and hold the power to stamp someone "hate speech" solely on the hand of facebook employees.

Re:I miss Usenet

[ncc74656]

Maybe I shouldn't post this here where the snowflakes can see it, but you can get free accounts here. Point your newsreader to their servers and you're in business. No binaries, but if you want those, there are lots of paid services offering them.

I even have an ebuild for trn in my Portage overlay, if you're using Gentoo. Builds and runs like a champ on x86 and AMD64, at a minimum.

Re: I miss Usenet

[Pfhorrest]

That is also a good idea, but the improvement on usenet killfiles I thought you were going to suggest it: modern systems like Facebook are better able to track what is a reply to whom than usenet was, so if you block a user, you can also (optionally) block all replies to that user as well, so you don't see one side of an argument against the trolls, you just don't see the argument at all.

Jesus stop it already

[RightwingNutjob]

One left-wing troll story after another. Are you retards trying to hit your quote before the year is up or are is the supervision on their Christmas vacation this week?

Re:Jesus stop it already

[ncc74656]

Are you retards trying to hit your quote before the year is up or are is the supervision on their Christmas vacation this week?

s/Christmas/winter/

That's how they'd want it, after all. :-P

A crowd sourced investigation

[Patent Lover]

How scientific.

Usenet, IRC, XMPP, even MU*s...

[Anonymous Coward]

They are all dying.

I have been poking around into a few communities I used to visit or knew people in, and visiting a few communities I didn't visit back when they were fresh and new. Almost all of them have waning activity. The largest active IRC now seems to be freenode, and mostly in the developer channels, combined with #hardware. 2600's irc is dead. IRC2P on I2P has about 20-30 regulars, spread across the i2p developer channels, #salt, and the russian/chinese channels and is otherwise dead. MU* communities that used to have playerbases in the hundreds connected range are now down to 100 at their peak, other than 1-2 cybersex themed MU*s. The older or mismanaged ones having 3-5 players, usually not even staff connected to them anymore.

XMPP is similiar. Despite every major messaging app, except maybe Slack having been founded/based on XMPP, no end users know or care about that anymore, instead claiiming they are 'private' because some social media hype claimed it so.

Result of all this, the techies who were middle aged during the 80s-90s are all retiring out of online activity, except for a few die-hards. The younger crowd is migrating to social media or hype based faux privacy networks because that is what their friends are doing. The millenials and younger are using whatever service all their friends are lemmings-ing to, and those of us who are left are having a hard time finding which legacy services still have the participation to reward our time.

Some of the most vile postings I've seen on FB

[SlaveToTheGrind]

have been directed toward conservatives or others who don't mindlessly toe the party line. Strangely, those all seem to stay up. If you want to talk about uneven enforcement, how about starting there?

Re:Some of the most vile postings I've seen on FB

[SlaveToTheGrind]

It's amusing that you posted this head-in-the-sand gem a full 18 minutes after the AC post right above yours. If you don't see the same and far worse on FB on a daily basis, you've achieved a purified echo chamber indeed.

Re:Some of the most vile postings I've seen on FB

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Ah, I get it. So you don't even participate in FB, have no basis to believe that what I'm saying is untrue, pretend it didn't just play out right in front of you here, and yet accuse me of making it all up. That's some chutzpah.

Re:Some of the most vile postings I've seen on FB

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see why you switched sides! Obviously the focus on tolerance, respect and politeness of the Democrat Party appealed to you greatly!

Re:Some of the most vile postings I've seen on FB

[phantomfive]

I want to add that if anyone finds their opinion exactly matching either party platform, then you are either demented or have some kind of Stockholm syndrome. The party platforms of both parties were made by a series of compromises, designed to appeal to a broad spectrum of ideologies, change often, and thus can be contradictory from time to time.

Anyone who strictly follows either party platform is a tool.

Re:Some of the most vile postings I've seen on FB

[Miles_O'Toole]

Conservatives, by definition, "toe the party line". To oppose it would be iconoclastic, and conservatives are anything but that.

Re:Some of the most vile postings I've seen on FB

[Trondheim]

....aaaannnddd you just proved the point.

Re:Just ask yourself one question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Note to self...
Don't destroy ISIS
Don't give middle class workers a tax cut
Don't increase GDP over 3%, higher than Obama did any time over 8 years
Don't prosecute illegals that kill Americans
Don't protect VA whistle-blowers that are trying to help veterans
Don't bring back Americans jailed overseas, such as shoplifting basketball players

I don't think your advice is very good.

Oh the vility!

