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Comment by paulgb | Hacker News Reader

> People really want Zuckerberg to decide whether posts of the president should be deleted or not? Is this for real?

I can't speak for everyone, but I just want the company not to carve out exceptions for their rules against violent speech depending on who said it.

If you believe that Facebook doesn't have the right to remove any violent speech regardless of who says it, obviously that's another story. I think online communities have the same rights to create and enforce rules that offline communities to, because I've seen what happens when they don't.

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If we want to treat everyone equally then people can not talk about using the military on such platforms. It is hard to get more clear case of glorifying violence than a person holding an army and talking about using it against people. Any speech glorifying war, talking about killing people in a positive light, or deploying people to kill other people, would be banned from those platforms.

But people want exceptions for when such violence feel good, and do not want it when it feel bad. Its similar to how some research (data however is disputed) that in warrior cultures, warriors who has killed in battle have more offspring than non-killers. There are good books on the subject of the love-hate relation humans have with violence.

Violence is fine, heaven help you if you show a female nipple on those platforms though.

...but that's exactly what Twitter did - they carved out an exception for politicians.

The problem I see is that "violent" speech is a subjective perception. I could claim that your post was "violent", and that I was harmed by it.

Sticks and stones.

Yes, there is subjectivity. In this particular case, Trump and Zuckerberg talked on the phone and Zuckerberg expressed concerns about the content but ultimately decided to keep it up.

If you really want fair and impartial content policies that apply equally to everyone, shouldn't it be concerning that we can't all call Zuckerberg on the phone?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/31/media/trump-zuckerberg-phone-...

Section 230 permits the platform to decide for themselves what is violent, according to https://www.theregreview.org/2019/07/15/kosseff-correcting-p...

Exactly. So Twitter says its violent and Facebook doesn't.

Yes, but I’m more interested in the next step. Both are within their right to enact their choices.

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