
Facebook takes down Britain First ads - jmsflknr
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46746601
======
vorpalhex
As always, this begs the question between hate speech and disfavored political
speech. I think Britain First is doing their best to actively revert the UK
back 50 years, but I struggle to see why it is they're simply hate speech and
not a valid political movement.

~~~
baddox
> Ads for a Britain First petition to stop a mosque being built in Maidstone,
> Kent, appeared on Facebook over the Christmas period, despite the group
> being banned by the social network.

> The three ads and the page on which they originated have now been removed,
> after BBC News contacted Facebook.

I think it’s safe to say that the “to stop a mosque being built” is the
important phrase here.

~~~
alkibiades
why is that hate speech? i don’t want more churches built, is that hate
speech?

~~~
Spivak
It depends, why don't you want more churches built?

Because it's a Muslim church and you don't like them?

Because you're an anti-theist?

Because you don't like the noise?

Because you think their application for a zoning exception is shaky?

~~~
growlist
..and this is the problem with hate speech - it involves perceived intent and
thus the criminalisation of thought.

~~~
ABCLAW
Wait until you find out that _mens rea_ exists.

~~~
growlist
Shallow comment. Suggest you read this:
[http://barristerblogger.com/2018/03/18/the-met-has-a-
problem...](http://barristerblogger.com/2018/03/18/the-met-has-a-problem-with-
hate-crime-it-cant-explain-what-it-means/)

------
spaginal
The question is, how would Facebook treat reverse bigotry that aligns with
their personal biases and values? Would it recieve the same hate speech
designation, or does “hate speech” end where your own personal politics begin?

That’s my issue with corporations and media playing speech cop. Free speech
wasn’t supposed to have carve outs. As long as you are not committing an
actual crime, and not just a thought crime, put every vile idea out in the
public and let people discuss it.

Censorship is never a sound policy, the scales slide, when old ideas are
squashed, what happens when the victors of censorship disagree with eachother?
Is their first impulse to actually debate or just continue designating more
ideas as hate speech?

~~~
ABCLAW
>Free speech wasn’t supposed to have carve outs.

Sorry to be a stickler, but what exactly are you referring to here?

This statement is demonstrably false at the principle level, even in Mills'
work, let alone in the enabling constitutional, legislative, or treaty-based
implementations of Free Speech.

We can have a sound discussion about the optimal place a society should land
upon on the more restrictions vs. less restrictions spectrum, but to pretend
that the only way the system works is at precisely zero limits warps the
conversation and prevents us from taking a deep look into the issue.

------
pointillistic
Anyone remembers how the internet was going to liberate the expression,
instead we got two, three bottlenecks manned (or is it personed?) by censors
actively supported by the MSM and virtually the entire university system.

~~~
freehunter
That is absolutely not the fault of the Internet and entirely the fault of the
people using the Internet. Every time I hear this complaint on a forum other
than Facebook or Reddit or Twitter I laugh because if it was true, HN wouldn't
exist. The millions of independent phpBB forums wouldn't exist. I wouldn't be
allowed to write my own HTML and Javascript if this was true.

Some people willingly put themselves into buckets, yes. It's always been that,
it will always be that way. But don't pretend for a second that this is the
death of the Internet or a lack of free expression or censorship or any of
that nonsense until you can't buy an IP address and host a web server on your
own hardware. The web is free and open, and the existence of non-free and non-
open parts of the Internet does not negate that in any way.

~~~
spaginal
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/08/13/godad...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/08/13/godaddy-
tells-white-supremacist-site-daily-stormer-to-find-a-new-domain-provider/amp/)

Domain providers are beginning to police content they deem as unacceptable
speech or ideas. Are you going to remember IP addresses when the DNS system
itself polices thought?

The problem is, tech companies are beginning to behave like a cartel when it
comes to free expression. We don’t just see it in Facebook, we see it across
all facets of the digital economy, from payment providers to hosting providers
to DNS services themselves.

If your solution for someone getting the scarlet letter is to say they are
free to build their own network, then we are approaching a major problem.

~~~
freehunter
The slope is not nearly as slippery as you're imagining it to be. I'm not sure
_literal white supremecists_ are the shining beacon upon which you want to
hang your argument (if I'm wrong on this, you don't need to read any further).
We're not talking about a controversial political opinion, we're not talking
about coastal liberals shutting down good American conservative free speech,
we're talking about _white supremecists_ who refer to themselves as
_genocidal_. People who want to murder (and have done so) non-white people
just for the crime of having a different skin color.

But beyond that absolutely ridiculous argument, yes. The Internet is free-as-
in-freedom as long as you have an IP address. If you want to start your own
competitor to the World Wide Web because a few private companies exercise
their right to not to business with you, you can do that. The Web and the
Internet work without domain names, and if you really need your message out
there and your followers really need to hear it, is typing in an IP address
too much work? If it is, then your message might not be as convincing as you
think it is. But even still, you can host your own website or Internet service
regardless. And you can start your own registrar and host your own servers and
make your own payment processor. That is entirely possible and at that point
only the government can stop you (and even then, you can choose your own
government like The Pirate Bay did). If your movement is stopped by a lack of
_convenience_ , that's not Facebook's problem.