[fustakrakich]

I had to look that up. Seems to exist, so don't hate me for it...

Is it me?

[Hentai007]

Or has the comment section here been more cesspool-y in the last few weeks?

Re:Is it me?

[invalid_user]

It's you, Hentai007.

But seriously, don't want to see people fight back SJWs, don't post SJW stuffs. Have you noticed that just 1 or 2 slashdot users are responsible for 100% of the SJW posts?

Re: Is it me?

[Zero__Kelvin]

It is you. It has been more "cesspool-y" for much longer than that. You are evidently just noticing.

Re:Is it me?

[RedK]

Have you noticed that just 1 or 2 slashdot users are responsible for 100% of the SJW posts?

They're easy to spot too. They actually use the Slashdot Friend/Foe system and so their posts have a little Yellow dot next to their names for me.

I dunno what was more surprising, seeing that thing being used, or the fact that people I had no idea even existed had found me important enough to flag.

Re: Is it me?

[Hentai007]

Eh there is a difference between âoefighting sjwsâ and calling for the extermination of people... it was like a few threads in a row and I wondered if the 8chan crowd was hitting /. For some reason...

Re: Is it me?

[invalid_user]

What do you mean "calling for the extermination of people"?
Like those
"Let's band together to kill all men"
or
"All I want for Christmas is white genocide"?
that proliferate mainstream academia/media?

If so, then golly, you are right and I must have missed them since I browse at +1.

How I miss those days when not everyone is a Nazi... where there are hot grits everywhere, frosty piss in all your base, and the Soviet Russia, caveman Ogg were all still alive.

Inevitable.

[Chas]

This kind of thing is inevitable when you try to police free speech.

Don't like it? Tough.

Define hate speech.

[Mr307]

According to these idiots insults are hate speech:
http://www.dictionary.com/brow...
noun
speech that attacks, threatens, or insults a person or group on the basis of national origin, ethnicity, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability.

Websters seems to have it simplified down to a literal state which could be fine:
https://www.merriam-webster.co...
Definition of Hate speech
: speech expressing hatred of a particular group of people

Wikipedia is all over the map but at least seems to only report on various countries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

These people are subjectively confused thinking "any form of expression regarded as offensive":
https://definitions.uslegal.co...
Hate Speech Law and Legal Definition
Hate speech is a communication that carries no meaning other than the expression of hatred for some group, especially in circumstances in which the communication is likely to provoke violence. It is an incitement to hatred primarily against a group of persons defined in terms of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and the like. Hate speech can be any form of expression regarded as offensive to racial, ethnic and religious groups and other discrete minorities or to women.

These people get it:
https://www.urbandictionary.co...
  Hate speech
A highfalutin' way of saying "I disagree with your meticulously-researched, irrefutable facts, so I am going to organize a social media campaign to demonize you and ruin your life. But don't forget to donate to my Patreon."
Sane, rational human being: "I sure do loves me some grapes!"
Filthy SJW bacterium: "OMFG GRAPE HAS 'RAPE' IN IT THAT'S HATE SPEECH! RAAAAAAAPE CULTUUUUUURE!"

Disparaging a social group is hate speech to these people:
https://www.thefreedictionary....
hate speech
n.
Bigoted speech attacking or disparaging a social group or a member of such a group.

Re:Define hate speech.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Who knew that an entire movie is hate speech based upon its insults laced throughout the movie...

Re:Define hate speech.

[Subm]

> Websters seems to have it simplified down to a literal state which could be fine:
> https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
> Definition of Hate speech
> : speech expressing hatred of a particular group of people

This definition says that when Indiana Jones says, "Nazis, I hate these guys," the movie is hate speech.

Is that what we want?

Re:Define hate speech.

[Mr307]

Well as a simple and seemingly correct definition I think its fair.

But in no way shape or form would I ever advocate for it to have a law associated with it, its all too subjective, which was the point of the original post.

Short of that very literal one, I dont believe there is a reasonable definition of 'hate speech', it would appear to be a tool mostly used to silence discussion, probably for political or dogmatic reasons.

Re:Define hate speech.

[Mr307]

Yes thats exactly what I am saying, there is a reason to allow baseless insults.

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
H. L. Mencken

And you are absolutely correct, I dont use facebook, twitter or any of those services because I like my privacy and have an aversion to groupthink.

Re:Lawsuits a coming

[Chas]

No. Because FB is a private entity. They're not the government.

As such, they're under NO legal compulsion to provide you with an unrestricted venue for airing your thoughts.

And FB isn't "enforcing the law". They're enforcing their "terms of service". Which they are free to set in any manner they see fit.

