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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, 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?