Unscrupulous ScienceBlogs bloggers getting their comeuppance

As I pointed out, ScienceBlogs is home to some of the worst arbitrary censors on the Internet, e.g., Fatheaded Ed Brayton and Sleazy PZ Myers. Now the New York Times has a scathing article attacking ScienceBlogs -- the article says,

Clearly I’ve been out of some loop for too long, but does everyone take for granted now that science sites are where graduate students, researchers, doctors and the “skeptical community” go not to interpret data or review experiments but to chip off one-liners, promote their books and jeer at smokers, fat people and churchgoers? And can anyone who still enjoys this class-inflected bloodsport tell me why it has to happen under the banner of science?

Hammering away at an ideology, substituting stridency for contemplation, pummeling its enemies in absentia: ScienceBlogs has become Fox News for the religion-baiting, peak-oil crowd. Though Myers and other science bloggers boast that they can be jerky in the service of anti-charlatanism, that’s not what’s bothersome about them. What’s bothersome is that the site is misleading. It’s not science by scientists, not even remotely; it’s science blogging by science bloggers. And science blogging, apparently, is a form of redundant and effortfully incendiary rhetoric that draws bad-faith moral authority from the word “science” and from occasional invocations of “peer-reviewed” thises and thats.

Under cover of intellectual rigor, the science bloggers — or many of the most visible ones, anyway — prosecute agendas so charged with bigotry that it doesn’t take a pun-happy French critic or a rapier-witted Cambridge atheist to call this whole ScienceBlogs enterprise what it is, or has become: class-war claptrap.

Fatheaded Ed's blog "Dispatches from the Culture Wars" is not even "science blogging" -- most of his posts are about political and social issues.

I am very proud that I am still first on Sleazy PZ's "Killfile Dungeon" list of banned commenters.

Other comments about the New York Times article are here and here.

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Facebook completely disables holocaust-denial sites

In my last post, I said, "A Facebook spokesman said that Facebook is not planning to remove the holocaust-denial sites -- at least not yet [link]." I spoke too soon. A new article says,

Facebook has confirmed my earlier suspicion that it has disabled two of the five Holocaust denial groups whose presence has caused much controversy over the past week, following attorney Brian Cuban's consistent pressure for the groups' removal.

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail to Technically Incorrect: "Two of the groups have been disabled, but the other three remain."

He continued: "We are monitoring these groups and if the discussion among members degrades to the point of promoting hate or violence, despite whatever disclaimer the group description provides, we will take them down. This has happened in the past, especially when controversial groups are publicized."

This is the beginning of the end for Facebook. Facebook executives are fascist sleazebags who should be put on trial for high treason for siding with the enemies of the US Constitution.
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Lots of controversial subjects provide opportunities for hate speech -- why single out holocaust denial? Controlling all the hate speech on Facebook sites would be an impossible task. And all this talk about hate speech on holocaust-denial sites is just guilt-by-association.

My own view is that a "systematic" Jewish holocaust was impossible because the Nazis had no objective and reliable ways of identifying Jews and non-Jews. What is hateful about that statement?

The censorship of the holocaust-denial sites has been improperly compared to Facebook's censorship of breastfeeding sites that contain pictures of breastfeeding women. The censorship standard for the breastfeeding sites -- the "redeeming social value" standard for pornography -- is different. Anyway, anything goes in pornography on the Internet, except kiddie porn using live kids as subjects -- for example, one of my favorite websites has dozens of pictures of girls using strap-on dildos to sodomize guys. So there is no point in trying to restrict pornography on the Internet, either.

I wonder -- how many people are going to spend the time to set up and contribute to a Facebook site on a controversial subject if there is a real risk that Facebook will arbitrarily delete the site in the future? What is to prevent an opponent of holocaust-denial sites from planting real hate-speech on them (e.g., "kill all the Jews") for the purpose of provoking Facebook to get rid of them? Also, the standard for judging the gravity of an incitement to violence should depend on the situation -- there is one helluva difference between (1) posting an Internet statement that incites to violence and (2) inciting a mob to violence. And the sole purpose for charging that all holocaust denial is anti-Semitic is to try to shut down debate.

Here are some legal issues --

The federal statute 47 USC §230, "Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material," is here. 47 USC §230 (c)(1) protects Facebook from liability for anything posted in Facebook sites by outside parties --

(c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material

(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Facebook is here the "provider . . .of an interactive computer service," and an owner and the contributors of a Facebook site constitute "another information content provider."