This being said, "Hate Speech" doesn't actually exist. And if it does, it exists under the purview of free speech.
It's NOT illegal to hate someone and say so.

Also, most of these platforms provide AMPLE controls for blocking content if people don't wish to see it.
But various people are too lazy.
And then there's the authoritarians. Who DO want to control your speech and how you think.
All these people are going to yammer at FB for "DO SOMETHING!" that they're ALREADY perfectly capable of doing FOR THEMSELVES.

Ultimately, they're going to figure out what the Founding Fathers understood intrinsically.
You simply CANNOT control speech. All attempts eventually become too cumbersome and fail.
Either by beating down the censors to the point where such things are abandoned.
Or by simply diverting so much effort from running the company that it eventually causes the company to fold.

Filter's can't work

[AK Marc]

One of the problems with filters is something I see on other sites, especially on political issues. Things escalate. When a post is finally flagged, often it's in response to a post that's similar or worse. Sites have trolls using moderation to eliminate opinions they don't like. If you just mildly insult someone who holds an opinion you don't like, then if they respond in kind, report them.

Deep Learning should be used to identify those who make the most complaints, or have a disproportionate number of reported posts in response to their posts. That'll make a "troll score" and lower the reliability of those who generate hate speech, as well as those who post hate speech.

Facebook is the worst, as the top comments are ranked by responses, so the most outrageous comments are on top, as they get the most "your wrong" comments. If Facebook treated such comments as a "downvote" on the original comment, then it would better filter out the noise.

But since Facebook is 100% noise, how would anyone notice?

Re:Lawsuits a coming

[AHuxley]

Re 'This is the end game. Bets?"
Big federal governments, state and local governments like social media to get in their virtue signalling.
Buy enough ads and social media SJW will report accounts an users to any government to show support for a nations laws and culture.
Communist governments, dictatorships and theocracies know if they buy ads they can gain influence on social media policy.
SJW like social media as they can report and ban users.
So social media will always have its supporters and be assured of ad funds from big brands and investors.

The average user who gets banned by big government supporting SJW will take their daily usage to sites that support freedom of speech and freedom after speech.
Big US social media brands with all the SJW censorship will ensure US Social media becomes really boring.
Daily news about big gov, products, services, big US brands. A few SJW supported news links. An ad to visit some nation ruled by a monarchy that invested in US social media.

Social media will remove all movie reviews, book reviews, history, art, culture, political comments.
Social media will be like paying tax. Some site that has to be used to interact with gov, big brands, ads. SJW will watch and report on every comment, question, link, new account.
All very boring and full of SJW.

Re:Lawsuits a coming

[AHuxley]

That depends if the comments are for federal gov, state or local government officials.
Once the private sector inserts itself between gov and the citizens it has to allow freedom of speech given its role in been a portal for local, city, federal gov.
Social media activist SJW cant just ban users for trying to petition their Government for a redress of grievances. The government selected a social media site to be their digital portal.
That reduces the ability to say they are 100% private sector and can ban account, users, comments, remove news.
Then its like been banned by a government for freedom of speech by a private sector site that allows comments about government policy.
Terms of service stop when accepting government interaction starts.
A lot of comments also have to be kept for FOIA and as part of the official record. Gov officials cannot just ask a social media SJW to remove all negative comments to m make their gov, city, state look better. Each and every comment could be considered part of the a citizen interacting with their government.
If social media wanted to keep its own private sector restrictive "Terms of service" SJW rules then do not become a local and national portal for government.

Re:Ask a subjective question, get a subjective ans

[AHuxley]

They should have kept their US branding globally.
Freedom of speech, freedom after speech sells around the world.
People who need to interact with their own governments can use boring national sites.
Keep social media fun, free and full of different news.
Thats what attracts people and profits. Users can all get 100% censorship in their own nations for every day.
US social media does not need to report users to they own nations police for enjoying US freedom of speech.

Re:FUCK ALL YOU PENCIL-DICKS!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Say what you want about Slashdot, but at least they don't censor here.

Facebook is evil for censoring. So are all of the freedom-hating assholes who want them to.

Re:We need to brutally murder nazi traitor faggots

[AmiMoJo]

Don't feed the trolls. There is a clear definition of Nazi, no need to argue about it. Anyone who doesn't understand it is being obtuse.

Actual Nazis are easy to identify by the swastikas and 1488 chants. No need to over-think it.

