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Facebook and Twitter pledge to remove hate speech within 24 hours
- gadders 10y agoI'm sure Facebook will use the same even-handed approach to this that they used on the curation of their trending news topics.
- hmm0a7fa8b60683 10y agoI wonder what is hate speech. Is HBD hate speech? Is crime statistics hate speech?
- CM30 10y agoYeah, I don't think this will work out well. Twitter removes a lot more negative posts from those on the right side of the political spectrum than the left, and seems genuinely biased to treating bad behaviour from the former as somehow worse than the latter on ideological grounds. And with stuff like the trust and safety council on Twitter and the news topic biases on Facebook (as well as documented examples where they worked with governments to remove speech the government didn't like, such as that about immigration in Germany), I suspect it'll just cause yet more political divisions and drama on these sites.
- axelfreeman 10y agoIt's not about left or right removal quantity. It's about hate. And there are a lot of easy cases on social media. I don't know what the do with not so easy cases. Maybe the same as before.
- ythl 10y agoWhat if a black person says "To all my n*ggers out there, x,y,z" on twitter, vs. a white person saying the same thing. Will the white person's tweet be removed, or both?
- theseatoms 10y agoAnd how would Twitter know which race the tweeter identifies as?
- ams6110 10y agoInteresting point. How can anybody know? If I have a penis, under today's standards I can claim to be female. If I have caucasian ancestry, can I claim to be black? Why not?
- striking 10y agoThere are people who claim to be "politically black", for whatever reason. https://heatst.com/uk/nus-at-war-over-politically-black-antisemitic-president-a-rachel-dolezal/ https://heatst.com/uk/nus-at-war-over-politically-black-anti... More substantive comment: why do we care about a person's race or gender when they use particular words?
- Karunamon 10y ago"We", meaning the readership of this site probably doesn't (I hope?), but it is a common trope that what you are allowed to say (meaning: be accepted without immediate backlash) is based entirely on your identity. I'll not go into that concept further for fear of igniting another tired flame war.
- hackuser 10y ago> Twitter removes a lot more negative posts from those on the right side of the political spectrum than the left Do you have data showing this? The last thing this debate needs is rumor and speculation.
- Karunamon 10y agoThat's a standard of proof that's impossible to meet. Consider: - Twitter is structured in such a way that direct censorship can't be differentiated between somebody's finger on a button and technical difficulties. (Did this hashtag disappear from autocomplete because someone removed it, or because the backend index is messed up?) - Differentiating between "left" and "right" political posts is not possible from an objective, programmatic standpoint. Political identity doesn't work either. Someone who's an unabashed Republican tweeting about, say, abortion, there's a very high likelihood that whatever they say about it is negative regardless of the content of the message, but how do you get a computer to understand that without a lot of false positives? - Nobody from the companies is ever going to admit to hiding/removing content for political reasons. (Barring whistleblowers of questionable veracity, c.f. Facebook) That only leaves generalities and user reports to work from, which have their own reliability problems. We're talking sociology/political science at the end of the day, and it's opinions all the way down, with very little hard data.
- hackuser 10y agoI'm not sure you're correct: > Twitter is structured in such a way that direct censorship can't be differentiated between Twitter provides data to researchers, at least in some situations, and may provide data about these events. > Differentiating between "left" and "right" political posts is not possible from an objective, programmatic standpoint. AFAIK, there are well-known methods in political science for defining left and right.
- kazinator 10y ago> > Differentiating between "left" and "right" political posts is not possible from an objective, programmatic standpoint. > AFAIK, there are well-known methods in political science for defining left and right. Small problem: political science isn't computer science.
- alva 10y agoHopefully more people will discover and patron anonymous messageboards that don't adhere to these ridiculous new directives.
- hackuser 10y agoBut few people want to participate in message boards filled with hate speech. Any public forum needs rules of decorum, just like any public or social setting in real life - few would want to participate in forums where others behaved like 4chan message board posters.
- alva 10y ago>But few people want to participate in message boards filled with hate speech. I predict that more people will want to visit if they see it as the only outlet where they can freely express their opinions on a topic. The vast majority of people don't seem to be able to sustain silence when they have a differing opinion, they need an outlet. If they cannot express that on Twitter/FB, they Will find another way. Funnily enough this will have a much larger negative effect on the "hate speech" movements goals than the existing presence of so called "hate speech".
- CM30 10y agoPlenty of people belong to forums and social networks with reasonable rules though. Which say, remove actual personal attacks but use common sense in regards to what should be removed rather than promising to 'remove hate speech in 24 hours' under some general 'framework'.
- hackuser 10y agoI'm not sure these rules won't be widely seen as reasonable. The forum we are participating in, Hacker News, removes hate speech much more quickly than that, though it doesn't provide an SLA with a response time.
