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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”

#251

Post by qubax »

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…

> "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.

Sure they are. Microsoft is even monitoring their service for "bad words".

https://boston.cbslocal.com/2018/03/27/microsoft-ban-offensi...

> What people are concerned about are the newsfeeds and timelines, specifically.

No. That's a small part of what primarily the left want to censor.

> It's silly to worry about giving these products "the power to determine what people can—and can’t—say online." They've already seized it for themselves--by deciding for me which content will show up in my newsfeed/timeline/suggested list. They decide which content gets promoted to me.

Which you can choose to ignore or bypass.

> So if you build a publishing system designed solely to maximize engagement, it's going to become a system that preferentially serves content that feeds negative emotions.

Then why aren't you demanding CNN or the NYTimes be censored?

> The companies doing this need to accept their responsibility for what they decide to serve and promote.

They are. They are serving what their customers want.

The only people who are complaining about it are authoritarian and selfish individuals who want to control what people see and say. It's no different than a prude whining about the porn people watch.

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

#252

Post by qubax »

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…

> 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.

It's also about control. The biggest whiners about "hate speech" are the media and news companies. Because they want to control what people see and hear. They don't care about hate speech, they just want to be able to control which hate speech the masses get to see.

It's patronizing, it's paternalistic and it's also puritanically authoritarian. It's evil.

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

#253

Post by pas »

dwighttk wrote: post #113
zaidf wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s even worse: many people are demanding Facebook monitor Messenger chats for abuses in Mayanmar while at the same time not wanting Facebook to monitor Messenger chats. This is just a perfect example of constant catch-22s I see in people’s expectations of tech companies. You can’t expect Facebook to both not monitor chat messages AND prevent chat messages that do harm. You can have one or the other.

wasn't it WhatsApp and message forwarding that people had a problem with in Myanmar? Not p2p.

India, but yes. And again, not exactly p2p, because large (meaning 100+ people group chats) that spread false alarms.

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

#254

Post by pas »

zaidf wrote: post #75
734786710934 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one is seriously asking Apple to police hate speech in iMessage or Facetime, for instance Many people are demanding that Facebook do exactly this.

It’s even worse: many people are demanding Facebook monitor Messenger chats for abuses in Mayanmar while at the same time not wanting Facebook to monitor Messenger chats. This is just a perfect example of constant catch-22s I see in people’s expectations of tech companies. You can’t expect Facebook to both not monitor chat messages AND prevent chat messages that do harm. You can have one or the other.

Can you please show one such instance of impossible demand? I thought that's two very distinct group of advocates.

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

#255

Post by thisisit »

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…

In countries like India, people are asking for Whatsapp to censor content.

10-15 years ago, SMS forwarding and bulk SMS were marked as a problem. Indian government had put in laws in place where they can and do ask telecom operators to jam mobile or even internet signals in sensitive areas.

In which case, asking technology companies to toe the line is the next logical step.

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

#256

Post by philwelch »

irishloop wrote: post #11
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 can absolutely be dangerous. Much of the run-up to the Holocaust was in dehumanizing and characterizing the Jews as money-sucking leeches bleeding Germany dry.

Much of the run up to the Holocaust was in establishing and propagandizing an authoritarian worldview while silencing the opposition with whatever tools were available.

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

#257

Post by philwelch »

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...

> But you can't yell fire in a crowded theater.

This cliche comes from a WWI era Supreme Court ruling and was part of the argument for how imprisoning anti-war protestors for “sedition” wasn’t technically a violation of the First Amendment.

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

#258

Post by orthecreedence »

jachee wrote: post #249
orthecreedence wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe social media companies get rid of any kind of algorithmic selection. Feeds are completely ordered by date. You can follow/unfollow people who you like or dislike. If you don't want to be offended by jackasses, don't go on the public feeds. That said, you've shot down a lot of people's arguments but I haven't seen you promote a sensible alternative. Given your personal belief framework and given the first ame…

I don't claim to know the answer, but I firmly believe that if all the energy being poured into protecting hate were instead put into eradicating it, the world could only become a better place.

> I firmly believe that if all the energy being poured into protecting hate were instead put into eradicating it, the world could only become a better place

HOW? How do you eradicate hate speech? What is hate speech? Anything that makes you feel bad? So do you single-handedly decide what speech is ok or not?

You're lambasting people's protection for free speech as "protecting hate speech" (which is a false dichotomy) and not offering any alternatives. I don't really get what the point of what you're saying is other than "This upsets me." And that's fine if hate speech upsets you, but understand that it upsets other people too, even if those people support free speech as defined by the US bill of rights and legal framework.

I guess what I'm saying is...stop complaining unless you start examining the problem critically (ok, you don't like hate speech... who enforces what hate speech is? how is it enforced? etc. right now you're attacking free speech but not offering ANY compelling or thought-out alternatives) and for the love of everything stop thinking in absolutes. You seem to have forced yourself into black and white thinking. That's not only counterproductive, it's dangerous. People who think in absolutes are targets to become tools of hate. If you don't start seeing nuance in things, you will be easily swayed and manipulated by anyone who has a Nice Shiny Solution to "end hate speech."

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

#259

Post by Grue3 »

neves wrote: post #83

Well, these unnamed "tech companies" are responsible for the proliferation of absurd lies that will elect a far right authoritarian candidate in my country, Brazil. The spread of this lies happens with the support of a well financed organization. I always thought that the Internet would be a democratic platform that would improve the debate in society. Maybe we would go back to a democracy without intermediaries. I w…

>Well, these unnamed "tech companies" are responsible for the proliferation of absurd lies that will elect a far right authoritarian candidate in my country, Brazil.

There was no reason why the opposition to that candidate couldn't have put up their own absurd lies, or, dare I say, disproved the far right candidate's lies, thereby achieving the same success via the same platform. The elections are all about effective campaigning. You can't blame the platform because the candidate you don't like is too effective at using it. Instead learn from your mistakes and use this platform to be just as effective.

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

#260

Post by leereeves »

padolsey wrote: post #228
Fellshard wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, lat…

The public wouldn't buy the 'neutral' aspect, as every mechanism that a platform provides, is in some way biasing the type of content that is broadcast. Twitter's RT feature, which requires no curation or modification of actual content by Twitter, still biases content to that, perhaps, which is most divisive or simplistic. Broadcast technology, even without algorithmic bells and whistles, is already a biased technolo…

Retweeting doesn't bias content; it's rather the opposite: making it easy for people to share content they like removes a longstanding bias. The old models of broadcast media selected content to fit the biases of a few powerful media executives.

You may find the choices of the average person "divisive or simplistic" but the Retweet button doesn't dictate their choices.

"Policing" content, however, is all about dictating people's choices, motivated by the thought that the "police" know better than less powerful people, and reestablishing the biased filter controlled by the powerful (new-)media executives.

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