I'm sure if Facebook existed in the 18th century people like Benjamin Franklin (not exactly a promoter of diversity, shall we say) and Thomas Paine (politically extreme by the standards of the day) would have been banned for spreading hate and advocating violence or something like that. It's very alarming that they're picking a side. It's one thing to censor violent/hateful speech above some arbitrary threshold but to openly announce you're only going to go censor it when one side does not sit well with me.
The right likes to claim that media and soical networks have been censoring them, but they always fail to mention that there are actual laws on the books(!) that target BDS supporters, who are overwhelmingly on the left, you're likely to be fired if you speak in favor of Palestinian rights etc. This rarely gets mentioned.
Much of the media also promotes a rather conservative economic agenda, constantly does smear pieces against Sanders, pretends that single payer means the same as throwing people off of insurance etc.
Yes, corporations do have a 'liberal bias' when it comes to social issues, (guess what, gays are also potential customers), but they tend to be conservative on economics.
From the people you named, it seems clear to me you do not know what I mean by left. Celebrities that play lip service to social issues for PR value, sure, but that's easy. Now tell me how many of the same people advocate for single payer, or ending the war in Yemen, my guess is almost none of them.
That's social vs economic left for you. Being socially liberal is logical, gays are also your customers. It's a different story when it comes to economics.
Yeah, if anything anti-BDS laws is one of those cases where the mainstream right and mainstream-"left" support it, and the "far-right" and "real left" both oppose it (albeit for very different reasons: the far right because they dislike jewish people, and the "real left" because they view Israel as a right-wing apartheid state that is oppressing the Palestinian people.)
One thing is constant though, it's a subject that inflames tempers.
> And it's important to realize that those laws passed with strong Democrat support
The dominant faction of the Democratic Party has for decades been center-right. (There are signs that a center-left faction may displace it soon, but that's uncertain.)
> and are still supported by the left-wing media,
Neither HuffPost nor, especially the Washington Post are “left-wing media”. WaPo is right of the dominant center-right faction of the Democratic Party, HuffPo is pretty much in line with it. And neither of those pieces you cite from those sources is even an editorial from the media outlet stating their position, they are outside opinion pieces of the type print and print-like online outlets that aren't narrow propaganda outlets tend to carry from a range of viewpoints that the outlet itself doesn't necessarily endorse.
The actual left-wing, or even center-left, media doesn't support anti-BDS laws, and it's not even clear to me that the non-left outlets you try to suggest do even support them.
While the Democratic Party, WaPo or HuffPost might not seem particularly left-wing relative to, say, Europe, they certainly are left of center in the US.
And what you're calling center-left or actual left-wing is far-left in American terms.
I think it's important to make a distinction between social leftism and economic leftism, because on the economic front the outlets you mentioned are squarely center-right.
And yes, it is relative, but that just shows you how right-wing the 'center' really is. The Democratic Party in the U.S. is called the Conservative Party in the UK.
Not really. I mean, you can use them that way and it has some value for some uses, but you lose a lot of insight particularly into natural strategic rather than tactical political alignment.
The left favors the interests of the working class, the right favors the interest of the capitalist class. The “center-” of each does so while still favoring preserving some protection for the distinct interests of the opposing class; there is a natural strategic alignment across the right (and similarly the left), even if there might be a tactical alignment between, say, the left and center-right in a nation with an electoral system favoring duopoly and a somewhat right-leaning political culture.
That line of thought leads to dismissing the experience of working people who are hurt by leftist policies (and know it) and claiming they are voting against their own interests when they vote Republican.
But the left made healthcare worse for people who have health insurance. They lower wages for American workers by expanding immigration. They raise taxes to pay for benefits for people who choose not to work.
> That line of thought leads to dismissing the experience of working people who are hurt by leftist policies
No, it doesn't. First, because It's quite possible to recognize that people fail in what they seek to favor. And, second and more importantly, because it leads to noticing that there's virtually no leftist policy in the US, since the dominant factions for the two parties have for decades been right and center-right.
> But the left made healthcare worse for people who have health insurance.
