Devil's advocate: I don't see why Facebook isn't allowed to choose what is or isn't displayed on their site. The only reason Facebook is a platform people choose to use is because of the editorial decisions they have been making. And the problem was that the policy was too consistent? That they were not making enough exceptions to the rule for important people?
Of course they're allowed to choose. And we're allowed to choose to criticize them in public for those choices. And they're allowed to choose to change their actions based on that criticism. Everybody is acting on the basis of their freedoms.
I'm reading this as a non-statement. Like I'm saying that no one should be outraged about this, and you are saying there is no such thing as outrage, just people acting in their own interests. Fine, that's very true, but then that takes the steam out of all arguments everywhere.
My point is that you equate outrage to "they're not allowed to," when that's not the case at all. They are absolutely allowed to. If you want to talk about the merits of outrage, you can't start with a false description of what it implies.
> Devil's advocate: I don't see why Facebook isn't allowed to choose what is or isn't displayed on their site.
They are allowed to. If they weren't allowed to, this wouldn't have happened at all.
OTOH, everyone else is allowed to criticize their particular choices, even while recognizing that they have the right to make choices.
> The only reason Facebook is a platform people choose to use is because of the editorial decisions they have been making.
I disagree that this is the only reason, but even if this was true that wouldn't be an argument against public commentary and criticism regarding Facebook's editorial decisions.
> And the problem was that the policy was too consistent?
No, the problem that has been suggested is that the policy is too simplistic, not too consistent.
"We don't keep pictures of naked children on our site." That doesn't seem too simplistic. Especially since censorship for Facebook requires an international staff of thousands to go through every single photo looking for child pornography or gore. How do you train contractors in the Philippines the subtleties between a photo that has historic merit and one that is lewd?
The only reason FB is the "safe" place it is is because they have done an incredibly good and consistent job of getting this type of stuff done. And I don't see any way they run around policies like this without just giving special privileges to ignore the posts of more influential people.
> "We don't keep pictures of naked children on our site." That doesn't seem too simplistic.
The argument over whether it is too simplistic is already all over all the other subthreads, feel free to engage in it there; I don't feel the need to repeat what's been said elsewhere here. In GP, I was just correcting you on what the nature of the complaint is.
