[HN Gopher] Historian suspended by Facebook after sharing docume...
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Historian suspended by Facebook after sharing document by Goebbels
Author : georgecmu
Score : 75 points
Date : 2021-08-16 14:44 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (labas.livejournal.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (labas.livejournal.com)
| geofft wrote:
| This is so bizarre. The guy is posting literal Nazi propaganda -
| as in literally a document written by Goebbels, finds it removed
| from Facebook for violating community standards, and concludes
| that the reason must be that Facebook is _sympathetic_ to
| Goebbels ' worldview?
|
| Is this a good-faith accusation?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| "literal Nazi propaganda"
|
| Do you think this document makes the German military look
| _good_?
| tyingq wrote:
| It read like hyperbole meant to emphasize the need for Facebook
| to publish a credible reason when they remove material.
|
| That is, not giving a reason invites speculation.
| technothrasher wrote:
| I believe it was a tongue-in-cheek accusation. But the line of
| thinking was that this piece of text should be considered so
| embarrassing to Goebbels due to its obvious wrong headedness,
| that somebody sympathetic to him or the Nazi movement might
| want to hide it to avoid the embarrassment.
| treeman79 wrote:
| I've had people get pissed at me for trying to explain a
| political issue. "Just tell me what is correct and how to
| vote!!"
|
| Zero interest in comprehension.
|
| These people would do very well in any sort of cult.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| That was my reading, although I'm not as unsympathetic to
| Facebook's moderators here as he is. He wrote that "I did not
| comment on any of Goebbels' words, considering them to be so
| obviously preposterous that its sheer absurdity rendered any
| additional commentary redundant," and...really? If you are a
| moderator charged with flagging pro-Nazi commentary on
| Facebook, you have undoubtedly seen post after post after
| post after post of "obviously preposterous" Nazi propaganda
| that people not only take at face value, but cheer for and
| put on signs and organize rallies around. When a moderator
| comes across this particular Nazi propaganda posted as-is
| with no commentary, it's nice to believe that they'll think
| "ah, perhaps I should stop now and deeply research _this_
| man, and consider that he is a Russian academic who has
| written papers on German-Soviet interactions and conflicts
| leading up to World War II, which I should now read the
| abstracts of in order to determine where his personal
| sympathies might lie. " But they won't. Because that's not
| really their job.
| playguardin wrote:
| Your an idiot. Are you frightened of the Nazis so much you
| think others should not be able to publish whatever they
| want? Your pathetic and a pu$$y
| koheripbal wrote:
| 1. The document is NOT Nazi propaganda. It was the short
| document which described a proposal to isolate German soldiers
| who have spent too much time in Paris, as they might have
| caught VD from prostitutes. This was a common problem at the
| time that also affected the US troops on leave there. He did
| not provide any commentary on the subject in his post, but
| noted in his blog that it's a ridiculously overzealous notion
| to send soldiers all the way to the eastern front, just because
| they spent time in Paris.
|
| 2. He questions whether the Russian Facebook mods that censored
| him were Nazi supporters, exactly because the document in
| question makes Goebbels look like an idiot. So yes, that's a
| good faith question to raise.
| notanzaiiswear wrote:
| Here in Germany "Mein Kampf" is illegal to sell. I was always
| amazed that it was available in the US (or so I heard). I guess
| they took "free speech" serious.
|
| I guess the public opinion has changed on that one by now.
|
| Personally I think it is better if such things can be accessed
| and discussed, so that their arguments can be properly refuted.
|
| (Facebook is a private company and can do what they want, of
| course).
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Why go as far as usa when it's readily available at libraries
| and for sale in many many European countries? Even some
| versions with comments are legal in Germany itself.
| notanzaiiswear wrote:
| Because it is a point about free speech in the USA
| (facebook being a US company), not availability of the book
| in other countries.
| detaro wrote:
| > _Here in Germany "Mein Kampf" is illegal to sell._
|
| It's not that simple. (in short, unedited and uncommented
| reprints are problematic (but not directly established as
| "illegal to sell" currently I'd say), pre-1945 printings are
| fine, commented editions exist and are fine)
| notanzaiiswear wrote:
| A commented edition was published recently (within last two
| years), but iirc it was the first of its kind?
|
| Edit: pasting comment to post below here, because HN
| doesn't let me post
|
| It seems this state of affairs was quite convenient for the
| government, and when the copyright expired, they decided to
| continue making it not legally available:
| https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/adolf-hitlers-
| mei...
|
| Seems to be true that it could be sold in antique shops and
| offered in libraries (not sure if any did offer it).
| detaro wrote:
| Until 2016 all new printings were stopped on copyright
| grounds by the state of Bavaria. Hitlers registered
| address at time of death was in Munich, so the state of
| Bavaria acquired his assets and used that to stop
| printings (internationally not often successful, and with
| the exceptions of US and GB, where the rights had been
| sold to Random House by Hitlers publisher), but 2016 (70
| years after death of the author) the copyright expired.
| Copyright was fairly straight-forward legally, commented
| editions now are too.
| playguardin wrote:
| Your psyche is pathetic.
| alephnil wrote:
| The problem is most likely that the moderators do pattern
| matching for certain key phrases rather than trying to understand
| its intention. Automatic tools can really only do this.
|
| This is very common in moderation and censorship. It's a problem,
| because you get false positives like this, and some topics
| becomes impossible to discuss, even for people that discuss them
| in a neutral manner. It also makes it very easy for people with
| actual Nazi sympathies and other extremist views to hide from
| censorship by not mention the wrong key phrases that matches the
| patterns.
