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Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)

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Re: Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)

#121

Post by wesleywt »

bedhead wrote: post #33
MrMan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Facebook should be broken up but I havent heard any good ideas yet regarding how to somehow regulate social networks. Beyond hate speech, I dont see any reason to limit what people can say. Somehow limiting how the network connects people, or how content propagates, seems like the key. Only FB has done the social experiments at scale to know how to engineer this, which is faintly ironic.

"Beyond hate speech" lol. That's kinda the problem, isn't it? Who gets to define "hate"? And why ban speech that is actually legal (even if highly offensive) anyway? And if it's worthy of banning on a major platform, why not just make it explicitly illegal? These are serious and important questions (among others) that seem to get conveniently glossed over.

How would you define calling for the genocide of the Rohingya people? Would you define that as hate speech? This is an important question for right wingers to answer. Should we be tolerant of your intolerance?

Re: Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)

#122

Post by surge »

nend wrote: post #106
bedhead wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Beyond hate speech" lol. That's kinda the problem, isn't it? Who gets to define "hate"? And why ban speech that is actually legal (even if highly offensive) anyway? And if it's worthy of banning on a major platform, why not just make it explicitly illegal? These are serious and important questions (among others) that seem to get conveniently glossed over.

>Who gets to define "hate"? I really dislike this argument. A lot of democratic countries have defined hate speech. In the US, individual companies define it and moderate it as they see fit. In other countries, their legislators and courts define it. The US has defined lots of difficult terms to define already. >And why ban speech that is actually legal (even if highly offensive) anyway? I mean if we're talking about…

>A lot of democratic countries have defined hate speech.

They have very poor subjective definitions that boil down to anything any group considers offensive which is a moving needle, and that make make things like satire and certain forms of comedy illegal and have a chilling effect on valid criticism. It's also compelled speech, and in some cases leaves violence as the only resort, as opposed to a conversation and de-conversion from extremist beliefs. We've seen abuse of it in several cases, if no one is offended, they'll create a group or pay someone to be offended. There's no burden of proof beyond someone's emotional state upon hearing the words. You can say something to two people of a group, one might think its funny and laugh, another might report you and call the cops.

Also, turns out you can yell fire in a theater, especially if you at least believe it to be true, and that's something courts can't determine, lots of people say things that they believe to be true, that turn out to be false. Likewise, if speech is dangerous but true, its still should be protected.

In either case, best this be settled in courts and legislation, not corporate meeting rooms that are echo chambers of opinion.

>If we're talking about at the society level, because it threatens democracy, peace, individuals safety

We already have laws against that, its why hate speech laws are usually redundant and likely to be abused and scope creep into silencing valid criticism of an individual or group of individuals who can then be offended and have you arrested, at the very least putting you through months and years of legal trouble before you're acquitted, and that's only if you can afford proper defense.

You people need to look at history. It boggles me how uneducated people are today on the context of this issue.

Even the person that did the Parlor leak is a Meiklejohnian absolutist.

Re: Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)

#123

Post by spaced-out »

bedhead wrote: post #110
nend wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who gets to define "hate"? I really dislike this argument. A lot of democratic countries have defined hate speech. In the US, individual companies define it and moderate it as they see fit. In other countries, their legislators and courts define it. The US has defined lots of difficult terms to define already. >And why ban speech that is actually legal (even if highly offensive) anyway? I mean if we're talking about…

If this speech threatens democracy, peace, and safety, why hasn't it been made illegal by the government, and how has the US managed to do so well for centuries with it being perfectly legal? Odd, the speech you're talking about being legal hasn't seemed to affect things much at all. Actually, we've done nothing but thrive despite hate speech being legal. Why haven't people been clamoring for decades to change the co…

>If this speech threatens democracy, peace, and safety, why hasn't it been made illegal by the government, and how has the US managed to do so well for centuries with it being perfectly legal?

Because we've generally dealt with that by deplatforming that sort of speech socially and/or in the private sector.

The history of the civil rights movement is filled with boycotts and other sorts of social pressure campaigns.

Re: Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)

#124

Post by MrMan »

bedhead wrote: post #33
MrMan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Facebook should be broken up but I havent heard any good ideas yet regarding how to somehow regulate social networks. Beyond hate speech, I dont see any reason to limit what people can say. Somehow limiting how the network connects people, or how content propagates, seems like the key. Only FB has done the social experiments at scale to know how to engineer this, which is faintly ironic.

"Beyond hate speech" lol. That's kinda the problem, isn't it? Who gets to define "hate"? And why ban speech that is actually legal (even if highly offensive) anyway? And if it's worthy of banning on a major platform, why not just make it explicitly illegal? These are serious and important questions (among others) that seem to get conveniently glossed over.

lots of democratic countries have come up with workable definitions. I propose to make hate speech illegal, so banning it won't be in any way contradictory. I am not glossing over anything.

