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Google and ProPublica team up to build a national hate crime database
- nkkollaw 9y agoSounds like positive news because it's totally crazy to see somebody—specially if not even German—waving a Nazi flag like it's something to be proud of. However, I wonder if this promotes hate towards the haters (probably a dumb thought)..? Who gets to decide who the bad guys are and what a hate crime is..?
- alecco 9y agoOf course. I'd even agree up to a point the extremist intolerants should not be allowed (be it nazis, fascists, maoist, communists, or religious extremists). But it looks very wrong to put this in the hands of a mega-corporation with political interests. They are a virtual monopoly on search and videos. I wonder what would the EFF would say about this. We've been on this road before. Under the pretense of terrorism threats individual rights were eroded on a massive scale. And Google was part of it, either actively or with willful ignorance (e.g. not encrypting internal links so NSA could easily tap). Who are they to decide what is a hate crime? In Canada it's a hate crime to refuse to use on of a dozen gender pronouns for "non-binary" people.
- nkkollaw 9y agoI guess it's a hate crime if it's considered a hate crime where it happens..? The more I think about it though, the more it seems wrong. There must be local laws that regulate hate crimes, it seems wrong that a corporation gets with someone and starts shaming people online instead of letting local authorities deal with it. And, if local authorities don't deal with it it's either legal—and so they should be able to do whatever they want no matter how stupid it is—or the problem is with the police, but a database doesn't solve that.
- yahna 9y ago> In Canada it's a hate crime to refuse to use on of a dozen gender pronouns for "non-binary" people No it's not. Listen to a lawyer or actual expert instead of a psych professor with a chip on his shoulder.
- alecco 9y agoCanadian Department of Justice website. http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/identity-identite/faq.html http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/identity-identite/fa... > With very few exceptions, grounds of discrimination are not defined in legislation but are left to courts, tribunals, and commissions to interpret and explain, based on their detailed experience with particular cases. Yeah, vague wording would surely work out if it's a hate crime or not. This is ridiculous. Laws should be clear. The majority of Canadian judges are quite left-liberals.
- yahna 9y ago> The majority of Canadian judges are quite left-liberals. Good.
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- amputect 9y agow/r/t "hate towards the haters" (assuming by "haters" here you mean people literally waving a nazi flag, or more colloquially, "nazis"), you might find this essay on the paradox of tolerence interesting: https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1af7007d6376 https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...
- Danihan 9y agoThis article is absurd, I'm not sure why people keep spamming it here. It's just a self-righteous rallying cry for more divisiveness.
- alecco 9y agoNot even pretending anymore, Google? > ProPublica was the brainchild of billionaires and major Democratic donors Herbert and Marion Sandler, the former chief executives of the Golden West Financial Corporation, who have committed $10 million a year to the project
- superobserver 9y agoGoogle hasn't hidden its liberal, pro-Hillary ties at least since her Presidential campaign. Can anyone say Eric "he who will not be named" Schmidt without getting suicided these days? Time will tell who answers for this.
- amputect 9y agoI encourage you to look at the full list of partners, this isn't "google and one liberal rag" it's "google and a ton of major journalism outlets and universities", and it's worth evaluating through that lens. I am cautiously optimistic that they might be able to accomplish something good here and create a more data-driven analysis of something that's a hot-button, highly emotionally charged topic right now.
- alecco 9y agoYes, perfectly fine. Jordan Peterson banned for being "far right" (he is nothing like that, for decades warned about the rise of fascism and nazism). And far left groups are allowed to perform violent acts and recruit people. All these liberal groups are waking up dark and powerful forces that have been dormant. They are delusional thinking it's something they will be able to control. Same applies with republicans feeding the Tea Party and all that. When anger rises it doesn't stop until there's a lot of blood.
- protomyth 9y ago"google and a ton of major journalism outlets and universities" Can you point to the known conservative group in that mix?
