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Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

arstechnica.com

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Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#11

Post by TheCowboy »

I was directed to a good talk on the idea of "legal talismans" or legal terms like free speech that can end up being out of place, such as in terms of service: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2016/10/Albert (transcript) http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/beyond-legal-talismans... (Also accessible as a podcast)

This isn't to mean they should avoid supporting "freedom of expression" but that these terms come with history and obligations that aren't always obvious.

If a company mentions 1st amendment rights, it isn't realistic to assume it will also have the capacity to correctly and quickly adjudicate all cases of expression that will occur within its service boundaries. People forget how parts of constitutional law itself are specializations with a lot of legal history and precedents.

The summary takeaway seems to be that service providers should avoid using these shorthand legal terms in their terms of service. Providers should try to spell out ToS specifically avoiding as much legalese as possible. Avoid using shorthand legal terms to give the illusion of a neutral position in an attempt to avoid liability.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#12

Post by cgb223 »

One of the things that bothers me about recent censorship on hate speech is how selective, and how inconsistently it's applied, if it is to be applied at all.

My grandfather escaped the Soviet Union. Stalin's regime killed all of his siblings. All of them.

But yet when I check YouTube, Twitter, and so on I see lots of videos professing communisms values. Hell I've seen a pro-communist march in a city I recently moved from.

Neo-nazis are awful, and Nazis have done unspeakable terrible things in this world.

But to me the Neo-nazis are being actively forbidden from expressing support for another ideology that has been responsible for tens of millions of deaths, while the communists are allowed to do the same thing.

I hate nazis and I hate communists. But to pick and choose which people are allowed to express support for these regimes is inconsistent at best, and tacticitly implying a preference at absolute worst.

This needs to change.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#13

Post by rayiner »

Free speech is the wrong framework for thinking about this. Tech companies are not government actors, so this is not a free speech issue. The better way to think about it is to analogize to gun sales. Gun sellers are within their rights to refuse to sell guns to people with nazi affiliations, etc. But they wisely choose not to go down that road, because if they did (1) they’d be enlisted into screening all sorts of other people (hate groups, abusive spouses, mentally ill people, etc.) and (2) when one of those people inevitably did buy a gun, there would be increased pressure to hold the gun seller/maker liable for failure to use their discretion to prevent to the tragedy.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#14

Post by userbinator »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #8

It's all good, just reinforces that they never were free platforms to begin with. Free speech has always been an illusion, society always ostracises those who go against the status quo anyway. Seriously though, you can use neo-Nazis to justify censorship, but then what about the less extreme alt-right? How about the slightly less extreme religious right? How about economically right-wing libertarians? Neo-conservativ…

Seriously though, you can use neo-Nazis to justify censorship, but then what about the less extreme alt-right? How about the slightly less extreme religious right? How about economically right-wing libertarians? Neo-conservatives? Where do you draw the line?

As I mentioned a few days ago on a related article, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15122311 , the extremists are good "canaries" for indicating the gradual erosion of freedom of speech. When the edges collapse, the line moves just a slightly bit closer to the mainstream, and a new set of views are considered extremist. Repeat until everyone is brainwashed into a monoculture. That's the scariest part.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#15

Post by ubernostrum »

userbinator wrote: post #14
Mikeb85 wrote: post #8

It's all good, just reinforces that they never were free platforms to begin with. Free speech has always been an illusion, society always ostracises those who go against the status quo anyway. Seriously though, you can use neo-Nazis to justify censorship, but then what about the less extreme alt-right? How about the slightly less extreme religious right? How about economically right-wing libertarians? Neo-conservativ…

Seriously though, you can use neo-Nazis to justify censorship, but then what about the less extreme alt-right? How about the slightly less extreme religious right? How about economically right-wing libertarians? Neo-conservatives? Where do you draw the line? As I mentioned a few days ago on a related article, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15122311 , the extremists are good "canaries" for indicating the gradual…

Several places in Europe have so far failed to empirically verify your hypothesis after passing laws to ban certain types of extremist (i.e., Nazi) speech and symbols.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#16

Post by pdkl95 »

paulddraper wrote: post #6
NegativeLatency wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of a false equivalence. Hate speech and harassment are not equal to being openly gay. I agree with your last point, care to explain more?

Uh huh. And what exactly is "hate speech"? Black lives matter? White lives matter? The NRA? Abortionists?

