mindlight

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Recently I posted a comment on a BBC article using my Facebook ID. The comment was critical of Islam and suggested that what the Chinese are doing in Sinkiang province might be an effective way to combat that.
The comment got about 50 likes before being deleted by Facebook as Hate speech. I complained but the decision was endorsed within about a minute.

Apparently I am not the only one. Hundreds of Facebook checkers are employed deleting comments. One German user recently sued Facebook for deleting comments critical of Germany. The post was restored.

My questions are these:

1) Since evangelism and criticism of other religions ( not accompanied by threatening behaviour) is not illegal why are these people deleting posts?

2) Should an American company be allowed to delete German posts that break no laws.

3) How can freedom of speech be protected from hate speech algorithms and over zealous leftist activists working for Facebook and the BBC amongst others?
 
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trophy33

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Recently I posted a comment on a BBC article using my Facebook ID. The comment was critical of Islam and suggested that what the Chinese are doing in Sinkiang province might be an effective way to combat that.
The comment got about 50 likes before being deleted by Facebook as Hate speech. I complained but the decision was endorsed within about a minute.

Apparently I am not the only one. Hundreds of Facebook checkers are employed deleting comments. One German user recently sued Facebook for deleting comments critical of Germany. The post was restored.

My questions are these:

1) Since evangelism and criticism of other religions ( not accompanied by threatening behaviour) is not illegal why are these people deleting posts?

2) Should an American company be allowed to delete German posts that break no laws.

3) How can freedom of speech be protected from hate speech algorithms and over zealous leftist activists working for Facebook and the BBC amongst others?
I think that internet gigants like Facebook, Twitter, youtube, twitch, Google etc that are providing their services in the EU must comply to the EU laws, freedoms and culture.

The EU parliament should work on it, they came with GDPR, which is good, but not good enough.
 
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JosephZ

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.1) Since evangelism and criticism of other religions ( not accompanied by threatening behaviour) is not illegal why are these people deleting posts?
Because advocating that innocent men, women, and children be forced against their will into internment camps where they are brainwashed, tortured, and forced to denounce their faith is hateful and wrong? Just a guess.

Randall Schriver, the US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security, was asked by a reporter to explain why he used "concentration camp terminology." He answered that "given what we understand to be the magnitude of the detention - [with] at least a million but likely closer to three million citizens out of a population of about ten million, so a very significant portion of the population - what's happening there, what the goals are of the Chinese government and their own public comments make that a very, I think, appropriate description."

Former prisoners told us of physical as well as psychological torture in the camps. Entire families had disappeared, and we were told detainees were tortured physically and mentally. We also saw evidence of almost a complete surveillance state in Xinjiang.

Uighur people in particular are subject to intense surveillance and are made to give DNA and biometric samples. Those with relatives in 26 "sensitive" countries have reportedly been rounded up, and up to a million detained. Rights groups say people in camps are made to learn Mandarin Chinese and criticise or renounce their faith.


Members of the Uighur ethnic group want their adopted homeland to take action over China’s internment camps, into which many of their loved ones seem to have disappeared.

2) Should an American company be allowed to delete German posts that break no laws.
3) How can freedom of speech be protected from hate speech algorithms and over zealous leftist activists working for Facebook and the BBC amongst others?
These are private companies and freedom of speech does not apply on their sites. They are free to choose what they deem to be acceptable and what's not acceptable.
 
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Albion

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Recently I posted a comment on a BBC article using my Facebook ID. The comment was critical of Islam....
Isn't this the reason? Facebook is perfectly free to censor anything that doesn't agree with its political leanings.
 
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mindlight

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Because advocating that innocent men, women, and children be forced against their will into internment camps where they are brainwashed, tortured, and forced to denounce their faith is hateful and wrong? Just a guess.

Randall Schriver, the US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security, was asked by a reporter to explain why he used "concentration camp terminology." He answered that "given what we understand to be the magnitude of the detention - [with] at least a million but likely closer to three million citizens out of a population of about ten million, so a very significant portion of the population - what's happening there, what the goals are of the Chinese government and their own public comments make that a very, I think, appropriate description."

