Your point would be correct if the recent bans were about hate speech and calls to violence. The claim that recent bans were solely about hate speech and calls to violence however is factually incorrect and therefore your point is wrong. The most popular banned topic of discussion is the validity of the 2020 election, an epistemological question. Very nonviolent and non-hatey figures such as Ron Paul are banned without any stated reasons.
Facebook seems to have undone Rob Paul ban, and explained it as a mistake. Given that Ron Paul lamented he had received no warning about violations of the community standards before the ban, it seems likely it wasn’t a deliberated and approved move, since they haven’t acted this way before and if they wanted to start a fight for power with politicians they’d start with cases where their decision for the ban is as defensible as possible.
Shooting the moderated figures would turn everyone against the social medias and they’d lose the power struggle fast. My most likely guess for what happened is an employee taking a shot against a figure he personally hated, and given the risk of backlash I’d expect Facebook to put in place a system against the risk of this happening again.
If you can quote me the other figures like Rob Paul and there are no explanations, or too many “accidental ban” explanations, then there would be more reasons to worry, I guess.
I 100% agree that I’d rather see this sites err on the side of caution than on the site of ban, and that such weird “mistakes” can be made is rather worrying.
Refuting the validity of an election, starting before it happens, in a total lack of proofs, while you are the losing party of this election… eh. I’d hardly see it as a purely epistemological question.
However, Twitter blocked the statements made by Trump as part of their “fact checking” policy, and banned his profile on a totally different motivation, how he addressed the rioters in supportive ways and the hints of doing it again in the future. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html
I can’t really see social medias wanting to risk a fight this harsh with politicians for reasons like factual accuracy (Which worries me as a theme, but the alternative is leaving a giant fascism-shaped door wide open for taking our society.) also because every time they ban someone popular their profits go down.
All in all, I’m believing the stated reasons and I see no evidence they’d have banned him anyway if he just disputed the election results in a more… let’s say peaceful way. (Which is still attempting to subvert the government and a horrible thing to do).
I’d also say that the traditional information medias have long taken on themselves the power to interpret, comment, and refute news. What Twitter did calling Trump on such fake statements is hardly an unprecedented move. Any journalist that wouldn’t have done the same would be hardly doing his job, and we’d see society being a lot worse off if they didn’t.
I know social medias aren’t journalists, but if they provide information channels to the masses, there has to be a way to prevent powerful people from just systematically lying about everything with no contradictions. You get dictatorship a lot faster this way, it’s basically how it gets on power every time (this isn’t a claim that Trump is a fascist, just that we’d get one soon eventually).
Facebook seems to have undone Rob Paul ban, and explained it as a mistake. Given that Ron Paul lamented he had received no warning about violations of the community standards before the ban, it seems likely it wasn’t a deliberated and approved move, since they haven’t acted this way before and if they wanted to start a fight for power with politicians they’d start with cases where their decision for the ban is as defensible as possible.
Part of the problem is that facebook has a lot of moderators who can just ban people. Ron Paul is strong enough to complain and get a decision reversed but average people who get banned by a random moderator can’t.
Part of the problem is that facebook has a lot of moderators who can just ban people. Ron Paul is strong enough to complain and get a decision reversed but average people who get banned by a random moderator can’t.
I agree it’s a big problem, the inability of average people to complain worries me as well.
I think Facebook should elaborate a strict guideline for its moderators, hold them accountable on how they decide and keep track on how they acted in the past, rewarding accuracy and punishing “interpretations”. For such a big organisation it wouldn’t really be excusable to leave moderators free to interpret the norms as the average forum would.
This would likely help a bit, if a moderator thinks he’s acting properly when he’s shooting down people belonging to the “enemy and obviously wrong” faction then things would turn sour really fast.
If the solution doesn’t do the trick and there are still too many “mistakes” then some other way to implement controls on the decision system would be needed.
Your point would be correct if the recent bans were about hate speech and calls to violence. The claim that recent bans were solely about hate speech and calls to violence however is factually incorrect and therefore your point is wrong. The most popular banned topic of discussion is the validity of the 2020 election, an epistemological question. Very nonviolent and non-hatey figures such as Ron Paul are banned without any stated reasons.
Facebook seems to have undone Rob Paul ban, and explained it as a mistake. Given that Ron Paul lamented he had received no warning about violations of the community standards before the ban, it seems likely it wasn’t a deliberated and approved move, since they haven’t acted this way before and if they wanted to start a fight for power with politicians they’d start with cases where their decision for the ban is as defensible as possible.
Shooting the moderated figures would turn everyone against the social medias and they’d lose the power struggle fast. My most likely guess for what happened is an employee taking a shot against a figure he personally hated, and given the risk of backlash I’d expect Facebook to put in place a system against the risk of this happening again.
If you can quote me the other figures like Rob Paul and there are no explanations, or too many “accidental ban” explanations, then there would be more reasons to worry, I guess.
I 100% agree that I’d rather see this sites err on the side of caution than on the site of ban, and that such weird “mistakes” can be made is rather worrying.
Refuting the validity of an election, starting before it happens, in a total lack of proofs, while you are the losing party of this election… eh. I’d hardly see it as a purely epistemological question.
However, Twitter blocked the statements made by Trump as part of their “fact checking” policy, and banned his profile on a totally different motivation, how he addressed the rioters in supportive ways and the hints of doing it again in the future. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html
I can’t really see social medias wanting to risk a fight this harsh with politicians for reasons like factual accuracy (Which worries me as a theme, but the alternative is leaving a giant fascism-shaped door wide open for taking our society.) also because every time they ban someone popular their profits go down.
All in all, I’m believing the stated reasons and I see no evidence they’d have banned him anyway if he just disputed the election results in a more… let’s say peaceful way. (Which is still attempting to subvert the government and a horrible thing to do).
I’d also say that the traditional information medias have long taken on themselves the power to interpret, comment, and refute news. What Twitter did calling Trump on such fake statements is hardly an unprecedented move. Any journalist that wouldn’t have done the same would be hardly doing his job, and we’d see society being a lot worse off if they didn’t.
I know social medias aren’t journalists, but if they provide information channels to the masses, there has to be a way to prevent powerful people from just systematically lying about everything with no contradictions. You get dictatorship a lot faster this way, it’s basically how it gets on power every time (this isn’t a claim that Trump is a fascist, just that we’d get one soon eventually).
Part of the problem is that facebook has a lot of moderators who can just ban people. Ron Paul is strong enough to complain and get a decision reversed but average people who get banned by a random moderator can’t.
I agree it’s a big problem, the inability of average people to complain worries me as well.
I think Facebook should elaborate a strict guideline for its moderators, hold them accountable on how they decide and keep track on how they acted in the past, rewarding accuracy and punishing “interpretations”. For such a big organisation it wouldn’t really be excusable to leave moderators free to interpret the norms as the average forum would.
This would likely help a bit, if a moderator thinks he’s acting properly when he’s shooting down people belonging to the “enemy and obviously wrong” faction then things would turn sour really fast.
If the solution doesn’t do the trick and there are still too many “mistakes” then some other way to implement controls on the decision system would be needed.