It's going to be really awkward when this is all over and big tech has to pivot back to when nationalism, strong borders, private firearm ownership, and armed neo-nazi militias[0] were all bad things.
War makes unlikely alliances. If you're fighting for the existence of your country you're not going to say no to the help of nazis. And if you're using the biggest social media platform on the planet to organize that war, you're going to want your allies on it.
What you've just discovered is that a unified policy across the entire world isn't actually the right policy. In one country you may want to ban some stuff you wouldn't ban in another one.
I just hope no one ever uses the catchy rule of thumb that"if 9 people sit around a table with 1 nazi, there are 10 nazis around that table" again seriously after this haha. It's that not even 1 month ago if one person at a protest had a nazi flag everyone protesting there was also labeled a nazi. But you got NATO publicly glorifying soldiers with literal nazi insignia (the black sun) and that's just being the good guys now.
I had never heard of Oliver Stone's "Ukraine On Fire" documentary until YouTube banned it, so I watched it last night to see what the problem was. It seemed to be a well documented summary of the events in Ukraine in the last 25 years or so. One notable thing was the number of times Nazis were entered into the picture, and it is strange that no one is talking about it.
I can say my perspective has changed a little bit on the subject.
Those Nazi groups may have been established by a certain foreign nation primarily to discredit the civil movement and to establish cause for military intervention.
I don't disagree, they are the perfect boogeyman. The problem is that if they may have started as just a boogeyman, they have undeniably grown to be an actual problem with huge institutional power.
That's why if you support ukraine, making excuses instead of wanting them gone is just playing right in the hands of russian propaganda. The more those groups grow in influence (like they have been doing since the start of the invasion), the more it's going to be hard to deny for western powers by just claiming it's a Russian red hereing.
Ok, so I took a look, and it doesn't seem like that it was created (or made more biased) in response to the recent events. Here's the history of that Wikipedia page if you'd like to see older versions: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Azov_Battalion&of...
> One notable thing was the number of times Nazis were entered into the picture, and it is strange that no one is talking about it.
The violent phase of the Maiden square riots looked like postapocalyptic neonazi live action roleplaying. Clear nazi esthetics. I guess many of them were to, in hindsight.
It is strange becouse I guess the Ukraine gov. does not need the Azov batallion anymore. They probably can't get rid of them (easely) even if they wanted.
As long as Ukraine fighting a war, that would be impossible. If they will sign peace and focus on economic development to join EU, neo-nazi topic will change its polarity and become toxic again. There is no way Ukraine can join EU with "Pravy sector" being legal organization.
With "war" do you mean 2014+ or the full invasion?
I understand that the gov. can't disband them now since they will just disobey orders and there is no resources to arrest them, but there was plenty of time before that.
Using more or less neonazis as a separate unit is just begging for problems, even if you are fighting separatist militia. Thinking about it, it is total madness. There is a insane internal security risk having them in a unit.
Does that matter? So national socialist groups are okay in times of war? Associating with Neonazi groups is suddenly fine when they are fighting on the side you cheer for?
Fuck the russian government and their war of aggression, unequivocally. Ive lost a distant friend in syria during The russian government's intervention there, and some of my current refugee friends lost their homes to their bombs. So yes I have no love for putins regime.
But can we please stop making excuses for literal nazis ? It's so weird to basically normalize or even encourage such groups because you don't want to agree with anything russia says. Those groups have been growing for the past 2 weeks because of that completely passive attitude where no one wants to be criticizing "our team". They can openly wear insignia designed by Himmler in front of cameras and still be praised by NATO. I think we should realize that this is not a marvel movie with a clear good vs bad plot. So there's nothing wrong with admitting there is a huge far right problem and still be against the invasion. The "good side" can be criticized without support the "evil side"
For the past few years I've been hearing that we can focus on more than a single issue at the time, so why not do that? Because wow this completely insane 180° on far right groups in a mere 2 weeks really really make the craze around anti fascism and nazism accusations in the past 5 years look like complete poltical theater. At this point I won't even be surprised if we start justifying actual war crimes if the Good side does it.
Yes. When you're fighting for literal survival, if you're so married to virtue signaling at that point that you don't fight the existential threat first, you're probably fucked.
Do I like nazis? No. Do I associate with them? No. If working together with one is how I stop some jackass from killing us both, am I going to do it? Sure as hell yes.
What you don't seem to realize is that those aren't your LARPer nazis that roam around on discord just to sound edgy and cool. They have literally committed war crimes, rapes and torture. And that's been documented since 2015.
By not trying to root them out now they will inexorably take over whatever will be left of ukraine. That's almost always what happens with radical armed elements, and as I said they are getting way more comfortable with not even hiding anymore. I can't think of any example where fighting side by side with radical extremists didn't end up backfiring. And beyond that I mean if the UA government can't even get their soldiers to not wear black sun pins openly and openly & explicitly promotes azov on social media, that really does not sound like they are even reluctant to have them on their side.
It's a war and I totally get that it's dirty and that you can't pick and chose your allies everytime. But nazis are an easy line to draw.
>What you don't seem to realize is that those aren't your LARPer nazis that roam around on discord just to sound edgy and cool.
Fully aware of this, thing is, given their circumstances, I can't really give half a shit. It's amazing easy to wax lyrical about "morality" when you've got the safety guarantee of the most powerful military on the face of the earth. A bit harder when they're literally dropping shells on your head and driving tanks into your cities. I cannot, and will not judge them for compromising when facing a literally existential threat.
Can't exactly get anywhere else when you're just a Russian puppet government. Historically speaking, that's bringing a hell lot worse of a future to anyone in the region than the Azov ever could.
So supporting AL Qaida was morally right in the context of the American invasion/interference in the middle east? They were after all at the forefront of the fight against the invaders too.
That isn't really the gotcha you think it is. The world isn't some simple good/bad binary; one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist after all.
Moreover, when the US went to Afghanistan, I certainly didn't judge Al Qaeda for using "terrorist" tactics like IEDs, or non-uniformed combat, in violation of the Geneva convention. They could have gone with honourable conventional warfare. Then they'd be honorable corpses relatively quickly.
In the end, when war comes, compromise is inevitable. You might regret the consequences down the line, but without that compromise to begin with, you might not have had that future.
It wasn't a gotcha, and I don't disagree with the spirit of your comment. I really appreciate the consistency at least, but do you agree that you'd have been in a pretty tiny minority during the iraq or Afghanistan war?
But I think that's besides the point. You'd be a minority in Russia too if you opposed the war in the Ukraine right now.
I strongly dislike the lens of morality here, because especially in this case, its coming from those who are insulated from the... Extenuating circumstances the Ukrainians find themselves in.
Furthermore I belive that most would do the same given similar circumstances. Historically speaking, it wasn't THAT long ago that the West aligned with the rather brutal Soviets to defeat their nazi greater enemy.
Why do you think nazis are so despised, because they write nasty things on twitter?
Arming literal nazis with weapons and letting them loose in a lawless context is a criminally stupid thing to do. These guys have no problem harming civilians or anyone who they feel like, that’s what makes them bad guys.
