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If censorship is too "challenging" to do right then maybe you should knock it off.


Censorship is something governments do. What you're discussing is a business decision Facebook made. They deemed it to be in the best interests of their shareholders not to amplify those peoples opinions. Zuck now regrets that decision, but it was still his decision.


> Censorship is something governments do.

Not exclusively, no. There's nothing in the definitions of the words 'censor' or 'censorship' that imply it is an act exclusive to governments.

Effectively, something can be censorship even if the government is not involved.

When the government is involved, then it's government censorship.


Semantically, you're right of course, but only because linguistically self-censorship is counted as a type of censorship, despite it not depriving anyone of liberties.

For practical purposes though, the kind of censorship that we're concerned with in this conversation can't be done by anyone other than a government or a lunatic with a gun. Companies just don't have any authority over anyone except themselves. They can't deprive you of your ability to speak, only your ability to use their property to do so.


It was a business decision made at the direction of the government.


You might be right.

The article says they were "pressured", it doesn't seem to to say how that pressure was applied. To me, it reads as though compliance was not mandated, just requested. Without more info, I suppose it could be taken either way.


Any request from the government can be characterized as pressure.


Further, there is already precedent that this is in fact, a first amendment violation.

The Biden Harris government is guilty of censorship via a third party.


If Zuck has a real problem with that, he can sue (as per the SCOTUS ruling on standing vis-a-vis First Amendment protections against government coercion).

He isn't suing, and it's up to the rest of us to make our decisions based on how we feel about that.


>https://x.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1828485808023539967

He is making sworn statements to the house judiciary committee.

Are you saying he is lying and the BidenHarris admin is telling the truth?

Why would he do that? And why does all the evidence of censored accounts on Facebook match up with the Twitter Files and what everyone saw happening?


No, I'm not saying he's lying.

I'm saying he might have found the circumstances distasteful but he didn't find them a violation of his rights worthy of a lawsuit.


Call it what you like, if you can't distinguish between doctors and quacks then you shouldn't be banning people you think are quacks because you aren't qualified to do so.


If i stand up a server and host a website, I get to decide who's allowed to use my server. I don't need to be "qualified", and who would decide what "qualified" means? Should the government be forcing me to host content I find objectionable?

Facebook is no different. Just bigger.


Nobody is saying a legal right to do so doesn't exist. Only that you shouldn't and you're a jackass if you do.

Your retreat into legality and semantics is telling.


Fair enough. When you said they "shouldn't be" I took that to mean they "shouldn't be allowed to", which is different than what you said. My bad.




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