- yardie 10y agoTwitter removes a lot more negative posts from those on the right side of the political spectrum than the left I've yet to meet the democratic nominee who refers to an entire ethnic group as "rapists and murderers". Maybe twitter removes a lot more posts from the right because those posts are actually racist.
- PKop 10y agoHe didn't refer to an entire ethnic group as "rapists and murderers". He was speciffically refering to... the ones who were rapists and murderers. (Drug cartels, cayotes, and other criminials). He was claiming the Mexican government was purposefully or tacitly sending their problems across the border. You can disagree with this claim, but don't misconstrue what his message was. He's also cited this article[0] in reference to the point he's trying to make. http://fusion.net/story/17321/is-rape-the-price-to-pay-for-migrant-women-chasing-the-american-dream/ http://fusion.net/story/17321/is-rape-the-price-to-pay-for-m...
- wfo 10y agoRight, you can make excuses and quibble and apologize for his hateful demagoguery as much as you like (his quote of course as we all remember suggests most immigrants are rapists and murderers and criminals, but concedes that it's possible some might be decent), but the point here is that there's a pretty significant difference that you'd have to be willfully blind to not recognize. One side of the spectrum goes out of their way to spew hate and abuse and incite violence. The other preaches tolerance and respect. You can't really play the "there are two sides therefore the two sides are equivalent just opposed" game here, I think even if you still could manage to do it pre-Trump, Trump killed it by choosing to be objectively worse by all measurements and accounts.
- qu4z-2 10y ago> The other preaches tolerance and respect. Wait, the Catholic Church is a political party now?
- Meekro 10y ago
- coldcode 10y agoDefining hate speech is a fuzzy problem. Are we talking about a union of definitions from everyone, or an intersection, or is the answer the ubiquitous "it depends"?
- awinter-py 10y agohate speech = political speech = speech Said another way -- when a community needs to have an immune system to produce the result it wants, the community has already failed.
- Karunamon 10y agoThe only possible way this scales is if they run on a report-based system. Result: A group of mildly-dedicated trolls can pull anything they want from Facebook and Twitter by bombing them with flags. These events are miniscule in the grand scheme of millions of posts per day the sites get, so nothing will ever be done about the abuse, leaving those that complain to look like a loud, perpetually-dissatisifed minority. Hate Speech is now the Worst Thing Ever® on the internet, so Facebook and Twitter now get to claim "Look! We did something! Witness us!"
- nmbr213 10y agoOrwell rolls in his grave
- jbob2000 10y agoActually, it would be Huxley rolling in his grave. Orwell was about government/"the system" oppression. Since these are private citizens/companies doing this, it's more inline with Brave New World.
- zer00eyz 10y agoHuxley/BNW "But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
- nmbr213 10y agoWell, kind of. In BNW population too was controlled by government, but not through means of warmongering, fear and hate, but through pleasure inducing drug that made people numb to anything happening outside of their daily routine (and eugenics, mostly). So I think banning is more Orwellian. But sure there are a lot of people who wouldn't care about censorship on the internet, even if it would affect them too.
- naringas 10y agojust an excuse for censorship
- VeejayRampay 10y agoRemoving hate speech means you have to define it in the first place. As soon as that line is drawn in the sand, it gains the ability to move. When it moves, it means anyone can eventually gain the power to move it. When that happens, it means that good and bad people can move it. When bad people eventually move it, you're in a pinch. That's why you don't draw in the sand.
- rck404 10y agoWhat that means you need to define good and bad people in the first place. On a serious note I completely agree with you as right now hate speech is about race, gender & body shaming which is the current line in sand. Soon nationality, sub-races, religion, region & sub-regions, individuals, comic characters and pretty soon actual corporations will be add to the things you can't hate on.
- talmand 10y agoSorry to be the one to point this out, but we're already there.
- Barrin92 10y agosorry, every statute is a matter of consensus and moves around quite a lot, especially over the course of history. This is how every legal system operates, this isn't a serious argument against anything
- StanislavPetrov 10y agoOf course it is, that's the whole point. Its why the 1st Amendment guarantees all speech (despite the Unconstitutional restrictions imposed over the years by our broken legal system). You either have free speech or you don't - there is no middle ground.
- ythl 10y agoYou reap what you sow: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/ "Twitter and Facebook aren't violating your free speech rights. They just think you are an ahole and are showing you the door."
- mooseburger 10y agoNo-platforming is an excellent way to produce an echo chamber though. Is that what we want our online spaces to be?
- st3v3r 10y agoConsidering most of this is talking about rape/death threats, I don't think we'll have a problem with echo chambers quite yet.
- alva 10y agoExcept that isn't the case here. The EU has declared, arbitrarily defined "hate speech" illegal. This isn't just the big name volunteering their services.
- striking 10y agoI see your image macro and raise you another. http://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-speech/ http://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-speech/ "With the right of free speech comes the responsibility to extend that right to others. Because if we leave who is heard to simply 'who can speak the loudest'... we won't find out when we're wrong."