That is certainly true. There are many examples of that. Israel provided weapons and advisers to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. They even bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor for them. [1] A more widely known example is the alliance between US and the Soviets during the WW2.
> What you've just discovered is that a unified policy across the entire world isn't actually the right policy.
I disagree with that. The ideal "public square" platforms should be neutral. The best policy (which I think will work in almost all cases for general platforms like FB) is to stick to supporting free expression as much as the law permits, don't manipulate people's feeds, and develop tools to let people filter out the content they don't want to see.
But the laws are different in different countries ( duh!). Antisemitism isn't illegal in the US, but is an actual crime in France just to give one example.
Right, that's a contentious area. The extent of jurisdiction of e.g. France over FB seems very nebulous to me.
And even then, I'm sure they have a court process to determine who's guilty of "hate speech" (or thoughtcrime or whatever), and FB is capable of challenging the cases or complying with the rulings for French residents. I assume blanket prior restraint is frowned upon in freer countries of the world.
There are efforts to pass Draconian laws to limit free expression online though [1].
How should Facebook adjust policies on a country by country basis? Should Facebook ban content on homosexuality or marijuana use in countries where those things are illegal?
Yeah, probably. You might not like it, but if you want to do business in a country, you generally need to follow their laws. That's how this shit works. Don't like it? Don't do business there.
Where in the hell are you getting 10% from? Ukraine has a multi-party government and their neo-nazis don't have even a single seat in their rather large parliament.
My 8-10% figure is quite conservative when compared with recent polling data. The Neo-Nazi movements are popular enough that Zelenskyy had to walk back his anti-Banderite rhetoric that was a decent part of his comedic act pre-2015-ish (I have only seen a few of his comedic specials from before that year so this timeframe is a rough guess).
>A poll conducted in early May 2021 by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation together with the Razumkov Centre's sociological service showed that 32% of citizens consider Stepan Bandera's activity as a historical figure to be positive for Ukraine, as many consider his activity negative; another 21% consider Bandera's activities as positive as they are negative. According to the poll, a positive attitude prevails in the western region of Ukraine (70%); in the central region of the state, 27% of respondents consider his activity positive, 27% consider his activity negative and 27% consider his activity both positive and negative; negative attitude prevails in the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine (54% and 48% of respondents consider his activity negative for Ukraine, respectively).
>Monuments dedicated to Stepan Bandera have been constructured in a number of western Ukrainian cities, including a statue in Lviv, as well as Staryi Uhryniv, Kolomyia, Drohobych, Zalishchyky, Mykytyntsi, Uzyn, Buchach, Hrabivka, Horodenka, Staryi Sambir, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Strusiv, Truskavets, Horishniy, Velykosilky, Sambir, Velyki Mosty, Skole, Turka, Zdolbuniv,Chortkiv, Sniatyn, and in such cities and villages as Berezhany, Boryslav, Chervonohrad, Dubliany, Kamianka-Buzka, Kremenets, Mostyska, Pidvolochysk, Seredniy Bereziv, Terebovlia, Verbiv, and Volia-Zaderevatska.
>In 2010 and 2011, Bandera was named an honorary citizen of a number of western Ukrainian cities, including Khust,Nadvirna, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Kolomyia, Dolyna,Varash, Lutsk, Chervonohrad, Terebovlia, Truskavets, Radekhiv, Sokal,Stebnyk, Zhovkva,Skole, Berezhany, Sambir,Boryslav, Brody, Stryi, and Morshyn.
Term "Nazi" originally and in modern Russian [propaganda] have a different meaning. "Being Ukrainian (speaking the language, knowing the history, preserving the culture)" is equal to being "Nazi" in the eyes of Russians.
So 10% are those, who would not make compromises related to language, history and culture to have some economic or political gains.
TL;DR the link is about Ukrainians vs. Poles, not about Jews and/or Holocaust
Ukrainians and Poles were enthusiastically massacring each other for hundreds of years for various reasons (Catholics vs. Orthodox, serfs vs. land owners, nationalists vs. nationalists and so on). This part of history is accepted by both sides. It's true, that collateral damage included Jews sometimes. Some Eastern European Jewish historians describe it as "always choosing the wrong side". Jews were targeted for managing estates of Polish nobility, participation in establishment of Communist rule in Ukraine in 1920s, participation in establishment of Soviet rule in 1939-1941 in Western Ukraine. But they were never targeted for being Jews.
>During the first year of the German occupation, the OUN urged its members to join German police units. They were trained in the use of weapons so they could assist the German SS in the murder of approximately 200,000 Volhynian Jews.
This page has links to 18 separate massacres where people in Ukraine were killed specifically because they were jews. Stop spreading disinformation and engaging in holocaust denial. The famous Simon Weisanthal even survived one of the massacres.
>The most notorious massacre of Jews in Ukraine was at the Babi Yar ravine outside Kiev, where 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation on 29–30 September 1941
>According to The Simon Wiesenthal Center (in January 2011) "Ukraine has, to the best of our knowledge, never conducted a single investigation of a local Nazi war criminal, let alone prosecuted a Holocaust perpetrator."
That 8-10% sounds wildly overestimated. Furthermore, neo-Nazis tend to be young males, who can't even quit the country now and are mobilised in the army, not to mention that a neo-Nazi is the type of person to die for their country(really not saying that as a positive), so the number of neo-Nazi refugees should be in the tens of people, not hundreds of thousands.
Surprised to see no talk about revenue. I am highly cynical about it - This hate that we're talking about sells. It sells like hotcakes. The entire world is on a binge with it.
The other kind of hate that gets banned brings no revenue and upsets the core audience by the means of PR damage of the platform.
That's just it though. The position was never that it was BAD per-se.
It's just... They wanted to control who was permitted to express nationalist sentiment, who were acceptable targets of "hate", and who was allowed to own guns.
"Nazis who travel to Ukraine to fight Russians are less bad people doing morally and ethically ambiguous things. Once they leave Ukraine, the actions they performed involving Russians are both unethical (because they willingly travelled there to murder conscripted teenagers) and ethical (because they willingly travelled there, presumably to defend the sovereignty of a nation they have tenuous cultural links with)"
Just wait 'til the Ukrainian Foreign Legion starts to be accused of things like massacres (whether legitimate or false reports for propaganda), then guys who were marching in BLM counter protests who went to Ukraine (again, running with the bad nazis doing good things) will have their social media histories paraded about to defame the entire foreign legion.
That changes things quite a bit, and definitely goes into the "none of our business, let the Ukrainians decide who is on their side" line of thinking for me, since all most of us are doing is putting blue and yellow on things and pretending that makes a difference.
I wouldn't be comfortable working with a Nazi on a line in a kitchen, just as I'm sure they'd say the same about me, but if Russia invaded here, I'd be quite comfortable "walking with him to the end of the bridge," as the other poster said. Deal with the day-to-day bologna after you've dealt with the once-in-a-century bologna.
That's not the point, really. This is real, hard proof, courtesy of Facebook and Instagram, that the West are a bunch of rabidly anti-Russian Nazis just like Putin has been saying all along! It's hard to think of a worse move. Now, if they had simply clarified that calls to military self-defense in the face of an internationally-condemned "military operation" don't count as "calls to violence", that would be a very different matter. But that's not what they did!
