Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases • Hacker News Board

Re: Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases

#111

Post by caeril » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 3:28 AM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #78

JohnWhigham wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people can't criticize Israel's actions as a country without being labeled anti-Semitic, then nothing is going to get solved.

When synagogues in the UK are being vandalized with swastikas, when residents of New York and US citizens are getting beaten on Fifth Avenue, and people lament these things on social media, that is not an appropriate time to criticize Israel's action as a country. Yet this is the norm.

This reasoning is great.

When black churches are being shot up, that is not an appropriate time to criticize Uganda's action as a country.

When South Americans are being detained in cages at the border, that is not an appropriate time to criticize Venezuela's action as a country.

When Muslims are experiencing intense Islamophobia, that is not an appropriate time to criticize Syria's action as a country.

I love this absolutely brilliant smokescreen. I'm going to use it. Thank you.

Re: Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases

#112

Post by LightG » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 8:57 AM UTC

bpodgursky wrote: post #105

LightG wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without getting into the debate at all, the main focus of recent moderation attempts have been to target "abuse"/"hate speech", however you want to define that. Adding "offensive" widens the scope enormously and unfairly and suddenly we're into the realms of restricting the freedom of speech for normal everyday situations.

This is extremely fuzzy line and pretty much nobody agrees where offense stops and hate starts. It's dishonest to try to distinguish a line between the two because it will inevitably move over time at the whims of the moderators.

I understand what you're saying, but I don't think the line is as extremely fuzzy as you say, otherwise there'd be relative anarchy.

There are some generally accepted "yes" and "no's", and then, yes, there's a few things at the edge that might give me cause to think twice.

If defining that line is "extremely fuzzy" to you, then you're already way too far down the rabbit hole (in my opinion) and I won't be following you down there.

Re: Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases

#113

Post by mikeblackson » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:26 PM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #72

djohnston wrote: post #23

Does this include all the legitimate criticisms of Israel that people try to lazily deflect with accusations of antisemitism? Who is doing the counting?

The problem with banging the drum about "legitimate criticisms of Israel" is that they're co-occurent with illegitimate criticisms and anti-semitism. There's also a very special kind of monomania. Some big account will post on Twitter or Facebook lamenting violence. "This synagogue in London got vandalized!" for instance, or perhaps "this US citizen living in the state of New York was beaten and there's security came…

African schoolgirls being kidnapped is very different than an apartheid state where the colonizers regularly oppress and murder the indigenous. In May 2021, when that tweet was posted, Palestinian homes were being stolen by what is considered an illegitimate state. Those anti-Israeli posts didn't come out of nowhere.

Re: Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases

#114

Post by billytetrud » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #61

billytetrud wrote: post #46

It's really weird that people think it's the responsibility of these platforms to police their users. Those of you that think it's easy to do, you're very very wrong. Censorship is also a problem and we should be supporting the right of idiots to voice their stupid thoughts so that we have the opportunity to voice our thoughts when others would rather not hear them. That's the whole point of freedom of speech.

>It's really weird that people think it's the responsibility of these platforms to police their users Is that the situation here tho? Were the platforms just going to let anything go and someone made them do it? I don't buy into that idea here. I doubt any of the platforms are happy to host it either.

??? What idea aren't you buying into? That platforms can't feasibly police their users and that its unreasonable for us to expect them to? Yes, they can get the worst of the worst. They can comply with court orders. But expecting them to censor everything people think is objectionable is not reasonable. Do you want facebook to be the arbiter of what you can and can't say? Because that seems to be what you're asking for. As much as you think what to censor is "obvious", it is very much not obvious.

Re: Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases

#115

Post by salawat » Fri, Aug 06, 2021, 12:47 AM UTC

fighterpilot wrote: post #101

raxxorrax wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe strong language can escalate things, but there is no causal relationship to conflicts as it was believed for the longest time. Especially if you look at different online communities, vulgar language doesn't even seem to have an effect on conflicts. Sometime people even calm down after having had the ability to vent. Wars happen for different reason. I wouldn't know of any war started by strong language. One…

Are you saying that there is no causal link between hate speech and genocides/massacres? Because that's historically not accurate. Here's a recent example: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... What conservatives ignore (and I consider myself pretty conservative-leaning) is that there's a grey area of speech that doesn't rise to direct incitement to violence but that nevertheless contributes…

Who but the audience has control over whether or not to be convinced?

This is the part I won@t budge policywise on. I won't accept a Big-Brother-Knows-Best arrangement where some nebulous group gets to wield absolute control over what things people say get to be heard.

For every untouchable, despised viewpoint in the town square are instances beyond number of parents warning children to take that individual as an example not to be. Or instances of a future being moved to counter the movement. Life, and by extension free-speech, is risky. We know this. We've known this. We will hopefully teach our children the same so they too will know.

Ours is not the right to forge their chains. Liberty is important, hard won, and easily lost, and difficult to reclaim. Does that mean unpopular movements gain momentum? That lives may be lost? Yes. Does that mean we should abandon all semblance of commitment to Liberty, and erect the illusion of a safe world only to have it be shattered again and again in a self-reinforcing spiral whereby more and more liberty is ceded to authorities so they can deliver more safety?

I know what my answer is. What's yours?