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

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

#51

Post by School-Cotton » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

OmarIsmail wrote: post #37

School-Cotton wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"should kill people" = "those people aren't deserving to live" = 1) either all humans are not deserving to live or 2) those specific humans are not deserving to live = if 2) country X are being dehumanized. if 1) do you consider yourself a human? A) yes, then why haven't you killed yourself? Since you haven't you think you're more deserving of life relative to everyone else and therefore are dehumanizing everyone but…

> if 1) do you consider yourself a human? A) yes, then why haven't you killed yourself? Since you haven't you think you're more deserving of life relative to everyone else and therefore are dehumanizing everyone but yourself,

This is circular reasoning. If we've already established that I might not think all humans deserve to live, you can't claim that thinking I deserve to live means I think I'm more human than everyone else.

It's perfectly possible to think someone deserves to live less than I do while still thinking they're human.

Such tortured logic is hardly "direct line implicit", which is exactly why your definition doesn't work.

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

#52

Post by daenz » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

jachee wrote: post #35

daenz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So, I see I've angered the privileged, white, tech-bro, capitalists. What? Why are you saying white people specifically are downvoting your opinion? And aren't you manifesting hate towards a group of people with a physical characteristic?

I'm not hating, only observing. The only ones who see fault in protecting the marginalized are the privileged. The only ones who advocate the right for hate speech are those who are functionally immune to it. And the demographics of HN are young, single, white, males. It's the only explanation I can find for someone downvoting "Hate is an absolute."

There's another possibility that you're overlooking, and that is that your subjective view is far more polarized than the average persons view. The language you've used so far shows you are thinking about all of this in very absolutist terms. Most people recoil from absolutism.

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

#53

Post by School-Cotton » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

snackbugs wrote: post #43

School-Cotton wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but thinking you deserve to exist more than someone else has nothing to do with whether you think they're human.

My girlfriend's dog is very sweet and loyal. I think it deserves to exist more than a (human) child molester does. This doesn't mean I think dogs are human.

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

#54

Post by daenz » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

jachee wrote: post #35

daenz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So, I see I've angered the privileged, white, tech-bro, capitalists. What? Why are you saying white people specifically are downvoting your opinion? And aren't you manifesting hate towards a group of people with a physical characteristic?

I'm not hating, only observing. The only ones who see fault in protecting the marginalized are the privileged. The only ones who advocate the right for hate speech are those who are functionally immune to it. And the demographics of HN are young, single, white, males. It's the only explanation I can find for someone downvoting "Hate is an absolute."

Also, since when is using the demographic of a behavior a reason to blame all behavior on that demographic? If demographic X commits crime Y more than anyone else, and I see crime Y, isn't it bigoted to blindly say "it's those damn Xs again"? That's exactly what you're doing here.

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

#55

Post by snackbugs » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #38

jachee wrote: post #4

Hate is an absolute. If you're not against it, you're supporting it. EDIT: So, I see I've angered the privileged, white, tech-bro, capitalists. Downvote away. Don't dare speak up about how hate is bad here. Got it.

What is "hate speech" changes both over time and with who identifies it; even if everyone is against it, they won't all agree on what specifically is included in the definition.

People keep saying that hate speech isn't defined clearly. It is, but these people have just never had to interface with it and have never cared to learn the boundaries.

Why haven't they had to interface with it? Because they have privileged positions in society, so hate speech has never been directed at them. Their lives have never been made harder to live by someone else in an influential position saying they don't deserve to exist.

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

#56

Post by xtreme » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

OmarIsmail wrote: post #37

School-Cotton wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"should kill people" = "those people aren't deserving to live" = 1) either all humans are not deserving to live or 2) those specific humans are not deserving to live = if 2) country X are being dehumanized. if 1) do you consider yourself a human? A) yes, then why haven't you killed yourself? Since you haven't you think you're more deserving of life relative to everyone else and therefore are dehumanizing everyone but…

According to this interpretation, arguments supporting capital punishment is hate speech and should be banned.

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

#57

Post by macspoofing » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

snackbugs wrote: post #19

onewhonknocks wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are those the only two options available?

Hate speech is made in full faith by a group that has dominance and power to influence others to harm groups who live under that dominance and power. How many gradations do you think there are between the two?

I don't agree with that definition at all. It is an atrocious and immoral definition of 'hate speech' (and dare I say probably racist in practice).

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

#58

Post by gbear605 » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

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…

I’m not entirely up to date, but I believe there are calls for regulating WhatsApp communications

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

#59

Post by dx87 » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #8

macspoofing wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Also who defines what 'hate speech' is and isn't?

If recent history is any example it's an ever expanding and often arbitrary list depending on an individuals sensitivity level (particularly when it comes down to the individual level like mod's on subreddits or employees at Twitter). It seems many very vocal people on the internet are essentially pushing an idea that the most sensitive people should be defining what those boundaries are for everyone and the list of…

A Google presentation titled "The Good Censor" was recently leaked where they talk about how themselves, Twitter, and Facebook, should censor free speach. They say that they want to move to a "European model" where civility is valued over freedom.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/10/17961806/google-leaked-r...

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

#60

Post by archerface » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

jachee wrote: post #12

macspoofing wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you're not against it, you're supporting it. I can be 'against' hate speech, but still support someone's right to utter it. Also, whose definition of 'hate speech' are we using?

If you're supporting an attacker's right to denigrate, abuse, or harass other people, you're supporting violating the victim's rights. One of these has a real social cost, and the other is just literal lip-service.

> 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 a person can and cannot say (a world I want nothing to do with).

Back to the previous point, I support someone's right to say something, not what they say. I think white supremacists are morons who sadly misunderstand there position in the world. I support their right to SAY what they want, but I don't support the contents of their speech.

The discussion around free speech requires nuance; none of it is even remotely close to as black and white as you paint it.