Why don't Facebook or Reddit or Twitter actually do something about racist ass clowns?

Simplest answer is the most likely - they don't want to. Why would they want to expel a meaningful proportion of their most active users? They are doing this for money, not goodwill. They use that money to donate to charity, and then they can sleep at night. Some of them probably also convince themselves they are promoting an open exchange of ideas that will eventually bring us all together.

But mostly, they like to fly anywhere at a moments notice on their private jets and vacation with their special circle of friends in their private resorts.

 

They have a right to free speech when it comes to the government. Private corporations can do whatever they want. So theoretically Reddit, Facebook, Twitter can start censoring users en masse... but they don't really have anything to gain from this and a lot to lose.

The blame is not on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc for providing the medium, relatively unfiltered. If they start censoring, then the responsibility and thus the blame shifts to them.

 

Applies to both sides. Shaun King needs the boot as well for inciting racial tension.

 

Media pressure seems to be the best course of action to force the hand of Reddit and FB. Reddit has dropped quite a few subs after coordinated exposure of their dark side - (ie) r/jailbait, r/fatpeoplehate, etc.

 

Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube are policed to some degree.

Twitter is pretty lax but they do go after high profile people from time to time who do unsavory things or violate the ToS.

Reddit regularly censors or shuts down communities that breed or advocate racism/violence.

YouTube is pretty much controlled by an algorithm and the marketplace, IIRC, wherein controversial content is either flagged or demonetized.

I can really only imagine the utter nightmare that it would be to police the largest website on Earth (Facebook).

I honestly prefer for sites to be unregulated or very minimal censorship. I trust that people won't gravitate toward repugnant ideas and values.

Censorship just tends to make these fringe groups stronger, IMO.

 

airBnB is not a social media platform or online forum, their TOS is inline with most rental laws out there in North America, AKA no discrimination of tenants based on race religion etc etc. That has nothing to do with forums moderating people's opinions. AirBnB try to root out discriminatory users because discrimination kills their user base an cuts into revenue. Those rules are not there to make a world a better place by silencing racists, it's not a opinion forum or social media, it's a short term rental marketplace.

Apples to bowling balls here, the analogy makes no sense.

 

R/the_donald is this around.

 

That subreddit is the most unintentionally funny thing on the planet. I hope they never ban it.

Plus I want to see the absolutely epic meltdown when Trump gets thrown out on his fat dimply ass in 2020.

 

...learned a long time ago that worthwhile people tend to follow worthwhile causes.

The last thing anybody should be doing is censoring people outright in this country. However difficult it may be to stomach, having these things said and done out loud and in the open is necessary, if for no other reason than to bring to light those things which lurk in the darkness.

It's never about the messenger...it's about the message. Cloaking this vileness with "patriotism" and "free speech" and other vapid and contemptuous equivocations exposes the truth. And the truth, above all things to me, is what matters.

 

Be like Germany, outlaw Nazi symbols, you don't have to let hate groups advertise.

Cut out the hate.

DD

 

Germany, as we all know, paid a heavy price for Nazism. Their country was effectively cut in half. Their personal reputations were ruined for a half century. America should have learned, considering the price of the Civil War, that to substitute equivocation for identification ("all lives matter" "...they're doing it too...") only serves to legitimize that thing which you say is not good...but actually have no problem with its existence as long as it doesn't affect YOU.

Black people have fought this fight a long time...not alone, but out leading the way (as we must), but sooner or later, some white people are going to have to call this for what it is...and get rid of it on their end.

Black folk are routinely told by white people what needs to be done on our end to fix "perceived" social injustices (and that's the crux of this problem — a paradigm shift -- determining the rules and measures of merit and worth for this society no longer resides exclusively with the decisions of white men -- rich or poor)...

...well, to all my well-meaning, I'm-not-a-racist, all-lives-matter, merit-over-membership white countrymen who always seem to know how to deal with this:

- You've "ignored" this, hoping that it would just go away...and it hasn't gone away.
- Black people have confronted this nine different ways to Sunday...and it hasn't gone away.
- The dates on the calendars have changed...but the times sure haven't.

...do all of us ignorant, dog-dumb plantation-group-think-minded n!ggers like me a favor ...

...and show us all how it's done.

Please.

 

^ You wouldn't think it/know it by watching the news lately, but I'm pretty sure white nationalists, neo-nazis, and the KKK are running at an all time low in terms of popularity and membership-per-capita in America.

 

Facts don't matter, only narrative does.

 

Facebook and Google do have a business incentive to remove hate speech..... however that is a very slippery slope.

 

Ignoring bigotry and racism equates with supporting bigotry and racism through inaction, in my opinion.

 

Because money.

And it's good for you too. So you can understand that there is, in every country and culture, people that can easily be destabilized and indirectly made to organize by taking a hatchet to their socio-economic rights and needs. Better to have an eye on this than not.

What you should really worry about is the coming crossing of that angry group and the inevitable next financial crisis. You should use the social media sites as tools to avoid that collision.

 

https://twitter.com/YesYoureRacist

Twitter user is outing the "unhooded" racists. American ingenuity, you gotta love it.

[NPR] On The Internet, Everyone Knows 'You're A Racist': Twitter Account IDs Marchers
They didn't wear hoods as they chanted "Jews will not replace us." They weren't hiding their faces as they waved Confederate flags, racist signs and swastikas. They looked straight at a sea of cameras as they made the Nazi salute.

