From the “it’s about time” department comes this story that details that a number of extremists have been banned from Facebook and Instagram:
In an effort to contain misinformation and extremism that have spread across the platforms, Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, have banned Alex Jones, Infowars, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, and Paul Nehlen under their policies against dangerous individuals and organizations. They also banned the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has repeatedly made anti-Semitic statements.
I’ll be frank. This should have happened years ago. It’s no secret that those people have violated the terms of service of these two platforms for years. To illustrate this, here’s the terms of service from Facebook which links to their Community Standards which has specific references to hate speech. And one can argue that all of the people who got banned were irresponsibly stirring up hatred and violence against people, ethnic groups and faiths that they didn’t like. In other words they were banned for being hate mongers. The thing is that this is not new information. But I suspect because there are several big spotlights on Mark Zuckerberg and company at the moment, they felt that they had do punt these people off their platforms now. And Facebook seems to be doing this in other places as here in Canada they banned a number of individuals and groups including the controversial far-right political commentator Faith Goldy and white nationalist crusader Kevin Goudreau. Google these people and you’ll see why they got banned.
Here’s the bottom line. Respectful disagreements are fine. Honest arguments to support one’s choices and points of view are fair game. But dishonest hate speech and attempts to stirring up violence are uncivilized, anti-social and should be shunned by any functioning civil society. As far as I am concerned, Facebook is right to do what they are doing and they should do more on that front. But it shouldn’t have taken them this long to do it.
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This entry was posted on May 3, 2019 at 9:14 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Facebook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Facebook And Instagram Ban Extremists From Those Platforms…. Why Did It Take Them So Long To Do So??
From the “it’s about time” department comes this story that details that a number of extremists have been banned from Facebook and Instagram:
In an effort to contain misinformation and extremism that have spread across the platforms, Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, have banned Alex Jones, Infowars, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, and Paul Nehlen under their policies against dangerous individuals and organizations. They also banned the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has repeatedly made anti-Semitic statements.
I’ll be frank. This should have happened years ago. It’s no secret that those people have violated the terms of service of these two platforms for years. To illustrate this, here’s the terms of service from Facebook which links to their Community Standards which has specific references to hate speech. And one can argue that all of the people who got banned were irresponsibly stirring up hatred and violence against people, ethnic groups and faiths that they didn’t like. In other words they were banned for being hate mongers. The thing is that this is not new information. But I suspect because there are several big spotlights on Mark Zuckerberg and company at the moment, they felt that they had do punt these people off their platforms now. And Facebook seems to be doing this in other places as here in Canada they banned a number of individuals and groups including the controversial far-right political commentator Faith Goldy and white nationalist crusader Kevin Goudreau. Google these people and you’ll see why they got banned.
Here’s the bottom line. Respectful disagreements are fine. Honest arguments to support one’s choices and points of view are fair game. But dishonest hate speech and attempts to stirring up violence are uncivilized, anti-social and should be shunned by any functioning civil society. As far as I am concerned, Facebook is right to do what they are doing and they should do more on that front. But it shouldn’t have taken them this long to do it.
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This entry was posted on May 3, 2019 at 9:14 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Facebook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.