- protomyth 9y ago
- gleglegle 9y agoThis is excellent news!
- superobserver 9y agoSure, if you like living in a nanny-police state. A lot more than the 1st amendment is under threat for the grossly staged violence perpetrated upon American society in recent days. Ref.: http://stevepieczenik.com/charlottesville-staged-confrontation http://stevepieczenik.com/charlottesville-staged-confrontati...
- krapp 9y agoOh, look. Someone believes the latest act of right-wing violence was really a false-flag operation by leftists coordinating with the CIA, and that Pizzagate was actually a thing. What crazy kooky outside-the-box reporting that is, which means it must be true I guess.
- superobserver 9y agoPizzagate is a distraction manufactured by the the mainstream media. Hardly surprising someone with your false and dismissive opinion would bring it up. How is this obvious? Because the media focused on one pizza joint when there are extensive documented cases of pedophilia and child sex trafficking taking place. Heard of Haiti and the Clinton Foundation? Get informed.
- superobserver 9y agoGoogle engaged in blacklisting people for something as vague as "hate crime" (when not crimes) is as Orwellian as it gets. Then again, as long as Antifa, BLM, KKK, Neo-Nazi, etc. persons convicted of real crimes are fairly and equally represented, perhaps we'll see real movement to shut this nonsense down.
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- calimac 9y agoInternet's plantation owners (google fb et, al.) pushing this is scary but NOT surprising. - Look back. All the shenanigans google did with ripping private hard drive data off open unsecured WiFi back in 2010+/-. - What about all the dirty tricks FB pulled on privacy policies. - The defining blog post Suckerberg posted about his Utopic view rooted in victorian europe social structure before fb was big. - Eric Schmuck's IO conferences and keynotes 6-10 years ago where he lays out a vision and his motives, "They Are Evil". If the masses knew what these controllers believed and their objectives they would delete their google and fb accounts. This is not surprising, it simply reveals the true arrogance of the plantation owners. They truly believe they are more powerful that the US Gov. The whole argument of these "Services" that control the life flow of society's communication being private companies is null. If they keep popping their head up the feds are going to chop it off. It terms of ANTIFA, I can point to a ton of ANTIFA crimes. all the trump rally assaults and destructiveness. The Berkley riots, Oakland riots, this last weekend where antifa went to the right wing rally to agitate and fight. The media is yet to actually report the truth about this last weekend's events in Charlotte. Watch it on youtube, see the different videos of what went down. The "News" is lying by omission". Why does the media not report the truth? Who is influencing the media bias? why?
- alecco 9y ago#3 14 points/26m Google and ProPublica team up to build a national hate crime database #6 105 points/1h YouTube admits 'wrong call' over deletion of Syrian war crime videos Yeah, perfectly explainable. Like every other time.
- Jaruzel 9y agoIf you are talking about post position on the Front Page, then it's stated somewhere (the FAQ?) that HN mods and admins can 'insert' a story anywhere on the front page if they feel it needs more attention than it's getting. Personally, I'm not a fan of that (feels a bit /. under DICE for my liking) - but I'm just a freeloader here, like the rest of us.
- alecco 9y agoIn the Google Memo debacle they kept saying they did not intervene in favor of Google. That it was just the flagging of users what drove the stories out of the home page. A story with 1600 points could only be reached via Algolia or comments section.
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- sctb 9y agoI'm not sure I understand. You can't compare points/time between stories for many reasons—some of them relevant to the story (like flags, penalties) and some of them not (not all votes are counted).
- yahna 9y ago> Antifa, BLM, KKK, Neo-Nazi 2 of these things are not like the others. 2 of these things just don't belong. edit: yay downvotes from people who can't mention nazis without whataboutism.
- smokeyj 9y agoAh yes, the inevitable subjectivity of defining "hate groups". I'm getting my popcorn ready.
- krapp 9y agoDon't worry, they have an algorithm. Google's algorithms never fail. Never.