The back sun isn't just a pagan symbol. This is pure revisionism, the exact version they use was literally designed by Himmler for the SS. Are we really doing " the swastika is just a religious symbol" or "the confederate flag is just about historic heritage" now?
They are going to have a hard time trying to explain themselves as to why they are praising Nazis on their platform and why they did not 'de-platform hate' especially those ones.
For companies like Facebook and Instagram, outrage sells; especially during a war. So why not squeeze out extra ads while they are at it?
The Israeli military is arming and training the neo-nazi militias in Ukraine. There are even Orthodox Jews who joined the Azov neo-nazi militias to defend Ukraine. Sometimes it can be complicated.
Israel sells weapons to anyone, it's just business.
As for the "orthodox jews fighting alongside nazis", that is just an unfounded claim, without any evidence other than double hearsay in a third-rate newspaper.
Orthodox jews often don't serve even in Israel (inb4: yes, yes, ulta-orthodox, etc etc, but still, and yeshiva students are still exempt).
I'd like to see stronger evidence than hearsay for this extraordinary claim, does it exist?
That's appalling and will be one of the last coffins on foreign run communication systems everywhere.
Can you imagine that some techies in California start deciding which people are to be attacked in your country or by your country? It's also probably not techies that are deciding that but that's not the point.
That's such a nation security threat that no country with sane government can afford to allow. Wars, genocides can not only be facilitated but also initiated and commanded by these social media.
And considering all the Machiavellian thinking going on, you can actually expect things to be done. French wine is inconvenience for the Californian farmers maybe? The French lately aren't really that active with ad buys anyway, why not design timelines to induce social unrest in France giving a kick to the American winemakers?
It is known that Facebook studied manipulation of emotions through curation of the user timelines[0].
Also, isn't that against Apple's AppStore guidelines? Apple should remove Instagram and Facebook from the AppStore immediately.
Facebook is not really making a decision themselves here, they’re just basically reacting to the prevalent public sentiment in the west. It’s not particularly different to what newspapers etc. were doing during WW1, WW2 or any other war (to a certain degree).
Why don't you provide some arguments instead? That's seriously low quality comment right there that doesn't amount to anything other than a personal attack. This shouldn't have place in HN.
Your initial comment doesn't make any sense. Why would Facebook being American have anything to do with anything?
It's a natural right of people to defend themselves and that requires killing invaders. There is nothing wrong with people doing this or discussing this on any platform.
It's not because its American but foreign(except for Americans, of course) and as we know from history, different countries can have different interests and they can clash and as we can see from the current events this can happen even today.
Communications are vital to the society and it is a national security risk when your communications are run by non-impartial entities. Meta choosing to enable some communities engage in an activity and deny it to others makes them a grave risk. This time around you may be happy with their choices, the next time you might be targeted.
Misleading title and article. Facebook and Instagram are allowing people in countries neighboring Russia to call for violence against Russian who are not civilians.
"We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” Meta said in a statement."
This article from Reuters is at best clickbait, and at worse Russian pro-war propeganda. People are eating this stuff up because they have a hate-boner for progressives, wokeism, and Facebook. If this confirms your biases too well, it might be a good idea to cross-examine.
Edit: When Meta actually allows calls for violence against Russian civilisans, I will be the first to complain. After all, I am Russian by blood.
"We won't allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians," says Meta.
They define credible as: having two "indicators of credibility", such as location or method. That is a considerably higher bar than for any other group. And that's referring to civilians, not soldiers.
In a separate, internal memo, they explicitly say that hate speech and violent speech against Russian civilians is allowed "if the context is the Russian invasion". That's sufficiently vague that the policy allows for dehumanization.
> That's sufficiently vague that the policy allows for dehumanization.
You're right to be concerned about dehumanisation, and to raise questions about Meta's ability to manage it.
However, when you consider that they are only allowing hate speech for the region affected by Russia's war, you'll realise that most of the people venting will either be personally affected or know someone who is.
I have to ask; in what way do you think someone could call for the death of Russian civilisans specifically in the context of the Russian invasion? I'm struggling to think of an example to support your argument. Perhaps you will provide one?
Why did they both say "Russians" and Russian Soldiers " then? They made the distinction and then included both. It's hard to take to blame people for thinking that basically means civilians too when they explicitly didn't just limit it to Russian soldiers. It's such an obviously ambiguous statement that was not even needed in the first place.
But yeah I'm sure Meta will be able to verify the military status of everyone that's being threatened or mobbed on Facebook.
> But yeah I'm sure Meta will be able to verify the military status of everyone that's being threatened or mobbed on Facebook.
You're straw-manning my argument. It's pretty obvious when someone says, 'death to the Russian invaders' that they mean Russian soldiers or Russians, specifically in the context of invading.
Also this change is only for the regions close to Ukraine. I personally would feel strongly if my neighbouring countries started getting invaded for no reason as well. If Meta don't relax the rules, it's likely they'll have to ban a lot of regular people from those countries.
Russia invaded a democracy. People nearby are going to be affected by it personally. They are going to have very strong emotions about it. They should be allowed to vent those emotions online without worrying about getting censored or banned for it.
It's ridiculous to assume that "I hate my neighbor and am going to kill him" and "there's a Russian army invading my city, we should set up an ambush" should be held to the same standard of speech. Of course, a larger question is whether Facebook should be the arbiter for this in the first place, but then the content is posted on their own private platform, and unlike a lot of people here I still think they should have 100% control over what they allow and disallow vs the government dictating it.
It's 2003, the US and UK invade Iraq claiming that they have WMD(which later was proven to be false).
Is it O.K. for Facebook to allow call for violence against Americans and the British? Should Facebook provide secure channel for the organisation of the assassination of T. Blair?
Zuckerberg moved by the struggle of the Palestinians, starts allowing Hamas to organize attacks through E2E encrypted channel on Israeli soldiers and politicians. Maybe when he is on it, should also provide them with historical location data of the person of interest? Is that alright?
Nicholson Baker wrote a novel envisioning the assassination of G.W. Bush. I don't know that it went anywhere, but as far as I know he has never been bothered by the law.
I'm sure that Facebook will be checking the persons targeted on their platform for registration in the Russian army but do you suggest that you are alright for Facebook to facilitate the the mentioned actions as long as they restrict it to soldiers?
I can't speak about the first part (I assume posts of this nature aren't really going to mention individual soldiers by name), but yes I do think it's okay for Facebook to facilitate violence when it is a clear case of self defense. I think organized guerilla warfare against a powerful invading army is a perfect use case for a neighborhood social network.
> "there's a Russian army invading my city, we should set up an ambush"
I believe a zero tolerance policy on incitement to violence is the only tenable approach. No matter the cause. Replace "Russian" with "US" and you are on CIA's shitlist.
Actual planning of armed resistance should not be done on Facebook or Twitter anyway.
>It's ridiculous to assume that "I hate my neighbor and am going to kill him" and "there's a Russian army invading my city, we should set up an ambush" should be held to the same standard of speech
Yeah, those examples are the easy ones. What about "we should genocide russians"? Where does that lie on your spectrum? Should facebook be allowing such speech?
> Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising.
Your hypothetical isn’t included in any of the current exemptions to free speech protection.
The US legal standard is imminent lawless action, not just any lawless action. I doubt that some a HN/facebook commenter is going to cause hoardes of people into pour into russia and do illegal action, so that hypothetical is probably legal under US law.
Another brilliant move in the game of "let's only allow US approved opinions while claiming to be unbiased." Next up we'll be allowed to deadname russian trans people!
If Russia wanted calling for their troops to die to be a Zuckable offense, they should have spent more time focus-grouping catchy phrases like “the smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud” and “regime change”
What the actual fuck is wrong with these people? Calling for literal violence against Russians is less dangerous than claiming masks aren't helpful? Is there something here I'm not getting?
A Government, even in Western democracies, is a severable and independent set of actors from the people it governs filled with people who have their own agency, view of the world, ambitions and a lot of power.
The Russian Military at least is staffed with people who are obligated to serve and die by their country. That’s part of being a soldier. It’s one thing to sanction a nation for the wars prosecuted by its leaders, but if you vilify the Russian people, you’re playing straight into Putin’s propaganda and frankly they don’t wholly deserve to be vilified either.
Jake thought about how he would conduct his morning routine that day. He brought the razor closer to his face as he stared at another face in the mirror. He looked at the template as a way to guide his desired look.
Of course, the face was not his, but he'd become accustomed to the responsive animations throughout a lifetime of shaving.
"You should probably nix some of those stray hairs and sharpen the beard shape", said the mirror.
Jake thought he was going to go for something a little different this time, but if that's what the mirror recommended, that's the result it was going to get.
"Make sure you turn on your minute-by-minute version updates in your BrainLink for The New York Times to get the best and unbiased news on Russian Aggression."
This slightly perplexed Jake. Last night he was thinking about increasing the feed parameter in his BrainLink for The Washington Post instead of The New York Times, but maybe BrainLink had a new deal with the latter.
Jake was almost done with his face when the mirror issued another transient directive.
"You want to kill some Russians today. Meet at these coordinates to sync with the rest of your Circle."
Jake took some surprise to this. He had met with his Circle frequently to do Collaborations before, but usually it only involved suppressing the underclasses. It was probably just a bug. Probably.
Still, it couldn't hurt to check it out. Jake followed the voice in his head and met with his Circle that day.
They seem to be merely reacting to what general public opinion is (I assume their goal is to keeping their platform relevant rather than to shift what people think).
If there was a widespread negative reaction to what they are doing in the west (or amongst their target audience)I’m sure they’d quickly change their policy.
If there was any doubt about the maliciousness of media and social media companies and actors, that should be long gone for anyone paying attention with a critical eye. The hypocrisy either leads to realization that one has been played all along, or severe cognitive dissonance.
Sadly, being anti-Russian has become the new green.
Russian's are humans too and deserve as much respect and consideration as every other nationality.
Remember, next time your race / religion / sexual orientation/ nationality might be the one being demonised, simply because someone powerful can make money out of having the masses hate you.
Resist the urge to give into mindless hatred and jingoism.
You mean the actions of a single person in power does not reflect 100% of the population of a country? Carefull, next you'll be telling me to think for myself or something!
The Russian people (unlike most other people in history who were targets of ethnic hatred) have the full control to stop this, though.
I don’t think any Russians who have declared their opposition to their current government are explicitly targeted. And it’s doubtful that most western people could easily tell a Russian and an Ukrainian apart. So I fail to see the ethnic/racial component here and I think it’s perfectly legitimate to discriminate people based on their political views in certain cases (supporting an unprovoked war of aggression by a less democratic country against a more democratic one (however flawed) is definitely one of them).
If you equate the Russian people and the Russian government with all of it’s supporters (explicit and implicit ones) that’s on you..
Sometimes I think what would happen if China invades Taiwan? Would FB and IG still allow calls for violence against Chinese? I am pretty sure many people will change their tunes when it comes to China, similar to what happened regarding COVID.
FB and IG already don't operate in China. Out of all the big tech companies, I would think that FB would have the least issue with standing up to China.
Not necessarily saying they would. I don't know enough. But they certainly have a lot less conflict of interest.
None of these things — least of all sanctions — would be allowed against their citizens.
Let’s not forget that the country one lives in is the least likely to show its atrocities. So let’s just accept it — geopolitics ain’t fair.
Therefore I have always been bothered by appeals to some sort of sense of decency in people by various groups being attacked, that are themselves at the same time unapologetically biased and unmoved by the same appeals by other weaker groups. (And yes this most definitely includes Russians.)
On a pedantic level, saying NATO should impose a no-fly-zone is a call to violence. Did these platform ever forbid calls for State-sanctioned force? I would have assumed that these parts of the user terms were referring to unsanctioned, or otherwise criminal violence.
"A no-fly zone" is one of the worst misnomers out there. In this case, it means that NATO - and specifically the USA - will start shooting Russian aircrafts. Sending NATO aircraft is not different from sending tanks. I understand why Ukrainians are asking for it but there is a reason NATO can't get involved.
Even though a no-fly zone would certainty imply a warning of violence, it is not in itself an act of violence when established only in the airspace of a willing nation to the detriment of an aggressor. Russia has no inalienable right to fly over Ukrainian territory.
I am not a supporter of the no-fly zone request from Ukraine, and it would almost certainty escalate the situation to the point of NATO being at war with Russia. However, it would be theoretically possible for the no-fly zone to be imposed without a single Russian plane being shot down—all Russia would have to do is to cease flying over Ukraine.
>I am not a supporter of the no-fly zone request from Ukraine, and it would almost certainty escalate the situation to the point of NATO being at war with Russia. However, it would be theoretically possible for the no-fly zone to be imposed without a single Russian plane being shot down—all Russia would have to do is to cease flying over Ukraine.
Why not go further? Why stop at the air? Why not make the whole country a DMZ? After all,
"it would be theoretically possible for a demilitarized zone to be imposed without a single Russian soldier being injured—all Russia would have to do is to pull all military out of Ukraine."
If NATO declared a no fly zone, assuming the Russian government is rational and primarily concerned about about their military objectives, it would immediately remove all their planes from Ukraine because it’s almost certain that the Western powers would obtain full aerial supremacy very fast. And any full scale attempt by Russia to contest it would lead to the destruction of their airforce.
With ground forces it’s not that clear, Russia could still try to and potentially succeed to achieve some military objectives (especially if they are able to occupy any densely populated areas before NATO forces show up) because NATO countries would be 100x times less willing to sacrifice the lives of their soldiers and probably much less willing to risk civilian casualties.
Also, assuming there is a guarantee (which is obviously impossible) I assume most people in western countries would support a no fly zone. I expect much fewer would support actual boots on the ground even given the same guarantee.
Of course the risk of escalation is too great in either case..
> assuming the Russian government is rational and primarily concerned about about their military objectives
I'm not sure we can assume that much, given how the invasion has been planned and how it's being executed. Even mainstream Russian media started to criticize it with at least one commentator saying there are no good ways of getting out of this war:
> Ah, you get it. Russia should do that, go back into their own border.
