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Another way to deal with this would be to not apologize, but to insist the algorithms are imparital, and to condemn their users. Call a big press conference and

Another way to deal with this would be to not apologize, but to insist the algorithms are imparital, and to condemn their users. Call a big press conference and say, shit, we found that a big portion of our users are antisemites. Put that trending topic behind a trigger warning and maybe add content disclaimers to antisemite's pages. They could say they are protecting freedom of speech, but also the other side of the medal - freedom to call out positions you find wrong. I understand of course that that ship has sailed. Howver, I also believe that the strategy of "keeping the lid on" positions that are hateful or morally undesirable does not work long term. It was completely unthinkable and taboo to voice nazi positions in public in post WW2-Germany, it is even forbidden by law. But this did not irradicate Nazi thought, it just pushed it underground. And look, suddenly with some historical distance it is coming out again. Same in the US with people running around in KKK hoods and waving the confederate flag. Of course, racism was never gone or solved (no matter what we thought as white kids growing up in the 90s), but now it seems to be OK again to be openly racist in certain circles. To tie it back to the topic, I believe we should not sweep positions we find horrible under the carpet, by saying they are taboo, and pretending we (e.g. Twitter) are impartial and unpolitical. Rather, we have to endure that people hold these positions, and speak out against them. Even if that means that we no longer are "politically neutral".

