Facebook to ban white nationalist, separatist content -- is it going too far?

First topic message reminder :

Much as I am loathe to support either ideology, check this out:

Facebook Inc. will ban content that references white nationalism and white separatism, taking a major step toward curbing racism and hate speech on the site.

The social media giant’s policies have long excluded posts on white supremacy, but Facebook said it didn’t apply the same lens to expressions of white nationalism because it wanted to be able to include “broader concepts” of nationalism such as American pride and Basque separatism, which are linked to people’s identity.

After an investigation by tech publication Motherboard and conversations with experts in race and civil rights groups, Facebook said in a blog post Wednesday that it concluded “white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups.”

The problem of white nationalism on Facebook was magnified in 2017 after a deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white nationalists used the social networking site as a way to fuel hatred and to connect far-right groups in a protest of the removal of a Confederate statue. The killer responsible for the deaths of 50 people in New Zealand earlier this month also used Facebook to post a racist manifesto before recording the massacre at two mosques live on the platform.

Going forward, people who search for terms associated with white supremacy will be directed to resources that combat hate groups, such as Life After Hate, an organization founded by former violent extremists that provides crisis intervention, education, support groups and outreach, San Francisco-based Facebook said.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-27/facebook-to-ban-white-nationalism-separatism-website-reports

Many people conflate white supremacy with nationalism and separatism, but (at least if you take their supporters at face value) nationalism means "a nation for this group of people" and separatism means "this group of people should live separately from other groups."

Is this an infringement upon the freedom of speech of people who nominally may very well not be advocating violence?

Is this going to backfire?

Discuss.

I said fucking discuss!!!!

You know what? I have been mean and I apologize, smelly. You asked me if I wrote that as satire and I fucked with you, and that actually makes me feel bad.

Now, to be fair, you fuck with people here all the time, and I don't know how that makes you feel, but you've never said you felt bad about your way of doing things. Whatever -- maybe it's a cultural thing, how the hell should I know.

I will tell you, I didn't mean it as satire; I meant every word and I still do, though I will accept the points made about how private entities have the right to control what is expressed on their platform.

I guess what I was trying to intimate was that Facebook's policy offends me, because they're talking about banning people who very well may not be advocating violence.

Forgive me if I'm man-(to-man)-splaining, but I think the notion of a free market of ideas is brilliant. Just as the people who shop at your local grocery ultimately decide which products are successful and which are failures, so should the sphere of ideas and philosophies -- i.e., if an idea is good, it will catch on, and if it's bad, it will be rejected.

I have, admittedly, also been thinking about a possible flaw with this idea here of late -- namely, that the human tendency to become addicted (to just about anything) could be used to corrupt the free market of ideas -- i.e., hate is as addictive as crack, at least for some.

But ultimately I believe that even for a hardened an atheist like me, the state of being human dictates that you must have faith in something, and for me, I'm most comfortable (I admit it's nothing more than comfort) with the notion that people will ultimately see reason. It may (and has) taken generations for people to come around on some issues, but the time spent isn't nearly as important as the conclusion. And ultimately, if we're a species that can't see reason, we're doomed anyway.

The ability of human beings has resulted in a world in which most people don't think race should preclude you from being, just for example, president of the United States. And it's even shifted racists' attitudes -- very few these days would argue that black people are a separate species, since they can see for themselves that black and white people can make babies, and if we were different species, that would be like dogs being able to reproduce with cats.

But I do not believe -- categorically -- that we have reached any of these conclusions by shutting down debate and suppressing free expression.

The notion that black people aren't equal to whites was subject to honest debate and today, the vast majority believe blacks and whites deserve equality.

The notion that homosexuality is a defect was subject to honest debate and today, at least in the Western world, most people think that sexual orientation is no more important than hair color.

The notion that being a woman doomed women to a state of inferiority was subject to robust, honest debate. The UK prime minister is a woman and nobody has batted an eye, so far as I've seen.

So no, I didn't write that as satire. Yes, I believe all ideas should be discussed. And yes, I put my hope and faith in people, who I firmly believe will fuck things up day and night but will eventually, after a lot of seemingly unnecessary drama, do the right thing.