- zxcvvcxz 10y agoDo these count as American companies? If so, is there not some violation of the First Amendment? > The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble, or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.
- mikecb 10y agoShort answer: no. The phrase in italics is bounded by the phrase "making of any law". The bill of rights operates only against the Federal government, except those rights incorporated against the States by the 14th amendment, and things which were applied to private action by the 13th amendment.
- k-mcgrady 10y agoNot American but I'm pretty sure the 1st amendment doesn't apply to private companies. You can go out in the street and yell hate speech if you want, you don't have a right to force them to allow it on their platform.
- markbao 10y agoIn broad strokes, no – the First Amendment only prohibits the government from abridging speech. Companies have no obligation to protect your speech, but many act with the spirit of free speech. Brief overview: http://lifehacker.com/5953755/what-exactly-is-freedom-of-speech-and-how-does-it-apply-to-the-internet http://lifehacker.com/5953755/what-exactly-is-freedom-of-spe...
- jbob2000 10y ago...prohibits the making of any law... Facebook and Twitter have no ability to make laws.
- sverige 10y agoThey don't, but they hire people who do. Otherwise why do they (and Google and Microsoft) spend so much time and money in D.C.?
- seany 10y agoWho gets to define what hate speech is?
- jobigoud 10y agoThe website where the speech is published to. They don't try to define hate speech in absolute, just define what they don't want to be associated with. Yes it's a slippery slope, but it's just this website opinion.
- sametmax 10y agoAs much as it's annoying, people tend to forget those websites are private companies, not charity or gov entities. They can do whatever they want as long it's legal. They don't have in any way humanity interests in mind, it's silly to expect them to take a stand on any other directions than the one benifiting them.
- alva 10y agoThe EU is defining "hate speech" as illegal. This isn't an initiative led by the companies.
- tpm 10y agoHate speech is already illegal in most of EU (you can go to jail for it). Trouble is, this was not enforced properly on social networks, they went "we don't care" and law enforcement didn't know what to do. This became a big problem during the refugee crisis, and several extreme far-right parties across Europe started using social media as their preferred medium (and the Russian propaganda machine is using it too). And they won big in several elections. So first Germany made a deal with Facebook and now the EU did it for all EU countries. I really do hope this will work to stop the propagation of hate speech at least a bit, otherwise several countries will be governed by neonazis in a few years, and even the EU itself might break. This is serious.
- 10y ago
- garandloch 10y agoThis is how it should be. Profiting from placing advertisements next to hate speech is pretty ethically dubious.
- pluckytree 10y agoThen, a few years down the road, it’ll have slid down the slippery slope to include anything that could hurt someone’s feelings. This has been what’s happened to all of society over the past few decades and Facebook and Twitter will be no different.
- dimino 10y agoEach decision being made will be evaluated for its merits. "It's only a small change" doesn't actually work as rationale with this many people watching. There is no slippery slope, it's a... grippy slope, because of all the... eyeballs.
- JacobJans 10y agoI used to agree with your basic sentiment. I'm still a strong believer in free speech, including speech that causes discomfort to those who hear it. However, we live in a world that focuses violence on specific individuals, depending on their race, class, gender, religion, and a number of other factors. Our everyday actions are part of that system. Sometimes we help focus that violence, usually without realizing it. This is true of victims of violence as well as those who are not targeted. What is our responsibility? Ignore the situation? I'll tell you this: Feelings do get hurt, but the problem is not hurt feelings. The problem is the poverty & oppression baked into our system. A system that supports some people (definitely me) while making life incredibly hard for others. Is removing hate speech going to stop these problems? Absolutely not. Would I have any problem removing hate speech from the discussion community I run? Absolutely not. Would the good people at Ycombinator have any issue removing hate speech from Hacker News? Absolutely not. Does that hurt your feelings?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- partiallypro 10y agoPeople on Twitter and Facebook have already had temp bans for supporting Trump. That's no defense of Trump, but the minor things I've seen them being labeled as against Twitter/Facebook policy have been very minor. It's worrying to me as a free speech absolutist.
- kdamken 10y agoThis is a dangerous path to go down. Much better to allow anyone to post anything they like that's not illegal. If you don't like it, unfriend/unfollow/block them. Why is this bad? Because hate speech is not clearly defined. What may be fine today may qualify as hate speech tomorrow. Eventually posting anything not super positive or encouraging could be considered "hateful" or "triggering" and get you in trouble. One of my favorite quotes on people being mean on the internet, courtesy of Tyler the Creator: https://twitter.com/fucktyler/status/285670822264307712?lang=en https://twitter.com/fucktyler/status/285670822264307712?lang...
- gadders 10y agoI agree. "I hate you, you stupid [insert bad word]" whilst wrong, should be permitted. "I hate you, you stupid [insert bad word] and I am going to come to your house and attack/kill/rape you" - get out the ban hammer.
