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On Facebook’s ideology

Never before has it been so clear. On hate speech:

…the companies have resisted calls in the past year by countries such as France and Germany to actively police their platforms for extremist or terrorist content, arguing that they shouldn’t be made to decide what constitutes legitimate debate.

On nudity:

We restrict the display of nudity because some audiences within our global community may be sensitive to this type of content – particularly because of their cultural background or age.

Keeping in mind that much of the debate around hate speech at this particular moment involves the rampant racism in Europe toward refugees, Facebook is essentially saying that it’s okay to offend refugees with hateful speech telling them to go back home, or worse, but not okay to offend their cultural sensibilities by showing them breasts. This is everything that’s wrong with the American approach toward free expression.

More here.

3 replies on “On Facebook’s ideology”

Basically Facebook says that their economic power is above the legislative powers of democratically elected parliaments. They insist on the publication of hate speech that is banned by law.

That’s surely part of the concern, although I have more sympathy for it based merely on the fact that Germany wants Facebook to implement technical monitoring that would most certainly result in overbroad censorship. My issue here is with Facebook’s morality and ethics.

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