DominikR

Who is "we Austrians"? I'm an Austrian and I have no problem with Facebook not censoring that video!

Just so everybody here knows why the Austrian government wanted it banned: It showed how Muslim immigrants beat up a 16 year old girl and broke her jaw, reportedly as punishment because she dared to pull the veil off a Muslim girl.

That doesn't sit well with our government that wants to invite all of the Middle East here!

And probably the same is true for jakobegger, who enjoys freedom of speech only when it is an opinion that he isn't offended by, otherwise censorship is very much appreciated.

> "good for business", which translates to "bad for consumers"

I know it's trendy to be left leaning so you easily get away with such generalising statements but ask yourself these questions before hating on all businesses:

Would you buy an iPhone or a laptop designed and built by a government agency? A car? How about a pair of shoes or pants. Would you prefer sending your children to private or public schools. Same goes for universities. Would you rather participate in evil Capitalism to earn a living or live under government social security regimentation, possibly even with a job provided or forced on you by government.

Is there even anything where you would prefer the government option over something offered by private businesses?

If you don't want private businesses to offer products and services, and government products and services suck, then who is going to provide this?

> It doesn't mean that I don't have a responsibility to my neighbors and community to provide upkeep to my house and ensure it's aesthetically pleasing.

Can your neighbours sue you if you paint your house in an obnoxious color? No? Then there is no responsibility.

Why is it that I, for whom English is only my 4th language has to explain to you what the English word responsibility means?

If for you responsibility is just a fuzzy term with some feelings attached then we don't need to discuss this matter as FB can't be held accountable to that kind of responsibility anyways.

> Similarly, I believe social media and the media has a larger responsibility to our civic discourse even if they are a private company

I do not doubt that you believe many things, but first you have to show what responsibility actually exists and then show if and how that applies to Facebook if you are going to make such an argument.

I'm not going to answer such a question pretending you are a 3 year old that really doesn't know how media + government collude and operate to control society.

You are incapable of seeing how it poses a threat to freedom of speech when all major media combined call for censorship? There's no point for me to engage in a discussion with you.

> A private company censoring the content on their platform is not a violation of freedom of speech

It's not, but a third party forcing FB to censor or me to shut up is censorship.

> I believe that the point being argued is that they have a responsibility to filter out automated messaging.

No, there is no responsibility whatsoever. Users are free to not use the service if they don't like it.

If you see this different then we have different views on what private property is.

Well I would say that is up to Twitter, Facebook and Reddit shareholders to decide since it is their property.

You don't get to cancel property rights because you don't like the reporting there. You also don't get to cancel freedom of speech because you don't like what someone is saying.

This is the second NYT article I see here today that is calling for more censorship because of some unsubstantiated claims. These people must be completely out of their minds.

So what? That's what FB can do when they find an issue. You are free to sue them if you feel that you have lost money because of this. Go ahead, that's what courts are for.

But I guess what many really want is for government to step in and use government force to punish FB until people feel that some kind of justice has been done. (burn the witch!)

That's why democracy is fundamentally incompatible with liberty.

On a side note: The media is attacking FB because they feel that FB doesn't censor and steer public opinion in the way they would like it to be. They are all up in arms claiming that Trump is FB's fault after they themselves have reported 24/7 on Trump. (but so biased, even Stalin would have cringed) That's the only reason why this article even exists.

Look, I'm a Libertarian as I stated before, I do not even want a government to exist as they are oppressive by nature but I recognise that there's brutal geopolitical competition among world powers.

I can't say with the little information I've got if it is necessary or not but I understand the rationale whereby someone might implement this because they are not willing to bet the survival of their people or their nation on the goodwill of others.

> They already have the passwords

Which is a good reason to let them continue collecting them indefinitely?

> Also, Russia doesn't and won't force any company to store users' data exclusively under their jurisdiction, as this would not allow any foreign company to operate in Russia, making your arguments incorrect.

You state this as if it was a fact, but there is great uncertainty among lawyers and businesses if the law requires data to be stored exclusively in Russia or if that's not the case. In any way you'll have to ask for permission which they might never grant you if you are a company like Facebook that's storing very sensitive information.

That was my point. As a libertarian I would in general tend towards not having the government involved with this stuff, but Russia and the US are two countries which have bad relations at the moment and there's uncertainty if they might have a military conflict in the near future.

Here it's hard to say if it is justified as I do not know what the US secret services and the US military might be able to do with this kind of data in a conflict. (having the passwords of XX million Russians could be devastating in a cyberattack as many will do the stupid thing and reuse the same password everywhere)

Why should Russia allow a US company to mine private data about its citizens on a large scale when it is known that the US government basically can force any US company to hand over any data it desires.

That's why they have passed a law whereby private data from social networks about its citizens has to be stored within Russia and must not be transmitted to any other country.

Linkedin knew that but they ignored it, probably because it didn't make economic sense for them

You can argue if it is acceptable or not for a government to step in and prevent foreign governments from acquiring such data about its population, but calling people stupid like you did frankly makes _you_ look stupid.

I'm pretty sure now that this mass psychosis in the West will most definitely lead to civil war.

There are just too many people who can't seem to accept democracy or liberty if it doesn't go their way.

This is _exactly_ how the Sowjets justified their own censorship.

It's all falsehoods by ideological degenerates or by Western saboteurs and other collaborators with the enemy and therefore must be censored in order to protect society.