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

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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most religious people are not zealots. I don't think they condone slavery, women's subjugation etc just because they go to church sometimes. You think they hang gays in Turkey? Besides, the overreliance on the writings of scriptures is a distinctly protestant characteristic

"Overrreliance" on scripture is an extremely important concept in islam. In fact I think every major sect (sunni or shia) and madhab are centered on that "reliance". Even the islamic schools of thought that usually take a less literal approach to the koran would probably be much much literal in their interpretation than your average protestant denomination. Innovating on the scripture by derivation, by cherrypicking…

I think this is an excellent analysis. In my experience (my family is from Bangladesh) American Muslims tend to get around this by relying on their status as a religious minority. To draw an analogy: what did Jesus think of Roman divorce law? As a religious minority it didn’t matter what the Romans doing, unless they were regulating Jews directly. Similarly, American muslims don’t have to reconcile their religious beliefs and political beliefs because as a practical matter someone else is making the rules.

The dominant group faces a different problem, because someone has to make the rules. “When does life begin?” Clearly society must answer this one way or the other—we won’t let people exercise their personal “choice” at say 2 months after birth. If religion doesn’t decide that question, some other non-falsifiable moral framework will.

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

#82
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 don't recall any verse in the Quran that compares the black wife of a king or leader to a chimpanzee. This is a pretty disingenuous slippery slope argument which can be used to argue against any censorship of virulent hate speech on any private platform.

There’s no slippery slope. Twitter will censor posts for misgendering people. Islam has pretty clear views on the separation of men and women, their separate roles, marriage (Mohammad was not a fan of single people!), etc.

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

#83
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If that community likes these ideas, that is not anybody else's business. That's obviously not the case in most countries on this earth. Holocaust denial for example is illegal across the EU.

It is only illegal if done "in public" (whatever that is taken to mean). Arguably, a private Facebook group is not "in public".

I will also note that in most cases, these laws don't prohibit such speech unless it is done in a manner likely to lead to harm. How widely or narrowly that is commonly understood is a different question.

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

#85
post #45

So if you see a racist post, making derogatory remarks against your race and you report it, Facebook reviews it and says it meets community standards, then you send it for reconsideration and nothing happens for weeks... What are the next steps? Do you report Facebook to the Police or are they immune? I read many times that someone posted something on Twitter and police raided their home the next day. Can they do the…

That would entirely depend on the local laws in your jurisdiction. In the US there is no law against creating or publishing racist content. (I'm not claiming that it's morally right to do that, but it's not illegal.)

In my country it is illegal, so I would expect at very least an order to block the site if they are not going to comply with the law.
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