Discussion: Zuckerberg: I 'Didn't Intend To Defend' Holocaust Deniers By Not Deleting Posts

Zuckerberg responded by saying that “It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent.”

Power corrupts, and Facebook corrupts absolutely.

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A moral and ethical Facebook would have 90% less revenue.

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Can we send Zucks to Mars with Elon? Please?

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From an amoral shareholder’s perspective, Zuckerberg is one of many Silicon Valley CEOs (lookin’ at you, Elon) who needs to hidden in a quiet vault for his company’s own protection.

PR protip: never find yourself in a position where you’re about to say “I never intended to defend Holocaust deniers”. If necessary, just collect your thoughts for five or ten seconds of dead air. People will understand. This is an interview, not casual conversation. If you need to think about how you want to answer a question, that’s intelligent and appropriate.

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With a name like Zuckerberg one would think he would not allow Nazis or any of their ilk on Facebook. What a Putz.

I guess Zuckerberg would be OK with someone “unintentionally” yelling “FIRE!!!” in a crowded theater.

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Zuckerberg: I ‘Didn’t Intend To Defend’ Holocaust Deniers ...

That may not have been your motive but your intent was clearly to organize the system so that others could freely do so.

NB: Intent is not the same as motive. What a thing does is what that thing is: a handy rule of thumb when analyzing systems. We can never know for certain what anyone’s motive was – they could tell us but they might be lying – but we can know their intent by the outcome, by the consequences of what they did; when those consequences appear sustainable in the face of their ongoing behavior that knowledge becomes as close to certainty as we can get with another human.

PS: That is why the intentions of Republicans are crystal clear: They have given up on democracy in favor of plutocracy and permanent single-party power. We may not know what motivates someone like Mitch McConnell – maybe he really wants to make America great again, maybe he wants another million in payoffs, maybe he’s just being a loyal party-member, or maybe he wants to take another whack at that black guy who used to be POTUS – it doesn’t matter: his consistent actions label him and all like him as fascists; that’s his intent. Full stop.

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and I absolutely didn’t intend to defend the intent of people who deny that,”

“…but heck, a dollar’s a dollar and that’s one more dollar for me!”

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But, Zuck… There’s an old German saying, “If you see a known Nazi at a table with 10 other people, you see 11 Nazis.” When you invite Holocaust Deniers to the table (by not kicking them off of the table) then you are defending them. Period.

Elon is more of a Twitter guy. And no need to impose Zuck on him, that’s mean.

The guy is such a fucking puke. Holocaust denial’s been going on since the Holocaust was in progress. His fucking Facebook is nothing special in its participation. It’s supporting Holocaust denial. And it makes him bucks allowing it happen. This fucking brat is not able to control the best he created from another guys idea. That’s why 2016 and that’s why this shit.

Here’s the thing - if you object to Zuckerberg and his shit platform, then stop using it. Otherwise, you are tacitly endorsing everything this fucker does and says.

PS - In case you are wondering, I don’t have a Facebook account. I don’t have a Twitter account. The closest thing to social media for me is posting here on TPM. I invite you to join me.

Zuckerberg: “If something is deemed to be fake, he said, it might remain on the site but it would be pushed down in the news feed so fewer people would see it.”

In other words, something “deemed to be fake” wouldn’t be removed, just simply “pushed down”. Yet FB has other censorship actions that are far harsher - with far less reason. Such as any pictures involving “nudity” (e. g. the Vietnam war kids pic - before they backtracked on that due to outcries). Sure, “nudity” is controversial, but it certainly is not necessarily “pornography”. Other social sites like Twitter and Tumblr do not automatically remove pictures with “nudity” (in quotes, because there are issues such as of “how much may be exposed”). FB doesn’t allow pictures with “nudity” even in closed, private groups specifically for “nudists”. The work-around is so simple. Just by default don’t show such pictures to people unless they agree to see them - which is how other sites handle this.

Yeah, there are other issues, such as other countries that don’t allow “nudity” to anyone. But how does FB accommodate countries such as many in Western Europe that don’t permit holocaust denial either? And just hiding holocaust denial is much less severe than FB’s censorship of “nudity” - which can lead quickly to temporary or permanent suspension of personal accounts. They have algrorithms that specifically police this.

FB insists on occupying an untenable position. It wants to be as “universal” as possible to maximize ad revenue while at the same time being very selective about censorship - which is giving a private “universal” organization far too much discretion about what to censor or not. It simply ought not to be considered a reliable, neutral conduit of news and information - but this is a very imperfect world, so it is considered as such. Not by sensible people, of course.

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