<story><title>Russia opens criminal investigation of Meta over death calls on Facebook</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/world/kremlin-says-meta-would-have-cease-work-russia-if-reuters-report-is-true-2022-03-11/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>monklu</author><text>On the contrary, I think this says less about FB, but more so reflects a hypocrisy in &amp;quot;western principles&amp;quot; that many are probably not self-aware of.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s assume for a second, that FB do not relax their rules for this conflict. Then they would have to ban a whole sleuth of Ukrainian accounts, including many government accounts such as Ministry of Defense, and probably even Zelensky. You don&amp;#x27;t have to stretch your imagination to see what the headlines would look like in that case -- &amp;quot;Facebook bans Ukrainian resistance against Russian aggression&amp;quot; etc. In a sense, FB was a facing a catch-22 situation, where it&amp;#x27;s just lose-lose for them, and they had to make a call to swallow the &amp;quot;less poisonous&amp;quot; pill.&lt;p&gt;Contrast this situation with American war efforts in the middle east and Afghanistan over the past 20 years, where they faced no such conundrum.</text></item><item><author>gambler</author><text>If you need to change your platform&amp;#x27;s rules for literally every major event (elections, Covid, this war) there is something profoundly wrong both with your rules and your platform.&lt;p&gt;There is tremendous value in having actual principles. So many people either forgotten it or never understood that to begin with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aerovistae</author><text>Reminds me of my favorite internet essay of all time, no longer available except on wayback machine[1]&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  ...the US criminal justice system is overwhelmingly preoccupied with procedure and process, often at the expense of justice. This myopia is the product of a technocratic bureaucracy.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The contemporary incarnation of the peculiar mindset of Anglo-American jurisprudence leads to the question, “Were the rights of all parties, as enumerated by the law, protected?”, eclipsing the much larger issue: “Is this outcome compatible with justice?”&lt;p&gt;While these comments are in reference to the legal system, I think they are equally applicable to the mindset pervading the oversight of today&amp;#x27;s tech world.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20210308014253&amp;#x2F;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;likewise.am&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;26&amp;#x2F;what-armenians-should-know-about-life-in-america&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20210308014253&amp;#x2F;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;likewise.a...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Note - the author is an intermittent HN user, abalashov.</text></comment>
<story><title>Russia opens criminal investigation of Meta over death calls on Facebook</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/world/kremlin-says-meta-would-have-cease-work-russia-if-reuters-report-is-true-2022-03-11/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>monklu</author><text>On the contrary, I think this says less about FB, but more so reflects a hypocrisy in &amp;quot;western principles&amp;quot; that many are probably not self-aware of.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s assume for a second, that FB do not relax their rules for this conflict. Then they would have to ban a whole sleuth of Ukrainian accounts, including many government accounts such as Ministry of Defense, and probably even Zelensky. You don&amp;#x27;t have to stretch your imagination to see what the headlines would look like in that case -- &amp;quot;Facebook bans Ukrainian resistance against Russian aggression&amp;quot; etc. In a sense, FB was a facing a catch-22 situation, where it&amp;#x27;s just lose-lose for them, and they had to make a call to swallow the &amp;quot;less poisonous&amp;quot; pill.&lt;p&gt;Contrast this situation with American war efforts in the middle east and Afghanistan over the past 20 years, where they faced no such conundrum.</text></item><item><author>gambler</author><text>If you need to change your platform&amp;#x27;s rules for literally every major event (elections, Covid, this war) there is something profoundly wrong both with your rules and your platform.&lt;p&gt;There is tremendous value in having actual principles. So many people either forgotten it or never understood that to begin with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rajin444</author><text>Private companies should not get in the business of policing content. Follow the laws of the land and that’s it.&lt;p&gt;It’s not really a foreign concept. We don’t deny somebody sunlight or air because they do something we don’t like (we as in non government entities - governments do deny people “air”). The world would be a better place if businesses operated as close to a natural resource as possible and left politics to politicians.&lt;p&gt;It’s dumb luck that sunlight isn’t provided by some corporation. Systems like that are what we should strive for.</text></comment>