Combating "Hate Speech" and Investigative Journalism being bad if you're not a "journalist"

Re: '#IAmHere': The people trying to make Facebook a nicer place

"A network of tens of thousands of online volunteers is fighting hate speech on Facebook. They organise under the slogan "#IAmHere"."


A: And yet she says this, despite the lofty claims of responding with reasoned speech.

==
"Ley says Facebook needs to "live up to its own community standards" and be quicker at deleting comments."
==

I've been an admin of a large group (>8.5k members) for years. One of those worst things you can abuse as an admin is deleting comments.

Skeptical. Joining the group to get a feel whether it really does what it claims to do.

Me: Notice that they're not against hate per se but "far right" hate

A: To me, the damning comment is the one on deleting comments. That's completely antithetical to the veneer of reasonableness they present to the world.

I'll respect them more if they just said upfront they are a deplatforming group.

Me: Now "honk" and promoting child nutrition are against community standards
Many "reasonable" people on the left believe in censorship

A: They are not reasonable. Reasonableness will not censor the only mechanism where an accused party can explain himself - speech.

B: Joining a group just in order to jump on people and call them out is pretty (and petty) bad behaviour. Join a group if you agree with their mission or approach; otherwise just don’t. If you so deplore the whole “calling out” phenomenon on the left then be consistent - don’t engage it in yourself, even if from another side.

Me: Journalists do that all the time

A: Incorrect claim B. I'm joining to get a feel whether it really does what it claims to do.

Prima facie, they don't. But my mind can be changed by what I see

B: The day both of you become journalists and have to make a living doing crappy stuff, then, I might accept that reasoning. Otherwise you have better lives to lead.

Me: "It's ok if it's part of your job" doesn't seem a good defence

If anything it makes it worse since you're profiting off this supposedly contemptible behavior

B: Individual journalists barely make a profit - they’re cogs in a big industry wheel that’s churning them to death. It isn’t nice that they do it, but sometimes people do what they do to survive.

Me: "It's ok if it's part of your job - but not if you earn too much" is even worse

Of course the more likely response is that it's good that journalists are doing investigations and exposing hypocrisy and deceit to the world

*4 months later*

Me: so what's your assessment now?

A: Don't know. Applications never approved.

Me: They know you're a member of the "far right"