Recent comments in /f/Facebook

n_n OP wrote

The article from four months ago also mentioned White supremacist content:

Facebook also faces a challenge with U.S. hate groups. In March, the company announced that it was expanding its prohibited content to also include white nationalist and white separatist content— previously it only took action with white supremacist content. It says that it has banned more than 200 white supremacist groups. But it’s still easy to find symbols of supremacy and racial hatred.

The researchers in the SEC complaint identified over 30 auto-generated pages for white supremacist groups, whose content Facebook prohibits. They include “The American Nazi Party” and the “New Aryan Empire.” A page created for the “Aryan Brotherhood Headquarters” marks the office on a map and asks whether users recommend it. One endorser posted a question: “How can a brother get in the house.”

Even supremacists flagged by law enforcement are slipping through the net. Following a sweep of arrests beginning in October, federal prosecutors in Arkansas indicted dozens of members of a drug trafficking ring linked to the New Aryan Empire. A legal document from February paints a brutal picture of the group, alleging murder, kidnapping and intimidation of witnesses that in one instance involved using a searing-hot knife to scar someone’s face. It also alleges the group used Facebook to discuss New Aryan Empire business.

But many of the individuals named in the indictment have Facebook pages that were still up in recent days. They leave no doubt of the users’ white supremacist affiliation, posting images of Hitler, swastikas and a numerical symbol of the New Aryan Empire slogan, “To The Dirt” — the members’ pledge to remain loyal to the end. One of the group’s indicted leaders, Jeffrey Knox, listed his job as “stomp down Honky.” Facebook then auto-generated a “stomp down Honky” business page.

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__m106__ wrote

“We’ve had conversations with more than 20 members of civil society, academics, in some cases these were civil rights organizations, experts in race relations from around the world,”

I'm gonna call bullshit on that one, unless they happened to be referring to all the people that chewed them out for their lack of response (who probably also fit those descriptions). I'm sure that those 20 or so members could also negatively impact Facebook's profit margins hence the new measures taken here.

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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote

Yeah it's intense but also mundane to think that they need these experts, both so they can exonerate themselves of potential wrongdoing by putting the responsibility onto them and also because they are unable to do the basic ethical thinking there.

Examples of stuff they will ban are still so strong; you basically have to outright say you're a white nationalist. White nationalist talking points are too vague for facebook. But I guess if they banned every person who talked about white genocide etc. they'd lose a lot of people, so they're not in a rush.

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videl wrote

“We’ve had conversations with more than 20 members of civil society, academics, in some cases these were civil rights organizations, experts in race relations from around the world,” Brian Fishman, policy director of counterterrorism at Facebook, told us in a phone call. “We decided that the overlap between white nationalism, [white] separatism, and white supremacy is so extensive we really can’t make a meaningful distinction between them. And that’s because the language and the rhetoric that is used and the ideology that it represents overlaps to a degree that it is not a meaningful distinction.”

lmao did they really have to do all that for this simple fact.

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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote

"Phrases such as “I am a proud white nationalist” and “Immigration is tearing this country apart; white separatism is the only answer” will now be banned, according to the company. Implicit and coded white nationalism and white separatism will not be banned immediately, in part because the company said it’s harder to detect and remove."

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