No, the left didn't. Aside from the question of whether the ACA made healthcare worse for people have insurance (which is a complicated mixed bag), the ACA didn't come from the left, it came from the center-right faction of the Democratic Party, following an outline earlier used at the state level by Republicans, and which actually was first suggested by a group of Republican politicians and insurance industry figures as a better (from a conservative standpoint) alternative to the (also from the center-right faction of the Democratic Party) Clinton healthcare reform effort in the 1990s.
> They lower wages for American workers by expanding immigration.
When and how have leftists fine this?
> They raise taxes to pay for benefits for people who choose not to work.
I'm talking about people who choose not to work. I've known plenty of them, but I've already discussed that in another comment here.
I will add that most working class people I know make too much money to qualify for benefits. They already earn more than minimum wage. They make too much to qualify for expanded Medicaid, or grants for college.
Also, fifty years ago, working class people made good money in construction. But even thirty years ago, those wages were already depressed by illegal immigrant labor. And when working class people complained, leftist journalists and politicians whose jobs weren't threatened by immigration dismissed those complaints as racism.
Most leftists know nothing about the real concerns of working class people.
Your comment shows the problem with assuming that the Democratic Party == left. It does not, at least not on the economic front, not since FDR, which is why you get the sort of compromise 'centrist' solution that is Obamacare, which actually takes a lot of cues from what were right-wing proposals, (i.e. Romney).
The left wants single payer/medicare for all, which polls extremely well, not crappy compromises. There should have been at least a public option, but precisely because Obama was no leftist, he took even that out.
Bernie Sanders actually polls well among the working class people you're talking about.
P.S. The notion that there is some significant amount of people who 'choose not to work' is... laughable. Life on benefits its not the comfortable sort of life you seem to imagine it being. In fact many people on benefits DO WORK, and they're struggling despite it. You can blame them for working minimum wage jobs, (like everyone can be an entrepreneur), however the real problem might be that the minimum wage has not kept up with the increases in productivity and inflation.
I'm not imagining anything; I'm speaking from personal knowledge. I grew up in poverty. Poor people aren't a distant mystery to me; they've been my friends, family, classmates, and neighbors most of my life. (Not so much coworkers because I was fortunate to enter the tech industry.)
I've known many people who prefer to live on benefits and take pride in their ability to work the system. That life may not seem comfortable by SV standards, but they like it. They have no intention of working hard and earning a more expensive life.
Of course, I've also known many poor people who worked hard to improve their lives. People who advanced by going to night school while working full time, or through hard work and loyalty for an employer, or by living simply and investing what money they had. But I rarely see policies that help that kind of person from either party.
> I've known many people who prefer to live on benefits and take pride in their ability to work the system.
Yeah, sure, but there's always going to be people taking advantage of any system. Does that mean no system is worth having? I mean there's a tremendous amount of waste at the Pentagon, for example, yet the right always seems to rather be focusing on punching down, rather than up.
Some systems are worth having. Taxing idle wealth instead of productive work would be a good system. Rewarding work instead of cutting off benefits would be a good system.
The system we have helps people who don't work but does little to help poor working people and IMO isn't worth having.
> And it's important to realize that those laws passed with strong Democrat support
Absolutely. The Democratic establishment does not represent the views of the left in this country. Certainly not on economic issues. Paying lip service to social issues.
On many issues, the Democratic and Republican parties in Washington are actually pretty aligned, their views on BDS being one of them.
> are still supported by the left-wing media
Which is why I tend to use the term 'neoliberal'. Left-wing they certainly are not, as the articles show. They're only left on social issues, not economics. The media tend to be pretty closely aligned with the Democratic establishment, which then gets conflated with left-wing, but figures like Nancy Polosi don't support leading left-wing economic priorities such a single-payer at all.
Many platforms have been doing this. It's likely because the majority of tech folks are left leaning, whether leadership in the company or audience. It's basic marketing.
I'm not sad that some of these really hateful people are blocked, that's a given. But choosing sides is dangerous. Not every conservative is spewing hate speech, in fact many from the left (even celebrities) post what could be considered hate speech.
