Joe on August 4, 2013 at 8:21 pm said:
I don’t think that some account being banned or something being removed (facebook, twitter, youtube) is necessarily indicative of active censorship on the part of the hosting company.
3 years ago I saw the fascist Left had “mass reporting groups” on Facebook, where suddenly 200 of them would go and report some account/item and get it removed. My guess is it triggers some complaints/hour threshold, and the item is automatically removed. These companies do not waste money having staff adjudicate this. They may have staff adjudicate an appeal, but the vast majority of banned accounts/content will not bother going through the appeal process.
I’ve seen the same “mass reporting” done on Twitter, with the same effect. Having seen it done, I’ve organised our own reverse teams that do the same thing, and it is 99% effective.
I expect it works the same way on Twitter. Even Pat Condell’s videos have ended up being mass-reported/removed by YouTube.
We don’t pay anything to use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. I guess they are well within their rights to reduce their costs by automating these things.
I understand what you are saying. There is a way we can test your theory with a liberal flick.
Deep down inside I simply can’ t believe it.