A Facebook competitor could attract business away from Facebook by making a credible promise of "NO CENSORSHIP."

Unfortunately, the following provision, 47 USC §230 (c) (2)(A), appears to give Facebook's act of censorship some protection --

(2) Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—

(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected;

A lot depends on how the term "good faith" is interpreted.

Also, 47 USC §230 (c)(2)(B) provides,

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—

(A) - - - - -
(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1)

Using IP addresses as the "technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1)" -- which Facebook is doing here [link] -- is illegal or frowned upon in Europe and California. [link] [link]

Wikipedia, the big online user-edited encyclopedia, has also been practicing arbitrary censorship, and this censorship has fueled attempts to create or promote alternatives to Wikipedia [link]. However, though Wickedpedia's reputation has been greatly damaged by charges of censorship and students are often prohibited from citing Wikipedia as a reference, these alternative encyclopedias have not been very successful in unseating Wickedpedia, largely because Wickedpedia's great size -- with millions of articles and many contributors -- has given it a big advantage because it is an encyclopedia. However, great size is no big advantage for Facebook -- much smaller competitors can offer everything that Facebook offers plus a no-censorship pledge (except for kiddie porn using live young kids as subjects) that is given extra credibility by 47 USC §230 (c)(1), which says, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

I wonder if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- the holocaust-denying Iranian president -- has a holocaust-denial Facebook site. LOL

This Facebook censorship really hits home because this blog could be shut down on the grounds that it contains holocaust revisionism (as well as Darwin-to-Hitler stuff). Facebook must be stopped.

Boycott Facebook. The freedom of expression you save may be your own.
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Facebook restricts access to its holocaust-denial sites

Wikipedia describes Facebook as --

. . a free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves.

Bradley Smith wrote on his "One Person with Proof" blog,

Technically Incorrect has posted an interesting article on censorship instigated by Dallas Cowboys owner Mark Cuban's brother and attorney for his companies, Brian. Brian has written to Facebook demanding to know why the social-networking site allows Holocaust denial groups. His opinion is that this is not a First Amendment issue.

"The belief that the First Amendment protects speech in the private social media arena or at your place of employment is a common misconception," he says.

Wrong. TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers, for example, are usually privately owned, yet the courts have ruled that they are subject or potentially subject to 1st Amendment freedom-of-speech requirements.
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Although Holocaust denial is not illegal in the US, it is a crime in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Israel, Slovakia, and Switzerland.

To Cuban, any Holocaust denial group is clearly committing an illegal act in those countries. He has therefore written to Facebook asking the company why it permits the five Holocaust denial groups he has found on the site.

It is not Facebook's job to enforce foreign censorship laws. Facebook's first obligation is to the US Constitution. Our courts have been severely criticized for merely mentioning foreign laws and court opinions, let alone applying them.

A Facebook spokesman said that Facebook is not planning to remove the holocaust-denial sites -- at least not yet [link]--

. . .we are sensitive to groups that threaten violence towards people and these groups are taken down. We also remove groups that express hatred towards individuals and groups that are sponsored by recognized terrorist organizations. We do not, however, take down groups that speak out against countries, political entities, or ideas.

However, he said that Facebook is using IP addresses to block access from countries where holocaust-denial is illegal [link]--

When dealing with user generated content on global websites, there are occasions where content that is illegal in one country, is not (or may even be protected) in another. For example, homosexual content is illegal in some countries, but that does not mean it should be removed from Facebook. Most companies approach this issue by preventing certain content from being shown to users in the countries where it is illegal and that is our approach as well. We have recently begun to block content by IP in countries where that content is illegal, including Nazi-related and holocaust denial content in certain European countries. The groups in question have been blocked in the appropriate countries.

As I said, Facebook's obligation is to follow the US Constitution and US laws, not foreign censorship laws. And I am really surprised that anyone in the US would dare restrict access to homosexual sites.

Also, using IP addresses to block Internet communications is illegal or frowned upon in Europe. A news article said,

(AP) IP addresses, string of numbers that identify computers on the Internet, should generally be regarded as personal information, the head of the European Union's group of data privacy regulators said Monday.

