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Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg backtracks on comments about Holocaust deniers
Facebook may be locked in a battle against fake news, and now CEO Mark Zuckerberg is backtracking on claims that the social network won't ban Holocaust deniers.
Zuckerberg gave the explanation to Recode after the site aired audio of the Facebook founder claiming "abhorrent" content, the New York Post reported, had a right to spread across his massive social media network.
"I personally find Holocaust denial deeply offensive, and I absolutely didn't intend to defend the intent of people who deny that," Zuckerberg told the website later. "Of course if a post crossed a line into advocating for violence or hate against a particular group, it would be removed. … These issues are very challenging but I believe that often the best way to fight offensive bad speech is with good speech."
Earlier, Zuckerberg had spoken differently.
"I don't think that we should be in the business of having people at Facebook who are deciding what is true and what isn't," he said, during an episode of the Recode Decode podcast on Wednesday.
Ed's note: And if there's one thing we can all agree on regarding limitations to freedom of speech online, it's that we'll never all agree regarding limitations to freedom of speech online!
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday July 26 2018, @01:37AM (10 children)
I was with you right up to there. That's just not even close to true. Peace was an option and would have been far better economically than years of production diverted to bring death. There were no 'spoils of war' in Europe worth what the war cost us either.
It wasn't about the economic interests of the USA at all, it was about the political interests of the folks that we see now, in retrospect, as the pioneers of the 'deep state,' both in the USA, the UK, and elsewhere.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @02:29AM
Arik, you have gone off the deep end! Come back to sanity! Don't be a putz! Arik?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday July 26 2018, @03:30AM (6 children)
Huh? You do realize that production of wartime materials in WWII was partly (arguably primarily) responsible for the greatest economic speed-up the U.S. had ever seen? A U.S. that had been struggling in its worst economic slump for the preceding decade?
I'm no fan of war, but there is absolutely no way peace could have spurred such a positive economic shift in the desperate circumstances the U.S. was then in.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Arik on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:31AM (5 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @07:38AM
Oh, Grate! Now Arik is a broken window as well as being Courier. Do not see this ending well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @09:17AM
It's only a fallacy if you care about the welfare of the economy as a whole. If you only care about the US glazier's business, the German window-owner can go fuck himself.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday July 26 2018, @12:09PM
Well, there are reasons to criticize the broken window fallacy -- which is an oversimplification. But it really doesn't apply in this case because the U.S. didn't suffer the primary destruction of the war. It got to fight the war primarily on foreign soil. The war overall obviously wasn't good for Europe, but that doesn't mean it couldn't have serious benefits for foreign powers who invested in it. If the war had moved to American soil significantly, things would likely have been quite different.
In fact, some economists have argued it was this very difference that led to the U.S. post-war economic dominance -- it took advantage of a foreign situation which elsewhere was overridden by the destruction of war.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @06:57PM (1 child)
I'll see you your Broken Window Fallacy, and raise you a Keynesian Economic Model [wikipedia.org].
There is every reason to think that massively increasing demand during a recession can help. Even if that output is thrown away (read: is a broken window), it can still in aggregate help.
Not all economists agree with this model, but there is a fair bit of circumstantial evidence that it may be true. Case in point, the ending of the Great Depression coincidentally aligned with the US involvement in WW2.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday July 26 2018, @09:41PM
Keynes and his animal spirits are simply a handy rationalization to take a loan, throw a big party, and wake up with a hangover. You can keep telling yourself it makes you rich, and when you're in the heady euphoric phase of the night we can even sympathize, but at the end of the day it's still just a bunch of transparent bullshit and you only believe it because you REALLY WANT to go ahead and get trashed.
There was a little bounce in 46, coincidentally that's also the first time they cut taxes since the 20s or before. It's only after the war is over that you see a real recovery though. The draft cut unemployment, sure, but that didn't mean that the draftees were more productive as a result of no longer being technically unemployed. You could guarantee full employment by drafting everyone, but then who would grow the food?
Obviously the army would have to. Hey, North Korea, here we come!
And there's as good an illustration as any of just how utterly wrong this argument is. If you were right, North Korea would be the richest nation on earth, at least per capita. They've been at war for 68 years straight! I bet their economy... oh... wait. No, nevermind.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @03:55AM (1 child)
In capitalism, political and economic interests are very much interchangeable. Ask China about their hacking doctrine :)
There were quite a few spoils to be had. Short term mainly in the form of military tech that was years ahead of its time - missiles, jet engines, submarines, tanks... both the USA as well as the Russians took of that what they could and their post-war designs were often if not largely copies, then directly evolved from German designs. Medium term there was the extraction of talent - see Operation Paperclip. German scientists and engineers were taken by both winning parties, in some cases more, in others less voluntarily. Long term there was was denying Russia influence over a highly industrialized country with excellent infrastructure, plenty natural rescources and traditionally a strong economy. The Russians were pretty dumb in the regard of what they did with their half of the country; they de-industrialized it by taking whole factories to Russia and letting infrastructure rot while West Germany rebuilt and (once again) became an important trading partner.
What I'll give you is that neither of these are of direct or immediate economic benefit, but in the end having a stronger military than the other guy is about one thing: being able to secure the resources you already have and being able to grab more resources by force when politics won't work (as seen on TV). So securing the tech and talent was imperative in order to prevent losing the edge on Russia^W the commies.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:34AM
Taking the same course in WWI instead could easily have avoided the rise of Hitler entirely.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?