- howlgram 9y agodon't worry, he just got blacklisted by google for that
- Danihan 9y agoIn the videos I saw, Antifa and BLM were stalking (and eventually hitting) people in Charlottesville with bats. In Berkeley, they beat several people unconscious, and that was just over a speaker who they didn't like. That's crossing some serious lines, whether you find it justifiable or not.
- dgfgfdagasdfgfa 9y ago> In the videos I saw, Antifa and BLM were stalking (and eventually hitting) people in Charlottesville with bats. Well, which one was it? That's a massive difference in identity.
- willstrafach 9y ago> In the videos I saw These don't seem to be very easy to find. Can you link some examples? (Honestly asking).
- chroem- 9y agoI'm about as far left as they come, like campaigning for Sanders left, but I have some serious concerns about this. There has been a serious effort to label everyone that disagrees with Israel's growing apartheid policies toward the Palestinian people as antisemitic hate criminals. I worry that this sort of corporate vigilanteism is going to make it effectively illegal to disagree with the narratives sponsored by the wealthiest members of our society.
- gremlinsinc 9y agoLefty here too (So left I wrote Bernie in, hoping Trump would win just to stick it to the DNC) - and not sad I did, because the Rep. party is literally in a suicide spiral off Trump tower... I'm totally totally appalled..by Saturday's events..and part of me rejoices at Cloudflare/Google/Godaddy fighting Nazi's... but a part of me - the techy/privacy part is screaming MY GOD WHAT Are we Letting them do in the name of 'Anti-Hate' -- giving everyone a label, or making them fit in a box is a scary precipice to go over. I hope and pray we can find better ways to combat the hate, I think the leaders at google are well meaning in this, but this screams to me that something bigger and deadlier could be unleashed as a result. We need to be REALLY careful how we start self-policing the internet.
- Danihan 9y agoI'm not sure why people can't just dislike (or hate) whomever they want to? Isn't that the whole point of Freedom of Association? Everyone dislikes certain individuals, or groups of people. Sometimes it's for petty, wrongheaded reasons. Sometimes it's for well-thought out, valid reasons. Sometimes it's ideological, sometimes it's pragmatic. Sometimes it changes over time, sometimes it doesn't. I don't understand the emotional / viewpoint policing people seem to want to engage in lately.
- gremlinsinc 9y agoI just watched a video -- where a housewife was calling for Jews to go back to the gas chambers, or well go to the gas chambers for the first time--because she doesn't believe it ever happened in the first place.. She wants her children to have a chance at a good life, and can't as long as Jews are alive... How are 14 million jews a threat to millions of white people? It baffles my brain their logic or lack thereof... so the answer is NO you can't HATE when your words of HATE include words about killing, and committing acts of Genocide and LOTS of white supremacists talk of genocide. Because we just ignore it--and well, remember how that worked out for Germany.. but but it can't happen in America right? Ask that of the Germans who were alive in 1920 if they could foresee 1941..
- freedomben 9y agoDon't worry, I'm sure James Damore won't show up on this list.
- 0x4f3759df 9y agoI guess they will start choking off more web activity from their political enemies.
- ucaetano 9y agoFor those who didn't read the article, the project doesn't try to define hate crimes, just surface media reports about hate crimes: > This page lists media reports, collected by Google News, about hate crimes and bias incidents.
- navs 9y agoThis a hundred times over. There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to this being a form of censorship. I say this because that was my first impression before reading the article.
