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

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

#171

Post by matt4077 »

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.

> the level of satire a society can cope with, is directly proportional to the quality of democracy

You're contradicting yourself: First, you deny that there are graduations in "freedom", saying it's all-or-nothing.

But then, a democracy's quality is apparently proportional to its freedom of speech, implying that there are, indeed, nuances.

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

#172

Post by Fnoord »

snowwrestler wrote: post #34

"Tech companies" is just way too broad a designation to use here. No one is seriously asking Apple to police hate speech in iMessage or Facetime, for instance, or Verizon to police hate speech in SMS. No one expects AT&T to police hate speech in a phone call. What people are concerned about are the newsfeeds and timelines, specifically. Companies like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube love to pretend that their newsfe…

> What people are concerned about are the newsfeeds and timelines, specifically. Companies like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube love to pretend that their newsfeed/timeline products are just like chat apps or phone calls--neutral messaging platforms.

> They're not. And the specific reason they are not, is the algorithmic timeline and content suggestions.

They're not because they're public, akin to broadcasting. One to many. In the past such has always been more or less under careful control. Public broadcast TV and radio were under control of dogma and moral, and it wasn't feasible to make your own. Publishers could opt not to release a manuscript if it didn't fit their ideology.

Consider the following thought experiment: "Twitter and Facebook were exactly as popular as they are now but they'd show everything only chronologically (last on top). Do you recon the control problem would be solved at that point?"

Now consider the following thought experiment: "Twitter and Facebook are only private 1:1 conversations. Do you recon the control problem would be solved at that point?"

In example #2 (regardless of it being chronologically shown or via an algorithm) the communication -whatever it might be- only goes to one person, not the general public. This contains the strength of propaganda (such as fake news or hate speech) greatly.

Also, remember that there are all kind of biases [1] even while we're not aware of them or when we are weak to fall for them.

[1] It is worth summing them all up but I am by no means an expert on this subject. I'm currently reading the book "The Confidence Game" by Maria Konnikova and it explains various of them in detail.

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

#173

Post by jancsika »

snowwrestler wrote: post #34

"Tech companies" is just way too broad a designation to use here. No one is seriously asking Apple to police hate speech in iMessage or Facetime, for instance, or Verizon to police hate speech in SMS. No one expects AT&T to police hate speech in a phone call. What people are concerned about are the newsfeeds and timelines, specifically. Companies like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube love to pretend that their newsfe…

> Instead of pretending they don't make choices, they should be introspective and thoughtful about the criteria they are using to make those choices.

They're stuck, however, because many of the people who bought into the myth of objective, non-biased algorithms have gone down the rabbit hole of the garbage recommended by those algorithms. To those users, attempts to cull the garbage will be interpreted as censorship.

Add to that there is no way to improve the recommendation systems (from an ethical standpoint of "improve") without hurting engagement.

Add to that HN's allergy to government regulation.

It's going to be quite a rollercoaster ride over the next few years. :)

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

#174

Post by Arubis »

ethanwillis wrote: post #140
tedunangst wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modest proposal: The government should appoint a Department of Truth to review and approve all social media posts in a country to eliminate election misinformation.

What's really depressing is that I can't tell if you're joking or not.

(s)he's joking, but the only reason I'm sure is the use of "modest proposal", not the actual content.

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

#175

Post by tempodox »

Policing “hate speech” will just create niches where you won't be censored. It's only a question of time until someone comes up with an idea to monetise that. Imagine a platform where “moderate speech” will be banned because it's against the house rules...

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

#176

Post by charlesism »

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…

    > we are taking the power to limit speech (which the
    > founders felt was too important to be wielded by the 
    > government)
Someone spray-paints a swastika on your car. Do you think the founders would mind if you painted it over?

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

#177

Post by _bfhp »

161 comments and no one has mentioned Glenn Greenwald and the Intercept's prolific coverage on this issue? I'll do a quick websearch and fix that.

Should Twitter, Facebook and Google Executives be the Arbiters of What We See and Read? August 21 2014 - https://theintercept.com/2014/08/21/twitter-facebook-executi...

Facebook Is Collaborating With the Israeli Government to Determine What Should Be Censored September 12 2016 - https://theintercept.com/2016/09/12/facebook-is-collaboratin...

Then: Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments December 30 2017 - https://theintercept.com/2017/12/30/facebook-says-it-is-dele...

"hate speech" from:ggreenwald on Twitter - https://twitter.com/search?q=%22hate%20speech%22%20from%3Agg...

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

#178

Post by twinkletwinkle »

lsh123 wrote: post #85

I don’t understand why someone needs to censor anything in the first place. If a user finds posts of another user offensive, etc, then the first user can unsubscribe/unfollow/block/... the second user. If everyone thinks the same way then the offensive user will just speak with her/himself.

That's how you end up with echo chambers and parallel online universes.

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

#179

Post by Arubis »

madrox wrote: post #157

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…

> 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.

Did you have the same biases I did? At that time and age (my teens, mostly), I just assumed people with different values than mine were ignorant, and so naturally they wouldn't be capable of using advanced technology.

I'm not proud of that, but there's still a _lot_ of that sentiment kicking around, including in the form that giving people additional access to technology and knowledge will educate the masses into the "correct" set of values held by whoever's pushing for greater technological adoption.

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

#180

Post by Fellshard »

padolsey wrote: post #70
snowwrestler wrote: post #34

"Tech companies" is just way too broad a designation to use here. No one is seriously asking Apple to police hate speech in iMessage or Facetime, for instance, or Verizon to police hate speech in SMS. No one expects AT&T to police hate speech in a phone call. What people are concerned about are the newsfeeds and timelines, specifically. Companies like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube love to pretend that their newsfe…

> They're not. And the specific reason they are not, is the algorithmic timeline and content suggestions. I think the more pertinent reason here is that these platforms have broadcast capability (immediate communication with many people) as opposed to p2p capability (traditional SMS or phone calls). Even if Twitter was strictly chronological, without any algorithmic mutation, we'd still presumably be insisting they p…

Not really.

One involves a neutral role, in which subscribed feeds are delivered to users without modification or filtering.

The other involves an active role on the part of the platform for any number of reasons: increased engagement, removal of voices that may cause perceived damage or lack of trust in the platform itself, or other, more ideological reasons.

I've noticed an intentional avoidance of distinction, lately, between active and passive behavior on a number of fronts, from sexual activity, to medical advice and intervention, to social media publishing. It's a pretty crucial component in ethical analysis that I suspect is being intentionally blurred.

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