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Facebook to police anti-Black hate speech more aggressively than anti-White

69 points by burnthrow 6y ago

DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
EDIT: Whoever flagged the post: thanks for proving my point. I could start a long outrage rant, but I don't even care anymore. I'm tired of arguing with people at this point. > Comments like “White people are stupid” were treated the same as anti-Semitic or racist slurs. [and won't be anymore] My opinion, and this won't change: This policy is racist. Whoever came up with it is racist. Whoever defends it is racist. EDIT/OFFTOPIC: Just figured out, on your profile you can enable display of flagged/removed posts. You can then vouch for their un-removal. May I consider myself a hackernews-necromancer now?
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  I think the blanket insistence that anybody who has an argument for this must be racist is breathtakingly hypocritical.
  - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
    > anybody who has an argument for this must be racist Anybody who believes people of one skin colour should be treated different than people of another is, in my books, a racist. There's no conversation to be had here.
    - wbazant 6y ago
      Well I do, I think groups of people who were treated badly in the past should now be treated a little better for a while. It's not enough to say, okay, let's all be fair from now on. I think this misses the acknowledgement of all the past violations of this principle, and any attempts to make this right.
      - caffeine 6y ago
        Hypothetical scenario: Before I was born, my father murdered your father, and got away with it. Now, after my father has passed away, the truth is revealed. What should my punishment be?
        happytoexplain 6y ago
        For the record, I lean toward the theory that creating balance will eventually return the scale is equilibrium, and that is probably better in the long term than giving the scale a push to get to equilibrium faster. However, your analogy doesn't make sense. No individual should be explicitly punished for the sins of an individual ancestor. But if some huge group of ancestors commits an atrocity against a target group that has effects lasting generations, to the point where that target group still suffers the ancestral hatreds to this day (just look at the dead posts in this thread - on Hacker News), then it's not exactly an outrageous occurrence if the society gives some boon to the targeted group. Of course, society is a zero-sum game, and a boon to any is a burden on others, but that's how the entire system works - there's no getting away from the physics of that. But to say the other groups are "punished" with no further context implies something worse than that. There's no way to compare this scenario with an individual person committing a crime against another.
        caffeine 6y ago
        That sounds reasonable on the surface, but actually it's even worse. Groups are just sets of individuals. And "boons" are punishment if they are forced. So to adjust the example: a group of people who look like my father killed a group of people who look like your father. What is my punishment? It sounds absurd because group identity is absurd. Are there individuals who need help? Let's help them. We do already, but we can do more. Are there individuals committing crimes of real violence? Let's stop them. That's not absurd at all.
        __s 6y ago
        If they used that murder to reap profit & you inherited that profit, you could pay some of it back
    - svrtknst 6y ago
      > There's no conversation to be had here. then why engage in one? If we assume that antiwhie and antiblack are both racism, would you argue that, in the current context, political climate, culture etc, that they have the same consequences? If yes, then, well, maybe there is no discussion to be had, it would be an inane claim. If no, some racism has more consequences, then this insistence that "its all racism" is pointless at best - the term is mostly useful to describe harmful relationships and ways to combat that harm.
      - Dirlewanger 6y ago
        This sounds like justification that some forms of racism aren't as racist as others. Sounds a lot like "separate but equal" reasoning. Disgusting.
      - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
        No. This is simple. Do you believe in treating people differently based on their race? It's a yes-or-no question, and one of them is literally the definition of racism. We can argue about the hypothetical merits of this all you want, but my point is not that it wouldn't work. You know what else works? Death penalty. Nuclear bombs. Pineapple on pizza. No, my point is that it's wrong, regardless of whether it has the intended effect. When I say there's no conversation to be had, I specifically mean about whether or not this is right or whether society should accept it.
        happytoexplain 6y ago
        >Do you believe in treating people differently based on their race? Yes, I do, just like I believe in treating people differently based on all sorts of properties, intrinsic and otherwise. I also lean toward the anti-affirmative-action side of things, despite totally believing that the core rationale has merit. Regardless, you're irrationally insisting that a complex social problem can be distilled into an 11-word yes-or-no question that frames your side of the argument favorably.
        nojokes 6y ago
- bitwize 6y ago
  "A society which has for 300 years done something special against the Negro must now do something special for the Negro." --Martin Luther King, Jr.