Saying "but Facebook banned me" as if Facebook was the entire Internet or even
the entire Web doesn't fly. Only you can give them that power, and you can
take that power from them whenever you want to. Being banned from
Twitter/Facebook/YouTube is only a problem if you honestly believe that
Twitter/Facebook/YouTube owns the entire Internet. But they don't. You're free
to start a competitor any time you want.

~~~
spaginal
Is the only food store in town, who is ran by a racist, allowed to starve
black families by refusing them service because of their skin color?

Are tech companies across the board allowed to shut down, disenfranchise,
silence, and marginalize people and businesses because they simply disagree
with their lawful politics and ideas?

~~~
freehunter
>Is a store allowed to refuse service to customers because of their skin
color?

In the US, no. Title III of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination
based on race (among other things).

>Are tech companies allowed ban users because they disagree with their
politics?

Yes. Political ideology is not a protected class the US. The government can't
tell you what you can and can't say, but private businesses are completely
free to moderate content hosted on their platforms.

But again, if you don't like the rules of Facebook/GoDaddy/Twitter/etc, of
these private non-governmental for-profit businesses, you're free to start
your own. You're making it sound like a global conspiracy when in reality it's
more likely that Daily Stormer's talk of white supremacy and genocide is so
distasteful across the board that major tech companies independently and
simultaneously decided that these people were not welcome.

------
keiferski
Does anyone else remember when, circa ±2009, Zuckerberg used to frame Facebook
as (in his words) a utility? What has happened since? The company grew and
became more "normalized" and thus inline with the "company activist" model so
prevalent today?

~~~
vertex-four
Among other things, they realised that being a utility would not be as
profitable. Also, many of the people who work there legitimately don't want
Facebook to be used as a tool to make the world a worse place.

------
pjc50
> The ads were first spotted and reported to Facebook as hate speech by user
> [real name!] on 2 January and he received a standard response from Facebook
> saying that the page in question did not "go against one of our specific
> community standards".

They published the _real name_ of the person who made the complaint! That's
just asking for him to get death threats. This is one of those moments where
"normal journalism" covers things which would be banned from most forums, in
this case as "doxxing".

> A day later, when the BBC got in touch, it had changed its mind.

This happens a lot. They'll routinely leave terrible violent rhetoric up while
censoring anything that looks like a female-presenting nipple.

------
bluGill
Regardless of content I don't want to live in a world where corporate
interests censor me.

~~~
EGreg
So join us in building open source alternatives.

~~~
js8
I am curious - which open source alternative to Facebook (and Google) has
currently the most traction?

~~~
EGreg
I am curious as well!

------
lewisflude
I feel like this corporate censorship is awful for free speech. Specifically,
because dividing people by beliefs/demographics increases tribalistic
behaviour and the spread of misinformation.

I foresee a situation where we have multiple social networks, each with
radically different social/political slants. Similar to what we've seen with
things like Reddit and Voat.

~~~
robertAngst
It seems like this is the first time non millennials had to deal with 'shitty
mods'.

They are new and don't understand- Its time to move off facebook.

Same reason I'm here instead of reddit.

~~~
lewisflude
I think the fact that I've not encountered an "evergreen" community (i.e. one
that doesn't go the way of Digg, Reddit eventually) gives me a lot of anxiety
with regards to my day to day online community usage.

Online communities often feel ephemeral, but maybe that's healthy in the grand
scheme of the internet?

I'm really thankful that we have good mods here on HN.

~~~
pjc50
Metafilter has been around for almost 20 years with a small, stable, gatekept
community.

I think a certain amount of churn is unavoidable in this accelerated 21st
century life, sadly.

------
gwbas1c
Maybe it's time to realize that it's very hard to be objective and neutral. In
this case, being objective and neutral is just giving the extremes a platform
to promote themselves.

Maybe sites like Facebook should try taking a "no politics" policy, or a
policy where a political ad is always placed next to a free ad from the
opposing side?

~~~
pjc50
> a political ad is always placed next to a free ad from the opposing side?

This is obviously a disaster, as it gives free rein to put lies on the same
footing as truth. But adopting local rules on electoral advertising is a
really good idea - UK print political adverts _must_ have an imprint saying
who's paid for them, for example.

------
mabbo
It is concerning that Britain First exist and have the support they do.

It's also concerning that Facebook has the power to decide who is right and
wrong when it comes to the most popular form of free speech we have in the
world today.

These aren't mutually exclusive facts- they can both be true or false and you
can agree or disagree with them to different levels. And I don't have an
answer. I'm not even sure any answer the majority would agree with exists.
This is the great problem our generation must answer as a society, or destroy
everything great we have achieved for having not solved it.

~~~
digianarchist
Britain First have about as much support as Islam4UK which is to say not much.

The EDL was the real worry with membership peaking at 184,000 but today
virtually none existent.

The majority of both groups appears to have merged into UKIP.