Re: Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)

#125

Post by Uhhrrr »

rvz wrote: post #20
sschueller wrote: post #6

I guess you could argue Facebook should be shutdown as parlor was. Although parlor was only used for hate, Facebook didn't do anything to stop it either. I think a big issue is how facebooks algo (and others) are built for maximum profit which at the same time also radicalizes people in their filter bubble.

Even if you wanted to, Facebook can't be de-platformed. They are entrenched in the internet and own their own data centres, are also themselves domain registrars and members part of the ICANN.

Also, our economy might not be able to handle the spike in productivity if it were to go away.

Re: Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)

#126

Post by nend »

crististm wrote: post #114
nend wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who gets to define "hate"? I really dislike this argument. A lot of democratic countries have defined hate speech. In the US, individual companies define it and moderate it as they see fit. In other countries, their legislators and courts define it. The US has defined lots of difficult terms to define already. >And why ban speech that is actually legal (even if highly offensive) anyway? I mean if we're talking about…

You don't get to enter into debate and get away with 'disliking' other's argumentation!

That's typically the reason why I get into a debate.

Re: Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)

#127

Post by nend »

surge wrote: post #122
nend wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who gets to define "hate"? I really dislike this argument. A lot of democratic countries have defined hate speech. In the US, individual companies define it and moderate it as they see fit. In other countries, their legislators and courts define it. The US has defined lots of difficult terms to define already. >And why ban speech that is actually legal (even if highly offensive) anyway? I mean if we're talking about…

>A lot of democratic countries have defined hate speech. They have very poor subjective definitions that boil down to anything any group considers offensive which is a moving needle, and that make make things like satire and certain forms of comedy illegal and have a chilling effect on valid criticism. It's also compelled speech, and in some cases leaves violence as the only resort, as opposed to a conversation and d…

>In either case, best this be settled in courts and legislation, not corporate meeting rooms that are echo chambers of opinion.

I'm really confused by what your points is. You spend most of your post talking about how laws against hate speech are ineffectual because courts can't determine a persons emotions and beliefs, and then say it's best handled by laws and courts.

Re: Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)

#128

Post by wolco5 »

notahacker wrote: post #116
mratzloff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick a point and draw a line in the sand. Then enforce it. So many HN replies amount to "we all agree this is a problem, but we can't fix the entire problem perfectly, and it has some hypothetical drawbacks, so we shouldn't even try." (Never mind that as a result of inaction in the face of disinformation and hate speech our societies are rotting from the inside, and many, many real-world atrocities are being carried…

I tend to agree with this, but given we're discussing Myanmar here I think it's worth adding that knowing where to draw the line can get a lot more complex than deciding 'Hang Mike Pence' crosses it. Myanmar's language and culture are completely alien to people drafting Facebook policies, driving forces behind intercommunity violence include things like [likely at least partially true] news reports of other intercomm…

The other side is facebook shouldn't offer a service to a country/people it can't support.

Re: Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)

#129

Post by wolco5 »

mc32 wrote: post #93
bedhead wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In mind" - what does this mean? Who exactly gets to define "in mind"? Like, you're now literally reading people's minds about their intentions? So I don't need to explicitly tell people to go do bad things, I can just say I'm upset about something and that's enough? I can make some bogus claim and that's enough? Because there aren't that many people spewing bullshit all day long on twitter? And let me take a wild gu…

That’s the difficulty, isn’t it? If I say, let’s go and burn that police station down now! Let’s be there at 9:15. It’s pretty clear. If you say, I wish that police station would get burned down. I don’t know. It’s not a nice thought, but you’re not actively working to have it burned down. On the other hand the wish does not have pure intentions. This is why I think it’s impossible to “monitor” and purge or ban viole…

Context matters.

"Let’s go and burn that police station down now"

If anyone I knew said that I would treat it as a dry joke.

Re: Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)

#130

Post by _fq4v »

marcusverus wrote: post #52
sschueller wrote: post #6

I guess you could argue Facebook should be shutdown as parlor was. Although parlor was only used for hate, Facebook didn't do anything to stop it either. I think a big issue is how facebooks algo (and others) are built for maximum profit which at the same time also radicalizes people in their filter bubble.

> Although parlor was only used for hate I encourage everyone to keep an eye out for these casual little calumnies, presented without evidence.

Right. I used parler to do such things as follow EWTN. I stopped using Twitter for this sort of thing because I figured that -- with EWTN's stance on the trans issue -- it was only a matter of time before they were banned (there had been talk of banning JK Rowling for similar tweets at the time, so it's a reasonable fear). I joined parler to not have to worry about this. This constant belittling of anyone who does not completely toe the line of whatever ethical system has taken over Twitter to classify people like me -- a brown man with immigrant parents -- as white supremacists is scary, dystopian, and insane.
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