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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”

#261

Post by notyourday »

kadendogthing wrote: post #236
notyourday wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is the argument the same? You can't just ask me to do all the work for you while you just presume your statement is factual with no supporting evidence. Though I've gone ahead and responded because I feel very passionate about this issue. To answer the heart of your point: any kind of editorial/screening system isn't perfect. We'll get things wrong. We always have, always will. It's still better than what's happe…

> To address your specific example: It's not based on what most of the population thinks. Qualified opinions are a thing. We can talk about what makes a qualified opinion, with your example or any other subject. Notably we see these types of opinions in your example gaining momentum because we're allowing certain groups of people unfettered access to an audience. It's really a bad example in my opinion, but I understand and sympathize with the point you're trying to make.

Who qualifies the opinion? The opinion of those that wanted gays muzzled in 1950s were very qualified opinions.

Hell, during the Obama's first term in the office he publicly opposed gay marriage as the President of the United States.

Notice that your comment is being slowly greyed out and my question is already in the negative with you being the only person who actually responded rather than attempt to downvote it into oblivion. And this is on HN, not Reddit.

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

#262

Post by Nasrudith »

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…

Interests of nations is a very dangerous phrase that justifies horrifying things like overthrowing a democratically elected government for sake of resources or because it reduces the price of an export by 10%. I believe the proper iconoclastic quote is "States don't have rights - they have limits on powers.

Preventing manipulation and exploitation and doing them are really completely identical from a practical standpoint. Even nobility preserving woods was itself a form of exploitation since remaining untouched was a divergence from the status quo.

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

#263

Post by Fnoord »

51lver wrote: post #205
Fnoord wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

My point was that neither phenomenons are exactly new.

One-to-many relationships aren't innocent to begin with; they've always been under public scrutiny, a magnifying glass. Algorithms might make it easier to find what you seek (I can assure you they do not always as I've witnessed on Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Apple -- you name it).

Bubbles are also not new. If you were a Catholic in The Netherlands in 1950 or 1960 then you watched Catholic TV and listened to Catholic radio and went to a Catholic church on Sunday and listened to a Catholic preacher and a Catholic pope telling you what to think about atheism, abortion, HIV, anti-conception, marriage, homosexuality and what have you and you went to a Catholic dancing. You came home with a Catholic partner of the opposite sex. Oh and you went to a Catholic school. Protestants? They exist, somewhere, but not in your myopic world. [Full disclosure: I grew up as an atheist child of Protestant parents in a Catholic area.]

Its a matter of choosing your overlord(s)...

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

#264

Post by Nasrudith »

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…

Personally I think hate speech should be given a far more narrow and less catchy term to capture actual issues intimidation with ethnic substituted for relevant group or axis. The whole point of hate crime charges: it isn't to make the group sancrosanct but that it isn't just the crime of vandalism/murder but violence against the entire group akin to sundown towns lynching ethnic minorities. That suppression is dangerous to freedom and can be suppressed to its benefit akin to the paradox of tolerance.

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

#265

Post by Nasrudith »

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…

That is a strange definition of responsibility - the voters aren't responsible? They lack agency completely? The propagandists who would and have used other means like newspapers, radio broadcasts and even just whispered malicious rumors? They completely lack agency as well?

Tech is just the easy scapegoat for society.

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

#266

Post by Nasrudith »

Arubis wrote: post #179
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…

There was some truth to that assumption when the internet was more niche and the old ecosystems were in place - it required a certain degree of curiosity and willingness to learn and explore when there were established "reputable" ways.

Greater access does help /if they are willing to use it in self improving ways/ in the first place. If they just use it for tabloids and gossip it won't be a library to them but tabloids and gossip.

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

#267

Post by dwighttk »

pas wrote: post #253
dwighttk wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was reading something about Myanmar[1], but I got it conflated with another article I can't find talking about WhatsApp message forwarding.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

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

#268

Post by dwighttk »

mundo wrote: post #223
dwighttk wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Mastodon instances can get in on the banning.

I'm a lot more sanguine about communities muting someone because they don't like that person than about companies muting someone because it's profitable to do so. You can hypothesize a future in which Mastodon gets very popular, and in which a single for-profit node or a coordinated group of such nodes monopolize it and end up wielding censorship power similar to traditional centralized social media sites, but that's…

It's already happened https://mastodon.cloud/@wilw/100635779449174251

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

#269

Post by Chazprime »

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.

This here is a perfect example of a bad faith argument; asserting that your definition of hate speech is the only acceptable definition is disingenuous.

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

#270

Post by jachee »

orthecreedence wrote: post #258
jachee wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

Asking "who defines hate speech?" is a cop-out. No one ever asks "who defines privacy?" in discussions about that. Hate speech is just as obvious to anyone with a modicum of empathy.

It's plenty easy for people in general (except HN, where no one seems to have any notion of what that could possibly be without a grand arbiter to define it down to the spin of each quark) to recognize hate speech.

Platforms already have frameworks for dealing with bad actors. Hate speech is just like any other abuse of a platform, and should be treated as such.

In short, I have come to realize that I'm never going to convince this highly-privileged audience to genuinely care about actual marginalized people over some imagined, theoretical bogeyman. So this will be my last wasted effort on the subject, here.

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