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Facebook Deletes Richard Spencer's Accounts in Hate Speech Crackdown

posted by chromas on Saturday April 14 2018, @05:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the Smells-like-censorship-or-teen-spirit dept.

aristarchus writes:

On the Daily Dot:

The Facebook pages of Richard Spencer, the alt-right leader who was famously punched in the face last year, have been suspended.

The pages for the National Policy Institute, a lobbying group of sorts for white nationalists, and Spencer's online magazine "altright.com," vanished on Friday after Vice sent the social network an inquiry about hate groups. They had a combined following of almost 15,000 followers.

The action was taken just days after Mark Zuckerberg emphasized during his testimony before Congress that Facebook does not allow hate speech. But it wasn't until Vice flagged the accounts that Facebook suspended them. The social network said in a statement that it identifies violating pages using human monitors, algorithms, and partnerships with organizations.

Also at Engadget and Vice.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Whoever on Sunday April 15 2018, @02:21AM (3 children)

    by Whoever (4524) on Sunday April 15 2018, @02:21AM (#667127) Journal

    If a baker can't offer a cake with writing on it and then refuse to make it with writing he finds offensive,

    But that's the key issue, isn't it? They didn't get as far as discussing what the cake would look like, what messages it might include. The baker refused to make the cake not because of any message on it, but because of who the customers were.

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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday April 15 2018, @02:40AM (2 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Sunday April 15 2018, @02:40AM (#667133) Journal
    It was going to be a wedding cake for a same sex couple. They found that offensive. Any text that would fit the occasion would therefore be offensive to them, so no, I don't think your quibble is the key issue.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Whoever on Sunday April 15 2018, @03:06AM (1 child)

      by Whoever (4524) on Sunday April 15 2018, @03:06AM (#667144) Journal

      Any text that would fit the occasion would therefore be offensive to them

      Without discussing the actual text, you cannot possibly know that. Besides which, it's quite clear that the baker's objection was to people getting married, not to any speech that might or might not have been involved.

      • (Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday April 15 2018, @03:13AM

        by Arik (4543) on Sunday April 15 2018, @03:13AM (#667146) Journal
        A wedding cake is not just symbolic is it *primarily* a symbol, it is 'speech' in and of itself, aside from any text placed on it, in roughly the same way that burning the flag is speech even if there is are no words, spoken or written, to accompany the act.
        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?