- sametmax 10y agoBut again, who draw the line ? I don't feel threaten by somebody saying that to me on the net. I don't censor it even on my comments. Maybe somebody will feel threaten by something about going to "see what've done with your shitty new restaurant". Are you going to remove that too ? And are you really sure the sure the line will not be moved after ? Because this is such an opportunity for politics. But also just for any entities with a moral or economic agenda. And will the censorship be done by humans ? Or will machine will stop a quotation from a book or a movie containing it ?
- wahsd 10y agoConsidering that the definition of "hate speech" has already morphed into anyone addressing race, sex, gender, national origin, religion, etc. it seems we have already arrived at such a vile place you described. It absolutely boggles the mind to realize that we are living in a world that is imploding on itself through self-immolation and self-doubt and self-destruction. I guess the cry-bully crowd will be happy once the west and the civilization and peace and prosperity it has brought to the world and provided them is left in a crumpled heap an we are all so fortunate as the rest of the noble savage world that does not indulge in the "privilege" of freedom, liberties, free speech, individual rights, self-determination, competition, etc. The blessings of socialist nirvana will soon be upon us and we will all be equally destitute once everything has been torn down in an infantile fits of social rage and tantrum akin to what led up to the dark ages.
- garandloch 10y ago>...in an infantile fits of social rage and tantrum... And yet you've given us quite the example already!
- wahsd 10y agoDo you feel better after trying to be passive aggressively insulting? Let me guess, you have no comprehension for the fact that your comment is precisely the kind of infantile tantrum I was referring to; in the absence of argument or fact, you resort to flaccid attempts at insult to make yourself feel better in an attempt at abating the discomfort that comes from the cognitive dissonance of reality penetrating the artificial boundaries of your self-delusion. Don't worry, I don't expect you to understand that and very much expect the same kind of defensive reaction you just exhibited. Don't worry, you can continue fooling yourself into believing you are correct.
- garandloch 10y agoI'm just making an observation -- that's all. Looks like I hit it right on the mark.
- a_small_island 10y agoAutoplay video on CNN, I hate the internet.
- Nickersf 10y agoThis call for action seems rather unorganized and vague. What does this even mean: "The companies also agreed to promote "independent counter-narratives" to fight hate speech, including content promoting non-discrimination, tolerance and respect." Are they trying to stop ISIS or please offended snowflakes? Doing both is a heroic task which will leave millions disenfranchised. Will this open the market for new social media platforms?
- soundwave106 10y agoIt's probably best to go to the EU press release: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1937_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1937_en.htm It's still a bit vague, but it will give you a better idea. I think the focus is terrorism and outright racism more than offended snowflakes. From the release: "The European Court of Human Rights set out the important distinction between content that 'offends, shocks or disturbs the State or any sector of the population' and content that contains genuine and serious incitement to violence and hatred. The Court has made clear that States may sanction or prevent the latter."
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hirsin 10y ago> Will this open the market for new social media platforms? My gut reaction to this was "Can't be a bad thing, let all of the hatred currently vented on Twitter and let it go somewhere else". But this is how Stormfront essentially works, and it's a bad thing - an echo chamber of "kill all the [insert group]" leads to thinking that's acceptable, or even a good idea. It's why mass shooters are announcing their plans on 4chan. People need to be told that their ideas are wrong, not given a new playground where everyone agrees with them. Kudos to Twitter for saying death threats and jihadism are wrong and not supported on their platform.
- burfog 10y agoSo, removing hateful comments about... southerners? people who "cling to god and guns"? Americans? Fundamentalists? Catholics? Mormons? the NSA? Trump? Brussels sprouts? ISIS? NAMBLA? Adolf Hitler?
- rck404 10y agoenum HATESPEECH_FACTORS { Race, Religion, Nationality, Feminism, Obesity }
- unlinker 10y agoSad but true. "Removing hate speech" is a codeword for "removing right wing ideas".
- powertower 10y agoYou can have any opinion you want as long as it agrees with our's. Everything else is hate speech.
- mschuster91 10y agoGoooood luck. I have reported so much neo-Nazi scum posts, people and groups, and guess what? Not a single one got blocked, despite Hakenkreuzes, refugee hating and other stuff that's outright illegal in Germany. It took over two years to block "Anonymous.Kollektiv", a fake "anonymous" site spreading extreme right-wing hate - and it isn't even certain that Facebook blocked them; many people suspect Mario Roensch to have shut it down voluntarily after he failed at opsec and subsequently got outed on mass media; now he's on the run with multiple warrants. Meanwhile, Facebook threatened to block "Kein Mensch ist illegal", a 122k-liked pro-refugee page, and its administrator got suspended for 30 days for posting a sourced, valid image (http://kein-mensch-ist-illegal.org/fb.jpg http://kein-mensch-ist-illegal.org/fb.jpg) which shows that 90% of religious muslims like democracy and 28% of right-wing AfD allied people hate democracy with further 61% being frustrated with democracy. All in all, nothing that violates any FB rule. It took mass-media outrage for FB to rescind the block. As long as FB repeatedly and openly rather allies with neo-Nazi illegal crap and instead bans admins and pro-refugee pages (because Nazis regularly organize "flagging" contests), I won't trust them.
