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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

#21

Post by rdtsc »

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…

My both grandfathers have fought Nazis during WWII, one was wounded and drove them out all the way back to Berlin. I've heard stories from a teacher about their childhood friend being raped and dismembered by German soldiers and other horrors. I find it disappointing when everyone today slaps "Nazi" label around an anything they disagree with. They are people alive who have concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms and they are probably shaking their heads listening to a bunch of spoiled brats, sipping their $5 Starbucks lattes and tweeting on their latest iPhone 7s how they live in a fascist country and nazis are literally around every corner.

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

#22

Post by Clubber »

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…

Yes, things get very complicated when we as a society decide to ban thoughts and ideas. I would say it eventually gets so complicated that we would end up banning way more things than we should, out of a sense of fairness.

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

#23

Post by hegojuko »

ubernostrum wrote: post #15
userbinator wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really because I see people in Britain, France, and Germany being arrested for anti Islamic sentiment expressed on social Media. It isn't just nazi speech that's criminalised, more and more speech is added to the list of what cannot be said. Soon it will be any speech critical of the government, aka living in a totalitarian regeim.

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

#24

Post by pdkl95 »

TheCowboy wrote: post #17
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 compone…

> Arguably, Nazism tends to ring more obvious to moderators.

Unfortunately, white nationalist (neo-nazi) groups learned a long time ago that PR matters. The average person starts to notice anything that actually looks similar to stereotypical Nazism. The Southern Strategy with Lee Atwater's use of dog whistle terms like "forced busing" and "state's rights" as indirect codes for racism demonstrated not only is public perception very important, but also how easy it is to make fascist beliefs palatable to the average citizen by wrapping it with carefully chosen euphemisms and coded language.

I highly encourage everyone to watch this[1] very well made overview of the current language and other propaganda techniques used by fascists. Unless you have been spending a lot of time over the last few years involved with "alt-right"/etc groups, it can be had to follow because confusion about facts is the goal.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx4BVGPkdzk

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

#25

Post by barry-cotter »

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.…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communis...

The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.

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

#26

Post by logicchains »

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.…

>The Soviet Union was a particular implementation of Communism which chose killing. Killing is not an inherent requirement to the ideology.

How could communism be implemented without killing people who refused to give up their property, or refused to stop trading with each other?

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

#27

Post by Clubber »

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.…

Neo-Nazism is not Nazism. That's also a false equivalence. Racial / tribal superiority has been with humanity in one form or another since before we were even human. Neo-Nazism is just a modern interpretation / flavor of that idea. Actual Nazism was far, far more destructive than a bunch of people clamoring about whatever they were clamoring about.

When Neo-Nazis are violent, the actual violence shouldn't be tolerated, but to ban thoughts is something completely different.

FWIW, I never understood why US citizens would carry a Nazi flag, when they know damn well people in their family were directly affected by it in one way or another.

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

#28

Post by Ace17 »

This is closely related to the "paradox of tolerance" by Karl Popper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

(whose TL;DR is "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance." )

Of course, it raises the question of who's to say what/who should be "not-tolerated".

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

#29

Post by idibidiart »

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…

"Ex-Christians _routinely_ complain that youtube censors their videos criticizing Christianity." Has that not happened, too? Just reversing roles for the sake of argument. Curiously wondering...

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

#30

Post by pdkl95 »

Ace17 wrote: post #28

This is closely related to the "paradox of tolerance" by Karl Popper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance (whose TL;DR is "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance." ) Of course, it raises the question of who's to say what/who should be "not-tolerated".

https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...

> [Tolerance] is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact.

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