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Another way to deal with this would be to not apologize, but to insist the algorithms are imparital, But since, as they admit, they have historically intervened in the trending rankings, insisting that they are impartial would be lying. They could decide not to intervene this time, but that would raise he question of why this is less deserving of intervention than past issues, if they were being honest and open.
gowld 8y ago
You contradict yourselves. Anti-hate-speech laws and culture suppressed the spread of ideas. That's the concept of "chilling effects" (from the other side). If suppressing speech didn't matter, no one would be worried about it being suppressed. With the rise of non-suppressed hate speech on Reddit and Twitter and Fox News and the like, we saw a resurgence of terrorism in the US, terrorism which was very clearly inspired by the hate speech (specifically, it's conspiracy theories) and spread ideas that people wouldn't have thought up on their own.
- mooseburger 8y ago
  The chilling effect is entirely about the speech suppression. One of the side effects of speech suppression is that one no longer knows what people really think, and there isn't good evidence that silencing someone changes their mind, which is the really important thing. There were vigorous efforts to silence the Nazis for example, and none of it mattered, because all speech control efforts target symptoms and not causes. About right-wing terrorism, pretty sure that's independent, as it has always been there.
- captainmuon 8y ago
  I'd say it suppressed the expression of ideas, but it was not successful enough to suppress the spread. It certainly did not extinguish the ideas. I would not say right wing terrorism was only inspired by recent online hate speech. The US always had militias, people like Timothy McVeigh, white supremacists, and so on. However, I think that social media made it impossible to "keep the lid on" these ideas. Before we could censor this pretty good in the mass media, but then mass media and mainstream society lost their monopoly of interpretation. Now people with nasty ideas realize they are not alone and come out, and organize.
- ppod 8y ago
  >If suppressing speech didn't matter, no one would be worried about it being suppressed. We could worry about it because the principle might one day be used against us. It's one thing to ban swastikas, but who gets to define what counts as "terrorist"? We already see that being abused to suppress dissidents abroad.
2_listerine_pls 8y ago
People just love trolling them because they overreact.
- kevinh 8y ago
  Ironic bigotry is still bigotry.
  - archgoon 8y ago
    context: The grandparents original line was "People just love trolling them because they overreact. Idiots think they're antisemites."
onemoresoop 8y ago
> but this did not irradicate Nazi thought, it just pushed it underground. I think it's reasonable to push Nazism underground rather than let it go mainstream and gain some steam. There are enough idiots who would think it legit and instead of eradicating it would grow. But I agree with not sweeping things under the carpet, ignoring them won't solve the problem but keep them somewhat contained for a while.
louwrentius 8y ago
This notion of free speech that would even allow calls of violence sound immoral to me. Calls for violence are not protected free speech in The Netherlands and I guess most (West) European countries. You would get fined or even jailed if you would say shit like this in our country. And I'm happy for it. Because it serves no purpose to incite violence. There's no debate to be had. There is nothing that can be debated upon. What is there to debate with people that call to kill all Jews. No, people can still have their free hate speech, but ideally not on any major social media outlet or news outlet if possible. And anyone calling for the murder on another person belongs in jail. Shame on Twitter for letting this slip through.
- jakelazaroff 8y ago
  This exactly. Allowing violent speech to fall inside our definition of "free speech" has a net negative impact on speech. Put another way: why would I paint a target on my back by trying to debate people who actively advocate for my murder? I'm much more likely to shut up and stay safe.
- captainmuon 8y ago
  Yeah I mostly agree, but I'm not suggesting to leave calls to violence in the open. Rather, replace the tweet in question by a notice saying basically "User XY called to violence against people here. We find this dispicable and totally oppose this kind of ideas. Signed, Twitter CEO. PS: To publically document what kind of person XY is, you can click [here] to read their hateful statement in original." I'd much rather have Nazis behind a content warning and publically pillored and shamed on twitter, than ban them and let them fester unbothered on Gap.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
13415 8y ago
> It was completely unthinkable and taboo to voice nazi positions in public in post WW2-Germany, it is even forbidden by law. But this did not irradicate Nazi thought, it just pushed it underground. That is precisely the point of these laws. Certain hate speech and anti constitutional propaganda is marginalized in order to not allow further recruiting and preventing these stances from becoming part of a mainstream debate again. It's an institutionalized (and therefore controversial) form of social control. The social control of ostracizing certain type of speech is present in all societies, though. If you're among ardent Christians, cursing and blasphemy is going to be 'prohibited', namely sanctioned. If you're among communists, other types of speech are prohibited. In many societies, you are not allowed to talk about certain taboo topics like sex, death, badmouthing someone's parents, etc. Certainly nobody has ever thought that German anti hate speech laws would make Nazis go away. They were invented to prevent a new Nazi party from rising again (together with other mechanisms like party prohibition by the Supreme Court) - and also, on behalf of the allied occupation forces - to prevent further embarrassment of West Germany abroad. On a side note, it was never "completely unthinkable and taboo to voice nazi positions in public in post WW2-Germany." It wasn't done in the GDR because of Gulags, whereas in West Germany this was always pretty common. There was even a successor party to the NSDAP that was promptly prohibited. There were right wing terrorists ("Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann") and plenty of old school Nazis who talked and still talk about nazi positions. We even have our own "Nazi grandma", the holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck, aged 89, who was sentenced 10 month in prison but never went there.
rchaud 8y ago
Algorithms are trained by real world data. If Twitter claimed that it is 'impartial', it would be fundamentally false (you cannot create a perfectly representative sample, and god knows how many propaganda bots are pushing up their DAUs). Worse still, it would communicate to advertisers that if Twitter's algos can be gamed so easily, its user base is 'low quality' and not worth serving ads to.
bassman9000 8y ago
Worked pretty well for Gab.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Another way to deal with this would be to not apologize, but to insist the algorithms are imparital, But since, as they admit, they have historically intervened in the trending rankings, insisting that they are impartial would be lying. They could decide not to intervene this time, but that would raise he question of why this is less deserving of intervention than past issues, if they were being honest and open.

gowld 8y ago

You contradict yourselves. Anti-hate-speech laws and culture suppressed the spread of ideas. That's the concept of "chilling effects" (from the other side). If suppressing speech didn't matter, no one would be worried about it being suppressed. With the rise of non-suppressed hate speech on Reddit and Twitter and Fox News and the like, we saw a resurgence of terrorism in the US, terrorism which was very clearly inspired by the hate speech (specifically, it's conspiracy theories) and spread ideas that people wouldn't have thought up on their own.

mooseburger 8y ago
The chilling effect is entirely about the speech suppression. One of the side effects of speech suppression is that one no longer knows what people really think, and there isn't good evidence that silencing someone changes their mind, which is the really important thing. There were vigorous efforts to silence the Nazis for example, and none of it mattered, because all speech control efforts target symptoms and not causes. About right-wing terrorism, pretty sure that's independent, as it has always been there.
captainmuon 8y ago
I'd say it suppressed the expression of ideas, but it was not successful enough to suppress the spread. It certainly did not extinguish the ideas. I would not say right wing terrorism was only inspired by recent online hate speech. The US always had militias, people like Timothy McVeigh, white supremacists, and so on. However, I think that social media made it impossible to "keep the lid on" these ideas. Before we could censor this pretty good in the mass media, but then mass media and mainstream society lost their monopoly of interpretation. Now people with nasty ideas realize they are not alone and come out, and organize.
ppod 8y ago
>If suppressing speech didn't matter, no one would be worried about it being suppressed. We could worry about it because the principle might one day be used against us. It's one thing to ban swastikas, but who gets to define what counts as "terrorist"? We already see that being abused to suppress dissidents abroad.