- ivanhoe 10y agoThere is a name for this, it's a censorship. And in long terms it just doesn't work. Look at EU, almost all countries there have very restrictive laws against the hate speech and spreading of the racial/religious hatred, and yet far-right political options are winning all over Europe... by banning people and ideas from mainstream soc. networks they'll just push them into underground, which will make them even more appealing to young... being banned on FB will be a way to show that you are cool...
- pnathan 10y agoCorrect. The nuance in the US is that this is censorship by corporation, not by government, so extant laws against censorship (which are aimed at the government) don't apply. I think it's past time that corporations for social media of a certain "size" be recognized as public fora, and a body of law be developed regarding their behavior and responsibilities. Facebook, Google, etc, should not be censoring. Where this gets tricky is that both the corporation and the internet tends to span borders, so jurisdiction becomes very complex. Someone in country A uses a service in country B to interact with someone in country C. Which country's laws apply? That is the problem. In the absence of legitimate power, illegitimate power is operative, and today that is Facebook and Twitter; they are serving de facto as quasi-governmental entities regulating interactions between citizens, since real governments have been unable to do so.
- mdesq 10y agoAt some point, these platforms become "utilities" and should be regulated similarly to other utilities.
- Grue3 10y agoIs Facebook going to delete Ramzan Kadyrov's Instagram then?
- narrator 10y agoThe reason that Facebook and Twitter receive this scrutiny is that information posted to them is public, persistent, viral and forced into many people's view by feeds. I think SnapChat counteracts all these features. I was recently hanging out at some nightlife spots, casually talking to random millennials at bars and such and realized that nobody was using Facebook or Twitter. They were all using SnapChat, almost compulsively. I asked them why and they said it was because their mom was on Facebook (!public). They also liked that everything disappeared after 24 hours (!persistent) and it alerts you if people screenshot your posts (!persistent). They also liked the fact that you couldn't repost stuff, only show pictures that the app took and you only shared with your friends (!viral) and only had to look at their stuff if you actually wanted to (!feed). It didn't come in on a feed. I think Facebook and Twitter are going to be cleaned out soon except for self-promotion and commercial information. At this point I assume that Facebook is public too. People desperately want privacy. I think a rising trend in the industry is the notion of forgetting. People want services to forget. They want to live in the present and not have everything remembered about them forever. They also don't want to be bombarded by feeds since they are full of distraction, advertising and ideology. The only thing they are interested in posting to these public services is things that they want to share publicly, like self-promotion or commercial/job related stuff.
- cm3 10y agoIsn't snapchat video only?
- narrator 10y agoSnapchat is also pictures and you can do traditional text. Mainly you have this thing called a "story" that people can subscribe to that lasts for the last 24 hours and it's pictures and video and text that you send to it. I recently tried using snapchat with a few people. They get annoyed that they can only see your pictures for a few seconds and then can't view them again and text disappears after 24 hours.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- imgabe 10y ago> Big tech companies have also met U.S. government officials earlier this year to discuss how to stop ISIS from recruiting terrorists on social media. The Obama administration had asked the companies to develop techniques to detect radicalization, and block pro-ISIS messages, photos and videos. Assuming the messages could be accurately detected, wouldn't it make more sense to allow them to continue and flag them for spying, and find the people sending them? If they're blocked from Twitter, they'll just move on to some less easily accessible platform.
- pdeuchler 10y agoEvangelical Christianity is a fantastic example of the slippery slope these sorts of actions create. I doubt anyone here would say most evangelical churches violate the legal ideals of free speech, but they've been extremely vigilant in maintaining group think on many controversial topics and anyone who goes against the group ideals is immediately shunned and treated as "other". This has created a feedback loop where they are now so far detached from mainstream Christianity* many are trying to classify it as it's own sect and in some cases it's own religion. Thus there has been practically no progress in evangelical theology within the past 20 years (Revelations fear mongering not withstanding), and as a result has lead to some seriously unscientific beliefs (that aren't even compatible with their own faith!) and severely detrimental societal interactions with the greater world. Extremely interesting to find those who look upon those same Evangelicals with contempt and hatred are following the exact same path. * inb4 someone who's never been to an evangelical church service tries to claim evangelical christianity is mainstream
- Karunamon 10y agoCould you be a bit more specific? As I understand it, "evangelical" just means the church tries to get more members (i.e. evangelizing) ...which describes pretty much all of them. What's the difference?