> It's likely because the majority of tech folks are left leaning, whether leadership in the company or audience
I agree. I don't think it's being done out of malice, just that tech is so politically homogeneous that not enough people realize this is out of line to keep these sorts of projects from going forward. The ball gets rolling and there's not enough people voicing a strong enough objection to stop it. I think in the future we'll see this as a failure to acknowledge that tech is not as diverse as the population in general. Car companies aren't stupid. They know they don't know everything so they do customer research, get focus groups, etc, etc, to help them determine how to tune things to be attractive to the target audience. Tech's target audience is the global population but tech mostly fails to account for all the customers that don't live on the West coast or Northeast of the US. We saw the same thing when music was somewhat democratized by the internet in the 2000s. Country and hip-hop surged in popularity because a bunch of well of white music producers in a few cities on the coasts didn't have the perfect picture of what everyone wanted.
Tech culture is somewhat homogeneous, especially in LA and SF - but I certainly wouldn't say tech itself is homogenous.
I'm fairly extreme politically, as an anarcho-capitalist - though it's important to note that despite the "anarchist" root, I'm as peaceful a person as can be and my views are literally founded upon the premise that forcing others to do something is immoral. I'm also happy to discuss my philosophy and do so under my real name. If you search me, you'll find years of posts across multiple communities where I actively discuss my views and the views of others. It's enough of a part of my life that I've decided that I can never completely separate it from my profession life because it influences the way I think about the world so thoroughly. As a result, I've even been asked about it multiple times in job interviews.
I give the above as background; my point in it is to say that I've been approached privately by many people who are outside the mainstream orthodoxy of tech. Some want to say they approve of some parts of what I profess, others want to pit their ideas against mine in a private and safe way. Others still seem to just want to be able to admit to someone that they feel that they have to hide who they are at work.
There is absolutely something of a chilling effect on political speech in tech. One of the reasons it's so difficult to discuss is because the people who are made examples of seem to go one of two ways - they flee the scene of the controversy and try to minimize the impact of the controversy (e.g. Brenden Eich), or they embrace it and push hard in the opposite direction, which makes them end up being seen as skewing very hard to the extreme right (e.g. Andrew Torba).
I don't have data to support my assertion, but my experience leads me to believe that there are more right-wing people in tech than it appears, and that there is a significantly higher number of libertarians of all flavors in tech than the general population.
How is tech "politically homogenous"? If anything, tech folks are a bit more likely to skew away from the political center, but it's not like they consistently lean "left" as a group.
I don't know if the people that make up tech lean left over all if you summed them up but the ones that don't lean left sure seem to keep their mouth shut in the workplace which has the same effect.
Not every conservative is getting banned, either. "Fascist parties and neo nazis are getting banned, therefore ordinary conservatives are also being targeted" really makes no sense.
Can you provide a couple of examples of this? In particular, I don't recognize who you're referring to in this section:
> [M]ainstream conservatives literally voted a white supremacist into government. They almost voted a pedophile into government.
--
> Sure there are jerks on the Democratic side but we tend to remove them from authority until they've shown appropriate contrition for an extended period of time.
Is it possible that you're seeing this through you own political biases? I freely admit that I generally see the issues with left-wing figures more easily than those on the right, so please don't think I'm being "whataboutist", because that's not my intention at all.
When I read the above, the first reactive thought I had was "What about Ralph Northam? He is in his college yearbook either in blackface or a Klan robe. What about Justin Fairfax? He's been accused of multiple sexual assaults. Both of them are still in their elected positions"
Of course, this isn't to say the GOP doesn't have its own members with serious problems - instead, my point is that it isn't any easier to conflate conservatives with far right extremists than it is to conflate progressives with far left extremists. From where I stand, it seems to be completely a matter of what biases the viewer holds.
Just my perspective, but I thought the Northam story got blasted for days. That he's still in office is staggering to me.
That being said, The Democratic party absolutely does not take their own medicine on this one. They're just as likely to circle the wagons, I just think they're more susceptible to a particular kind of shame (though not due to any kind of moral conviction, I'd chalk it up to something more like vanity.) I'm more or less as left as they come, but the idea that the Democrats have the moral high ground when it comes to keeping their people in line doesn't square with what I've seen.