> And what exactly is "hate speech"?

Generally, it's public speech intended offend, harass, or threaten a group of people that is defined by an inherent trait (e.g. skin color, sex/gender, sexual orientation), in addition to legally defined protected classes (e.g. religion, disability).

The SCOTUS has generally ruled that hate speech is protected by the first amendment, with only very narrow exceptions (e.g. credible, imminent threats).

> Black lives matter?

Obviously not hate speech. Asking for the rights of black people to be respected isn't a threat or harassment.

> White lives matter?

Assuming you are referring to groups such as those protesting recently in Charlottesville, then this might be hate speech. A lot of speech wouldn't qualify, but the chants that specifically targeted protected groups probably do count as hate speech. Details matter a lot, but it's probably reasonably safe to assume the protest became hate speech when the chant "You will not replace us!" became "Jews will not replace us!"

> Black lives matter?

Obviously not hate speech. Political opinions are never a protected class.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#17

Post by TheCowboy »

cgb223 wrote: post #12

One of the things that bothers me about recent censorship on hate speech is how selective, and how inconsistently it's applied, if it is to be applied at all. My grandfather escaped the Soviet Union. Stalin's regime killed all of his siblings. All of them. But yet when I check YouTube, Twitter, and so on I see lots of videos professing communisms values. Hell I've seen a pro-communist march in a city I recently moved…

This is always going to be a challenge with managing the content of any platform. It's not easy to be a moderator of different views.

Arguably, Nazism tends to ring more obvious to moderators. There is more than one form of communism that has been implemented, and it's likely these videos alll aren't professing a support of Stalin's bloody reign. Communism also (usually) lacks a racial/nationalist superiority component that calls for the decimation of all others. But that doesn't mean people should be free to use Marx's good intentions to let terrible communist regimes off the hook.

It's probably not a bad idea for people with your experiences to attempt to organize with the goal to inform users and moderators about propaganda videos on their platforms.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#18

Post by 2_listerine_pls »

Iv wrote: post #9

I say yes. Because you probably disagree with what most people will call hate speech. Criticism of religion, criticism of some historical events, is considered by some as hate speech. Ex-muslims routinely complain that youtube censors their videos criticizing islam. Videos of brutality (that often contains legal proofs of crimes) are removed if they are used by some hate groups, even if the intent of the recorder was…

It's interesting to see these censorship trends come up after trigger events:

-war on fake news

-war on hate speech

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#19

Post by mambodog »

cgb223 wrote: post #12

One of the things that bothers me about recent censorship on hate speech is how selective, and how inconsistently it's applied, if it is to be applied at all. My grandfather escaped the Soviet Union. Stalin's regime killed all of his siblings. All of them. But yet when I check YouTube, Twitter, and so on I see lots of videos professing communisms values. Hell I've seen a pro-communist march in a city I recently moved…

Hold on. I'm not a fan of Communism, but there's a pretty clear difference. The Soviet Union was a particular implementation of Communism which chose killing. Killing is not an inherent requirement to the ideology. Contemporary proponents of Communism or Socialism usually aren't claiming that the Soviet Union's implementation was good. In Neo-Nazism the ideology itself has the elimination of other races as its goal. The ideology itself is violence. Talk about false equivalence.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#20

Post by kiiujjhhu »

mambodog wrote: post #19
cgb223 wrote: post #12

One of the things that bothers me about recent censorship on hate speech is how selective, and how inconsistently it's applied, if it is to be applied at all. My grandfather escaped the Soviet Union. Stalin's regime killed all of his siblings. All of them. But yet when I check YouTube, Twitter, and so on I see lots of videos professing communisms values. Hell I've seen a pro-communist march in a city I recently moved…

Hold on. I'm not a fan of Communism, but there's a pretty clear difference. The Soviet Union was a particular implementation of Communism which chose killing. Killing is not an inherent requirement to the ideology. Contemporary proponents of Communism or Socialism usually aren't claiming that the Soviet Union's implementation was good. In Neo-Nazism the ideology itself has the elimination of other races as its goal.…

Sure, how about Chinese communism under Mao? Or how about Vietnamese communism under pol pot, or Cuba, how Venezuelan socialism?

The list of communisms evils go on and on yet I still read apologists exposing its supposed virtues regularly.

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