
Facebook Censors User for Mentioning Censorship - huntermeyer
http://heatst.com/tech/facebook-censors-conservative-lauren-southern-for-mentioning-censorship/
======
xiaoma
I have to say I'm pretty disappointed. While Facebook is _legally_ allowed to
censor what they please (at least in the US), they present themselves as a
neutral platform. Their CEO was just speaking with political pundits concerned
about just this kind of behavior.

Beyond that, Facebook is much closer to a utility than a single media entity
these days and it's disturbing to see them wielding political power in this
way. They hold a great deal of power over nearly every online media publisher
around the world. Even in a case where I agree with their political slant, I
don't want to see this happening.

It pains me to say it but due to their monopoly power over the social graph,
it might be time for more regulation.

~~~
ende
You're trying to make a comparison to the regulation of common carrier
utilities but you're missing an important distinction. Regulation of certain
utilities is justifiable because those utilities enjoy a natural monopoly
granted and empowered by the government (usually due to the limitations of
land based infrastructures which naturally prevent market competition).
Facebook enjoys no such monopoly. Other digital social networks can and do
compete with it. If you don't like what facebook does, you can personally
regulate it by deactivating your account.

~~~
xiaoma
> _" If you don't like what facebook does, you can personally regulate it by
> deactivating your account."_

Likewise if someone didn't like the way AT&T's monopoly operated in the 70s,
they could simply deactivate their account. However, then as now with a
Facebook account, it would have been a self-limiting choice.

Once a communication network has the majority of people in a region on it, it
becomes nearly impossible to compete with directly and it also wields great
power in relation to its users.

~~~
ende
It's not the same thing though. The anti-competetive behavior of a company in
the telecommunications industry is grounded (literally) in the natural barrier
to entry that comes with the immense investment and government authorization
involved in land based infrastructure. These are necessary 'practical'
monopolies that are purposely created by the state in order to regulate them
as public utilizes and because it is impractical to allow multiple overlapping
land infrastructures.

Facebook does not fall anywhere close to this category of communications
network. There is no barrier to entry created by Facebook's existence.
Multiple other social networks can and do exist, and not only that but you can
simultaneously participate in all of them. They are not mutually exclusive.
Facebook is not a monopoly, it's just really popular.

Finally, Facebook is not a monopoly for the very simple reason that you are
not a customer of Facebook. Facebook does not provide you any service that you
have paid for in an economic exchange. Facebook's customers are advertisers,
and the advertisement industry is anything but a monopoly.

------
justinsaccount
"Facebook" in this case is most likely other users reporting her content. See
for example:

[http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-
room/news/277657-hill...](http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-
room/news/277657-hillary-supporters-take-down-bernie-fb-pages-in-coordinated)

[http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/04/26/hillary-trolls-just-
go...](http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/04/26/hillary-trolls-just-got-facebook-
shut-bernie-groups-reporting-pornography/)

~~~
walrus01
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor)

corollary: never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
a automated abuse-prevention system (in this case, people flagging posts)
doing what it was designed to do with zero human intervention.

------
mattbee
This is tinfoil-hat rubbish - all it shows is someone who was a) banned from
posting from Facebook, b) posted some conspiracy gobbledigook, then assuming
b) was the reason for a).

The banned user could have been posting racism, abuse, publicy, privately ...
without knowing all of her previous conduct it's impossible hard to tell. But
unless lots of other people corroborate their own posting bans with "talking
about censorship" it's not really convincing.

(This story written by the woman who thought Twitter's search autocomplete was
a reflection of what was posted on Twitter, rather than her own muck-raking
search history! [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/louise-mensch-
blame...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/louise-mensch-blames-
corbyn-supporters-for-anti-semitism-turns-out-its-her-own-offensive-
search-10466928.html))

~~~
daveguy
If you take out the tinfoil hat rubbish jab this is an informative post.
There's no reason to bias the reader against your opinion before they read it.

------
kinkdr
Good. Facebook is doing her a favor. Why not self-ban herself from Facebook
for life? Or to put it in a nicer way, ban Facebook from her life for ever.

I am not a lawyer, but I don't think it is illegal for Facebook to censor and
deny service to anyone they want. (Somebody can correct me if I am wrong). And
in similar fashion, everybody is perfectly free to use Facebook and comply
with their rules, or choose not to use it.

Maybe it is me, but I am having really difficult time understanding why people
take Facebook so seriously and add so much value to it. It is just another
cheap entertainment website. There are so many more.

~~~
unlinker
>Maybe it is me, but I am having really difficult time understanding why
people take Facebook so seriously and add so much value to it.