| Animats wrote:
| _" Goebbels had thus demanded all German soldiers, having stayed
| in Paris for six months, be transferred to the Eastern Front to
| negate any "adverse" effects of billeting in the French
| capital."_
|
| Corrupted by the enemy, always a problem with occupying forces.
|
| The American version of this is "Your Job in Germany".[1] This
| was made for US occupation troops in Germany. Directed by Frank
| Capra and written by Theodor Geisel ("Dr. Seuss"), an unexpected
| collaboration that seems to work. The message: "You are in an
| enemy country. Take no chances. No fraternization with any of the
| German people."
|
| It's become harder to view this video. The YouTube version,
| uploaded directly by the US National Archives [2], is now "age
| restricted". Of the Internet Archive versions, only the Ogg
| Vorbis version is still playable.
|
| See it now, before the Thought Police delete all the copies as
| "hate speech".
|
| Understanding what went wrong after WWI is helpful in
| understanding what went wrong in Afghanistan. It's not directly
| comparable, but it's important to know that the US had, in the
| past, changed minds and societies by military force,
| successfully.
|
| [1]
| https://archive.org/download/YourJobInGermany1945/YourJobInG...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=821R0lGUL6A
| mrbuttons454 wrote:
| I agree that this video is very important to archive and make
| available to view. I don't disagree with Youtube's decision on
| age restriction. I watched the video, and there are several
| scenes showing dead bodies. I think making that available, but
| age restricted, is a fair compromise.
| [deleted]
| dilippkumar wrote:
| I've always wished to live in a world where high end science and
| humanities research happens on the open internet so that people
| outside academia (like myself) can participate as a member of an
| interested audience.
|
| With YouTube removing videos about CoVid from people who are
| actively working/researching the virus (because they disagree
| with the CDC and WHO guidelines), and FB removing historical
| artifacts by a Historian because such things must only happen
| behind paywalled journals that only large universities can
| afford, I worry that the internet is moving away from being a
| place where information is freely available.
|
| I still think that everyone should host their own blog and have
| an RSS feed that people can subscribe to and have independent
| editorial control. But I also want to see YouTube and Facebook
| succeed as internet companies by enabling regular people like me
| listen to experts disagree about controversial topics and see how
| consensus slowly forms at the end of rigorous debate among
| experts.
| bob229 wrote:
| How foolish we have been to privatise our public square
| Finnucane wrote:
| You'd think scholars interested in doing serious research on
| original source documents would have better ways of publishing
| than relying on Facebook.
| dogleash wrote:
| Even the large media organizations are contorting their output
| for attention on social media; what chances do the independent
| professionals have to bring attention to their work while
| ignoring those platforms?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I was motivated to think of these use cases of sharing research
| when I found out a project to scan, transcribe and translate
| thousands of hand written journals was done by sending memory
| cards back and forth. I thought maybe Fossil scm would be a
| good option with file blob and wiki support, but the learning
| curve isn't there, people take the path of least resistance.
|
| I think a lot of research groups are still in list-servs, and I
| haven't seen any social networks catering to advancing cross
| disciplinary research. Maybe something could be built on top of
| LibGen ?
| notanzaiiswear wrote:
| Such as?
| powera wrote:
| There are many better ways of doing research.
|
| The obvious speculation is that this person did not use any of
| those better ways because the document is a forgery. If it is a
| forgery, the author would be promoting neo-Nazi propaganda.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Just to be clear, you're accusing a researcher of being a
| neo-nazi, forgery, and spreading nazi propaganda.. because
| they chose to make a historical document widely accessible?
| powera wrote:
| I'm saying that if the researcher is incapable of using any
| of the reputable ways of publishing research, we have to
| consider it possible there is a reason for that.
|
| Why do you think the historical document is legitimate,
| other than this LiveJournal post?
| koheripbal wrote:
| He found a new unpublished order from Goebbels, and thought
| he'd share it with other historians.
|
| That seems pretty reasonable.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Hopefully this drives uptake of those better ways. And if
| better ways don't exist, this is a call for improvements
| (integrating with Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, SciHub,
| mailing lists/rss, etc).
| derbOac wrote:
| Honestly I'm getting tired of this sort of moderation on
| social networks. It has nothing to do with scholarly
| channels, or Nazi this and that for me; I just don't
| sympathize with censorship I guess and there's always going
| to be some false positives and negatives when you start going
| down that path. It just feels like a waste of everyone's time
| to me.
|
| Having said that, I think you're right about hoping it leads
| to better avenues, as I think there's a real need for it.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Yeah, because networks without moderation have gone over
| pretty well. Srsly, FB is not the solution for everything.
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| Almost as if Facebook has an allergic reaction when things
| outside of a narrow worldview get posted.
| koheripbal wrote:
| He shared a newly discovered unpublished document written by
| Goebbels with other historians. He did not make a comment in his
| post, because he felt the document itself was comical enough to
| be funny.
|
| This was in no way propaganda since the order was about German
| soldiers contracting VD in Parisian brothels.
|
| Facebook banned it/him.
|
| He makes his own point pretty concretely...
|
| > It must be stressed that any objective investigation of history
| and research of the past becomes simply impossible if quotations
| from primary sources are grounds for punishment. Any curtailing
| of documentary evidence leads not to peace in the community but
| to the preordained failure to learn from history. It eventually
| allows the tragedies of the past to be repeated anew.
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(page generated 2021-08-16 23:02 UTC)