My point is that "no fly zone" is pretty similar to "boots on ground", even if they're "peacekeepers". It's not some sort of special military operation you can declare that won't provoke a response from putin.
The discussion was not about wants, predictions, or evaluation of pros and cons. It was about whether or not declaring a no-fly zone over a country that requests it is an act of violence.
That is just an opinion. An often under-informed opinion, and I certainly hope NATO is not dumb enough to put in a no-fly zone in a non-NATO country. However that's not the same as calling for assasination of a country and its people. I have met many wonderful Russian people and I wish them all long and happy lives; obviously not Putin though.
I do not think he would give a flying fuck about zone. And if planes will be downed he will have to answer and the war starts. Russia's army can not hope to win conventional conflict with NATO and is ruled by a rabid man at the top. the only thing it can do in response is to use nukes. After that say goodbye to a world.
I think it stands a better chance of keeping us OUT of a NATO conflict then starting one.. Violating a no-fly zone requires authorization, and hopefully thought..
Whereas, right now, we're simply waiting for a bomb to mistakenly land on the wrong side of a border. No thought, no intention, no authorization...just one of those things that happen during war. I think this is a much more likely outcome.
>"Violating a no-fly zone requires authorization, and hopefully thought.."
Putin did not sign for no flying zone. For him it is not a violation and as much as I hate this maniac he is under no obligation to respect NATO laws on non NATO territory.
Violating Ukraine the way he did required way more than "hopefully thought" and yet it did not stop him.
I think that no-fly zone is a guarantee to get nuked.
But assuming your logic is correct, we're screwed anyway. Putin has always wanted to rebuild the USSR. He's annexed territory in the past, he's attempting to annex it now, and he'll attempt it again in the future.. So at some point, someone's gonna push the button..
I am not sure if this is sarcasm, but yes, it is pretty much up to him.
>"He's annexed territory in the past, he's attempting to annex it now, and he'll attempt it again in the future"
I think Ukraine is where his career ends. The question is how long. And in any way I do not think that he will attack NATO unless in return. I could be wrong but I prefer having a chance not to be annihilated vs a guarantee to the opposite.
In the Vietnam war there were actual Soviet troops shooting down American aircraft with SAMs and it didn't lead to nuclear war. Why do people think even providing Ukraine with aircraft will lead to WW3?
I suggest you do dangerous experiments in your own backyard. I have no idea why they did not start war over Vietnam but I have a feeling the situation now is vastly different.
We need to get rid of the illusion that WW3 isn’t happening already.
I would rather die standing up for my freedom so that me, my family, my children — you — can live in a free world with no warmongering dictators, than cower and live in fear, which the West is collectively doing.
So, the Saudis haven't been bombing Yemen since 2015? I mean it's only a conflict that resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 people. One would think that would cause more outrage.
> it certainly does look like WW3 in Kyiv and Kharkiv.
But somehow it wasn't WW3 when it happened to Herat or Aleppo or Halabja or Hargeisa or Burao or Grozny.
It's almost as if an isolated conflict and a world war are different.
Invasion of Poland literally triggered WW2 with the UK and France declaring war against Germany. Has anything comparable happened yet? No? Then how is it different from any of the dozens of wars fought since WW2?
The UK guaranteed the independence of Poland with an agreement that in language is the same as the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. The West is refusing to fulfill its current obligations under the spirit of that agreement, the same way the UK could have failed to fulfill their agreement in 1939.
So in retrospect saying “it literally triggered WW2” provides zero informational context as to the situation as it is currently happening.
> Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to Belarus, Kazakhstan or Ukraine if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
Which it did.
While the British assurance to Poland was:
> ...in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power.
That isn't remotely the same language.
The West is refusing to escalate the conflict which might trigger a world war. It isn't a world war yet and there is no appetite in the West for one.
And, asserting NATO air dominance in Ukraine is easy and guaranteed to succeed with de minimis cost (in lives and/or military equipment). Whereas creating land dominance with tanks is another matter.
A no-fly zone is an easy win for NATO and would make Ukrainian civilians safe from aerial bombardment.
>The only potential caveat is if Russia uses nukes. But that doesn't start World War III. (However, It probably leads to a partition of Russia like the Allies did to Germany after WWII.)
and you know, most cities in the west being a nuclear wasteland
> The only potential caveat is if Russia uses nukes
That's a ridiculously huge caveat - especially since the guy in charge appears to be unstable and has already threatened to use them. Triggering Putin would potentially be condemning hundreds of millions of people to death.
> It means nothing to keyboard warriors here. (entire comment)
This kind of insult (you're referring to me, but have probably misconstrued what I said) is not OK on HN. There is no intellectual content at all in what you said.
...the sources said Macron had been struck by how different Putin was to the man he had met in his summer residence on the French Riviera three years ago.
lol lots of countries thought Russia was a pushover. Also if Russia starts losing they will start launching nukes. Maybe not a "end all civilization" nuke but say one aimed at a middle sized US city like say Portland or Little Rock to prove a point. Are you ready for that? Same for European cities.
a) There's been very little aerial bombardment to date - tons of missiles, rockets, and artillery though - none of which respect no-fly zones.
b) Do you know how that mad man in charge of Russia would respond if a US jet shot down one of his planes? I don't, but the worst case scenario is pretty darned bad.
If Russia starts WW3 they'll be nuked as well. Contrary to popular belief, Putin is all but stupid or crazy, and he'd never put himself and his country in a position to lose everything. If NATO or any other EU country shoots down a Russian plane -in Ukraine- Russians will retaliate -in Ukraine- with conventional weapons. But this time they know the odds might be against them and probably will be more inclined to real negotiations, not the farce they have been conducting until now.
>If NATO or any other EU country shoots down a Russian plane -in Ukraine- Russians will retaliate -in Ukraine- with conventional weapons.
I think this is a sensitive area where acting like there is any certainty is dangerous. I can't agree with your assumptions about 2nd order and 3rd order effects because there are too many known and unknown variables to consider.
I think it is safe to assume nobody would like to start a nuclear war because of ensured mutual partial or total destruction; intervention in Ukraine with conventional weapons only would send a clear message that there is no will to reach that level.
>intervention in Ukraine with conventional weapons only would send a clear message that there is no will to reach that level.
This is not true. No nuclear powers should engage in direct wars, I'm not a fan of proxy wars either but they are safer than direct conflicts which can easily escalate.
We have never had a world war between nuclear armed states and we should avoid the potential at all costs.
That is what hurts me the most: want to be untouchable? Get nukes!
Iraq has been invaded for a lot less; Kuwait population back then was 1/20 than current Ukraine, but Saddam never had nukes (as any other WMDs, but I digress).
So what happens if say 3 years from now Russia decides to invade an EU or NATO country? Will it make any difference that the invaded country is part of the EU or NATO? They still have nukes, so what would be the western response? Will the nuclear deterrent magically disappear because of a NATO or EU stamp somewhere?