- pdeuchler 10y ago"Evangelical" christianity has come to describe a certain group of mostly Protestant believers largely found in the South and Midwest US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism). Interestingly enough, they're more of a political identity in some circles as beyond a few (relatively minor) theological differences with denominations like Baptists, Methodists, or "non-denominational" groups they mostly identify based on social/political issues (gay marriage, abortion, religion and government, etc. etc.) rather than theological ones (although they do their best to tie the two together).
- dragonwriter 10y ago> As I understand it, "evangelical" just means the church tries to get more members "Evangelical" is a label that was adopted by a specific group within Christian Protestantism that was reacting against specific elements that were seen as problematic within Fundamentalism (it was essentially a dissident offshoot of Fundamentalism) -- the term had some prior use, which in part inspired the label selected, but that's now pretty much its exclusive use when used to describe a subset of Christianity. In some respects, some of those disagreements have faded over time; there's a lot of overlap in terms of both religious ideas and relation of religion to civil society between Fundamentalists and some subset of Evangelicals, though the range of Evangelical views is still broader. Its not uncommon for people outside of either movement to use "Evangelical" and "Fundamentalist" interchangeably.
- TelAviv_1 10y agoThey never remove pro-Hamas terrorist content. Never ever. I have no idea why.
- winslow 10y agoI'm sure this won't be abused at all...
- jimrandomh 10y agoThis makes me uneasy, but not for the reason other people are saying. By committing to a 24 hour response time, they seem to be committing to a response strategy that doesn't involve any investigation. There's a risk that they'll end up removing important speech, and things that are only borderline in their questionability.
- latenightcoding 10y agoOld news, Facebook has been working very closely with the German Government to protect poor little Merkel from being criticized.
- pillowkusis 10y agoDo you have evidence of this? I would imagine censoring mainstream dissident speech would be quite a controversy...
- Siwi 10y agohttp://www.dw.com/en/mark-zuckerbergs-offensive-on-hate-speech/av-19083482 http://www.dw.com/en/mark-zuckerbergs-offensive-on-hate-spee... http://www.dw.com/en/berlin-police-raid-homes-in-crackdown-on-right-wing-hate-speech/a-18845429 http://www.dw.com/en/berlin-police-raid-homes-in-crackdown-o... And one on a "mainstream dissident" that's quite controversial: http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/15/europe/germany-erdogan-joke-prosecution/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/15/europe/germany-erdogan-joke-pr... Also, while we're on the topic of "slippery slope": http://www.politico.eu/article/twitter-suspends-darthputinkgb-account-mocking-vladimir-putin-russia-spoof-parody-social-media/ http://www.politico.eu/article/twitter-suspends-darthputinkg...
- supergeek133 10y agoThis is why it's important for people to understand that the First Amendment is a very unique thing in the world.
- five3 10y agoYou don't understand the 1st amendment bro. The 1st amendment only stops the US Government from censoring speech. Private companies can do whatever they want.
- supergeek133 10y agoSo the EU (the government) directing a private company to censor things is OK with you? Or did you not understand what I was referring to/making a comparison of? Bro.
- Siwi 10y agoAmerican tech companies shouldn't indulge censorship, even if it seems well intentioned, the scope is promised to be limited, and the pressure from governments is immense. They also shouldn't try to pick political winners by promoting the social campaigns and positions of the EC, as they've promised (citation below). What is legitimate speech should not be determined by whoever is in power. Europe has tried that on several occasions. It never goes well. Just imagine if Donald Trump could declare what speech was considered legal and illegal. Perhaps we're getting a preview from Erdogan in Turkey right now. This situation appears to be an attempt to suppress dissenting views (largely on immigration, border control, and refugee/asylum policy) following shifts in public opinion away from European integration and establishment incumbents like the CDU/CSU and SPD and toward nationalism and political parties like AfD in Germany, FPO in Austria, and FN in France. Since November Merkel has been pressuring Facebook to sanitize the platform of negative views toward migrants. It is troubling that leaders can punish their citizens for views that break from their policies. State police have even conducted house raids on those promoting "incorrect opinions" toward migrants on social media (citation below). We are not talking about physical threats, we're talking about opinions. Facebook and Twitter should not enable what has become, in a very literal sense, thought police. If there are window-licking asshats posting nonsense on social media, let's challenge their views and win the debate. Democracy is about more speech, not less. I hope Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft haven't drifted so far from their original principles that they've lost sight of that. http://www.dw.com/en/berlin-police-raid-homes-in-crackdown-on-right-wing-hate-speech/a-18845429 http://www.dw.com/en/berlin-police-raid-homes-in-crackdown-o... http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36416967 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36416967
- spriggan3 10y ago> American tech companies shouldn't indulge censorship I'm all for free speech, but US companies should follow the local laws. US tech companies aren't above the law, especially when they do business in foreign countries (selling ads is doing business). It sucks but going against the laws doesn't work in the long run. You can get away with it when you're a young US start up and you don't have offices in France,Germany or Austria, but as soon as you do, you are effectively subject to local laws.
