Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 89 posts

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#31

Post by gscott »

mambodog wrote: post #19
cgb223 wrote: post #12

One of the things that bothers me about recent censorship on hate speech is how selective, and how inconsistently it's applied, if it is to be applied at all. My grandfather escaped the Soviet Union. Stalin's regime killed all of his siblings. All of them. But yet when I check YouTube, Twitter, and so on I see lots of videos professing communisms values. Hell I've seen a pro-communist march in a city I recently moved…

Hold on. I'm not a fan of Communism, but there's a pretty clear difference. The Soviet Union was a particular implementation of Communism which chose killing. Killing is not an inherent requirement to the ideology. Contemporary proponents of Communism or Socialism usually aren't claiming that the Soviet Union's implementation was good. In Neo-Nazism the ideology itself has the elimination of other races as its goal.…

Most communist countries kill those that disagree with them, for the common good they say. If you fully embrace communist values then you need to rid yourselves of those that don't agree otherwise you are not going to be able to create a perfect society.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#32

Post by cgb223 »

hegojuko wrote: post #23
ubernostrum wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several places in Europe have so far failed to empirically verify your hypothesis after passing laws to ban certain types of extremist (i.e., Nazi) speech and symbols.

Really because I see people in Britain, France, and Germany being arrested for anti Islamic sentiment expressed on social Media. It isn't just nazi speech that's criminalised, more and more speech is added to the list of what cannot be said. Soon it will be any speech critical of the government, aka living in a totalitarian regeim.

Wasn't there some guy in the U.K. Who was investigated by the police for tweeting something vaguely homophobic?

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#33

Post by thomas_howland »

I don't see this in terms of whether tech co's should "ban hate speech". I see it in terms of whether they should decide to turn themselves and their employees into political targets, especially in the context of escalating political violence and willingness by political actors to go after oppositional infrastructure (cf, hostility towards left wing journalists).

Con Ed doesn't have this problem and manages to make tons of money, despite providing power to I assume some number of literal nazis.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#34

Post by Clubber »

pdkl95 wrote: post #24
TheCowboy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is always going to be a challenge with managing the content of any platform. It's not easy to be a moderator of different views. Arguably, Nazism tends to ring more obvious to moderators. There is more than one form of communism that has been implemented, and it's likely these videos alll aren't professing a support of Stalin's bloody reign. Communism also (usually) lacks a racial/nationalist superiority compone…

> Arguably, Nazism tends to ring more obvious to moderators. Unfortunately, white nationalist (neo-nazi) groups learned a long time ago that PR matters. The average person starts to notice anything that actually looks similar to stereotypical Nazism. The Southern Strategy with Lee Atwater's use of dog whistle terms like "forced busing" and "state's rights" as indirect codes for racism demonstrated not only is public…

Here's the full interview that you are referring to with Lee Atwater. Since it's becoming referenced more and more, it really deserves a full listen. I believe it is mostly misinterpreted, and I was guilty of that myself.

https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-inf...

Atwater was referring to the GOP Southern Strategy and how it evolved from 1954 to 1968. He wasn't referring to his strategies during the Reagan election in 1980. I believe he's gotten a bad rap for that. He graduated college in 1973 after that period.

Atwater: But Reagan did not have to do a southern strategy for two reasons. Number one, race was not a dominant issue. And number two, the mainstream issues in this campaign had been, quote, southern issues since way back in the sixties. So Reagan goes out and campaigns on the issues of economics and of national defense. The whole campaign was devoid of any kind of racism, any kind of reference. And I'll tell you another thing you all need to think about, that even surprised me, is the lack of interest, really, the lack of knowledge right now in the South among white voters about the Voting Rights Act.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater

The South voted primary Democrat (southern democrat, there were northern democrats that were a different flavor) for 100 years, since 1860 because Lincoln was a Republican and Lincoln burned the South. I mean the South constantly voted majority Democrat up until about the civil rights era in the 1960s when they turned majority Republican. I'm sure you are aware, the South almost always votes majority Republican (in 2008 Obama won 3 southern states though). This shift was due to the Southern Strategy that Atwater was referring to, but did not implement himself. It's absolutely fascinating how much slavery and it's affects are part of this nation. I consider it our "original sin."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#35

Post by weberc2 »

idibidiart wrote: post #29
Iv wrote: post #9

I say yes. Because you probably disagree with what most people will call hate speech. Criticism of religion, criticism of some historical events, is considered by some as hate speech. Ex-muslims routinely complain that youtube censors their videos criticizing islam. Videos of brutality (that often contains legal proofs of crimes) are removed if they are used by some hate groups, even if the intent of the recorder was…

"Ex-Christians _routinely_ complain that youtube censors their videos criticizing Christianity." Has that not happened, too? Just reversing roles for the sake of argument. Curiously wondering...

