Individual rights and freedom of expression took thousands of years to evolve. They made civilization great and held the promise to make it greater yet. Facebook is out to dismantle much of the progress in attaining universal free speech. Instead, Facebook promotes speech codes and censorship. Those are to freedom of expression what shackles and prisons are to freedom of movement. That is not progress, it is regress.
Human nature strives to achieve improvement, perfection, with the limits to that only being set by human imagination, and that is limited only by human ingenuity. No flights of unlimited human imagination are achievable by using anyone’s “community standards” that constrain freedom of expression. Those flights cannot even be launched, let alone be completed, when they are limited through arbitrary constraints imposed by the “community standards”, the rules of profit-hungry corporations. It is pretense to call corporate rules, constraints, restrictions and censorship: “community standards”! They are no more “community standards” than “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.” It would be far more accurate for Facebook (and, correspondingly, any other comparable corporation) to insist that, “Facebook is the Ministry of Truth.” George Orwell would rage in his grave, if he knew and could, but he most certainly saw what was in store for us. He was a prophet whose dystopian visions are becoming reality.
No democracy ever had any say in what Facebook’s “community standards” should entail. No delegated member of the community of mankind ever attended any meetings, discussions or debates at which it was determined whether FB “community standards” were needed and what they should entail. Not a single elected representative got sent by the people to any sessions at which Facebook’s “community standards” were hammered out, amended, put into their final form, voted on, ratified and published. Not one legislative assembly appointed Facebook judge, jury and executioner.
Everyone, including Facebook, knows that Facebook cooked up what it calls “community standards”, without anyone anywhere in the world providing the least semblance of legal authorization for Facebook to do so, let alone allow Facebook a free hand to judge anyone’s conduct based on those standards, and to hand down any sort of punishment to perceived violators of “community standards” that are not accessible to the public and were, as far as I can determine, never published as a formal, comprehensive document.
Community standards cater to the ideology of communism. We know where that leads. It starts out with identity politics and goes from there to where everyone’s individuality is made equal by brutally hammering it flat. Under communism, anything and anyone remarkable, outstanding, admirable, and excelling, Whack comes the hammer! Communism is an enemy of freedom of expression and free speech.
Facebook’s “community standards,” standards in whose making the people had no say, make the quest for perfection deplorable, and the drive to deprecate established ethical traditions desirable, are not worth pursuing. They must not be inflicted upon humanity, perhaps not even on Facebook’s employees. Aside from that, Facebook’s “community standards” suffer from at least one fatal strategic flaw, amongst others that are firmly based on logical fallacies.
The next section addresses Equality of Outcomes vs Equality of Opportunities.
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See also:
- Facebook censorship ruled unconstitutional — Germany
- Facebook locked me out
- Breaking with liberalism
- UNFPA : Family breakdown human rights triumph
- Remembrance Day 2008
- Australian Govt Admission: We Censor Websites
- Freedom and Equality vs Rules and Power
