Saturday, August 26, 2017

On FB censorship

Well, I've had an interesting encounter with FB censorship. 

I put a few posts up from confederate apologists. I didn't necessarily agree with those posts, but the allegations were new to me, so I wanted to discuss them. 

My mostly liberal friends weren't sympathetic and told me so. I guess at least one of these "friends" may have reported the posts and had them taken down, even though the posts were followed by a lot of intelligent thoughtful discussion and revealing information. 

I do consider myself liberal, but I'm definitely starting to see why conservatives feel that liberals don't support free speech. 

I must say that the intolerant behavior of my fellow liberals is actually making me less sympathetic to them. 

I heard from a friend, who considers himself independent, that he has similarly had  posts removed, even though he tried to be balanced and thoughtful, and even though he got lots of thoughtful comments. 

I believe that, in a free speech battle, right will ultimately triumph, but censorship strengthens falsity. Certainly, having posts removed, when they were followed by intelligent discussion, gives fuel to the fire of those conservatives who fear that the truth is being suppressed. It's not a good way of convincing people that what they've said is wrong. 

https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-hate-speech-censorship-internal-documents-algorithms

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