>When I read the above, the first reactive thought I had was "What about Ralph Northam? He is in his college yearbook either in blackface or a Klan robe. What about Justin Fairfax? He's been accused of multiple sexual assaults. Both of them are still in their elected positions"
Therein lies the danger of bias and silencing "one side" of a politicial conversation. Because the mainstream media does not blast the story everywhere and call for their heads, bad people are allowed to do bad things, even if they're members of a party that does a lot of good things.
I believe the term for what you just did is 'victim-blaming'.
The alt-right label, for example, has fuzzy boundaries, and this is leveraged to apply that label to anyone without feeling the need to verify the accused's position or statements in more detail. It could be argued that the right has similar issues around applying the label of 'communist', 'socialist', etc.
The intent in these cases is to cordon the accused off, lighting a signal flare that their ideas are too extreme to be worth considering. This causes real harm to real ability to discuss things in the moderate spectrum if everyone is being labeled as being at the edges.
> But choosing sides is dangerous. Not every conservative is spewing hate speech, in fact many from the left (even celebrities) post what could be considered hate speech.
I mean, the headline talks about far-right hate groups, and not about conservatives in general. Why is it that a lot of conservatives seem to take it personally when hate groups are banned? I think this victimhood complex is unhealthy. Facebook is not choosing sides by banning hate groups.
The issue is that there is a far-right and not a far-left. When you say: this is what is acceptable to us, there has to be a way to look at a side and say there is the limit.
The other issue is that the approach these days to minimize or eliminate opposition by making them a “hate group.”
I have a standard test for this based on a very simple hypothesis: Hate is hate regardless who is targeted. If someone write a hate speech about the Jewish people and rewrite every mentioning of Judaism to Islam, then it is still hate speech. The target of hate doesn't change the fact that it is hate.
So I apply the same to feminism and rewrite every mentioning of men to immigrants and women to nationalists. Simple word for word rewrite. Hate being hate, if the rewrite look like hate speech then the original text must also be hate speech.
If Facebook is not choosing sides then such test should work to determine if something is hate or not.
It's not that conservatives don't want hate groups banned, every reasonable person does. It's because of the ever expanding definition of what hate speech is.
I'm no conservative, but I definitely see their point when "I love America" is hate speech, yet "Straight White Men should die" is not. Look at Twitter as an example.
I don't disagree that detecting hate isn't a hard problem. But I also feel it isn't as ambiguous as you make it out to be.
"X loves Y" - not hate speech.
"X should die" - hate speech.
Now, context to these could change it. But the question is, can two random person proficient in the same language tell apart similarly the two kinds of speech?
If a human can perform the task with pretty good accuracy, then it's doable.
Now if we're saying that even people can't tell apart hate and violence, we're in more trouble. But as of now, I think it's a pretty strong claim to make that people can't actually decipher hateful tones in text.
I think the enforcement is way more imbalanced than you realize.
Here's an example, how about instead of "X should die", it's "lol, can all X just die?". They give it a little jocular spin with the "Lol", but it's effectively the same comment.
Here's the deal: if X in that comment is "black people", you get banned on Twitter. If it's "white people" you don't get banned.
Now personally, I don't mind the comment in either form. I don't believe it's an actual threat to anyone. It's kind of edgelordy, but whichever. And beyond that, I'd be very unhappy if someone got banned for something like that, because it just stomps over whatever other, more legitimate commentary they might've had.
I'm interested in having conversations, even imperfect ones. All conversations are imperfect.
But OK, let's move past "X should die".
But it's not just that. Any discussion where one side can be spun as a vulnerable minority (merit be damned), that minority status can be used to silence the other side.
So for example, consider transwomen in women's sports. There's a not-insignificant push among trans activists to claim that transwomen are "biologically female". I think the logic with that is: 1. sex is fuzzier than most people realize (debatable) and 2. hormone treatments are sufficient to tip someone over the line into the other biological sex (also debatable).
Referring to a trans woman as male for the sake of argument runs you a serious risk of getting permabanned from Twitter if the person you're arguing with is particularly ornery.
Hum, you make claims of this will get you banned and this won't. What are those assumptions built on?
I'm not saying it's not the case, I don't use Twitter and don't know their processes.
