
Facebook limits spread of 'Boogaloo' groups amid protests - dredmorbius
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-boogaloo/facebook-moves-to-limit-spread-of-boogaloo-groups-after-charges-idUSKBN23C011
======
tarkin2
Free speech balances delicately, and that should be debated vigorously, but it
should not be treated as an absolute.

You shouldn't be free to incite violence. Nor should a company help that
speech spread.

~~~
clairity
> "You shouldn't be free to incite violence. Nor should a company help that
> speech spread."

only the fringiest of fringes argue for absolutes. everyone (else) is arguing
about where the line is drawn. for instance, if we take yours at face value,
you'd be arguing against the american revolution.

~~~
firethief
I find your absolutist interpretation hard to understand. I think if the
occurrence of a situation in which violence is appropriate necessitates an
exception to a rule, that doesn't necessarily indicate a bad rule. For
example, even though the Founding Fathers were presumably well aware that
circumstances may exist in which violent revolution would be justified, note
that the constitution they drafted didn't make allowances for a new American
Revolution to able to occur without any laws being broken.

~~~
clairity
the founding fathers didn't draw that line. they didn't say "free speech,
except inciting revolution", they said "freedom of speech", particularly
allowing for insurrection speech. the supreme court upheld this interpretation
a number of times, for instance[0],

> "In Brandenburg, the US Supreme Court referred to the right even to speak
> openly of violent action and revolution in broad terms"

no one is breaking any rules or laws here, as far as the constitution is
concerned.

but see, that's all beside the point regarding facebook. they have no binding
legal requirement to that same standard of free speech. the debate there is
how much corporate censorship people are willing to tolerate without injury to
facebook's bottom line and stature.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech)

~~~
firethief
> the debate there is how much corporate censorship people are willing to
> tolerate without injury to facebook's bottom line and stature.

Facebook doesn't need to respond to what its users think it should do, because
its users aren't organized enough to achieve the collective action necessary
to threaten its bottom line. More generally, what Facebook "should" do, from
the perspective of the public good, is a wrong question. Facebook's business
model is fundamentally misaligned with the public interest, so even if we
could pool our strength to force it to the right policies, it couldn't be
trusted to enforce them faithfully. What's right for Facebook isn't what's
right for Us; with perpetual struggle we could at best narrow the gap.

In contrast, a federated structure, like Diaspora, is conducive to democracy,
because Diaspora is not a company with its own interests. Diaspora is Us. In a
federated system, the question is not "what speech do I wish the monopolistic
enterprise I've subjected myself to would allow". The question is "what speech
will I allow on my server" and "what servers do I want to network with". These
questions are inherently more democratic. When the right model is chosen, the
problem of endlessly tuning parameters disappears. Fit can be achieved without
all the work of overfitting.

So I use Diaspora. I don't have any friends. But I know I'm right.

------
hirundo
This is the first time I've heard the word boogaloo in connection with
insurrection. Banning it makes it sound like a genuine threat/possibility,
something I should learn more about.

Facebook is streisanding boogaloo.

~~~
criley2
It's not facebook streisanding, they've gone mainstream after years of alt-
right/incel/QANON build-up. A lot of outlets are covering it and having not
heard of it by now is probably getting on the back end of the bellcurve.

They're getting arrested routinely by FBI counter-terrorist police e.g.
[https://www.justice.gov/usao-nv/pr/joint-terrorism-task-
forc...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-nv/pr/joint-terrorism-task-force-
charges-three-men-who-allegedly-sought-exploit-protests-las)

Hawaiian shirts, Race War Electric Boogaloo, "Great Awakening", the radical
right has gone off the deep end

~~~
dicknuckle
I've seen it around. Pretty sure it's just a joke taken way out of context, or
I'm just not aware of it being taken too far. I've seen the amusing memes
about ATF only knowing how to shoot dogs, then there's dog whistles for mildly
illegal things like hiding their now-outlawed Bump Stocks and describing that
as a "boating accident" i.e. "losing" them in a lake.

~~~
loopz
It's no joke when they show up to any demo wielding guns.

------
082349872349872
sometimes I wonder if the cosplaytriot types are even aware that they're
Googlebombing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogaloo_(funk_dance)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogaloo_\(funk_dance\))
has the semantics I had expected for the syntax.

It even made it across the Iron Curtain:
[https://youtu.be/QSc3uk8Q5w4?t=4881](https://youtu.be/QSc3uk8Q5w4?t=4881)

(1986, so a bit later than 1984's Electric Boogaloo, and a bit earlier than
the 1989 end of the wall)

~~~
dredmorbius
The alt-right usage etymology is ... convoluted, but dates to a gratuitously
terrible film sequel ("Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo", 1984), and came to be a
go-to reference for any sequel or return, here, with race war connotations:

[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/electric-
boogaloo](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/electric-boogaloo)

Appropriation of language and symbology is quite common among similar
movements.

~~~
082349872349872
Yikes on appropriation. I had been assuming the "Trump on a Tank" image was
obviously parody, both from subject matter and from the black power fist on
the tank (on the mudguard just behind the sprocket). Now I wonder if this may
actually be a case of "any sufficiently advanced ideology is indistinguishable
from satire"?

