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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”

#81

Post by golemotron »

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…

> Making decisions about what content your audience sees is an act of publishing, even if it's executed via complex algorithm. The companies doing this need to accept their responsibility for what they decide to serve and promote.

Repealing Digital Safe Harbour would be a good first step. If you are responsible for what people see, you are responsible for the content.

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

#82

Post by mistermann »

snowwrestler wrote: post #65
tux1968 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Deplatforming is about deciding which ideas are granted resources (pushed above the cultural baseline), not who is punished for speaking (pushed below the cultural baseline). People without platforms are still free to speak. If dang banned me from HN I could still go stand on the corner and read my posts aloud and no one would arrest me. Free speech does not mean I'm entitled to someone else's platform.

> Free speech does not mean I'm entitled to someone else's platform.

You're thinking of the first amendment, there is a nuanced difference between that and the general principle of free speech.

I'll assume you happened to not be aware of this, but there are lots of people online who refuse to acknowledge that difference and continue to spout the "entitled to someone else's platform" persuasion meme, which is kind of what this whole discussion is about: power, or altering the course of future events. If one's ideas & principles are sound, disingenuously censoring opposing ideas shouldn't be necessary. I believe many pro-censorship people know this explicitly (but would never speak it out loud) and others "sense" it subconsciously.

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

#83

Post by neves »

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 was wrong.

We are entering a dystopian world where the profits of a handful of companies are more important than the rest of society.

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

#84

Post by wccrawford »

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…

>This is problematic in ways that used to be obvious to people in free societies, but for some reason seems lost now.

I don't think this is true. I think some people always got it, and some people still do. The difference is that the internet allows anyone to post their opinions, but it used to be a lot harder to reach other people.

We still have people that we hold up on pedestals for saying the right things, and the people that we remember from the past are the ones that said things that were incredibly right, or incredibly wrong. We don't remember what every common Joe used to say daily.

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

#85

Post by lsh123 »

I don’t understand why someone needs to censor anything in the first place. If a user finds posts of another user offensive, etc, then the first user can unsubscribe/unfollow/block/... the second user. If everyone thinks the same way then the offensive user will just speak with her/himself.

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

#86

Post by ceejayoz »

zaidf wrote: post #75
734786710934 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one is seriously asking Apple to police hate speech in iMessage or Facetime, for instance Many people are demanding that Facebook do exactly this.

It’s even worse: many people are demanding Facebook monitor Messenger chats for abuses in Mayanmar while at the same time not wanting Facebook to monitor Messenger chats. This is just a perfect example of constant catch-22s I see in people’s expectations of tech companies. You can’t expect Facebook to both not monitor chat messages AND prevent chat messages that do harm. You can have one or the other.

> You can’t expect Facebook to both not monitor chat messages AND prevent chat messages that do harm.

Not monitor, or not use for advertising targeting?

I'm fine with spam/malware/virus prevention in my Messenger or Gmail. I'm not enormously comfortable getting an ad for baby clothes after I send a private message to someone that I'm pregnant.

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

#87

Post by daenz »

jachee wrote: post #68
daenz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no "grey" area for hate. It's absolutely binary. If you hate something or someone, there's no half-way. Hate is the force behind the Holocaust, hate is the force behind the Iraq Wars. Hate has torn the Middle-east to shreds for millennia. Hate was the Khmer Rouge's genocide. Hate was Apartheid. Giving hate any leeway is to give it 100% of its power. It must MUST MUST be fought as an absolute.

>Giving hate any leeway is to give it 100% of its power. It must MUST MUST be fought as an absolute.

Apparently this means yelling at white people for your downvotes on the internet.

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

#88

Post by draw_down »

Right... unless the speech being silenced has to do with BDS, or pointing out various things about Israel. Then all of a sudden not moderating it would be "a dangerous path".

Look, I'm on board with the idea that speech shouldn't be policed in these ways, but I find it incredibly disingenuous how the matter is discussed lately. The US government as well as digital platforms have routinely curtailed, surveilled and (in the case of the government) outright punished certain forms of speech by people on the left, but now it's a problem because some people on the right got banned by Twitter and YouTube.

Given this, I find it very hard to take seriously the "free speech" stuff. Show me one person or group on the right who will go to bat for someone who got in trouble for supporting BDS, and then we can talk about free speech.

Until then, it's just a tactic, and quite frankly I respect the tactical savvy of people on the right pushing this issue. They at least understand how to fight for their side, which is more than I can say for Democrats and other left-leaning centrists. But that's all it is, a tactic. It isn't about freedom at all. If you're only concerned about people on your side, your concern is not freedom.

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

#89

Post by Tomte »

dx87 wrote: post #59
dmix wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I cannot speak for the whole of Europe, but the German model certainly isn't "civility over freedom", but practical concordance: you have several basic rights which unfortunately almost always collide in some form with each other, and you find a way to give maximum effect to all of them.

The difference between America and Germany — very broadly speaking — is that America goes for the local maximum (free speech trumps everything) and Germany goes for a global maximum.

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

#90

Post by snackbugs »

School-Cotton wrote: post #76
snackbugs wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're defining dehumanization biologically, when in usage the term is overloaded with another definition that refers to depriving others of dignity, individuality, and other positive human qualities. To say that another doesn't deserve to be recognized with those positive human qualities is at the root of saying that they don't deserve to exist.

If you're defining it like that then it's just as vague and subjective as "hate speech" is, so we haven't made any progress with this definition.

You're being confronted with a truth about the clear definition of hate speech, and you're resisting moving forward because you intuitively sense the contradiction that your own belief might pose to that. This is where you need to be brave and get past that.
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