Germany's data protection commissioner, Peter Scharr, leads the EU group preparing a report on how well the privacy policies of Internet search engines operated by Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others comply with EU privacy law.

Here are some excerpts from Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995:

Article 1

Object of the Directive

1. In accordance with this Directive, Member States shall protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, and in particular their right to privacy with respect to the processing of personal data . . . .

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Article 2

Definitions

For the purposes of this Directive:

(a) 'personal data' shall mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'); an identifiable person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity . . . . .(emphasis added)

Article 6

1. Member States shall provide that personal data must be:

- - - - - - - - -

(e) kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the data were collected or for which they are further processed . . . . .

Article 7

Member States shall provide that personal data may be processed only if:

(a) the data subject has unambiguously given his consent; or

(b) processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract; or

(c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject; or

(d) processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject; or

(e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller or in a third party to whom the data are disclosed; or

(f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by the third party or parties to whom the data are disclosed, except where such interests are overridden by the interests for fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection under Article 1 (1).

As for Articles 7(c) and 7(e) above, "compliance with a legal obligation" and "performance of a task carried out in the public interest," Facebook has an obligation to follow the US Constitution and has no obligation to follow foreign censorship laws.

Some of this blog's articles about misuse of IP addresses to block Internet communications are here, here, here, here, and here.

If Facebook's restriction of access to a Facebook site shows disapproval, then what does unrestricted access to a Facebook site show? Approval? Does Facebook want to imply that it approves of every Facebook site that has unrestricted access? Why can't Facebook just post a disclaimer saying that Facebook does not endorse or approve any Facebook site?

Facebook is so big that they think they can get away with almost anything. However, like Wikipedia, Facebook is going to find out that, as the saying goes, "the bigger they are, the harder they fall."
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Banned by so-called Texas Freedom Network

My comment submissions to the blog of the so-called Texas Freedom Network are no longer being considered for publication on a case-by-case basis but all of them are being blocked. What instigated this ban was my response to a video of comedian Bill Maher. Bill Mayer made several statements ridiculing the state of Texas, including the statement -- "Texas has a board of education?" My comment included the following statement: "TFN, you applaud when this stupid comedian ridicules your state. I have no respect for you. None at all." TFN's response was, "We love you too, Larry. Now goodbye." The TFN bloggers have pretty thin skins to kick me off their blog for something like that. And TFN has allowed other commenters to constantly abuse me. The Darwinists can dish it out but they sure can't take it. If my comment was so offensive, TFN had the option of not publishing it (TFN has comment moderation turned on) but they chose to publish it and then banned me. I believe TFN was looking for an excuse to get rid of me because my comments on the TFN blog are persuasive and irrefutable. As Gov. Arnold Schwarenegger said, "I'm always kicking their butts -- that's why they don't like me."
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I can sometimes evade comment bans by submitting comments under false names and/or using anonymous proxies to get around IP address blocks. However, I like to submit comments under my real name and the free-of-charge anonymous proxies that I use sometimes don't work in getting around IP address blocks. IP address blocking is illegal or frowned upon in Europe and should be illegal in the USA. IP address blocking appears to be illegal in California.
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Anti-comment policy on popular law blog

Jack Balkin says on the popular multi-blogger law blog Balkinization,

New comments policy at Balkinization

Since last week I have implemented a new policy on the blog. The default rule is that comments are turned off. Each author will decide individually whether to turn the comments on for his or her postings.

For the first year and a half of this blog, there were no comments, and the blog operated quite successfully. I added comments in the middle of 2004 . . . . .Many blogs have developed successful communities of commenters, with many very interesting and substantive contributions and discussions. Unfortunately, this has not happened here.

Generally speaking, there are two things you want from a comments section: quality of comments, and civility. If you cannot have one, at least you want the other. Recently, with some exceptions, it has become obvious that neither is occurring in our comments sections here. Instead, the comments sections are populated by regular trolls and many threads have turned into little more than name-calling. There is very rarely any serious analysis; mostly there is point scoring and vitriol. Many regular readers have written to say that they find the comments section a distraction and think the blog would be far better without it . . .

I may experiment with moderated posts in the future, but moderating takes considerable time and effort, more time than I have at the present.