I would be surprised. Christians don't enjoy the same social protections as Muslims (for better or worse) at least in the US.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#36

Post by weberc2 »

cgb223 wrote: post #12

One of the things that bothers me about recent censorship on hate speech is how selective, and how inconsistently it's applied, if it is to be applied at all. My grandfather escaped the Soviet Union. Stalin's regime killed all of his siblings. All of them. But yet when I check YouTube, Twitter, and so on I see lots of videos professing communisms values. Hell I've seen a pro-communist march in a city I recently moved…

One peculiar irony is that the American left is sort of going through their own red scare, wherein half of the US is paranoid that everyone around them is a Nazi.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#37

Post by thomas_howland »

rayiner wrote: post #13

Free speech is the wrong framework for thinking about this. Tech companies are not government actors, so this is not a free speech issue. The better way to think about it is to analogize to gun sales. Gun sellers are within their rights to refuse to sell guns to people with nazi affiliations, etc. But they wisely choose not to go down that road, because if they did (1) they’d be enlisted into screening all sorts of o…

This is very silly. FFLs are already prohibited from selling to abusive spouses (if there is any sort of domestic violence conviction or restraining order) and the mentally ill. They also reserve full rights to decline any sale, which they do regularly with people who seem unbalanced or give indication they're intending on misusing the weapon. Seriously, try to buy a rifle with a swastika sharpie'd on your forehead and see how many gun shops you get ejected from.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#38

Post by weberc2 »

mambodog wrote: post #19
cgb223 wrote: post #12

One of the things that bothers me about recent censorship on hate speech is how selective, and how inconsistently it's applied, if it is to be applied at all. My grandfather escaped the Soviet Union. Stalin's regime killed all of his siblings. All of them. But yet when I check YouTube, Twitter, and so on I see lots of videos professing communisms values. Hell I've seen a pro-communist march in a city I recently moved…

Hold on. I'm not a fan of Communism, but there's a pretty clear difference. The Soviet Union was a particular implementation of Communism which chose killing. Killing is not an inherent requirement to the ideology. Contemporary proponents of Communism or Socialism usually aren't claiming that the Soviet Union's implementation was good. In Neo-Nazism the ideology itself has the elimination of other races as its goal.…

Doesn't "kill the dissenters" seem to be the flavor of most communist countries? China, N Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, Romania, Vietnam, etc.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#39

Post by notzorbo3 »

gscott wrote: post #31
mambodog wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on. I'm not a fan of Communism, but there's a pretty clear difference. The Soviet Union was a particular implementation of Communism which chose killing. Killing is not an inherent requirement to the ideology. Contemporary proponents of Communism or Socialism usually aren't claiming that the Soviet Union's implementation was good. In Neo-Nazism the ideology itself has the elimination of other races as its goal.…

Most communist countries kill those that disagree with them, for the common good they say. If you fully embrace communist values then you need to rid yourselves of those that don't agree otherwise you are not going to be able to create a perfect society.

And in a society adopting capitalism the Bourgeoisie must violently suppress the proletariat otherwise you're not going to be able to create that perfect society.

Re: Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried

#40

Post by s_kilk »

weberc2 wrote: post #38
mambodog wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on. I'm not a fan of Communism, but there's a pretty clear difference. The Soviet Union was a particular implementation of Communism which chose killing. Killing is not an inherent requirement to the ideology. Contemporary proponents of Communism or Socialism usually aren't claiming that the Soviet Union's implementation was good. In Neo-Nazism the ideology itself has the elimination of other races as its goal.…

Doesn't "kill the dissenters" seem to be the flavor of most communist countries? China, N Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, Romania, Vietnam, etc.

Right, and capitalism is completely bloodless and clean /s
Post reply on HN