That is not a trivial issue; ignoring the nuclear threat is for sure the safest way, but can create a nasty precedent in which every nation with nuclear weapons could be entitled to do what they want if they become rogue as Russia is today.
Even if Putin is intelligent and sane (questionable), it's still possible for him to miscalculate and get into a situation where it's impossible to de-escalate. Calls for a no-fly zone are just idiotic and display a complete disconnect from the military reality. Anyone who believes it can work should watch this video where military aviators with actual experience in enforcing no-fly zones explain the problems.
> Or maybe, “No Ukrainian or Russian aircraft - NATO aircraft will shoot down both.”
Not really. Response to any Russian aircraft shot down would be sending a bunch of rockets to the place from where the aircraft was shot down; whether the destination is NATO or not.
From there, it would escalate quickly. That's why NATO generals and saner politicians are not enthusiastic about it.
TL;DR: trying to enforce no-fly zone would hurt. Too much to be worth it.
I wouldn't say so, it's a discussion of military strategy in a war zone. I'm far more concerned about 'You should punch your Russian expat neighbor in the face.'
There's a fundamental distinction, which you're missing, between initiated force and defensive force.
When someone robs or murders, that's initiated force. When the police use force to stop a robber or murderer, that's defensive force.
A "call to violence" is only applicable to initiated force.
For example, if I say, "let's murder Bob," that's a call to violence. If I say, "The police should arrest the murderer of Bob," that's not a call to violence.
Calling for a NATO no-fly zone is calling for defensive force, not initiated force, and thus is not a "call to violence."
I hope you can see how unjust and absurd it would be to call the defense of innocents a "call to violence."
>Calling for a NATO no-fly zone is calling for defensive force, not initiated force, and thus is not a "call to violence."
You do understand what a NFZ in Ukraine is, right? It's not "hey fellas can ya stop flyin here, thanks". It's "we are now firing on all Russian aircraft within the zone, weapons away". Cut to WWIII, and so on.
>I hope you can see how unjust and absurd it would be to call the defense of innocents a "call to violence."
Of course a defensive call to action is a call to violence. This absurdist doublespeak is tuned to redefining words to fit how one views a conflict, and who is the aggressor and who is the agressed.
I 100% support Ukraine but this is building a muscular reflex pattern than can't be unlearned. We shouldn't have private tech enforcing state wishes. They are no longer un-biased parties.
> An outlaw is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so that anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system. In early Germanic law, the death penalty is conspicuously absent, and outlawing is the most extreme punishment, presumably amounting to a death sentence in practice. The concept is known from Roman law, as the status of homo sacer, and persisted throughout the Middle Ages.
Yeah, about violence against the ethnic Russian populations in eastern Ukraine - doesn't seem that Russia needs any help there. Russians are bombing and killing civilians in those Russian speaking cities even without permission from facebook.
Doesn't it become difficult to tell the difference when the message from the platform is approximately: "rage is permitted in the direction of foreign nationals from these two nations from 9am to 9pm tomorrow"?
Nope, I'm still baffled. I get the sense it might make some kind of sense looking back retrospectively after a few further events play out, but at the moment this continues to seem like a bizarre situation.
"I used to be fairly optimistic that we could get through a period of consistently higher tensions with China without provoking a huge racist freakout against Asian Americans but the current reaction against all things Russian is causing me to revise that way way way downward."
That's cute. Zuckerburg is going to control our "2 minute hate". We've always been at war with eurasia.
And people wonder why Russia, China, etc block facebook. That more nations haven't banned facebook really makes you wonder at the quality of leadership in these countries.
There is no point in calling for violence on social media against anyone, the Russian people including.
It may feel liberating for some to post such calls, but the actual killing is happening right now on the real ground, not virtual.
This is what needs to stop!
Channeling the anger and helplessness against the aggressor into the hate is not making people stronger and is not going to stop the aggression.
If anything, expressing your own thoughts and feelings about the current events and how they affect your daily lives could be not only a way to cope with this crisis, but also a way to document this uneasy and fearful time for the future self and others.
Posts, tweets etc. describing our individual and collective human experience of this is what may eventualy help find a way out of this nightmare, not the hate.
I genuinely wonder if such kumbaya rhetoric stays the same once the person actually experiences the bombing of his own house and see people around him heart or dead. Or just forced to leave his own home abandoning everything behind.
Watching closely Russian politics for the last 20 years, the one thing they do perfectly is use this kindness and tolerance of the West against them. Once in house the authorities repress everything that is democratic, decent, free and different, they demand the outside world to stick to their values to the letter, ousting every little deviation from it as the West hypocrisy. And then using it to further convince his own people that the West is rotten.
You can't win the fight if the other side always plays dirty. I believe this is more than just Ukraine-Russia conflict, this is the Cold war that actually never ended.
People in Russian govt., army, and media who are responsible for planning, authorizing, executing, and justifying this barbaric aggression against Ukraine should be tried as war criminals.
Just as the people of the Russian Federation should bear responsibility for condoning and rationalizing these actions.
The rift between people of the Russian Federation (Belarus too) and Ukraine is already ripped in millions of hearts which will likely remain unbridgeable for the forseeable future.
However, for any justice to take place, the accounts should be collected of what happened and how people's lives were affected.
That's why a hateful post by itself may be enough for someone to channel the anger and grief, but its effect would be a lot more meaningful, if the personal experiences are recounted instead.
Also, many people's daily lives, I'm sure, are touched by these events. Many may feel anxiety and horror even though they may not be directly related to Ukraine or Russia. Hate by itself will not express this. Yet documented, it is another statement to count towards those who perpertrated these crimes.
The world has been through this before, yet here we go again!
At what point does a tech company CEO or other high ranking official get murdered by a state actor for this type of thing? Yemen might not be willing (or able) to reach out across the world to murder a civilian business leader but states on the level of Russia can make "accidents" happen.
"March 10 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms (FB.O) will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion"
Russian soldiers invading Ukraine are combatants. Discussing battle tactics against soldiers is not the same as calling for violence against Russian civilians.
> Russian soldiers invading Ukraine are combatants. Discussing battle tactics against soldiers is not the same as calling for violence against Russian civilians.
That's correct. That's why I'm puzzled by the phrase "Russians and Russian soldiers". The idea of attacking the former sounds like a nightmare. And I'd say it's a quick way for Ukraine to lose at least some international support. Defending your country is the right thing, attacking innocent people is the opposite of that.
>> Russian soldiers invading Ukraine are combatants. Discussing battle tactics against soldiers is not the same as calling for violence against Russian civilians.
> Why is it happening on a social network that an American tech company is running and moderating?
If that's actually happening, it's because the perfect can be the enemy of the good. They're two weeks in to being invaded, so they're probably just scrambling to get organized and stay alive. I hope the Ukrainian military has better communications, but if the people in some neighborhood militia are expeditiously using FB to meet an immediate communications need, I think that's fine.
Though obviously once things stabilize a little they need to find something better, ASAP.
However, reading the article, this doesn't sound so much like it's because of discussions of battle plans, but rather a situation where hatred and calls to violence are justified and healthy responses, and their previous policies didn't capture that nuance.
