Alex Stamos: Asking tech companies to police hate speech is “a dangerous path” • Hacker News Board

Re: Alex Stamos: Asking tech companies to police hate speech is “a dangerous path”

#151

Post by criddell » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

mrkstu wrote: post #137

criddell wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you don't have a problem with ostracizing groups like ISIS or white supremacists, then maybe we don't disagree that much.

Are we at war with white supremacists? ANTFIA? Venezuela? Equating ISIS with supremacists is equating a nuclear bomb with an M80 firecracker.

Well that brings up an interesting question: is the US at war with ISIS? I know Congress authorized action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda and maybe that's all that's needed to go after other groups.

Re: Alex Stamos: Asking tech companies to police hate speech is “a dangerous path”

#152

Post by trolleyhacker » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

OmarIsmail wrote: post #37

School-Cotton wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your definition makes no sense. "We should kill people from country X" isn't hate speech by your definition - it doesn't imply anyone is any less human than anyone else.

"should kill people" = "those people aren't deserving to live" = 1) either all humans are not deserving to live or 2) those specific humans are not deserving to live = if 2) country X are being dehumanized. if 1) do you consider yourself a human? A) yes, then why haven't you killed yourself? Since you haven't you think you're more deserving of life relative to everyone else and therefore are dehumanizing everyone but…

If we follow this reasoning, a statement like "Nazis deserve to die." would be hate speech.

Re: Alex Stamos: Asking tech companies to police hate speech is “a dangerous path”

#153

Post by snackbugs » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #133

snackbugs wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep saying that hate speech isn't defined clearly. It is, but these people have just never had to interface with it and have never cared to learn the boundaries. Why haven't they had to interface with it? Because they have privileged positions in society, so hate speech has never been directed at them. Their lives have never been made harder to live by someone else in an influential position saying they don't…

> Because they have privileged positions in society, so hate speech has never been directed at them. Really? As a minority and member of other protected groups, I have had to endure what you characterize as "hate speech" many times and yet I remain in complete opposition to the goals of your movement. The restrictions on speech and thought championed by your movement are contrary to the ideals of classical liberalism…

That's terrific. I'm sincerely happy for you that you're fortunate enough to be in a comfortable enough place in society that hate speech isn't an obstacle in your life.

However it seems as though your idea of a free society doesn't extend freedom to people for whom hate speech is a much greater obstacle.

Re: Alex Stamos: Asking tech companies to police hate speech is “a dangerous path”

#154

Post by dwaltrip » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:47 PM UTC

atmosx wrote: post #94

ilovecaching wrote: post #10

There's still too many unsolved philosophical questions here. What is hate speech? What should the limits of free speech be? How do we contended with the multitude of religious, legal, and cultural differences and anomalies when policing news and thought across the world? How do we react to people weaponizing the policing of hate speech to remove free speech? I have yet to hear compelling answers to this problem, and…

Speech is either free or not free, there is no middle path. If you want free speech, you accept the consequences. If you want “regulated” speech, there are consequences. That’s it. I would argue that the level of satire a society can cope with, is directly proportional to the quality of democracy the society has.

Ignoring nuance doesn't make it disappear. Every developed country on earth regulates speech to varying degrees.

Re: Alex Stamos: Asking tech companies to police hate speech is “a dangerous path”

#155

Post by bilbo0s » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:47 PM UTC

dwighttk wrote: post #115

mundo wrote: post #103

This strikes me as a timely and important sentiment. When we demand that Twitter ban anti-semitic tweets, or that Cloudflare block white supremacist websites, or that Youtube deplatform Alex Jones, we are taking the power to limit speech (which the founders felt was too important to be wielded by the government) and handing it to middle managers at software companies. The de jure rule is "Freedom of Speech shall not…

Even Mastodon instances can get in on the banning.

Yep.

In the end, even most of these hypothetical distributed social network instances would have the de facto rule:

>Don't say anything that would upset the advertisers...

Re: Alex Stamos: Asking tech companies to police hate speech is “a dangerous path”

#156

Post by kadendogthing » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:48 PM UTC

mrkstu wrote: post #134

kadendogthing wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is this analogy bad (sunlight helps plenty of bad things grow, things even detrimental to our survival as a species), but it assumes that you're dealing with rational actors. Stop naively assuming this. It's a bad assumption. There are people out there who will argue in bad faith and have no interest in reasoning or truth. And there are people who will fall victim to those bad ideas. Religion, terrorist fact…

I think the onus is on those who would silence debate to prove the immediate harm they are advocating isn't the worse alternative. There is a reason why prior restraint on speech is almost impossible to compel in American courts. I find it curious that those who apparently are in such a rush to suppress Bad (TM) ideas adopt the worst ideas of fascists in order to do so.

>I think the onus is on those who would silence debate to prove the immediate harm they are advocating isn't the worse alternative.