  - nojokes 6y ago
    The world is not US. There are many white people who have done nothing to the black people. Even more, they have been under similar obsession for even more time. Get over of your US centric view of the world.
    - valarauko 6y ago
      I think the usual counterargument to your point is that Europeans have greatly benefited, directly or indirectly, from the conquest & colonization of Black & Brown people. I don't know how much water that argument holds, but there it is. Sure, there were European groups that were themselves being actively colonized/conquered (eg, Ireland), but it's also true that the conditions in their home countries led many of these same peoples to seek their fortune elsewhere and to end up at the vanguard of colonization. For example, when the British were in India, there was an outsize presence of Scottish & Irish fortune seekers in the subcontinent who made out like gangbusters.
      - nojokes 6y ago
        This perspective is not any better. Try to put it into your head - most white people did not benefit from the oppression of the black people. I did not, my ancestors did not, my countrymen did not. I do not share any collective guilt with some American slave owners, or French colonists. Like it was told, this policy is racist. Whoever came up with it is racist. Whoever defends it is racist.
        valarauko 6y ago
        Again, this is not my argument - just one that I've seen brought up in this context. It's also not completely wrong. While it's possible you, your ancestors, or your countrymen did not directly or indirectly benefit a single cent from a transfer of wealth via colonialism or oppression of non-Europeans, I do honestly doubt that would be true for most people of European descent.
- rjkennedy98 6y ago
  This wouldn't be so awful, if it wasn't painfully obvious that American Black people are some of the most racist people on the planet. Many of them treat acting white or being around white people as something akin to treason. This is just another piece of evidence that they cannot hold themselves to the standards of everyone else and so they must be given special treatment since their culture is so intolerance. Corporations are too happy to oblige since they don't want to kick Black people off their platforms.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
    Got any hard evidence for these anecdotes? Your comment reads very poorly and is likely against the community guidelines here.
    - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
      > Your comment reads very poorly and is likely against the community guidelines here I agree with the first part, but what about it would be against any guidelines?
      - sonotathrowaway 6y ago
        Aggressively slandering and smearing racial groups on the basis of made-up anecdata seems the definition of flame-baiting to me.
        DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
        > on the basis of made-up anecdata And you're now accusing them of having made stuff up? How is that any better? Isn't the left all about respecting peoples subjective life experiences?
        sonotathrowaway 6y ago
        To be clear for future context, you’re defending the now flagged & deleted comment that said all black people hate white people as “his life experience”. Do you honestly think that was his life’s experience - that every single minority he’s met has expressed hatred towards him? It seems pretty clear that you’re concern trolling here and not arguing in good faith. Or maybe you’re not, and you genuinely believe that /rjkennedy98 has met every black person and knows us well enough to judge our hearts. Can you please explain if you think he’s met every black person, that he can pass group judgement?
dandare 6y ago
What really angers me about this - and the radical left in general - is not that it is dangerous per se. It dangerous because it gives free munition to the populists and alt-right cranks, who are dangerous per se.
- orbifold 6y ago
  What is dangerous is if a country has radical groups in both directions , which demand allegiance from moderates. It is also interesting how class (laborer, burocrat,farmer,...) has been replaced by race or “privilege” (basically inconsequential for changes in wealth distribution) in radical-left circles. Which is why it is easy for big companies to be “woke” because it doesn’t threaten the established order, but caters to special interests. This navel gazing and self-absorption by a large fraction of young people that otherwise could protest economic inequality like the occupy-wallstreet movement did is pretty intentional I think.
  - wbazant 6y ago
    I like this distinction of class and privilege you've made, I think it's interesting how they differ and how they're similar. What do you think about the argument that in a knowledge economy, a person's "privilege" which involves their education, but also a stable life and lack of stuff that distracts them from thinking clearly is more or less what gives a person their middle class status, and their "privilege" which involves connections to people with capital and ability to impress them, is crucial to making it rich?