Former prisoners told us of physical as well as psychological torture in the camps. Entire families had disappeared, and we were told detainees were tortured physically and mentally. We also saw evidence of almost a complete surveillance state in Xinjiang.

Uighur people in particular are subject to intense surveillance and are made to give DNA and biometric samples. Those with relatives in 26 "sensitive" countries have reportedly been rounded up, and up to a million detained. Rights groups say people in camps are made to learn Mandarin Chinese and criticise or renounce their faith.


Members of the Uighur ethnic group want their adopted homeland to take action over China’s internment camps, into which many of their loved ones seem to have disappeared.


But Islam has always relied on the use of these very same levers of control. The Chinese are just objecting to the end goal , as do Christians, but they are saying that the only way you defeat a religion that relies on this external control is with external control like these camps. The key difference with Christianity is that Christianity is not man made it is God initiated. The Chinese mess with heaven itself when they seek to control a Christian whereas they merely correct a political ideology when they do the same with a Muslim. That said Many Chinese Christians do in fact experience freedom of worship and some of those are even in the Communist party itself. It is Catholics who insist on papal supremacy and house churches who reject any oversight that have been targeted for persecution. There are Christians who will endure persecution there in Christs name and there are those who think that the battle with the state is not one they are called to fight at all. Christianity is therefore far more flexible in the face of an atheistic Communist state and the more likely to survive and thrive no matter what policy is pursued

These are private companies and freedom of speech does not apply on their sites. They are free to choose what they deem to be acceptable and what's not acceptable.

To some extent that is true, but their own success means that they have to respect that many people use them as a platform for engagement with other platforms all around the world , indeed they encourage these links and make money from them. So if I post on the BBC using my facebook ID I would expect the BBC to edit me out not Facebook and especially when I have actually broken no laws and threatened no one with my exercise of free speech. If they are going to police me then they are going to lose me and millions of others like me. I reduced my Facebook footprint some 20% as a result of the above decision for instance.
 
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mindlight

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Isn't this the reason? Facebook is perfectly free to censor anything that doesn't agree with its political leanings.

They are scared of being sued also and have gotten it into their heads that Christians are just as guilty of hate speech as Muslims which is ludicrous given the statistics of terrorism. It is an ideological position not an evidential one. There is real evidence of collusion between Muslims on Facebook and for hateful words leading to threatening actions while there is almost none for real terrorists from the right on Facebook. So they do not have a balanced perspective on real threat intentions and actual outcomes here.
 
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mindlight

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I think that internet gigants like Facebook, Twitter, youtube, twitch, Google etc that are providing their services in the EU must comply to the EU laws, freedoms and culture.

The EU parliament should work on it, they came with GDPR, which is good, but not good enough.

Yes but how they comply with those laws and the biases they bring to bear in doing so is an ideological feature of these more leftist than rightist companies.

GDPR is an attempt to protect personal data which is different from using such platforms for evangelisms or to criticise other religions. Such freedom of speech is permissible under law so long as it does not include threatening behaviour towards persons or groups.
 
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Goonie

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Recently I posted a comment on a BBC article using my Facebook ID. The comment was critical of Islam and suggested that what the Chinese are doing in Sinkiang province might be an effective way to combat that.
The comment got about 50 likes before being deleted by Facebook as Hate speech. I complained but the decision was endorsed within about a minute.

Apparently I am not the only one. Hundreds of Facebook checkers are employed deleting comments. One German user recently sued Facebook for deleting comments critical of Germany. The post was restored.

My questions are these:

1) Since evangelism and criticism of other religions ( not accompanied by threatening behaviour) is not illegal why are these people deleting posts?

2) Should an American company be allowed to delete German posts that break no laws.

3) How can freedom of speech be protected from hate speech algorithms and over zealous leftist activists working for Facebook and the BBC amongst others?
If you are referring to this
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...BRAC&usg=AOvVaw3-4bRZ8MVz-7XkzMx-QkYG&ampcf=1

The disappearance of upto 3 million members of a particular religious group into concentration camps.

Given the fact that you are also posting from Germany I'm not surprised your posts were deleted.
 
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mindlight

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If you are referring to this
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...BRAC&usg=AOvVaw3-4bRZ8MVz-7XkzMx-QkYG&ampcf=1

The disappearance of upto 3 million members of a particular religious group into concentration camps.