That said, in my work, we deal with similar scenarios. Normally, you look for trends and you have different levels of enforcement for different risks.
So say you have automated systems doing monitoring which flags and alerts of possible bad behavior. Normally these are scored and categorized. For some score and category, you might take an automatic actions. Say, block the comment from posting at all and tell the user to reword in a non hateful manner their idea. Or you delete the comment. Now these infractions go towards the account. When there's many if them, indicating a trend, it promotes the account for manual review.
At that point, a person does a holistic overview of the account and its infractions. If they can reverse some if them, feeding back into the automated monitoring and alerting to improve its false positive rates, and they can confirm them, to add weight to those labels. Finally, they can choose to contact the account holder to justify themselves, give them a warning, take partial enforcement like deleting certain posts, or outright ban them.
Even the ban has degrees. You could have the account ban, but be allowed to create a new account. Or you can be banned with cross account detection, so your IP, email, address, credit cards etc. are all banned to make it hard for you to even sign up again.
And the processes in place and their rules are constantly adjusted and reevaluated. And there's even backfill mechanisms, so if rules are relaxed in the future, prior enforcement can be reversed if they no longer hold against the new rules for example.
Would you find that if say Facebook or Twitter were to operate in a somewhat similar fashion that it would seem reasonable?
This is a very difficult topic, however I've got a similar feeling to you. Once the news broke out that they would be doing these things, the headlines mentioned also "nationalism" would be banned.
The American Revolution was a nationalistic revolution. Heck, some folks got together to found a new nation! There's nothing more nationalistic than founding a nation.
Also every nation on earth is nationalistic, by pure definition of what a nation is. What do they mean when they say they would ban nationalism? Nationalisms without state-backing? e.g. Basque nationalism?
We certainly have a problem with hate speech and social media, but even though I have no idea about how to solve it I fear this might not be a step in the right direction.
Edit: sigh - downvoted already without a reply. Fanatism is so damaging to democracy and debate.
We live in a globalized world, there's an argument to be had that nationalism in the cheery light you just presented it as is no longer such a good thing. I'm of the opinion that the very concept of countries is inherently violent, so there's my bias, but I don't want to get into this.
What I do want to get into is all this "why ban one side and not the other", well probably because one side is significantly more violent and is only becoming more agitated? Is that not completely obvious? They're not trying to ban a school of thought, they're trying to prevent terrorist attacks by white men on non-white and immigrant people. As has been literally happening. The most violent parts of the left are responses not home grown hatred, and they're not shooting up places of worship. Go ahead, find the like 2 bad examples of left leaning violence but it doesn't take much to find 10x that from the right. One is not like the other.
Antifa. They promote and engage in violence all of the time. You can say x is y times worse, but violent/hateful groups are violent/hateful groups and should be treated equally. They've even been labeled a terrorist organization, but still, for some reason, have free reign over most cities.
Free reign except for the police targeting them, refusing to protect them, actively protecting proud boys, and having numerous examples of police supporting white power movements.
In Portland, it's the citizens that the police refuse to protect. They let antifa and proud boys duke it out, while the regular people without a bone in the fight are left to defend themselves. Literally sit there a block away watching as antifa steps into the streets, redirects traffic, and beats citizens and cars that don't obey their instructions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq-dcJrnGTM
But that's exactly my point. Antifa is definitely a bad thing, but it is literally a response to the other side. If right wing extremists didn't exist FIRST, antifa wouldn't exist AT ALL. If nationalist extremists don't exist, antifa has nothing to fight.
edit: to be clear, I think antifa etc should be banned as well and I do not condone their actions or think they are a good response.
But they didn't start the problem. They haven't killed dozens of people on multiple continents.
Illegal violent responses are still illegal and not justifiable. It doesn't matter who did it first or started it. If that is the prevailing attitude, I think we're in for a really large battle where everybody will lose. Antifa is turning the public against them, because it's affecting regular average people who don't want a part of this fight. Most of us just want to be able to visit downtown, shop, and walk around with our families in peace.
Or they will invent enemies where none exist, or they will expand the boundaries of who qualifies as an enemy. There are other routes for this kind of group to appear and stay in motion.
Letting violent groups that hate everyone who doesn't line up with them persist because they're fighting people we don't like more has not had a successful track record.
