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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”

#191

Post by notyourday »

kadendogthing wrote: post #95
mrkstu wrote: post #16

Cockroaches thrive in the dark corners. Sunlight is antiseptic. And forcing ideas/speech into those dark corners don't keep them from growing, it merely allows it to grow unobserved and un-countered. Ideas are the only counter to other ideas and how we communicate those idea is via speech. Suppression only invites martyrdom on the behalf of those suppressed, increasing their credibility.

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…

How is this argument differ from the following one:

(setup - 1950 but we have facebook/twitter/youtube/instagram)

Most of the population thinks that people promoting same sex relationships are just hell bent on destroying the good and wholesome America and demand that the leaders of LGBT of the time be deplatformed from that twitter/facebook/youtube/etc.

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

#192

Post by manfredo »

charlesism wrote: post #176
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?

It'd more like Ford trying to ban people from putting Hilary or Trump bumper stickers on their cars. In your scenario, an individual had their property vandalized. That is not comparable to platforms censoring certain views.

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

#193

Post by manfredo »

bilbo0s wrote: post #161
menacingly wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be true. When I was a kid, I saw a full hooded KKK march on TV, and I said "why do we let them march?" and my mom said "because you have to hear from people you don't want to hear from to know free speech is working" I cannot fathom that this conversation would even be considered good parenting today.

I think you probably don't have kids. I don't know many parents and children who would be sitting around watching tv with each other. Let alone watching a klan march? Way too many screens. Way too much choice. Way too much personalization. The scenario itself would only arise in VERY conservative or traditional families. Most other families just don't work like this. Blame Netflix I guess?

I think you're missing the forest for the tree. It's about instilling the priciples of the free market place of ideas - not just the specific medium involved.

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

#194

Post by menacingly »

mhneu wrote: post #120
menacingly wrote: post #72

Putting aside that it's a slippery and malleable label to apply to undesirable speech, there is an elitism hiding in these ban-hate-speech arguments. The core assumption is that while _I_ am able to see these vile ideas for the lies they are, the unsophisticated masses must not be allowed to hear them, lest they fall prey. This is problematic in ways that used to be obvious to people in free societies, but for some r…

The issue is that the wealthy and also foreign adversaries are exploiting the algorithms to amplify speech that serves their interests. That typically does not serve the interests of average people. The issue is how to avoid exploitation and manipulation. When the KKK marched several decades ago, it got coverage in newspapers and media proportional to its influence in society. Today, the wealthy and foreign opponents…

So, one common thing I see is I don't think left-leaning people right now realize how similar to the extreme fringes of the right they sound.

Your first two paragraphs would be a huge hit on /pol right up until you got to the point of resolving which adversaries and interests you're talking about.

I don't know where it takes us when an authoritarian, silencing approach is what both sides agree on, and they just haggle over where to point it.

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

#195

Post by orthecreedence »

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.

Viewing the world in absolute terms IS one of the main causes of hate, in my opinion. The idea that a group of people can be convinced to view something as absolute makes them malleable to do things they wouldn't otherwise do.

For instance, you are absolutely against hate. Now all someone has to do is change your definition of hate. Even in a subtle way. Now you are absolutely against something else you may not have been before. And this absolute disgust for something can morph and become something completely different than it was before. And you will never question it because you have absolutely made up your mind and there is no other way.

The world is not black and white, in any way. There are only shades of gray. There is no such thing as absolute good, and there is no such thing as absolute bad. Please examine this in yourself before you become a tool for someone else's agenda.

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

#196

Post by manfredo »

OmarIsmail wrote: post #28
mrkstu wrote: post #16

Cockroaches thrive in the dark corners. Sunlight is antiseptic. And forcing ideas/speech into those dark corners don't keep them from growing, it merely allows it to grow unobserved and un-countered. Ideas are the only counter to other ideas and how we communicate those idea is via speech. Suppression only invites martyrdom on the behalf of those suppressed, increasing their credibility.

There is evidence that deplatforming works ( https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-... )

I don't think this sort of analysis can measure the impact of deplatforming on people's opinions. While deplatforming may suppress the open dissemination of hateful ideas it's erroneous to assume these ideas become less prevalent as a consequence. This has happened in my workplace, for one. After the company made it clear it would not tolerate things like Damore's memo and Stuart Reges' article on women in computing, I and other people who agreed (or at least, aren't actively adverse to those views) shut up, and joined the chorous of people condemning them. But in private, it didn't change our views. If anything, it's made me even more skeptical of that sort of leftism.

Consider the fact that deplatforming (primarily of right wing speakers) in the US became significantly more prevalent around 2014, and 2015. It didn't help in the 2016 election.

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

#197

Post by charlesism »

manfredo wrote: post #192
charlesism wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It'd more like Ford trying to ban people from putting Hilary or Trump bumper stickers on their cars. In your scenario, an individual had their property vandalized. That is not comparable to platforms censoring certain views.

    > That is not comparable to platforms 
    > censoring certain views.
Historically, it has been. If someone had sent a letter to The Pennsylvania Chronicle, containing a recipe for baking a turd pie, I don't think Ben Franklin would have felt the need to print it.

Facebook, Twitter, Google... they're the ones footing the bill to host their users' content.

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

#198

Post by nopzor »

charlesism wrote: post #190
macspoofing wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Also who defines what 'hate speech' is and isn't?

Mod does. Don't like the mod, get out! Social networks don't control the police and jails. They have always had the right - though they neglected it because they are lazy and delusional - to moderate content on their own servers. It's so clear to me that "one size fits all" social networks will go away. They are inherently dysfunctional. Putting everyone from terrorists to toddlers on the same forums was never a good…

No, they neglected it because they originally wanted protections afforded to “common carriers”. Now they are trying to have their cake and eat it too.

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

#199

Post by manfredo »

natestemen wrote: post #14
chrisco255 wrote: post #6

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.

speech is dangerous. hate speech promotes and incites violence.

Wrong. Hate speech, at least in the US, has no formal definition. All it takes for something to be considered hate speech is to call it hate speech.

Incitements of violence are already prohibited by law.

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

#200

Post by bilbo0s »

manfredo wrote: post #193
bilbo0s wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you probably don't have kids. I don't know many parents and children who would be sitting around watching tv with each other. Let alone watching a klan march? Way too many screens. Way too much choice. Way too much personalization. The scenario itself would only arise in VERY conservative or traditional families. Most other families just don't work like this. Blame Netflix I guess?

I think you're missing the forest for the tree. It's about instilling the priciples of the free market place of ideas - not just the specific medium involved.

I'm going to gently suggest that the proliferation of screens, the proliferation of choice, the proliferation of personalization, in and of themselves, demonstrates that the principles of the free market place of ideas is well understood. The kids just choose ideas that perhaps we would not choose. (Or in most cases, ideas that we would definitely not choose.) But this is the essence of the free market of ideas that you subscribe to. That children are not interested in the ideas that we are interested in, does not mean that we need to go and make sure they consume our ideas instead. That's kind of the opposite of a free market.

So kids live in a free market, and they generally choose things we, as parents, don't like. This doesn't, always, make the kids wrong. And it doesn't mean that they are in need of our guidance to see things "correctly". (Which invariably seems to mean, "You're wrong kid, this is what you should believe." And then we wonder why they call us hypocrites when we at the same time talk about a "free market of ideas".)

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