The comment threads are often the most important parts of blog posts. The comment threads serve the important functions of presenting different views, finding flaws in the reasoning in the original articles, and correcting factual errors in the original articles. These functions are especially important on law blogs because law blogs are frequently authoritatively cited by law journals and are sometimes even authoritatively cited by court opinions.

The Internet has the potential to produce a quantum leap in our ability to exchange ideas. This potential of the Internet is sabotaged by suppression of visitors' comments on websites.

IMO law journals and courts should have rules against authoritative citation of blogs that don't allow comments or that arbitrarily censor comments. The lack of peer review of law journal articles was bad enough, but now law bloggers are suppressing visitors' comments. Law journals are typically not peer-reviewed or even faculty-reviewed but are typically just student-reviewed! Furthermore, law journals are not just educational exercises for law students -- the Harvard Law Review alone was cited 4410 times in federal court opinions alone in the decade 1970-79 alone!

There is too much emphasis on civility. I allow name-calling on this blog if the name-calling is accompanied by serious arguments. I do not allow name-calling that disparages on the basis of race, sex, color, national origin, those kinds of things.

I participated in some of the discussions on Balkinization and IMO they were good. Balkinization is a popular law blog and has no trouble in attracting good commenters. In some cases, the original article would have been very misleading without the comment thread.

As for Jack Balkin's statement about not having the time to moderate comments, Balkinization usually does not get a lot of comments and the bloggers there should take the time to read them or at least skim them.

The bloggers on Balkinization have the option of allowing comments and hopefully some of them will choose to do so because they want feedback, even if some garbage is mixed in.
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Arbitrary Censorship on a Houston Chronicle blog

This article shows a comment I submitted in response to an article posted by Steven Schafersman on the Houston Chronicle's Evo.Sphere blog. Schafersman rejected the comment, claiming that the comment contains falsehoods. I showed here that those alleged falsehoods are in fact substantially true.

The Evo.Sphere blog is not Schafersman's personal blog but is an official blog of the Houston Chronicle, and therefore Steven Schafersman should not be permitted to arbitrarily censor comments submitted to the Evo.Sphere blog. I am complaining to the Houston Chronicle staff about this.

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Questions about arbitrary censorship on blogs

Questions for the great legal minds who frequently visit this blog:

(1) Suppose that a really popular blog accuses someone of, say, an infamous crime, and the blogger censors all comments that rebut the accusation. Could the blogger be sued for libel on the grounds that the censorship of the rebuttals shows "reckless disregard" of whether the accusation "was true or false" (New York Times v. Sullivan) and on the grounds that regardless of whether or not the original accusation was the result of "actual malice" (New York Times v. Sullivan), the censorship of rebuttals shows "actual malice"?

(2) Court opinions occasionally cite blogs. Suppose that the Supreme Court cites a blog visitor's comment and that the citation is decisive in deciding the case. Suppose that the blogger disagrees with the comment and decides to censor it -- along with associated comments ((in order to eliminate the context of the comment) -- because the Supreme Court cited it. Forget for the moment that the court could independently archive the original post and the comment thread (authorities citing Internet sources often fail to independently archive the source). Would such censorship be ethical or not?

In answering these questions, please keep in mind that blogs are private property and that it is always legal and proper for bloggers to do whatever they want.

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Law blog post about a blogging fairness doctrine

Balkinization, a popular law blog, has an article titled, "The Fairness Doctrine and the Blogosphere." This is the first time I have ever seen another blog's article on the specific subject of blogging fairness doctrines. I have long advocated a blogging fairness doctrine that would prohibit or discourage the arbitrary censorship of blog visitors' comments. I have posted a comment under this Balkinization blog article -- my comment is the 18th comment in the comment thread (I tried to make a direct link to the comment but the link does not work) . For the first time, I could post such a comment on another blog without attempting to hijack the comment thread! My comment about a blogging fairness doctrine successfully hijacked a comment thread on the Volokh Conspiracy blog -- actually, it was not really a big hijacking because the original topic was broadcasting fairness doctrines and I changed the topic to blogging fairness doctrines. Also, I have discovered a law professor, Cass Sunstein, who might agree with my ideas about a blogging fairness doctrine, and I will try to contact him -- an article said,

. . . . the biggest potential danger of neutrality is that its concern for equal treatment of bits will extend to sites' content, creating a kind of Fairness Doctrine for the Web, as FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell has warned — and as Obama adviser and law professor Cass Sunstein once called for.

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