This should solidify in everyone's mind, that the push to censor speech, no matter what cause-of-the-week reason is given, is fundamentally about attaining power over a weapon that can be used when it suits you.
Actually it's not hate speech because "hate speech" is actually "hate or encourages violence towards a person or group" + power/oppression. Because Russians are the oppressors in this case, such speech against them can't be considered hate speech.
"Facebook temporarily allows posts on Ukraine war calling for violence against invading Russians or Putin's death"
The lead paragraph goes on to say:
> Meta Platforms (FB.O) will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion
(emphasis mine)
And Meta stated in the article that:
> We still won't allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,
I'm not saying I agree or disagree but the title should be corrected as this nuance is important, as it indicates generic calls for violence against any and all Russians is still not acceptable.
I guess Facebook got tired of being held responsible for various international pogroms and just wants to set up a facility for states to use social media to organize pogroms against minorities that they want harassed, expropriated, or mass-murdered. The US has become a nihilistic place that stands for nothing and will change its "time honored" values on a dime for politically opportunistic reasons.
Allow any and all speech that comply with local regulations, with exception granted for commercial speech (ie. spam/advertising). Don't give out victim cards.
> Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also an exception to free speech.
Can we argue that social media Facebook/Twitter and Co becomes the most effective weapon ever ? I mean, you can keep the population highly motivated, you can shift the perception of war. Right now even people returning to Ukraine for fighting, I think it is highly driven by social media.
If the answer is yes,could we conclude that most of the war related content is not really controlled by Facebook and rather by the military?
so when Russia constantly says that the West is out to get them, they might actually be right? if FB is so blatant about supporting (yeah, in some countries) violence against Russians, I can't even imagine what goes on in secret.
Even as a moral absolutist myself that's a laughable oversimplification bordering on deliberate obtuseness. Obviously all hate is not the same. You call for the extermination of covid-19 and nobody will disagree with you. You call for the extermination of mosquitos and most people won't disagree with you. You call for the extermination of destructive invasive species and a majority of people will agree with you. Some reasons for hate are acceptable and some are not. Hating someone because of their race is not acceptable. Hating someone because they invaded your country and bombed your fleeing women and children is acceptable.
> Hating someone because of their race is not acceptable. Hating someone because they invaded your country and bombed your fleeing women and children is acceptable.
But the regulations apply to "Russians and Russian soldiers", not just the invaders. Would you be okay with calls of violence against saudi civilians because of their government's involvement in the 9/11 attacks?
They said the calls for violence against Russian soldiers were allowed because this was being used as a proxy for the Russian military, and said it would not apply to prisoners of war.
Again, this is deliberate obtuseness. If a pack of grizzly bears break into my house and I scream "Kill the bears!" I'm obviously not calling for genocide against ursus arctos horribilis.
I find it strange that you accuse me of being "obtuse", but you respond with the most softball examples. What about calls of violence against "russians"? Is "let's find russian nationals in ukraine and lynch them" okay? What about "let's invade russia and kill women children as payback"? I would hope not, but based on a permissive reading of the article it certainly seems allowed.
They said the calls for violence against Russian soldiers were allowed because this was being used as a proxy for the Russian military, and said it would not apply to prisoners of war.
It's not permissible when referring to anyone but Russian soldiers actively involved in the invasion, not even ones who were involved but are no longer. I don't know how the meaning could be any more explicit.
> I don't know how the meaning could be any more explicit.
The exact wording in the first paragraph was:
>Meta Platforms (FB.O) will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion
Which would suggest call for violence towards "Russians" (presumably all russians, not just russian military personnel) would be allowed. That said, the article was later edited and clarified that the exemption did not apply to russian civilians, so the question is largely moot.
That's a hotly debated philosophical concept, moral absolutism and moral relativism and everything in between. I'd assume from your statement you're a moral absolutist, but that does not make that statement an absolute truth.
Not only is GP a moral absolutist, but GP's system of morality postulates that hate is bad. It is also possible to be a moral absolutist with other postulates from which you can derive that hate is bad in many cases but not all.
This seems like it would apply to calls to violence against civillians as well if I'm understanding correctly, "violence against Russians and Russian soldiers". Under that definition "Someone should go start stabbing Russian shoppers in Evropeysky" for example would seem to be ok.
edit: it looks like the article has been updated to specify civilians are not included.
I think you'll find that when you see your family and friends being bombed you can't kill the invaders with a clear mind and no hate.
There are already multiple car accidents caused by Ukrainian refuges in Romania because they're too distraught due to what they've suffered so far. And you want them to not hate Russians? You can't be rational when you see your battered 5 year old in the morgue.
I would love to see a rise of alternative BigTech (FB, Google, Apple, Microsoft). Not the Parlor kind, but more leaning towards libertarian values and the foundational principles of the United States. Perhaps based in the East Coast: Philadelphia, Chicago or Boston.
Not big tech, but an internet version of a post office. That is, a government-provided at-cost presence on the web linked to your real identity that can't be taken away from you without a court order and whose only rules are the laws of the United States. I don't think we have it in us, though.
> Not the Parlor kind, but more leaning towards libertarian values and the foundational principles of the United States.
Yes, but as noted by Scott Alexander:
The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.
What would that look like? A messenger app or forum, sure I can see that, we have 4chan, but I'm having a hard time envisioning a whole bigtech corp embodying those ideals or even what those ideals are that would be embodied.
Based on Chicago principles, less virtue signaling and more doing, apolitical and completely ruthlessly neutral (like Switzerland), highly capitalistic but also with strong integrity, protect the interest of United States and its allies, straightforward CEOs that don’t speak corporate lingo, work with DoD and DARPA, unwavering support for human rights. Above all, have conviction of their own and not buckle under pressure, and won’t sell out to questionable labor practices in China. 100% domestic.
Seems to be a common response: if it’s not big tech it’s automatically 4chan.
You're editing a lot, so I want to snapshot what you said at the point of time I'm responding:
> Based on Chicago principles, less virtue signaling and more doing, apolitical and completely ruthlessly neutral (like Switzerland), highly capitalistic but also with strong integrity, protect the interest of United States and its allies, straightforward CEOs that don’t speak corporate lingo, work with DoD and DARPA, unwavering support for human rights. Above all, have conviction of their own and not buckle under pressure, and won’t sell out to questionable labor practices in China. 100% domestic.
> Seems to be a common response: if it’s not big tech it’s automatically 4chan.
That seems like a lot of oxymorons - what are they doing that is apolitical, but also happily involved in defense, but also interested in human rights? And neutral like Switzerland but only in regards to America?
If they enable the air force to better bomb civilians in a foreign country is that still apolitical and for human rights? How does it approach the knowledge that those agencies are doing their best to do questionable things to its own citizens rights? What happens in 4 years if domestic policy changes? Do they not lobby? And they never leave the United States? Can you have a Facebook/Google/Amazon and be exclusively in America?
Why such a hostile response? I am trying to have a peaceful discussion. And all those rhetorical questions appear to be strawmaning what I am proposing.
Oxymorons are currently present in the way Apple does its PR - no problem with sweatshop labor in China, but they'll never miss a chance to have a political opinion about other things - diversity, BLM, Ukraine, etc. Whatever aligns with their audience.