Yeah, it's you. Spend more time thinking of it and you'll realise there's a
big chunk of the population that gets their news from Facebook. Then you'll
realise how this is sort of a big deal, in its own way.

~~~
mevile
Remember way back when people had a blog with an RSS feed and anyone could
subscribe to your blog with their browser or some app to read what you had to
say instead of going through Facebook or Twitter? Remember when all that
slowly went away because people went to Facebook and Twitter? Well this is
what you get when people collectively decide apps and platforms with walled
gardens are better than the open web. Enjoy your nice and tasty shit sandwich.
It's all our own fault really.

~~~
darpa_escapee
I don't really think people made that choice consciously because they thought
walled gardens were better, there was a major push to redirect people and
content creators to those platforms.

I was very happy with the way things were until Google pulled the plug on
Reader and made it harder to follow "decentralized" content.

~~~
walrus01
They made the move because walled gardens are much easier to use, require far
less effort and have nicer friendly UIs built by large teams of UI/UX people
who have the goal of keeping people captive via browser sessions and their
mobile apps.

------
PuffinBlue
In the banking world you can get too big to fail.

I wonder if in the social media world you can get too big to allow censorship?

~~~
internaut
I wonder that too.

It's clear that even though the Net is owned by private interests it 'feels'
like a public space.

~~~
fridsun
It's advertised and designed to "feel" like a public space, in an effort to
disguise the truth of the ownership. Lack of a true public alternative is sad.

~~~
internaut
I can't quite agree with that.

The Net felt like a public space long before advertising existed on the Net.

It is still also true though that people have an illusion of ownership over
their emails in their Gmail accounts. That's why I switched away from them.

I think there does exist a role for truly public entities on the Net e.g.
Estonia's attempts but I also don't believe a normal government is capable of
providing these.

Can you take seriously an entity that can be swayed by Momsnet?

That's like running US chamber of commerce proposals past 4chan.

------
tdaltonc
> ... Mark Zuckerberg’s message hasn’t got through to Facebook’s employees.

What is this referring too?

~~~
jack9
Mark's not removing individual claims himself...ostensibly it was an employee.
However, Zuckerberg's recent message
([https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102830259184701](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102830259184701))
seems at odds with the behavior witnessed.

------
thelostagency
Well played on the video proof

~~~
mevile
The video proof only shows that's she's banned. It doesn't proof what she was
banned for. Based on the screenshots I believe her for the reason why she was
banned, not the video. Maybe a bit of a semantic quibble, but it's the
screenshots, not the videos that are damning.

~~~
daveguy
I don't see the damning screenshots. They don't seem indicative of "you are
banned", but not why. It does say she has been banned for 30 days for "posting
things not allowed". That could be anything. Are you seeing something I am
not? Banning for political opinion is definitely wrong even if not
unconstitutional since it isn't the gov (and I am liberal -- doesn't matter
the side you are on). However if she was also posting hate speech then it
would be understandable. I am not sure it is poorly conceived
moderation/censorship on Facebook's part or scapegoating on her part the
reason for the ban. Neither the screenshots nor video clarifies that.

------
gtf21
Article talks a lot about Zuckerberg but I'm unconvinced that he's working up
some big conspiracy to censor conservatives.

Definitely disappointing that this happened on FB (regardless of what is legal
- the law can't be made to fit all cases), I just doubt there's a conspiracy
going on.

On a side note: this looks like a really well written, balanced and
trustworthy source.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
Check out some of the other submissions for heatst.com:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=heatst.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=heatst.com)

It's some wingnut site.

------
walrus01
Hey, you know, Facebook isn't obligated to publish anything. It's a 'free'
service. If you want to publish something run your own httpd. There is
absolutely nothing preventing anyone with $20 from buying their own domain,
setting up DNS on it and running a webserver through a bulk hosting company.
Oh wait, that's too hard for you? I can hear the world's smallest violin
playing.

~~~
jff
Remember you said this if they ever decide to censor someone you _agree_ with.

~~~
walrus01
Oh I'm very much aware of it. Anyone's relationship with Facebook is governed
by their TOS, nothing more. Because it's a 'free' service, you're not owed
anything by it. In fact, you're the product. Facebook wants to be the world's
largest walled garden and their entire revenue model is based on keeping
everyone trapped inside it, for the purpose of selling advertising. I would
never encourage anyone to rely solely on Facebook to publish anything they
care about, no matter where it is on the political spectrum.

You can use it as a tool to reach more people but don't become utterly
dependent upon it, that's just foolish.

Expect and plan for anything that you pay $0.00 for to disappear at any time,
for any random reason.