> We live in a globalized world, there's an argument to be had that nationalism in the cheery light you just presented it as is no longer such a good thing. I'm of the opinion that the very concept of countries is inherently violent, so there's my bias, but I don't want to get into this.
Right, nations can only exist as long as they use violence to fight (perceived) threats.
> What I do want to get into is all this "why ban one side and not the other", well probably because one side is significantly more violent and is only becoming more agitated? Is that not completely obvious? They're not trying to ban a school of thought, they're trying to prevent terrorist attacks by white men on non-white and immigrant people. As has been literally happening. The most violent parts of the left are responses not home grown hatred, and they're not shooting up places of worship. Go ahead, find the like 2 bad examples of left leaning violence but it doesn't take much to find 10x that from the right. One is not like the other.
We want the same and I agree we have a huge problem with right-wing extremism that does not mirror in left-wing extremism (sic).
My worry is: how soon until the same people we want to deplatform are the ones in charge of the platform? Get Twitter as an example: It is usually left-leaning and minority Twitter users the ones getting the shit end of the stick. Jack Dorsey is known for being, to say the least, accepting of nazis in his platform.
Edit: Again another bunch of downvotes without replies. sigh
> "And since Detachments of English from Britain sent to America, will have their Places at Home so soon supply’d and increase so largely here; why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion."
> "Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind."
I believe the modern response to that is "Big Yikes."
I mean it's racist, but is it hate speech? It's basically the Republicans party platform for keeping the southern border closed and limiting immigration from mostly darker skinned countries.
> It’s very alarming they’re picking a side. It’s one thing to censor violent/hateful speech above some arbitrary threshold...
Heres a quote from, jack renshew, one of the people they’ve banned:
> Hitler was right in many senses but you know where he was wrong? He showed mercy to people who did not deserve mercy ... As nationalists we need to learn from the mistakes of the national socialists and we need to realise that, no, you do not show the Jew mercy. [0]
They’re not banning your kooky ol’ conservative grandpa, these are actual hateful people who’s movements have been using Facebook to spread racism and misinformation intentionally.
Facebook has become widely known as a site full of misinformation—I can’t blame them for wanting to change that reputation. If it were my web forum I’d certainly do whatever I could to change if my site were known as a racist infested misinformation brand.
The people being blocked are right-wing extremists radicalised by hate speech, not just garden-variety right-wingers. And the reason they're being blocked is because they've been involved in an increasing number of violent attacks around the world. From Anders Breivik, to the murderer of Jo Cox in the UK, to the Christchurch mosque shooter, the extreme right is doing an outstanding job of persuading everyone else it's happy to house murderous racist kooks.
There's no equivalent - not even close - for anything that could be considered the far-left in the West today.
Whatever you think of Bernie Sanders, AOC, or Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, they're not known for threatening to murder anyone, or inciting anyone to murder. Nor - realistically - are they ever likely to be.
Free speech ends in US law - not just in opinion - where incitement to murder and violence begins. At that point it's no longer about civilised debate, it's about criminal consequences, and there's no constitutional protection for those.
> but to openly announce you're only going to go censor it when one side does not sit well with me.
It's important to remember that the left does not promote the quantity or severity of violence that the right does. If you get left wing groups calling for the elimination by violence of all members of a religion Facebook (and other social media networks) will happily ban them.
This is a completely stupid analogy.
How exactly is this comparable to Benjamin Franklin?
The people being banned aren't banned because they are far-right. They are banned because they are spewing hate, or even worse: "Renshaw is a former spokesperson for neo-Nazi organisation National Front who plotted to murder West Lancashire MP, Rosie Cooper".
Far-right political figures that don't call for violence or murder aren't threatened of being banned.
This is an absurd claim. The British National Party is an explicitly fascist organization. Additionally, from the article: "Similarly, far-right activist Jack Renshaw has been banned. Renshaw is a former spokesperson for neo-Nazi organisation National Front who plotted to murder West Lancashire MP, Rosie Cooper." You might not like all the ways the term "spreading hate" gets used (I don't) but that doesn't mean it's devoid of meaning and misapplied all the time.
