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

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

technologyreview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 276 posts

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

#41

Post by kazinator »

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…

Chats and phone calls aren't neutral in the same way as the content of a newsfeed or timeline. Who calls you or texts you is hardly a random population sample.

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

#42

Post by thetrumanshow »

OmarIsmail wrote: post #33
ryanmonroe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that this comment dehumanized me. Therefore, you must remove it. See the issue?

How do you feel dehumanized? Let's have that discussion. (see the answer?)

With the appropriately-tuned hate-filter you wouldn't get to defend your idea and have a discussion, you would just be de-platformed.

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

#43

Post by snackbugs »

School-Cotton wrote: post #23
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.

Your definition makes no sense. "We should kill people from country X" isn't hate speech by your definition - it doesn't imply anyone is any less human than anyone else.

It does indeed imply just that. You're abstracting the impulse to eliminate other groups away from that fact that it comes from a perspective of supremacy: the idea that your type of human is more deserving of existing than a foreign human.

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

#44

Post by snowwrestler »

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.

Ideas aren't cockroaches, they're plants. And sunlight helps poison ivy grow just as much as it helps tomatoes and flowers.

There's no plausible mechanism by which talking about an idea more and more, makes it disappear. That's all an idea is: something to talk about.

Now, if you want to argue that no ideas should ever disappear, go ahead, but don't cloak it in "antiseptic" language. Antiseptic kills things. If you're talking about antiseptic for ideas, you're talking about killing ideas.

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

#45

Post by olivermarks »

Essence of article IMO "If democratic countries make tech firms impose limits on free speech, so will autocratic ones"

Free speech is what defines a democratic country.

Terms like 'Hate Speech', 'Fake News' are buzz phrase distractions that get in the way of the core of this reality. We already have a legal system in place that defines libel, threats etc. We don't need a new layer of corporate jurisdiction over our ability to speak online or monitoring what we can or can't say

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

#46

Post by criddell »

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.

> Ideas are the only counter to other ideas and how we communicate those idea is via speech.

A lot of holders of bad ideas have no interest in rational debate. For those people, sunlight is an energy source, not an antiseptic.

When ISIS posts a video of a beheading, there isn't a lot of reasonable discussion going on in the comment section.

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

#47

Post by macspoofing »

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.

Yes. It's very easy to create a personal definition of what's offensive. If you were the King of the world, I'm sure it would be very easy for you to tell everyone what is and isn't good.

>Speech that explicitly or direct line implicitly dehumanizes anyone.

Except, you've gone nowhere. You've substituted the intrinsic ambiguity and subjectivity inherent in 'hate speech' with the same intrinsic ambiguity and subjectivity inherent in 'dehumanization' .. in fact, I have a better idea of what 'hate speech' is than what 'dehumanization' actually entails. I've seen people argue that a model in a bikini is dehumanizing.

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

#48

Post by tux1968 »

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-... )

For some definition of "works" since the analysis doesn't consider unintended effects or potential adverse long-term consequences. This all seems joyful while the technique is being applied to those with whom we disagree, less so once the technique has been turned on you yourself.

Defending free speech means defending those we disagree with, and maybe even hate.

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

#49

Post by dgellow »

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.

I really don’t think so. You just replaced hate speech by dehumanizing speech but have the exact same situation. Same question then, what is dehumanizing speech, who defines it? The definition that you offer doesn’t seem too different to me than saying hate speech is content that you find hateful.
Post reply on HN