Given the fact that you are also posting from Germany I'm not surprised your posts were deleted.

I was not born German as you know, but I will say it anyway just to be clear for this thread. But most Germans alive today would also disassociate themselves from Hitler and the Nazis so calling yourself a German today is something profoundly different than it was.

These are not concentration camps comparable to Auschwitz for instance where millions of people were exterminated. The better parallel would be Siberian gulags as with Communist Russia where people were sent to work off their bourgeoise sins and be re-educated to be good communists. So Leftwing Stalin or Mao not right wing Hitler would be the monster lurking in the background here.

I supported the Muslim immigrations, I encourage my children to relate to Muslims as people first and indeed my daughters best friend is a Muslim. We also have Muslim neighbours. But organised radical extremism amongst Muslims required a similarly radical response. While I may disagree with Chinese Communism as being a rather vacuous or rather second level set of goals by comparison to a Christian theological worldview the Chinese methodology is exactly the one that will hurt Islam most by destroying all communal endorsement of the believers faith and the removing of the external props on which it relies. Muslims are extraordinarily vulnerable to such political controls as the reconquistada in Spain and liberation of the Balkans , Israel and India all indicated. At the end of the day my personal conviction is that there is no God at the heart of Islam and it is just a political ideology/culture at the end of the day.
 
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Albion

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These are not concentration camps comparable to Auschwitz for instance where millions of people were exterminated. The better parallel would be Siberian gulags as with Communist Russia where people were sent to work off their bourgeoise sins and be re-educated to be good communists. So Leftwing Stalin or Mao not right wing Hitler would be the monster lurking in the background here.
True, but propaganda doesn't care much about accuracy. Its about the impact of the words.
 
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Newtheran

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Recently I posted a comment on a BBC article using my Facebook ID. The comment was critical of Islam and suggested that what the Chinese are doing in Sinkiang province might be an effective way to combat that.
The comment got about 50 likes before being deleted by Facebook as Hate speech. I complained but the decision was endorsed within about a minute.

Apparently I am not the only one. Hundreds of Facebook checkers are employed deleting comments. One German user recently sued Facebook for deleting comments critical of Germany. The post was restored.

My questions are these:

1) Since evangelism and criticism of other religions ( not accompanied by threatening behaviour) is not illegal why are these people deleting posts?

2) Should an American company be allowed to delete German posts that break no laws.

3) How can freedom of speech be protected from hate speech algorithms and over zealous leftist activists working for Facebook and the BBC amongst others?

What you describes happens on forums as well.

What is typically called "hate speech" used to be called disagreement.

It's a strategy employed to silence dissent.
 
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Newtheran

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1) Since evangelism and criticism of other religions ( not accompanied by threatening behaviour) is not illegal why are these people deleting posts?

2) Should an American company be allowed to delete German posts that break no laws.

3) How can freedom of speech be protected from hate speech algorithms and over zealous leftist activists working for Facebook and the BBC amongst others?

You raise a lot of good issues. Typically, a company is given the freedom to run its business as it sees fit. There are critical questions to address with regards to this:

(1) Is the business in question a platform of a publisher? If it's the former, it does not have the right to censor content in this way. If the latter, then it has to meet other standards and although it can censor content it opens itself up to other legal liabilities when it does. Incidentally, this distinction would apply not only to facebook but to smaller online communities such as this one.

(2) Is the business in question a monopoly? Under this scenario - which pretty clearly apply to Google and Amazon at this point - the company would be subject to being broken up involuntarily under the Sherman Antiturst Act. With regards to Google and Amazon, at least, I think addressing their failings under antitrust law would be the most effective solution.
 
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mindlight

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Islamophobic/paranoid/radical opinions aren't accepted everywhere.

Your complaint is ridiculous and the original intent is disgusting. You're not as bad as Hitler but more like Stalin or Mao?

I am so glad a Muslim commented on this thread, thank you for posting.

The theory is that Islam relies on usage of political levers and when deprived of those tends to shrink in size. The history of Christianity however says the opposite as it can thrive in cooperation with or in opposition to the state.