Asshole NOT EQUAL TO Schutzstaffel

[MSTCrow5429]

I'm old enough (i.e., not middle-aged yet) to remember when "hate speech" was on the anti-free-speech fringes. Then it started moving in on us. And the closer and closer it got, the greater and greater amount of largely anodyne words and thoughts became verboten. Now some claim that certain words or thoughts are equivalent to physical violence. It was better when people were just seen as obnoxious dicks, and not some form of Neo-Grammar(ish) Nazi guilty of breaking windows of the mind.

Re:Asshole NOT EQUAL TO Schutzstaffel

[mjwx]

I'm old enough (i.e., not middle-aged yet) to remember when "hate speech" was on the anti-free-speech fringes.

I'm old enough to remember when the old racist brigade was nought but a small group of sad men sitting in the corner of the local pub. They sat their in their corner muttering about "them" ("them", the target, changed over time, first it was Asians, then Arabs, then Muslims, however the hate always remained the same). They'd never venture out of their corner because no-one put up with their bullshit, you'd note that none of the local racist brigade had all of their teeth because back in those days if you were a hateful little twat that didn't keep their mouth shut, someone took it upon themselves to shut it for you.

However this has changed in recent years (very recent, as in the last decade). Given anonymity by the internet and emboldened by that anonymity making them think their bollocks was popular (see the old "silent majority" cliche) they've began operating openly. People have been telling them to shut up and go away but apparently, free speech(TM) protects them from any criticism (and entitles them to whatever platform they want).

Seeing as if you actually punched* a racist, xenophobe or other bigot these days, they'll run straight to the cops claiming assault on their Free Speeches(TM) the actual majority is now turning to law makers to make these miscreants go away.

If you need to see who is really threatening free speech, look at those using it to try to silence criticism of their views. The real "SJW's" are those who are using that term as an insult and claiming free speech means you cant contradict them or tell them their racist or otherwise bigoted views are not wanted. Here in the UK, the only people trying to convince me that I cant say something are the Daily Mail readers. I'd rather not see free speech thrown out, but as long as it's being used to silence critics, it's going to head that way.

* I do not, emphatically do not, recommend punching anyone, you'll likely just end up hurting your hand (yes most people cant punch to save their life), palm strikes, elbows and knees are far more effective (don't try kicking unless you've been taught how to do that either).

Re:We need to brutally murder nazi traitor faggots

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was visiting a college town last year, their definition of Nazi and racist was anyone who was not a Democrat. It went from "punch a Nazi" to "shoot a Nazi" to "punch a racist", to "punch a Republican".

I have grown up in a flyover state. The amount of true Nazis is very small. In fact, in times past where they marched, and nobody gave a rat's ass basically killed their movement. Now with protests and people coming from other areas of the country just to spark riots, this extreme ideology just gets embraced by more, along the lines of the Streisand Effect.

Real Nazis know how to return violence. However, if they are ignored and silently given a "-1 Overrated" (to put it in Slashdot terms), they will lose membership and all but disappear. However, if people come fight them, it means they get a lot more recruits along the lines of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Re:Just ask yourself one question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Daesh? Obama, the Sauds, and Russia broke their back.

Tax cut? Nope. Two years from now, when the ballooning deficit causes rollbacks, it will be a net tax increase. Interesting that this is timed just after election year.

GDP over 3%. Obama inherited a shitshow, and made a top tier economy, with the US the top trading bloc in the world. Now, that crown belongs to China due to the TTIP abandonment, forcing Australia and the Pacific Rim to defer to China.

Prosecute illegals? Obama did a record job at deportations. In fact, there are more "illegals" bailing the US than coming in.

Protect VA whistle blowers? The VA got defunded.

Bring back Americans jailed overseas? Obama did this as well.

Now, lets discuss the real issues:

1: The North Korea issue has a high chance of making the entire Pacific Rim a war zone. This will hose us in many ways. The heated rhetoric is doing nobody any good.

2: The mixed signals from Tillerson versus Trump is similar to what sparked Iraq to seize Kuwait. The administration needs to send a cohesive message to the DPRK. If they want China to actually do something other than give lip service, they need to start hitting China where it hurts, with a tariff on the cheap shit China exports. Europe does this.

3: The fact that the US has sent a message that de-nuclearization means a country is now vulnerable to regime change, a la Libya.

4: The fact that the US has abandoned allies like NATO, forcing Europe to work on a world that the US isn't a partner.

5: The fact that overall, international tensions against virtually every country in the world are at a high point, even staunch allies like England and Canada.

6: There is a lot of unrest in the US. When you have people with zero hope, extreme groups pop up and thrive.

7: The tax bill is a bill of attainder. Every group Trump doesn't like has a tax hike applied, be it college students to people who live in a trailer and mortgage it.