- SovietDissident 10y agoAn example: Facebook removing actual statistics on campus rape (i.e., "hate speech") and kowtowing to the completely false SJW/feminist narrative that 1/4 college women are raped. https://i.sli.mg/oNjASl.jpg https://i.sli.mg/oNjASl.jpg
- cheez 10y agoEhh... This is more like "don't post stuff that offends me and makes me scared for my safety". That's the real danger with censorship. Anyway, Facebook as the social platform is on its way out, but the brilliant fucker that Zucks is, he is buying up everything that remains relevant.
- ravenstine 10y agoSocial media is not directly subject to the first amendment. However, there is a legitimate problem if entities that monopolize a communication channel apply subjective censorship; it's a threat to the first amendment, an American principle, if the mass can't actually carry out free speech. It can be argued that online speech has now been monopolized by a few entities; while I don't think that's entirely true, there's a nugget of truth in there. If Facebook, which now wants to be more of a media company than just a place for cat pictures, controls an obscenely large portion of online communication, that means they(a small number of people in reality) can have far too much influence in political discussion, freedom of expression, etc. While the side of me that's liberatarian says that people can simply not use Facebook if they don't like it, saying that alone is not going to stop the mass in the center of the bell curve from subjecting themselves to censorship, which indirectly subjects myself and others to that same censorship. What can make this worse is the continuing implosion of Twitter. If we want people to have some retain modicum of responsibility(i.e. just unfriend/unfollow/block), censorship that oversteps reasonable boundaries needs to be challenged, and our government can do that if they impose on free speech.(whether or not that actually happens, idk)
- Siwi 10y agoWhat ever happened to the principle "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." This is about putting the lid on views of their citizens that European governments don't like. Disappointed that Twitter and Facebook are giving into this in Europe when they wouldn't in China.
- brockers 10y agoWhat is the difference between Hate Speech and Newspeak? When do we cross over the line from good intentions to thoughtcrime? Is the best way to end racial, religious, or sexual discrimination to hide it or to lambaste those who would propagate it?
- unabst 10y agoWe need to flag it, not delete it. Pretending this stuff doesn't exist isn't doing anyone any favors. It's far better to have a public record of who is posting this stuff. Let them advertise themselves, and let's deal with them. That's progressive. Censorship is for communists. For a blanket solution I would suggest a "safe feed" default where tweets flagged as hate speech are removed from your feed. Also have a hate counter in profiles so the number of hate tweets is public information. Then if the user wishes to delete them and have no hate on record, they can. What the manual mod team would need to do is review unflagging requests. Flagging can be done by the community, and most of them will be right. Unflagging and malicious flagging is the right problem to focus on, not whether or not to delete something (minus cases where it's the law).
- evunveot 10y agoI've had remarkably similar ideas rolling around in my head for the past couple of years, watching various viral controversies work their way through Twitter, Reddit, and Wikipedia. I disagree with the idea of a "hate counter," though, because it would encourage people to self-segregate and I think it's wrong to reduce people to their worst attributes. Everyone has the potential to make a positive contribution in at least some niche. I would just add that my ideal system would have a plethora of highly objective, undeniable flags for a variety of potentially disruptive behaviors; posters would be required to disclaim or "pre-flag" their own posts; and readers would have the ability to toggle which flags they're willing to view at any given moment. The punishment for failing to disclaim a flag would be a period of probation (increasing with repeated violations) where the user's posts are automatically disclaimed for that flag. The punishment for malicious flagging, as judged by a group of users with a long history of proper use of a particular flag, would be probation with regard to the ability to use that flag on others' posts. I expect that the "off-topic" flag, along with the ability to rigorously define the topic in any given context, would get a lot of use, as would "name calling," "assigning motives or attributes to a group" (aka "broad brushing"), and "expressing incredulity" (aka the starting-your-comment-with-"Um..." flag).
- kyrre 10y agowe are witnessing the end of twitter.
- antisthenes 10y agoTwitter has been an insolvent rotting corpse for quite some time. Taking the company public only revealed their financials for everyone to see and confirmed it.
- moomin 10y agoMeh, I've seen Facebook and Twitter's standard response to racially motivated death-threats. Deciding it's within the terms of service faster isn't going to change much.
- jswny 10y agoI completely understand this move. It seems logical enough, and it's much like what Reddit has done/is doing banning certain hateful subreddits. Advertisers don't want to advertise with companies who are known to host hate-speech or anything of that caliber. However, a move like this is essentially going down the rabbit's hole: you can never get to the bottom. Who decides what constitutes hate speech? No doubt, certain groups will claim they are being censored much like what happened recently with Facebook and conservatives. It may seem like a perfectly good move, but it's just not viable in the long-term.