Personally I would not want to live in China and Christians are also having problems with the Chinese authorities which seriously undermine their quality of life and freedom of worship. I am not advocating the death of any Muslims nor any deprivation of property or anything like that. But it seems to me that the Chinese strategy may actually work to reduce the Muslim footprint in China.
 
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mindlight

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You raise a lot of good issues. Typically, a company is given the freedom to run its business as it sees fit. There are critical questions to address with regards to this:

(1) Is the business in question a platform of a publisher? If it's the former, it does not have the right to censor content in this way. If the latter, then it has to meet other standards and although it can censor content it opens itself up to other legal liabilities when it does. Incidentally, this distinction would apply not only to facebook but to smaller online communities such as this one.

(2) Is the business in question a monopoly? Under this scenario - which pretty clearly apply to Google and Amazon at this point - the company would be subject to being broken up involuntarily under the Sherman Antiturst Act. With regards to Google and Amazon, at least, I think addressing their failings under antitrust law would be the most effective solution.

Obviously the BBC prides itself on its own honesty and impartiality regarding publishing news articles. But in practice it edits outs comments that it regards as extremist even when a significant part of the response to many articles on LGBTQ or Islam is exactly that because people have extreme reactions when lies are told about these. If Facebook joins in the editing of BBC feedback then they only ever get distorted readings of their articles impact and its filtered impressions become less newsworthy and helpful to someone who genuinely seeks the truth of a matter.

Amazon sells just about everything from Mein Kampf to the Quran, from the Bible to the Communist manifesto or Maos little Red book and also allows the publishing of opinions through its publishing wing which I do not believe it should be held liable to. It is simply a market stall on the Internet as far as I am concerned and should be allowed the freedom to trade, so long as it sells what the customer buys, pays all due taxes etc then that works. I have not seen evidence of ideological tampering in this free market as yet. Maybe you can give an example?
 
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JosephZ

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Which criticism of the pedophilic merchant's cult definitely is.
Is this kind of talk really necessary? Muhammad's marriage to Aisha wasn't unusual at the point in history that it took place. Prearranged and Child marriages were common among all societies at that time and Christians and Jews were practicing this centuries before Islam existed. Child marriages continue even today in many cultures. Even in the US, my home country, marriage to children as young as 7 was allowed in the state of Delaware less than 150 years ago.

Over the course of American history, the most commonly observed age of consent was 10 years. In 1880, 37 states had an age of consent of 10 years while 10 states kept an age of consent at 12, and Delaware maintained its age of consent at seven years, having lowered it from 10 in 1871.

If you are going to label Muhammad a pedophile, you will also have to do the same with some people in the Bible and many within the Church throughout history. Once again, there was nothing at all unusual about Muhammad's marriage to Aisha and labeling him as a pedophile is not only unjust, it also damages our witness to Christ.
 
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Theophilus2019

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Obviously the BBC prides itself on its own honesty and impartiality regarding publishing news articles. But in practice it edits outs comments that it regards as extremist even when a significant part of the response to many articles on LGBTQ or Islam is exactly that because people have extreme reactions when lies are told about these. If Facebook joins in the editing of BBC feedback then they only ever get distorted readings of their articles impact and its filtered impressions become less newsworthy and helpful to someone who genuinely seeks the truth of a matter.

Amazon sells just about everything from Mein Kampf to the Quran, from the Bible to the Communist manifesto or Maos little Red book and also allows the publishing of opinions through its publishing wing which I do not believe it should be held liable to. It is simply a market stall on the Internet as far as I am concerned and should be allowed the freedom to trade, so long as it sells what the customer buys, pays all due taxes etc then that works. I have not seen evidence of ideological tampering in this free market as yet. Maybe you can give an example?

In Britain it is well known and acknowledged in the press (see UK newspapers over the last couple of weeks) that the BBC is anything but honest and unbiased. The BBC has a strong bias against Christianity and traditional values. It also has a strong bias toward homosexuality, evidenced by the way hardly a day passes on the BBC website without a pro-homosexuality story, even when it just isn’t news our even if there are other more worthy stories to report. In Britain many people don’t call it the BBC any more but instead call it the G(for Gay) BC.
 
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