2_listerine_pls 8y ago

People just love trolling them because they overreact.

kevinh 8y ago
Ironic bigotry is still bigotry.
- archgoon 8y ago
  context: The grandparents original line was "People just love trolling them because they overreact. Idiots think they're antisemites."

onemoresoop 8y ago

> but this did not irradicate Nazi thought, it just pushed it underground. I think it's reasonable to push Nazism underground rather than let it go mainstream and gain some steam. There are enough idiots who would think it legit and instead of eradicating it would grow. But I agree with not sweeping things under the carpet, ignoring them won't solve the problem but keep them somewhat contained for a while.

louwrentius 8y ago

This notion of free speech that would even allow calls of violence sound immoral to me. Calls for violence are not protected free speech in The Netherlands and I guess most (West) European countries. You would get fined or even jailed if you would say shit like this in our country. And I'm happy for it. Because it serves no purpose to incite violence. There's no debate to be had. There is nothing that can be debated upon. What is there to debate with people that call to kill all Jews. No, people can still have their free hate speech, but ideally not on any major social media outlet or news outlet if possible. And anyone calling for the murder on another person belongs in jail. Shame on Twitter for letting this slip through.

jakelazaroff 8y ago
This exactly. Allowing violent speech to fall inside our definition of "free speech" has a net negative impact on speech. Put another way: why would I paint a target on my back by trying to debate people who actively advocate for my murder? I'm much more likely to shut up and stay safe.
captainmuon 8y ago
Yeah I mostly agree, but I'm not suggesting to leave calls to violence in the open. Rather, replace the tweet in question by a notice saying basically "User XY called to violence against people here. We find this dispicable and totally oppose this kind of ideas. Signed, Twitter CEO. PS: To publically document what kind of person XY is, you can click [here] to read their hateful statement in original." I'd much rather have Nazis behind a content warning and publically pillored and shamed on twitter, than ban them and let them fester unbothered on Gap.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

13415 8y ago

> It was completely unthinkable and taboo to voice nazi positions in public in post WW2-Germany, it is even forbidden by law. But this did not irradicate Nazi thought, it just pushed it underground. That is precisely the point of these laws. Certain hate speech and anti constitutional propaganda is marginalized in order to not allow further recruiting and preventing these stances from becoming part of a mainstream debate again. It's an institutionalized (and therefore controversial) form of social control. The social control of ostracizing certain type of speech is present in all societies, though. If you're among ardent Christians, cursing and blasphemy is going to be 'prohibited', namely sanctioned. If you're among communists, other types of speech are prohibited. In many societies, you are not allowed to talk about certain taboo topics like sex, death, badmouthing someone's parents, etc. Certainly nobody has ever thought that German anti hate speech laws would make Nazis go away. They were invented to prevent a new Nazi party from rising again (together with other mechanisms like party prohibition by the Supreme Court) - and also, on behalf of the allied occupation forces - to prevent further embarrassment of West Germany abroad. On a side note, it was never "completely unthinkable and taboo to voice nazi positions in public in post WW2-Germany." It wasn't done in the GDR because of Gulags, whereas in West Germany this was always pretty common. There was even a successor party to the NSDAP that was promptly prohibited. There were right wing terrorists ("Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann") and plenty of old school Nazis who talked and still talk about nazi positions. We even have our own "Nazi grandma", the holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck, aged 89, who was sentenced 10 month in prison but never went there.

rchaud 8y ago

Algorithms are trained by real world data. If Twitter claimed that it is 'impartial', it would be fundamentally false (you cannot create a perfectly representative sample, and god knows how many propaganda bots are pushing up their DAUs). Worse still, it would communicate to advertisers that if Twitter's algos can be gamed so easily, its user base is 'low quality' and not worth serving ads to.

bassman9000 8y ago

Worked pretty well for Gab.