- talmand 10y agoEspecially when sometimes this is being forced by a group of people who seem to be professional complainers. First they cut out 10% of the users for this violation, then another 10% of the smaller group for that violation, then another 10% of the new smaller group for another violation, and so on and so on. Eventually you're just left with the complainers, who'll just move onto another platform to start over with the complaining.
- talmand 10y agoI find it interesting that, in this thread, most of the reasons to support this type of thing resort to the lowest common denominator as the reason to support it. "This could be used to silence opposing viewpoints!" "You mean like rape and death threats? Why do you support that? You're a disgusting racist bigot!" As if that's the only type of free expression the naysayers are talking about. It's kind of sad really. Imagine the surprise when some of these people supporting such things find out it's their turn to have their opposing viewpoint stifled.
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- slackstation 10y agoThis is a direct consequence of the world wide web turning from a self-publishing culture (blogging + RSS) to a posting culture (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) It's trivial to exert political and social pressure globally. I'm not trying to be polemic nor alarmist but, when you centralize the primary social exchange for almost 2 billion people on one network, these are the effects. People need to start thinking for themselves and see that by using a service like these they are only seeing part of the whole. To be fair, most people probably won't care too much about what's outside the walls of the garden. And further, the walls of the garden aren't terribly high nor hard to come over. It's easier and simpler than ever to start a blog. It's easier still to make a Facebook account. People who care enough to make the trivial amount of effort to publish outside the system should and we as developers should make it even easier, safer and lower friction. Let's Encrypt, cheap and easy static hosting, static site generators, etc.
- draugadrotten 10y agoThe upside is that when we figure out how to stop hate speech, we can apply the same solution to spam, and finally be rid of it.
- drdeca 10y agoI think there are a number of things that can probably be done to address harassment on social media which don't significantly infringe on free speech. One possibility might be to allow users to set a rate limit on replies to a particular message for people they haven't white listed. (So, like, if more than 20 "strangers" reply to a public post that one makes, it wouldn't allow further replies. But only if the person who made the post wanted it like that.) Other possibilities include checking if many people went to an account from the same other account mentioning it, which, there would be ways around that, but, it seems like it could still help. (also as an optional thing) Some of these are kind of weak but I think some things could be done. Note that none of these prevent anyone from saying anything to anyone who wants to listen. It just makes it harder for people to say things to someone who doesn't want to hear them. This seems like a fairly safe thing.
- vonklaus 10y agoagain, just to reiterate my unwavering unpopular viewpoint: having a single entity (or 2-3 colluding entities) control vaste swathes of the internet is fucking insane. * 1 - 2 last mile providers per area. * google virtually entire world search engine (pagerank variations used in every major one) * facebook controls most of the worlds personal account info / verification * twitter realtime sentiment and data broadcast. facebook and twitter are less dangerous than time warner and google, but facebook is still massively dangerous because a real fb account is more proveable than a ssn. its 10 digits vs, 10 years of your digital life, including any part of your life that ws important to someone else. I still don't get this: > I have a backup of my application data on aws in several regions, I also have a replicated backup on azure, and I push to tarsnap every quarter just in case. This viewpoint considered pragmatic and best practice. > We should allow Google & Baidu to essentially control the onboarding, searching, verification, security, document storage, mobile, transmission, DNS, and CA on the internet. this is fine. If you don't like it, use duckduckgo or bing's version of pagerank. - everyone
- carapace 10y agoI think being nice to each other on twitter and facebook will be okay.
- kelukelugames 10y agoThis thread is another proof of HN's immaturity and lack of empathy. The slippery slope arguments are comical.
- StanislavPetrov 10y agoIt is absolutely stunning and sickening that so many otherwise intelligent people cannot (or refuse to) grasp the simple concept that banning any speech or free expression is the opposite of having "free speech". It doesn't matter if the government (or some other entity) designates that speech as "hate speech", offensive, false, defamatory, or anything else. You either have free speech, or you don't. You cannot partially restrict free speech. Restricted speech is not free. Freedom is dangerous. If we were all locked in our own individual, soundproof cells all the time, nobody would be in danger of being assaulted or offended. That is not a free society. In a free society, you are constantly at risk. It would be bad enough if censorship, fascism, and bondage were being inflicted upon us by domineering overseers using violence and sheer force. It is far more disgusting and disheartening that so many of my fellow human beings are actually embracing and endorsing this authoritarianism. Unfortunately, it looks like the human race is going to get what its asking for.
- WhyDoPeople 10y agoIt's fascinating to see what criteria they will consider hate speech. Facebook is usually fast to act on any reports, so I've been able to test what they allow and what they have removed. A black girl making fun of Asians and calling them stupid and "chinky ass" was left up. A white guy calling black people "ghetto" was removed. A white guy calling Mexicans "wet backs" was left up. I'm not sure what they are counting as hate speech, and what they aren't, as those posts appear to have been moderated by an actual human. I guess it depends on the time of day, and the attitude of the person judging the content.