Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#21

Post by rayiner » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

cblconfederate wrote: post #15

rayiner wrote: post #14

> so that hate speech against Black, Jewish, LGBTQ , Muslim , and multiracial people would be taken down through an automated system And what happens when the system takes down quotes from the Quran--which Muslims believe to be not only the inspired, but perfect word of God--as "hate speech."

I dont think people disagree that antiquated religious texts do contain a lot of hate speech

Which "people?" The secular descendants of white protestants--people who, despite maybe no longer being believers, retain distinctly protestant views of religious authority and interpretation? Yes. But certainly not, say, virtually all Muslims.

I'm not disagreeing with the approach--I'm just pointing out that societies can't help but encode their religious and quasi-religious views onto putatively secular rules. What Twitter or Facebook deem "hate speech" is invariably dictated by what white Americans,[1] think that means.

[1] Or others socialized into that culture. The practice of Islam here in America has a distinct influence of mainline Protestantism quite absent from the practice in Bangladesh. I was at an Islamic wedding for a family member several years ago, and the imam was narrating over passages from scripture to conform it to how Americans view things.

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#22

Post by logicalmonster » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

viggity wrote: post #5

I think preciously few people necessarily dislike the idea of quelling hate speech. The real problem is who gets to decide what classifies as hate speech. When there is a large contingent of america chanting nonsense like "silence is violence" one moment and "punch terfs" the next moment, I'd rather that nobody gets to make the decision of what does and does not constitute hate speech.

I think there's a minority, but still substantial number of authoritarians, who absolutely do like the idea of quelling what they view as hate speech.

The classification problem is not one that can ever be agreed to though as you point out, so I'd rather that larger platforms like Facebook simply provide tools to choose and mark the kind of content you'd prefer to see rather than blocking comments that a vocal group dislikes. The real solution to this problem was found many decades ago, and is of course ignored. Go back to teaching children stuff like the following rather than making victimhood into a currency.

> Sticks and stones may break my bones,

> But words can never hurt me.

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#23

Post by rayiner » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

selimthegrim wrote: post #17

rayiner wrote: post #14

> so that hate speech against Black, Jewish, LGBTQ , Muslim , and multiracial people would be taken down through an automated system And what happens when the system takes down quotes from the Quran--which Muslims believe to be not only the inspired, but perfect word of God--as "hate speech."

The so-called Calcutta Quran case never made it out of the first court so in India at least there’s no legal basis for this

I might trust Indian judges in 1985 to respect pluralism more than Facebook employees in 2021.

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#24

Post by helen___keller » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #19

helen___keller wrote: post #8

> like a user who posted an image of a chimpanzee with the caption, "Here's one of Michelle Obama." Anecdotally, I’ve seen these sort of images shared across Facebook many times and it was a large part of a decision to step back my usage of the product around 2016, including having my account deactivated for several years This topic is commonly viewed in a political lens (free speech, etc) but I view it in a free mar…

I don't see any inflammatory garbage. It's all a matter of which friends and pages you follow.

This is true. Admittedly my usage of Facebook I can only suspect is typical of other “casual” users, started with a period of active use in which I heavily curated and added content streams, then a long tail of passive use where I primarily just consumed content already on my home page. During this long tail I wasn’t looking to curate (especially considering that unfriending is sometimes visible and noticed), so I’d just scroll past bad content; eventually the bad content wore me out and I quit.

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#25

Post by statguy » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

hirundo wrote: post #7

A better way to quell hate speech is to provide the tools for individuals to do it, however they want to define it. Call it a bubble construction kit. If you think a post is hate speech, mark it as such to exclude it and its creator from your bubble. Allow other users to subscribe to your bubble, and visa versa, such that you share your include/exclude lists with them, out to a given degree of separation, with any ex…

This does not address the problem of “Michelle Obama is a chimpanzee” or the “holocaust did not happen” going viral in one of those communities!

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#26

Post by spfzero » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

It seems this falls into the category of: Company has idea, investigates it, decides not to go ahead for the time being. Big deal. This is what all businesses do all the time. They task some employees to come up with a plan or to research a possible plan. Then they consider it from various angles, then they might decide to go ahead with it as is, modify it, or table it.

It is always an "Employees' Plan" because the people tasked with doing it are obviously employees, or sometimes consultants. The people making the decision are always "Execs" because they are executing a decision. This headline is designed to transmit a disturbing message, with nothing actually notable behind it.

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#27

Post by AlexandrB » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

rightly wrote: post #3

"Hate speech" doesn't exist. It's not real. They made it up to shut you up.

Neither does "poetry" or "obscenity" insofar as these are just labels for different styles/uses of language. That doesn't stop them from being useful.

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#28

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

This article's reporting is false. They say "The researchers proposed a tweak so that hate speech against Black, Jewish, LGBTQ, Muslim, and multiracial people would be taken down through an automated system.", but the original Washington Post article they're summarizing (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/11/21/faceboo...) says that the automated hate speech detection system already exists; the proposed tweak was to disable that system for hate speech against any groups other than the listed five, turning it back on only as an aspirational future goal when the algorithm "had been retrained and was on track". This is because the researchers weren't just aiming to quell hate speech in general - they wanted to change the fact that Facebook is (they concluded) "better at cracking down on comments that were harmful against White People".

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#29

Post by simiones » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

statguy wrote: post #25

hirundo wrote: post #7

A better way to quell hate speech is to provide the tools for individuals to do it, however they want to define it. Call it a bubble construction kit. If you think a post is hate speech, mark it as such to exclude it and its creator from your bubble. Allow other users to subscribe to your bubble, and visa versa, such that you share your include/exclude lists with them, out to a given degree of separation, with any ex…

This does not address the problem of “Michelle Obama is a chimpanzee” or the “holocaust did not happen” going viral in one of those communities!

If that community likes these ideas, that is not anybody else's business. Unless you believe there exists undeniable truth + an algorithm to find it, you have to accept that people can each decide what they believe is true - even [what you and I perceive as] hurtful and misguided ideas such as the above.

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#30

Post by bertjk » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

hirundo wrote: post #7

A better way to quell hate speech is to provide the tools for individuals to do it, however they want to define it. Call it a bubble construction kit. If you think a post is hate speech, mark it as such to exclude it and its creator from your bubble. Allow other users to subscribe to your bubble, and visa versa, such that you share your include/exclude lists with them, out to a given degree of separation, with any ex…

In addition to what you described, we can also add a bit more logic: "Only exclude if it is blocked by more than X subscribed lists" or "Only exclude if it is blocked by both Rachel Maddow and Ben Shapiro".