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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”

#201

Post by manfredo »

charlesism wrote: post #197
manfredo wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Pennsylvania Chronicle isn't a platform. It's a publisher. Readers' letters getting published is the exception, not the norm.

The ideas discussed here would be more like a telecoms provider specifically refusing to do business with someone because they disagree with their politics.

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

#202

Post by macspoofing »

snackbugs wrote: post #138
macspoofing wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm fascinated with why people don't acknowledge power structures as having any influence in how one part of society views another; that there is currently no hierarchy in society. I didn't say anything of the sort. What I meant to communicate to you was that I don't see any evidence that the SPECIFIC (and arbitrary) power structures you choose to use, have any actual explanatory power. Typically, ideologues of your…

Every reply of yours so far has hinged on my definition of terms being arbitrary. I'm strictly talking about well-defined terms. Maybe you have never examined them because you never needed to interface with them in practice, or maybe you do understand them and are just arguing in bad faith to defend a more abstract belief. I won't make any assumptions about that.

>Every reply of yours so far has hinged on my definition of terms being arbitrary.

Not quite. I am fully aware that ideas like "privilege" or "dominance/power hierarchies" have well defined meanings. But thought they are well-defined, their applicability in explaining our society is controversial. Proponents of these concepts tend to be ideologically driven. I criticized these concepts because you used them to create a definition of 'hate speech'.

>Maybe you have never examined them because you never needed to interface with them in practice

I have no idea what you're talking about here.

>maybe you do understand them and are just arguing in bad faith to defend a more abstract belief

I disagree. I attempted to be very clear in why I disagree with your point of view and I tried to capture your position fairly. Where is this 'bad faith'?

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

#203

Post by snackbugs »

EdSharkey wrote: post #135
OmarIsmail wrote: post #18

This is already going down the path of "what is hate speech". Here is what I think is a pretty simple definition: Speech that explicitly or direct line implicitly dehumanizes anyone. Then the arguments become pretty simple: does a statement dehumanize someone? Does it indicate that they are any less human than another? That's a much easier discussion to have.

"hate speech" and "dehumanizing" are implicitly political terms. Will you will agree with me that one's politics are simply deeply cherished opinions and nothing more? It appears to me that we are excluding voices from public discourse because, in the opinion of a powerful group, they have been rude. One person's rude criticism can easily become another person's hate speech.

Unfortunately, politics directly affects the safety, health, and livelihood of everyone.

People get sick die because of political decisions, and people gain great amounts of wealth because of political decisions.

People maintain comfortable places in society or remain in fully employed poverty because of political decisions.

There is very little in peoples' lives that aren't affected by politics.

If you're in a position for politics to not affect you because it's just an abstract topic of conversation, you're part of a privileged class of people who aren't being scrutinized and blamed because of your inherent, born qualities. Congratulations.

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

#204

Post by archerface »

blueboo wrote: post #169
archerface wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're supporting an attacker's right to denigrate, abuse, or harass other people... Did that person's comment say that they support those things? Weird, I didn't read that... When it comes down to the fundamental rights of an individual you can't pick and choose when something is an unalienable right and when it is not. We can either have free speech (warts and all) or we can live in a world that dictates what…

But you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. And if stoking panic in the easily-panicked is something you ARE okay with forbidding, why is it then ok to stoke hatred in the easily-manipulable? I guess that wart makes this a world you want nothing to do with, because of slope's slipperiness...

I honestly would have to read up more on the arguments for the restrictions that are currently in place.

A problem with this whole discussion is that no one has the same definition of "hate speech"; it is too subjective of a term. We all (the majority) agree when it is wrong to declare imminent danger.

But like I said, I need to read up more on the rationale for those restrictions.

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

#205

Post by 51lver »

Fnoord wrote: post #172
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…

It absolutely is not broadcast as long as an algorithm is selecting posts for you. Air TV is broadcast. The radio is broadcast. Those platforms do not not selectively choose their audience to maximize engagement. There's no innocent one to many relationship here. Facebook actively gives extremist material to extremists because their robot thinks it will make them use the platform more. It's not the same message going to all subscribers. That is why they are responsible.

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

#206

Post by snerbles »

halfnibble wrote: post #101
OmarIsmail wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Deplatforming works until new "free speech" platforms like Gab arise to replace the old.

Not without the old taking measures to keep that from happening.

Gab itself has been deplatformed to a degree, Google and Apple banned their mobile apps and their DNS registrar threatened to yank their domain over certain user posts.

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

#207

Post by manfredo »

bilbo0s wrote: post #200
manfredo wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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're still missing the above commenter's point.

> 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"

The point is, exposure of reprehensible ideas is part of free speech. The fact that we consume media differently today does not change this. Maybe the 21st century analogue is a kid asking their parents why Alex Jones is on YouTube (well, that example isn't possible anymore). Or why we let the KKK use Twitter. The medium is a detail, the point is explaining the value of free speech to kids.

The fact that kids may be interested of different ideas also has no relevance to this point. The situation here is when kids ask why certain ideas aren't banned and suppressed, the answer is because free speech entails tolerating the existence of said ideas.

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

#208

Post by 51lver »

bilbo0s wrote: post #155
dwighttk wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

What advertisers? I haven't seen any on mastodon. In fact, I think the network would be actively hostile to their presence.

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

#209

Post by macspoofing »

snackbugs wrote: post #186
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone's arguing in bad faith here, it's you. Power dynamics may lead to hate speech but they are not an intrinsic part of hate speech.

Hate speech specifically comes from a position and perspective of power. Stop making up your own terms.

>Hate speech specifically comes from a position and perspective of power.

That's not a universally accepted definition. You're simply asserting it to be true. It's very similar to the way the definition of 'racism' was contorted from a conceptually simple "somebody who hates someone based on their race" to "somebody who discriminates (usually in some abstract ill-defined, overbroad way) and who is part of some power dominance hierarchy (also arbitrarily defined) against a marginalized sub-group" or paraphrased: "If you're non-white, you cannot be racist". Sorry, you don't get a pass on that and you don't get to just assert this to be true. I also believe that this is a deeply immoral way of looking at the world.

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

#210

Post by lsh123 »

twinkletwinkle wrote: post #178
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.

I think censorship is the way to create echo chambers in a much faster way
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