8: There is a lack of interest in prosecuting insider trading and financial crimes. In fact even though it is commonplace for top brass in a company to short their stock before a bad announcement (firm got hacked, etc.), it isn't even looked at.

9: The fact that there is zero interest in bipartisan debate whatsoever. Trump wants his wall, and he will shut the government down until he gets it.

Now, here is the big question: What has Trump done to build up this country? So far, he has brought the shadow of nuclear war back onto this country.

And who determines what is considered vile?

[CustomSolvers2]

One of the most curious things about censorship-, prohibition-, arbitrariness-, etc. prone attitudes is that they usually try to prove that they are objectively better. They don't seem to accept their real imposition-based authority (you can use Facebook only if you accept its rules or Facebook's rules have to agree with the corresponding legislation or Facebook should listen what many of its users say) and hypocritically claim their moral superiority.

DISCLAIMER: I am not defending any position here. In general, I prefer permissive and properly-understanding approaches which only rely on prohibitions when strictly required.

Re: FUCK ALL YOU PENCIL-DICKS!!!

[temcat]

At least here you can read at -1 if you really want to see what's been downmodded.

Re: We need to brutally murder nazi traitor faggot

[temcat]

It is very, very inconvenient and frustrating when one cannot arbitrarily assign people dehumanizing labels!

Re: having an imperfect filter is good for Faceboo

[temcat]

This, at least among other things.

Re:We need to brutally murder nazi traitor faggots

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

No, actual Nazis were members of Germany's National Socialist German Workers' Party, which went defunct in 1945. There are a few still around, mostly in their 80's+. The current crop of "alt-right"ers that are doing the 1488 chants are a pale imitation, a mimicry. They are considered "neo-Nazis".

Re:Lawsuits a coming

[Chas]

Sorry, but you're incorrect.

Regardless of whether the person and the government official are both using the social media platform, they are still both subject to the whim of the platform provider. NEITHER are OWED service. And even if they insert themselves between the two parties, it's still THEIR platform, not a platform controlled by either of the two parties. 1A protections simply don't apply.

If you want a real-world analog.

Guy meets government official in a coffee shop.
Owner of the coffee shop kicks the guy out because he's screaming profanity and hurling epithets, disrupting business.
This inhibits his ability to communicate with the government official.
But it's STILL not a 1A violation.

Like Oil and Water

[Shogun37]

Truth (Capital "T" Truth) and groupthink don't mix. Humans WILL lie to themselves about anything and everything. And we get very upset when reality refuses to follow our whims. And why, oh why, are you socializing with people you don't like on a platform that doesn't like you?

Re:FUCK ALL YOU PENCIL-DICKS!!!

[sabri]

Facebook is evil for censoring. So are all of the freedom-hating assholes who want them to.

Facebook is operating a private platform funded by private money. Their platform, their rules. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. They can censor whatever the want, just as you can censor whatever you want in your house. If you don't like what your friends say in your house, you can ask them to leave. If Facebook doesn't like what you say on their platform, they can remove it and ask you to leave. Simple.

Which does not mean that I agree with them. But they are not doing anything wrong, legally or morally.

Re:FUCK ALL YOU PENCIL-DICKS!!!

[sabri]

you don't get to dictate what is moral for other people. By my measure, morally they are being evil.

You are right, your moral compass may be different than mine. I stand corrected.

And while FB as a company might be evil, legally they still do have the right to delete whatever they want.

Farcebook...

[iq145]

...Setting the standards for double-standards!

Re:FUCK ALL YOU PENCIL-DICKS!!!

[sabri]

The law is too often used as a refuge for the unscrupulous.

Yes, you are totally right there. But this does not apply in the case of Facebook.

If you don't want Facebook to delete your content, don't use Facebook. If you feel that Facebook is an evil corporation, don't use Facebook. Don't visit website that use Facebook's services. Or block all of Facebook in your favorite adblocker. It's literally that simple.

Re:Slashdot allows racist anti-Russian posts to st

[AutodidactLabrat]

Oh? You mean like BLM shouting "Hands up, don't shoot" is racism?
Heard that one before Reichsmarshall

Re: FUCK ALL YOU PENCIL-DICKS!!!

[AutodidactLabrat]

Yeah, but how many red-pills can be bothered?

Re:FUCK ALL YOU PENCIL-DICKS!!!

[AutodidactLabrat]

I'm sorry, but you don't get to dictate what is moral for other people. By my measure, morally they are being evil.

Actually, yes you do.
It's called "Law"