- wongarsu 9y ago>The Hate News Index will keep an eye out for false positives finding false positives means eventually you have to decide what you consider a hate crime
- ucaetano 9y agoYou missed the example of the false positive: > (casual uses of the word “hate” for example)
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- devindotcom 9y agoLike police shootings and acts of force, hate crimes are growing in number and visibility but are inconsistently reported. An independent database seems like a great idea. I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that this is going to be some Google-run thoughtcrime outfit. It's news organizations and universities sharing data, Google is on algo support. Full list of partners here: https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/hatecrimes https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/hatecrimes
- freedomben 9y agoI detest the surge in (at least visible) racism as of late, but as a liberal this terrifies me. The idea that an organization (particularly one that is driven by corporate interests and has serious problems with diversity) is able and willing to impose its will like this against others is concerning. This is one of those hard things, because I don't fear what it currently is, or what the intentions are, but I do fear what it can become. Definitions of things change over time, and what is considered a "hate crime" can and will change. This could easily become a tool for the enforcement of political correctness (and I don't mean that the way the alt-right likes to define it. I mean the traditional definition, that being politically correct means you agree with those in power). And what of somebody falsely accused or convicted? We know the police can be crooked and that courts can make mistakes. Are we to ruin someone's life and/or reputation because of that? Must they beg and sacrifice at the altar of Google to clear their name?
- ucaetano 9y agoCheck the actual project, it has nothing to do with what you're talking. It is just an index of news articles talking about hate crime. > This page lists media reports, collected by Google News, about hate crimes and bias incidents.
- freedomben 9y agoI did read the article. Perhaps you missed this part: > “In this case, it helps reporters by digging out locations, names and other useful data from the 3,000-plus news reports
- urda 9y agoI'm terrified at seeing the positive "great idea!" and "good job google" comments here. This type of database, or collection of persons can (and most likely will) be wielded in an unfair and unjust manner. This isn't Google's job to handle at all. HN readers, sure Google is on your side today but that might not be the case tomorrow. Any sane person can see why this is an awful idea.
- notananthem 9y agoThis is great, southern poverty law center already does this well though
- devindotcom 9y agoYeah, they're a partner.
- Inconel 9y agoI think reasonable people can disagree on how well the SPLC does this considering their including of Maajid Nawaz among their list of anti-Muslim extremists. Edit: To clarify, I understand that you were referencing their hate crimes database and that I brought up their list of people they label as extremists, and while the two things aren't the same, my point was to highlight that not everyone sees the SPLC as infallible.
- oval-atom 9y ago1984: Government's Attempt to Control The Mind and Bodies of Its Citizens The novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is an American classic which explores the human mind when it comes to power, corruption, control, and the ultimate utopian society. Orwell indirectly proposes that power given to the government will ultimately become corrupt and they will attempt to force all to conform to their one set standard. He also sets forth the idea that the corrupted government will attempt to destroy any and all mental and physical opposition to their beliefs, thus eliminating any opportunity for achieving an utopian society. I guess Mr Orwell got it wrong, it won't be the government. Google has already shown it's belief in "Diversity", but only how they define it, as experienced by the engineer they just booted. Google, FaceBook, Apple, Twitter, and Microsoft will be controlling all the information. Don't be surprised if you see only what they want you to see. People worry about the NSA invading your private life, the NSA drools about the data these Techno Giants already have. And of course they put on this glorified act of denial when the government requests information. Yet people worry about who will police what these government entities are doing, so who is going to police these Techno Giants? Remember, these companies are in for the money and all that that comes with it. Zuckerberg wants everyone to have a Basic Income, who is going to pay for that? But it is one way to buy votes. It sounds like just another welfare program. Welfare is destroying this country, as it is today. It destroys incentive and when that happens, the mind becomes worthless. I tend to go along with Thomas Sowell. https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/thomas-sowell-explains-how-the-welfare-state-hurts-the-poor/ https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/thomas-sowe... https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/instead-of-ending-poverty-big-government-subsidizes-dependency/ https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/instead-of-... The ideology of the Techno Giants, "Your Life Belongs to US"
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- sysdyne 9y agoWhat's with this dystopian news I'm reading more everyday? "This page lists media reports, collected by Google News, about hate crimes and bias incidents." No doubt containing personal names and being combined with Google's algorithms. What could possibly go wrong?