~~~
pjc50
Which in turn has merged into the Conservative Party. Occasionally an MP or
councillor is found posting in a hate group.

[https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zm8zb3/tory-mp-with-
histo...](https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zm8zb3/tory-mp-with-history-of-
islamophobia-was-a-member-of-racist-facebook-groups)

(Sometimes people claim they were added to the group without their knowledge
or consent, which FB lets you do - this is a massive misfeature of the
system!)

------
EGreg
I've seen Britain First ads. While I disagree with their fearmongering, I
think they went to great lengths to portray things in a nonviolent and "we
Christians just want to make sure our children can still practice
Christianity" way.

Really, though, this is beside the point. Just like whether the Internet
should be regulated under Title I or Title II was beside the point. The point
is that, when you're at a point where it's one or the other one-size-fits-all
policy, it's a symptom of too much consolidation: the telcos / banks /
platforms / whatever have become too big. It's a cartel.

Look, Facebook is becoming something much different than college social
networks, or a "utility". Isn't it time for open source software that we can
all move to, like the Web instead of AOL, or like Wordpress instead of
Blogger.com ?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI)

Why are we, in 2018, still relying on giant centralized corporations to
connect us and "allow" us to have our own ( _shocker_ ) chatroom on their
servers?

~~~
Cthulhu_
> Why are we, in 2018, still relying on giant centralized corporations to
> connect us and "allow" us to have our own (shocker) chatroom on their
> servers?

We're not though, but why are you posting this in a centralized, censored /
managed comment section while you could go to one of the decentralized open
source alternatives currently being worked on? It's not about options, it's
about what everyone wants - engagement, being where the crowds are, being
heard, reading other people's opinions. As long as they align enough with your
own, of course.

~~~
EGreg
Actually HN built their own software for their own forum, and I think even
released it. They aren't hosted on some huge centralized site. This is exactly
what I'm talking about.

Would you also say "it's not about options" in other areas like net
neutrality, telcos or banking?

------
dep_b
OK so let's assume for a moment that those people neither have a problem with
the religious part of Islam nor the fact that it's usually practiced by
foreigners but only have a problem with the political part. Then let's apply
it to something else to see how it feels:

"Facebook removes petition against Communist youth center"

It has a kind of 1950's ring to it and it still doesn't totally remove the
smell of stupidity, but this once was a very common stance not only in the US
but in most western countries.

"We want Britain to stay capitalist" is absolutely not a strange slogan.

I still think anybody should be able to be a Communist in a free society, as
long as they don't plan a violent guerrilla or want to overthrow democracy
with some kind of idealistic planned economy dictatorship.

------
gammateam
“Political groups have been spending increasing amounts of money on Facebook
adverts”

That’s because Cambridge Analytical was the instruction manual

All the hearings and dockets are better free content than any marketing guru’s
online course

~~~
tossaccount123
give me a break, Obama's team was allowed to suck up Facebook's entire social
graph and also used an app to get the data for all of the app users friends
without consent

[https://www.fastcompany.com/40546816/obama-campaigns-
targete...](https://www.fastcompany.com/40546816/obama-campaigns-targeted-
share-app-also-used-facebook-data-from-millions-of-unknowing-users)

Zuckerberg and Sandberg hosted events to raise money for Obama

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-harnessing-facebooks-
soci...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-harnessing-facebooks-social-
graph/)

The media called it genius and a good thing when obama used data and social
media to win. Those dumb dinosaur conservatives were being left behind by tech
savvy democrats. Now it's portrayed as evil when the reverse happened. Pure
propaganda

[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.htm...](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-
digital-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-
machine-facebook-election)

~~~
gammateam
I dont think it matters? I didnt say it was evil, interestingly enough you did

Cambridge Analytica is still the instruction manual

Its almost like your response was on your clipboard for anytime you saw CA in
a sentence

How would you expect me to respond to that.. sorry that Obama’s team isnt
getting credit?

------
skilled
> "We thank the BBC.."

And why is BBC trying to portray that a canned email response is an official
statement?

I don't doubt the matter at hand, but this is very sloppy journalism.

~~~
pjc50
That _is_ the official statement Facebook gave to the BBC, and it's proper
journalism to report what they said when asked.

~~~
skilled
It's not. And I actually feel insulted to have you counter my initial
statement. Go read the article again and tell me how is it an official
response.

------
plufz
I never think ads have been fair or 100% free speech. If I own a web site with
ads I very much get to pick which organizations can use my platform for
getting out their message. And they are free to start other web pages with
their own content. Also if I am a billionarie I can make my voice heard a
billion times louder than a poor person, how democratic is that? When Facebook
bans actual accounts or pages, I think that is a bit different. You could
still argue that they could start their own web page, but I think that is
murkier territory when they limit non-paid free speech.

Edit: Would be great to get a reply on why I'm being downvoted?