I'm not trying to champion Apple, far from it, but I can't see how any sort of consistent policy could be defined from those opposing ideals and I wanted to highlight some I saw, especially when the stated goal is to align with core fundamental principles. As stated, those principles seem in opposition to each-other.
>Emails also showed that Meta would allow praise of the right-wing Azov battalion, which is normally prohibited, in a change first reported by The Intercept.
So it's ok to praise literal neo-Nazis now, as long as it lines up with business and political interests? Someone less cynical than me, please explain.
FB / Twitter was kicked out of PRC for not banning calls for violence against Uyghurs in response to ethnic riots. Granted it was lack of capability to censor on PRC scale at the time, and they're essentially now banned in RU. Still one of the more blatant bullet point affirming western social media platforms are ultimately western foreign policy instruments - no different from PRC - while only matter of time before blowback affects RU diaspora living in west. But still not as low as cold shouldering paralympic athletes.
I'm trying to think of something constructive to say, but all I can give is disappointed "wow...".
We truly live in a post-sarcasm world. Not even the fucking onion could make this shit up. Perhaps next week will be followed by headlines like "Ethnic cleansing environmentally friendly, scientists conclude", "Did Hitler give a bad name to holocausts?" and a few extra "Why a nuclear war isn't going to be this bad".
No matter how much you (as well as I) hate the fact that private platforms can impose or change their moderation rules unfairly on who ever they want, whenever they want and no matter how hypocritical they are, they are still private platforms and can do whatever they want even if it is against their own terms of service.
Ultimately, they don't care and they are on no-one's side. Thus, they will never change. Outrage sells more ads.
That doesn't really follow. Private toll road operators aren't liable for accidents that happen on them due to driver negligence, for example - but they're still private.
And you can still sue people for hate speech and libel if they post such on Facebook. You just can't sue Facebook itself.
"March 10 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms (FB.O) will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy.
The social media company is also temporarily allowing posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland, according to a series of internal emails to its content moderators."
Not surprisingly, this is a heavily editorialised headline, moderately so on HN and more-so on Reuters.
The actual content states (emphasis mine):
...temporarily allowing some posts that call for death to Russian President *Vladimir Putin* or Belarusian President *Alexander Lukashenko* in *countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland*...
There's a massive difference between calling for the death of your Russian neighbor in US vs calling for the death of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.
>Meta Platforms (FB.O) will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion
People here are upset by "russians", which could conceivably mean russian civilians.
Unless I'm mistaken, I'm not seeing any discussion here on how to remedy this situation. Given that this site is a prime nexus for tech folks this lack of discussion is disappointing.
I would imagine the parent is referring to some of the more "Freedom Fries"-esque excesses of Russophobia, like canceling Tchaikovsky from symphony programs, discarding Russian vodka, banning Russian cat breeds from competitions, etc
> I would imagine the OP is referring to some of the more "Freedom Fries"-esque excesses of Russophobia, like canceling Tchaikovsky from symphony programs, discarding Russian vodka, banning Russian cat breeds from competitions, etc
all insignificant compared to the suffering Russia is imposing on Ukraine. Russophobia should be the least of people's worries when Russia is dropping bombs on hospitals full of Ukrainian kids.
And before "whataboutism people" come here say "USA does it too", well, yeah, that's why a lot of people in middle east have a visceral hatred for Americans.
> that's why a lot of people in middle east have a visceral hatred for Americans.
we had a lot of visceral hatred for them, too, because our media in the early 00s propagandized us into having visceral hatred for them, in order to manufacture consent for invasion. the rest of the decade was spent telling us that we were morally wrong for having this visceral hatred for them—despite said visceral hatred having been intentionally instilled upon us. now, in hindsight, few are willing to acknowledge what happened, because to do so would be to admit having had, in the past, irrationally visceral hatred for a broad group of people, for ill-defined reasons, only to go on to "unlearn" this behavior later on, and we all want to think of ourselves as good people, so let's just pretend none of that ever happened.
I fully expect this exact same pattern to play out again this time, too.
> Okay, let's use your wording then. Would you say that in the hypothetical described above, that Islamophobia would be "all insignificant" and "least of people's worries"?
My bad, I didn't know Islam was a country with a government that decided to send tanks and jets to invade and bomb a foreign country... /s
That's the absurd parallel you are proudly are making as a sophist. Perhaps you should focus on making the Russian armies get the fuck out of Ukraine instead.
Flamewar comments like this are not ok here. Personal attacks are particularly unwelcome. I realize emotions are understandably high, but you can't post like this to HN and we ban accounts that keep doing it, so please don't do it.
it's unbecoming to willfully misinterpret someone's statement in order to make a point distinct from that which they were making, and then to go on to agree with said willful misinterpretation.
Sarcasm is unbecoming, but only because it's a thinly disguised insult. Read that comment as "What you just said was so egregiously stupid that I'm going to show that by pretending that you meant something different". Put that way, it would be clearly inappropriate for HN, so they use sarcasm as a fig leaf.
It might be more becoming to say "Many people are dying and I think it's inappropriate to use a generic, vague expression pertaining to this other, much less directly violent thing." Or words to that effect. But I'm not surprised that the GP post was so shocked by the phrasing that they resorted to sarcasm instead.
> Sarcasm is unbecoming, but only because it's a thinly disguised insult. Read that comment as "What you just said was so egregiously stupid that I'm going to show that by pretending that you meant something different".
this is supposed to be against the rules here on HN. it's not as though I didn't understand what was being communicated.
They are hoping that by not actually putting it that way, they can get away with it. I don't know if they can or not. It's up to the moderators to make that decision of whether it crosses a line.
If it were up to me, I'd tell people that they have to keep far away from the line, and not try to sidle up to it without crossing it. But as you can tell from the many other comments, many people disagree that there should be any moderation at all, and certainly would allow something that isn't explicitly a call for violence.
I am enjoying the irony of discussing the moderation of a nonviolent comment in a thread about relaxed moderation of violent content.
IMVHO that's *alone* it's a proof that actual narrative "Ukraine is the democratic invaded country and Russian the dictatorship invading it" is just propaganda, so *far from being true*.
I have not much sympathy for dictators in general, but the fact that's Putin is a dictator does not means the others are good and democratic people and that's *must be* learnt for the sake of our democracies because actually our own propaganda sound exactly like Chinese one, no more "news", no more "truth", no more "debate", just single-party official directive. In China the single party is formal, have uniforms and a flag, here it's anonymous suit and tie, no flags, but the rest is exactly the same.
I can't believe this is real. Zuckerberg might not be the brightest guy but I can't believe he could be that stupid. I hope Meta will back down and apologize very soon.
My comment wasn't clear. I updated it. Close them all. Use adblock and make sure they don't track you from social logins etc. Take every action you can to not feed that monster. Be anti-facebook and make your friends and family aware.
This seems like a bad idea. I certainly wouldn't miss Putin, but this all just opens up a can of worms and internet diarrhea. Leave that for subs on reddit where it's at least boxed off and easy to avoid.
[0] https://theintercept.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-facebook-azov-ba...