Live data from Hacker News

Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

nytimes.com

51–60 of 207 posts

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#51

>They consist of dozens of unorganized PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets with bureaucratic titles like “Western Balkans Hate Orgs and Figures” and “Credible Violence: Implementation standards.” >In Pakistan, moderators were told to watch some parties and their supporters for prohibited speech. >In another email, moderators were told to hunt down and remove rumors wrongly accusing an Israeli soldier of k…

Hah, I googled those titles just an hour ago, and there were few random pdfs, and powerpoints.

Now, not a single one.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#52
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were completely full of willing listeners for hate speech, then that might be applicable. Hate groups aren't sending private forum messages to each other, they're broadcasting Even John Stuart Mill, a founding philosopher of free speech, postulated that speech needs to be curtailed when the expression harms others.

Words can not be violent. If you think one person being offended means speakers must be silenced, then you're on a dangerous pathway to fascism.

It is very important to protect the right to free speech and expression. It is equally important that we don't downplay the potency of communication and the singularly powerful role that it plays in the behaviors of humans.

The word is powerful; invoking mental constructs and emotions. Indeed everything ever created or destroyed by a human began as a mental construct and/or emotion. Therefore words themselves are critical to destruction or creation and can be so much more than just violent--they will make or break the entire human species.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#53
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were completely full of willing listeners for hate speech, then that might be applicable. Hate groups aren't sending private forum messages to each other, they're broadcasting Even John Stuart Mill, a founding philosopher of free speech, postulated that speech needs to be curtailed when the expression harms others.

Words can not be violent. If you think one person being offended means speakers must be silenced, then you're on a dangerous pathway to fascism.

So do you believe every institution that enforces community standards — whether it be HN or other forum — is basically headed toward fascism?

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#54
post #5

Having a bunch of likely millenial aged individuals with limited life experience based in Menlo Park to have a say in discourse that crosses so many boundaries? What could possibly go wrong?

This is exactly why Silicon Valley engineers, and engineers generally, need to stop being so dismissive of people with "useless" liberal arts educations, and instead bring in sociologists and anthropologists to think through these processes in a comprehensive way. I'm being downvoted into oblivion elsewhere on this site for suggesting this, but I feel like it's a very obvious move for tech companies that have this pr…

I have no problem with anthropologists and those in the liberal arts employed when there are skills they have that help a company. Bubble-1, many humanities students were hired around working with content. That wasn't a bad thing.

As I said in another post, companies also actually used to hire people outside the tech bubble to deal with things like categorization of websites, etc. That went away once they could achieve a certain percentage with cheap labor.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#55
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were completely full of willing listeners for hate speech, then that might be applicable. Hate groups aren't sending private forum messages to each other, they're broadcasting Even John Stuart Mill, a founding philosopher of free speech, postulated that speech needs to be curtailed when the expression harms others.

Words can not be violent. If you think one person being offended means speakers must be silenced, then you're on a dangerous pathway to fascism.

The pen is mightier than the sword!

FB is not taking down web sites - they are managing public discourse on their own channels. Constitutional freedoms don't quite apply here.

When the Feds take down web sites, I think a much higher standard needs to apply.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#56
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re talking about hate speech as if it were a universally agreed upon concept. Hate speech is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Any speech I consider to be hateful is hate speech, any speech you consider to be hateful is hate speech, and there are 7.5 billion other unique sets of criteria out there for defining hate speech that are no more or no less valid.

If you want to get into a semantics argument on the definition of hate speech , then here's Wikipedia's definition: >Hate speech is speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Wikipedia’s definition is no better. Even if you accept this definition, now you’re faced with the impossible task of defining what constitutes an attack on those grounds. The issue of defining hate speech is at the core of the free speech concerns, because what constitutes hate speech, by necessity, comes down entirely to the whims and personal opinions of whoever is enforcing the censorship.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#57
post #24
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't believe in censoring communications between a willing-speaker & willing-listener, anything they do has a 100% false-positive rate.

If only Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were completely full of willing listeners for hate speech, then that might be applicable. Hate groups aren't sending private forum messages to each other, they're broadcasting Even John Stuart Mill, a founding philosopher of free speech, postulated that speech needs to be curtailed when the expression harms others.

These platforms also censor private person-to-person messaging, between people who don't complain about the content. That's willing-speaker-to-willing-listener, and being censored.

And, rather than trying to square-the-circle of global speech standards enforced by crude algorithms and rushed, underinformed low-wage moderators, they could make the remedy for unwanted speech simply unsubscribing/unfriending the source. And, for users who feel disturbed by broadcasts, FB could offer opt-in moderation circles – leaving all willing-listeners, with no grievances, unmolested by 3rd-party censorship.

