If censorship is too "challenging" to do right then maybe you should knock it off.

Censorship is something governments do. What you're discussing is a business decision Facebook made. They deemed it to be in the best interests of their shareholders not to amplify those peoples opinions. Zuck now regrets that decision, but it was still his decision.

> Censorship is something governments do.

Not exclusively, no. There's nothing in the definitions of the words 'censor' or 'censorship' that imply it is an act exclusive to governments.

Effectively, something can be censorship even if the government is not involved.

When the government is involved, then it's government censorship.

Semantically, you're right of course, but only because linguistically self-censorship is counted as a type of censorship, despite it not depriving anyone of liberties.

For practical purposes though, the kind of censorship that we're concerned with in this conversation can't be done by anyone other than a government or a lunatic with a gun. Companies just don't have any authority over anyone except themselves. They can't deprive you of your ability to speak, only your ability to use their property to do so.

It was a business decision made at the direction of the government.

You might be right.

The article says they were "pressured", it doesn't seem to to say how that pressure was applied. To me, it reads as though compliance was not mandated, just requested. Without more info, I suppose it could be taken either way.

If Zuck has a real problem with that, he can sue (as per the SCOTUS ruling on standing vis-a-vis First Amendment protections against government coercion).

He isn't suing, and it's up to the rest of us to make our decisions based on how we feel about that.

>https://x.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1828485808023539967

He is making sworn statements to the house judiciary committee.

Are you saying he is lying and the BidenHarris admin is telling the truth?

Why would he do that? And why does all the evidence of censored accounts on Facebook match up with the Twitter Files and what everyone saw happening?

No, I'm not saying he's lying.

I'm saying he might have found the circumstances distasteful but he didn't find them a violation of his rights worthy of a lawsuit.

If i stand up a server and host a website, I get to decide who's allowed to use my server. I don't need to be "qualified", and who would decide what "qualified" means? Should the government be forcing me to host content I find objectionable?

Facebook is no different. Just bigger.

Nobody is saying a legal right to do so doesn't exist. Only that you shouldn't and you're a jackass if you do.

Your retreat into legality and semantics is telling.

Fair enough. When you said they "shouldn't be" I took that to mean they "shouldn't be allowed to", which is different than what you said. My bad.

That is not the challenge, cranks have freedom of speech. There is no such thing as "legitimately" in this question.

Flat Earthers are legitimately questioning the science because no one has (or should have) the authority to arbitrate what is too stupid to question. Everything has tradeoffs and free speech has a lot of somewhat obvious downsides.

In the sentence you wrote "they are not legitimately questioning the science" who decides what is legitimate questioning? You?

Too bad that you don't like what some other people say or write. That's what public discourse is, most things said will be things you don't agree with. And since you're neither God nor the Supreme Ruler, you don't have the right to silence anybody else.

Why are you so angry? Where did I say that flat earthers should be silenced?

You desperately need to remove yourself from communities of perpetual victimhood.

All I said was that they are not legitimately questioning the science, because they are not.

The one thing that is extremely interesting is that even the people who loudly shout for free speech do not themselves believe in it, as they constantly try to cancel all sorts of free speech and expression essentially constantly.

Very very few people believe in absolute free speech.

I am not angry, and not a victim. Maybe you're making up an image in your mind?

The discourse as I interpreted it, was that there was a need to censor those who are expressing opinions that are not "legitimate".

There “might” be a need to *selectively* censor people expressing illegitimate “science”. Especially when they knowingly do it knowingly.

What Facebook does though, is horrific. They are not just letting illegitimate science have a platform, they are actively and intentionally propping that shit up because it creates victimhood communities.

The nice thing about running a platform is that you absolutely have the right to silence whoever you please.

...until your platform becomes important enough for it to matter to people more powerful than you

I'm not sure that this is a useful distinction. It starts to sound an awful lot like philosophy 101 "what is a p-zombie" horseshit... if both people are asking the same questions or using the same rhetoric, why would their internal, unknowable-without-telepathy intent make any difference whatsoever? If you do think there is an actual distinction, somehow, even then should you care? Because people who want to censor the speech will just label the skeptics as cranks anyway, and shut it down.

"Crank vs sincere skeptic" is fallacious, as it attacks the person and not the argument.

> You responded, you obviously think you're making a point. I hope you're one of the cranks though, because that would explain how poor your argument is.

Pot, meet kettle.

So you're one of the magical thinkers. That somehow the outcomes change due to internal states that no one can even determine, internal states which do not affect the physical world at all.

That the crank can actually change things just by thinking about it, like some kind of half-assed troll telekinesis. Wow. You've apparently got a few fans for your idiocy, they're downvoting away.