~~~
loopz
It's meta that sometimes gets people injured or killed. It's also a sort of
natural balancing act.

------
Kednicma
What can we do, as a community, to limit the spread of fascism? It seems that
it's quite a problem.

~~~
JKCalhoun
As a start:

Education.

People need to believe justice is applied equally: white as well as black,
rich as well as poor.

Close the extreme and growing wealth gap in the country.

~~~
Barrin92
I'm always confused by the suggestion that education is some sort of panacea
for totalitarian ideology.

Someone who is racist or fascist by definition rejects the notion that justice
_ought_ to be applied equally and just about anything else that you would
likely consider moral or proper.

And fascism also is not a function of wealth inequality. Fascism has
historically grown out of the middle-class. Seymour Martin Lipset identified
fascism as _" Extremismus der Mitte"_ in Germany. It's well at home in the
petite bourgeoisie or in the US I guess you'd say the suburban middle class.

~~~
x86_64Ubuntu
People like throwing education out there because it's less politically charged
than anything meaningful.

~~~
JKCalhoun
Not really.

I see _fear_ behind most of the worst behavior in our modern politics.
Education goes a long way to address fear.

Want politically charged? I suspect the reason the U.S. has its current
president is due in part to a emasculated voting class lashing out from
feelings of powerlessness. Education would have gone a long way to making them
feel more relevant in a constantly changing economy/society.

------
rainworld
One of the more obvious psyops I‘ve seen.

Last week, for about a day, media tried to pin the rioting and violence on
some nebulous white nationalist actors but obviously that didn‘t test well in
the face of overwhelming audiovisual evidence and remnants of critical
thinking so they quickly returned to the tried minimizing and voxsplaining.

But apparently they’re not quite done yet.

~~~
kgin
Can you elaborate on this?

------
thinkingemote
These groups seem to have sprung out of nowhere suddenly and that smells off
to me. Or at least they have appeared in the media suddenly in the last week.
I don't watch too much news.

I suppose once the evidence and interviews with members on the ground occur we
should be in a better position than assuming the boogaloo is not a fake
boogeyman.

~~~
jibal
All Facebook groups are made up, and are brand new at some point (which is the
same as having sprung out of nowhere suddenly). But the boogaloo folks who
create and join these groups exist IRL.

------
whatshisface
I've been thinking for a while about what would happen if the slippery slope
doesn't happen and big tech companies stick to censoring only the things that
you can't say in nice costal elite company or can't say in China. I think I
have finally worked out what the analogy would be for that. It is analogous to
what some would call "systemic racism." Systemic racism is defined as a
constant headwind against minorities that is composed not of organized pogroms
against innocents, but as thousands of tiny cuts combined with a few
_isolated_ pogroms that can be denied as the work of radicals. _Our_ violent
criminals get a little less punishment than _their_ violent criminals. _Our_
political radicals are pushed away by the media a little less than _their_
political radicals. We have a _few_ instances of doing something clearly
unfair to them, which are understood as exceptions and quickly forgotten, but
whenever they do something clearly unfair to us, it's held up for years as an
example of their moral inferiority.

That's the kind of constant headwind that can add up over time and distort a
society beyond recognition. Why? Because the disadvantaged group will see
their disadvantage get worse over time, because in the vast average of
thousands of interactions, they slide slightly backwards. As the disadvantage
gets worse, the bias gets worse along with it. This can play out in many
situations, from the ones that seem totally indefensible ("What do you mean
we're being unfair, he's a murderer!"), to the ones that seem ridiculously
minor.

~~~
kthxbye123
Just to be clear about your argument here - you are suggesting that Facebook
changing its recommendation algorithm to not suggest that people join groups
run by white supremacist paramilitaries advocating for a second civil war is
akin to systemic racism?

~~~
paulsutter
COINTELPRO was an FBI program to discredit the Black Panthers, whose public
image is marred to this day by the program. So these things do happen.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO)

> Beginning in 1969, leaders of the Black Panther Party were targeted by the
> COINTELPRO and "neutralized" by being assassinated, imprisoned, publicly
> humiliated or falsely charged with crimes. Some of the Black Panthers
> affected included Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Zayd Shakur, Geronimo Pratt,
> Mumia Abu-Jamal,[18] and Marshall Conway. Common tactics used by COINTELPRO
> were perjury, witness harassment, witness intimidation, and withholding of
> evidence