Then, willing-speakers sending legal speech to willing-listeners wouldn't be collateral damage of their clumsy improvised censorship regimes.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#58
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were completely full of willing listeners for hate speech, then that might be applicable. Hate groups aren't sending private forum messages to each other, they're broadcasting Even John Stuart Mill, a founding philosopher of free speech, postulated that speech needs to be curtailed when the expression harms others.

So-called hate speech doesn’t cause harm other than to feelings. It’s constitutionally protected in the US, and Facebook is going down the wrong path trying to eliminate it.

Yes. Here, Facebook is making a good-faith effort to censor, we can see how difficult a time they are having writing rules for it, and Facebook is being criticized for it. There is no good way to do prior restraint.

Read Justice Brandeis' concurring decision in Whitney vs. California.[1] He wrote the classic decision on this subject, and I can't improve on that.

"Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that, in its government, the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end, and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness, and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that, without free speech and assembly, discussion would be futile; that, with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies, and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones. Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law -- the argument of force in its worst form. Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed."

"Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. To justify suppression of free speech, there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the danger apprehended is imminent. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the evil to be prevented is a serious one. Every denunciation of existing law tends in some measure to increase the probability that there will be violation of it. Condonation of a breach enhances the probability. Expressions of approval add to the probability. Propagation of the criminal state of mind by teaching syndicalism increases it. Advocacy of law-breaking heightens it still further. But even advocacy of violation, however reprehensible morally, is not a justification for denying free speech where the advocacy falls short of incitement and there is nothing to indicate that the advocacy would be immediately acted on. The wide difference between advocacy and incitement, between preparation and attempt, between assembling and conspiracy, must be borne in mind. In order to support a finding of clear and present danger, it must be shown either that immediate serious violence was to be expected or was advocated, or that the past conduct furnished reason to believe that such advocacy was then contemplated."

"Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression. Such must be the rule if authority is to be reconciled with freedom. [n4] Such, in my opinion, is the command of the Constitution. It is therefore always open to Americans to challenge a law abridging free speech and assembly by showing that there was no emergency justifying it."

"Moreover, even imminent danger cannot justify resort to prohibition of these functions essential to effective democracy unless the evil apprehended is relatively serious. Prohibition of free speech and assembly is a measure so stringent that it would be inappropriate as the means for averting a relatively trivial harm to society. A police measure may be unconstitutional merely because the remedy, although effective as means of protection, is unduly harsh or oppressive. Thus, a State might, in the exercise of its police power, make any trespass upon the land of another a crime, regardless of the results or of the intent or purpose of the trespasser. It might, also, punish an attempt, a conspiracy, or an incitement to commit the trespass. But it is hardly conceivable that this Court would hold constitutional a statute which punished as a felony the mere voluntary assembly with a society formed to teach that pedestrians had the moral right to cross unenclosed, unposted, wastelands and to advocate their doing so, even if there was imminent danger that advocacy would lead to a trespass. The fact that speech is likely to result in some violence or in destruction of property is not enough to justify its suppression. There must be the probability of serious injury to the State. Among free men, the deterrents ordinarily to be applied to prevent crime are education and punishment for violations of the law, not abridgment of the rights of free speech and assembly."

Note the standard Brandeis laid down:

"In order to support a finding of clear and present danger, it must be shown either that immediate serious violence was to be expected or was advocated, or that the past conduct furnished reason to believe that such advocacy was then contemplated." "Immediate serious violence". That's the US standard for prior restraint. That's what Facebook, as a US company, should be using.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/274/357#writin...

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words can not be violent. If you think one person being offended means speakers must be silenced, then you're on a dangerous pathway to fascism.

> Words can not be violent. sure, sure. please explain how Facebook did not contribute to the Rohingya "situation" in [Myanmar]. please document how violence-inciting speech never helps spark actual violence (xenophobic violence everywhere since the dawn of speech). i know, i know... guns don't kill people, people kill people. the issue is: we're all latent murderers. civilization is a very thin veneer. if we were al…

The real support for violence is not hidden in the Facebook walls of morons, it's on broadcast news. Virtually every news channel came out against Trump ending our war in Syria. By comparison, I couldn't care less what some dumb racists say on Facebook.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#60
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that nothing that Facebook does will actually solve the problem. The solution that will actually solve the problem, having different social networks, with different community standards for each, is antithetical to Facebook's existence. Facebook will continue to make more PowerPoint presentations and hire more outsourced content moderators in a desperate attempt to make the unworkable work... or at leas…

Reddit may be coming to it's golden age.

Nope... for this reason

"I hate group X, I create an account and become part of X. I attack group Y until group X gets banned."

Post reply on HN