We've always relied on editorial control for the most part in all of our mediums to make sure that the information being disseminated is reasonably accurate and fit for public consumption. It's not a fascist idea and has absolutely nothing to do with fascism or any type of propaganda for any political party. There's no need to be so absurdly hyperbolic over what is quite frankly, a common sense mechanism when dealing with the proliferation of ideas.

We know that disinformation spreads faster than the truth on several new, internet media platforms these days. The onus is on the people who would so eagerly disregard common sense filters that have been time tested, for them to prove that the danger and harm currently being caused by this new wave of disinformation in every single subject matter will be worth it now, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future. Take the following:

* Vaccines, health.

* Environment

* Economics

* General politics.

In which subject are the ideals your espousing helping us? Because in each of those subjects I can point you towards real life, damaging consequences that have come about because of unfettered Bad (TM) ideas that spread over modern mediums.

This isn't a theoretical problem. It's happening right now, today.

Re: Alex Stamos: Asking tech companies to police hate speech is “a dangerous path”

#157

Post by madrox » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:49 PM UTC

I've been social on the internet since the early 90s, and it's been a wonderful place for most of it. Before it became so egalitarian, the people adept at socializing on it were pretty left leaning or downright libertarian. Now everyone is in on it, so we're getting confronted by parts of society we could pretend didn't exist 10 years ago. I don't know why I didn't see it coming.

There's a can/should debate hidden in here. Tech companies totally can police hate speech (or any kind of speech) on their platforms, thanks to handy things like a ToS. Whether they should is a cultural question about what kind of a society we want to have. If history has taught me anything, it's that the can side of the debate wins in the long run.

Re: Alex Stamos: Asking tech companies to police hate speech is “a dangerous path”

#158

Post by leibwiht » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:49 PM UTC

OmarIsmail wrote: post #66

tux1968 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some definition of "works" since the analysis doesn't consider unintended effects or potential adverse long-term consequences. This all seems joyful while the technique is being applied to those with whom we disagree, less so once the technique has been turned on you yourself. Defending free speech means defending those we disagree with, and maybe even hate.

I think it's pretty safe to say that child porn would run a lot more rampant if it could be easily shared without consequence? I understand that there's a different level of consequence we're talking about here (legal vs comment deletion) but how we treat child porn is the extreme for intolerance and I think it's safe to say child porn is less than it would be in the more "tolerant" alternative. And I actually do mea…

Ideological convictions are not the same as smoking or child porn. Proving that smoking is wrong is easy. Proving that an entire ideology is wrong is not even possible, because "right" and "wrong" in this sense are subjective - they are relative to a specific person with specific interests. You might think "well obviously 'right' is whatever is the best for the most people", but should you really always prioritize the interests of the group as a whole over its constituent parts? For example, should you suppress Tibetian/black/white/Uyghur/etc nationalism because secession movements are against the interests of their host nations? Your condescension is mind-boggling, putting a system of ideas on the same level as satisfying base desires in an antisocial way is ridiculous.

Re: Alex Stamos: Asking tech companies to police hate speech is “a dangerous path”

#159

Post by eganist » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:50 PM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #141

eganist wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Speech isn't "dangerous". You know what you do about people that say stupid things: you call them out on it. The answer to hate speech is more speech. This worked to marvelous effect when legitimate, unique net neutrality concerns were buried under an avalanche of duplicate anti-net-neutrality letters sent on behalf of people who were very much deceased. The solution to this challenge likely needs a much more nuanc…

Your example has nothing to do with hate speech. Your example is fraudulent speech.

In the end, what does hate speech do other than to defraud an audience into an unjustified view of a subject?

It's a relevant analogy. You're free to dispute it, but we might all benefit if you invest some effort explaining why this and other examples aren't relevant.

Re: Alex Stamos: Asking tech companies to police hate speech is “a dangerous path”

#160

Post by mden » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:52 PM UTC

jachee wrote: post #68

daenz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another possibility that you're overlooking, and that is that your subjective view is far more polarized than the average persons view. The language you've used so far shows you are thinking about all of this in very absolutist terms. Most people recoil from absolutism.

There is no "grey" area for hate. It's absolutely binary. If you hate something or someone, there's no half-way. Hate is the force behind the Holocaust, hate is the force behind the Iraq Wars. Hate has torn the Middle-east to shreds for millennia. Hate was the Khmer Rouge's genocide. Hate was Apartheid. Giving hate any leeway is to give it 100% of its power. It must MUST MUST be fought as an absolute.

So would you say you hate 'hate'? If you don't hate 'hate' and it's "absolutely binary" then doesn't it follow you love hate? If you do in fact hate 'hate' then it must also mean you hate yourself.

Absolutism like this often leads to logical traps. Even when it doesn't it's still unhealthy. Besides, the only way to exterminate an idea is to exterminate the people that might embrace that idea which in itself sounds pretty wrong.