As Matt Thompson wrote for The Atlantic, the white supremacist march and rally this past weekend wasn't a KKK rally: "It was a pride march."

The bare-faced shamelessness was the point. But it was also an opening.

On the Internet, some people are crowd-sourcing efforts to identify and shame the people participating in the rally. Most prominently, on Twitter, the account called "Yes, You're Racist" has been soliciting help and posting IDs. "I'll make them famous," the account pledged.

So far, at least one protester is no longer employed after being publicly named and shamed.

Cole White, who used to work at a hot dog restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., "voluntarily resigned" on Saturday after his employer confronted him about his participation in the event, according to the Berkeleyside news site.

@YesYoureRacist is not a new Twitter account. Since 2012, the account has been calling out "casual racism on Twitter," according to the user's fundraising page. It would post screenshots of deleted racist tweets, highlight offensive comments by elected officials and retweet everyday users who would say "I'm not racist but ..." followed by something, well, racist.

But after the rally in Charlottesville, Yes You're Racist pivoted from highlighting online remarks to identifying real-world marchers.

Many of the people it named had publicly declared their plans to go to Charlottesville. The account identified one man as "Illegal Aryan," who wrote on the white supremacist site Daily Stormer last month, "See you in Charlottesville!"

"Illegal Aryan," real name Mark Daniel Reardon, was identified by an antifascist group this spring and confirmed on Daily Stormer that he lost his job as a result.

Another identified marcher, who has repeatedly tweeted holocaust denials and says he is a member of the Proud Boys, said on Twitter he was at Charlottesville. After he was identified, he said he's received death threats.

Of course, there's a long and not entirely noble tradition of online humiliation for perceived moral trespasses.

Jon Ronson, who literally wrote the book on the phenomenon (it's called So You've Been Publicly Shamed), chimed in on Twitter to give his take on the public identification of the white supremacists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville.

"They were undisguised in a massively contentious rally surrounded by the media," he said, noting also that there's "a big difference" between making a thoughtless or offensive comment online and marching in the name of white power.

That said, Twitter is "a terrible information swapping service," he said, and some innocent people would inevitably get caught up in the process.

Indeed, the "Yes You're Racist" account has made, and acknowledged, some mistakes.

One of the photos it examined was from a previous Trump rally, not the Charlottesville march or rally. (That image featured a man wearing a Nazi armband. He said on Youtube he wore it as a "social experiment" to prove that "not all Trump supporters are Nazis. I went to the Trump rally as a Nazi and they kicked me out and disavowed me ... I dressed up as a Nazi to prove a point, not to spread a message of hate.")

Another photo was misidentified as the white supremacist Billy Roper. Roper, who has called for non-white races to be "eliminated" or "become extinct," did not actually attend the Charlottesville event. Roper, who is vehemently anti-Semitic, objected to the fact that one of the speakers at the event works with a Jewish fundraiser.

Roper wrote on his blog that he actively contributed to the confusion over the identity of the "Arkansas Engineering" marcher:

As Roper muddied the waters, others on the Internet misidentified the man in the photo as a University of Arkansas professor, which was false.

Meanwhile, one young man who was photographed screaming at the torchlit march told a local news station that it was definitely him — but he insisted he's "not the angry racist" people see in the photo.

"As a white nationalist, I care for all people," said Peter Cvjetanovic, who is studying history and political science at the University of Nevada, Reno.

"I did not expect the photo to be shared as much as it was," he told KTVN.

A "Yes, You're Racist" tweet about Peter Cvjetanovic was retweeted more than 32,000 times.

 

Fair enough...but again, we are mostly agreed that this isn't about the messengers...it's about the message.

Perhaps more than a little off the original topic, but this highlights my own personal reflections on these things, historically and contextually in America....

White Protesters—Yes, White People—Take Down a Confederate Monument in Durham, NC
(article from TheRoot.com - emphasis mine)

Spoiler

@DerrickQLewis via Twitter video screenshot

A group of protesters in Durham, N.C., toppled a Confederate monument in front of a courthouse in the city’s downtown area Monday evening, and the entire act was caught on video and posted to Twitter. Don’t worry; none of them are dead or arrested yet because they were mostly white.



The video, posted by Twitter user @DerrickQLewis, shows a crowd of people gathered on a grassy area in front of statue that appears to be in front of a courthouse. What look like a long rope is tied to the neck of the statue.

As the gathered crowd chants, “No hoods! No KKK! No Fascist U.S.A.!” a group of people pull on the rope until the statue is toppled from its pedestal. When the statue hits the ground, the crowd cheers, and some people run up to kick the statue and spit on it.

The crowd of demonstrators were part of a planned protest to show solidarity with Charlottesville, Va., the scene of the massive racist jamboree that happened over the weekend.



After toppling the statue, the crowd then moved to another intersection in downtown Durham, which they proceed to block.


They then proceed through downtown Durham, carrying signs that decry white supremacy.


In what is probably the blackest part of this protest, three young black people came to pose next to the statue after it was toppled.

And I’m glad that’s all they did, because you know that if it were us marching through the streets, blocking traffic and tearing **** up, they would be calling us animals and lining up with the riot gear already.