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Comment by themagician | Hacker News Reader

Good. They should ban more people. They should ban whoever they feel like banning, for whatever reason or give no reason at all. They already ban you instantly if you show a nipple.

We should stop pretending like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter et al. are some kind of public good or utility. They are private message boards. Message boards which already decide what you see by showing you an endless stream of content designed to optimize ad revenue.

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You raise a great point. Everybody is freaking out about this censorship, but these platforms have always been censored. Why is censoring sex perfectly reasonable and nobody cares, but censoring a violent nutcase is suddenly a massive free speech issue?

It's because of the violation of expectations. The expectation has been set that these platforms are a 'free-for-all' of sorts. Once you start adding new categories of people to ban, people get antsy and start wondering where it stops and who will be effected. Hence why I say in another comment in this thread that it'll cost these companies to use their moderation powers more fully. When you don't set the right expectations up front, changes in moderation policy get very very ugly.

The whole point of my comment is that these platforms have never had the expectation of being a free for all. Upload a video of a penis and watch how long that lasts. And I don’t think “incites violence against actual people in the real world” is a newly banned category either.

No, I think they do have that expectation. 'Everything but porn' is a pretty widely accepted free for all category on the web. But yes, 'incites violence' is an actively illegal category; I suspect the only reason it's lasted this long is that the moderation muscles have atrophied so hard nobody seemed willing to go first in banning Jones completely.

Everything but porn, classified documents, personal information without the consent of the person, copyrighted works, encouragement of suicide... I could go on.

You can find all of these things on the web, but they are far from widely accepted.

Because the censorship does not stop at violent nutcases, but extends to anyone who's ideology is not in line with theirs.

Here's a prime example:

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/heng-gets-facebook-blo...

The same doesn’t apply to sex?

I would challenge that censoring sex is perfectly reasonable and nobody cares. I hear adult models bitching all the time that their content keeps getting taken down even when they try not to violate any TOS. It's really hard for them to promote themselves and make a living -- especially now with SESTA and FOSTA. I can understand filtering and flagging something as NSFW or something like that but to remove it altogether is a bit much for such a public platform. I think Twitter takes a good approach to it. It is flagged so you can avoid it but you can opt in if you want it.

I don't know much about Alex Jones, but when were instances where he was violent?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMZJNbn241I

This is just what shows up as the first item from a Google search. Think of it as a teaser. I'm sure there are more comprehensive videos, but it's kind of exhausting to even look through his material since he does this for several hours every day all year round. Alex Jones himself probably produces 100+ hours of audio and video a month of just him ranting. He also has other people now who do the same thing. The amount of content that they actually create is pretty incredible. And when he really steps over the line and directly threatens someone he then removes the video and backtracks. It just happens over and over and over again.

We should stop pretending they shouldn't be regulated like some kind of public good or utility.

They definitely shouldn't be.

But if you really want to promote free speech on the Internet then you should support Net Neutrality and go a step further and support the re-nationalization of telecom as a public utility so that it gets first amendment protection.

I didn't see how you see banning InfoWars is, for no reason. There is apparently a very grounded reason why InfoWars gets banned.

Oh no, I know. But they don't even need to give a reason.

even better they should do it on all sides of the political spectrum

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