- meowfly 6y ago
  I don't see how people think that it isn't dangerous. Ezra Klein wrote the following on Vox. > A few years ago, it became popular on feminist Twitter to tweet about the awful effects of patriarchal culture and attach the line #KillAllMen. This became popular enough that a bunch of people I know and hang out with and even love began using it in casual conversation. > And you know what? I didn’t like it. It made me feel defensive. It still makes me feel defensive. I’m a man, and I recoil hearing people I care about say all men should be killed. > But I also knew that wasn’t what they were saying. They didn’t want me put to death. They didn’t want any men put to death. They didn’t hate me, and they didn’t hate men. “#KillAllMen” Ezra admits that viscerally it didn't sit right and it took some understanding to come to the conclusion that what was being said wasn't what was actually meant. This is the exact same argument people like Peter Thiel make, "take Trump seriously not literally". The idea that people have to read through the lines of hyperbolic and aggressive speech and understand the intentions and history is absurd. It just seems obvious that incendiary and zero sum language is going to push people into more extreme (and authoritarian) politics.
dilap 6y ago
It's interesting to watch language evolve. Racist: bias against PoC Race-blind: no bias on the basis of race Antiracist: bias against non-PoC (perceived to be "anti"racist because it goes against historical racism against PoC)
- bart__ 6y ago
  Please note this language change is only for the US
  - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
    Considering how aggressively the US is exporting its culture: forget it.
    - bart__ 6y ago
      I guess that's true, but I must say that in my direct vicinity there is a lot of anti-US sentiment, especially on their politics and culture "indoctrination" of other west countries. I'm a student in the NL
      - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
        I'm from (east) Germany and over here it's kinda mixed. Most people have a sort of passive acceptance for american cultural imports, but many also dislike large parts of it.
        effingwewt 6y ago
        As an American, I hope more people see us as a warning, rather than something to aspire to. I can't even watch Shark Tank anymore (was a guilty pleasure), because I'm tired of hearing about 'the american dream'.
    - dang 6y ago
      Adding nationalistic flamewar to the race flamewar you've already been fomenting is seriously not ok. Please stop posting flamebait to HN.
_iyig 6y ago
>In the first phase of the project, which was announced internally to a small group in October, engineers said they had changed the company’s systems to deprioritize policing contemptuous comments about “Whites,” “men” and “Americans.” Facebook still considers such attacks to be hate speech, and users can still report it to the company. However, the company’s technology now treats them as “low-sensitivity” — or less likely to be harmful — so that they are no longer automatically deleted by the company’s algorithms. If you want to destroy a multi-racial democracy, alienating and scapegoating its largest, poorest (in absolute population terms [0][1][2]), and most well-armed ethnicity during a period of economic instability seems like a great approach. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+impoverished+black+people+in+america https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+impoverished+black+... [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+impoverished+hispanic+people+in+america https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+impoverished+hispan... [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+impoverished+whites+in+america https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+impoverished+whites...
okprod 6y ago
Privilege is invisible to those who have it
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
  That has a bit of an "emperors new clothes" feel to it if you ask me
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  > Privilege is invisible to those who have it This is tricky, because in theory it can apply both ways, but in practice people who accuse others of having invisible privileges will deny having their own. It's like having your cake and eating it too. "You are so privileged!" "No, I am not." "Yes you are, but you can't see it, precisely because you are privileged." "Well, you are privileged too, in a different way." "No, I am not." "How could you know, if the privilege is invisible to those who have it?" "Well, I just know for fact that you are privileged and I am not. And my friends agree with me. Unlike your friends, who agree with you, because they are as wrong as you are."
badconvincer 6y ago
So HN is being brigaded now? Nothing stays good.
Knufen 6y ago
Lets replace one type of racism with another. Maybe instead of aiming for a swinging pendulum we should try to balance it to make sure everyone is treated fairly.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  Bean counters have deemed that too expensive. /s? I'm not even sure tbh.
caffeine 6y ago
This is a rational economic response to outrage culture. Anti-white speech elicits minimal economic damage (ie no backlash). Anti-black speech elicits enormous consequences. So Facebook is simply calibrating their model to accurately reflect the real world cost for the company of different types of speech.
- dandare 6y ago
  Based on the same logic, not letting black people in your neighbourhood is the same rational economic response to crime. That is why we don't allow for discrimination based on race or gender.
  - caffeine 6y ago
    I think the variable of interest with crime is poverty, not race. Rich black people don't commit more crime than rich white people. And we DO discriminate economically in our neighborhoods - people move to wealthier areas where the opportunity cost of crime is higher and better schools + better police make crime unattractive.
msla 6y ago
How about hate speech against Romani? Most would see them as White (at least inasmuch as they're not Black) therefore discrimination against them isn't as bad, as per Facebook, and yet anti-Romani discrimination is much more prevalent (and vicious!) in Europe. Is this Facebook saying it's an American-only company? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiziganism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiziganism https://www.hhrjournal.org/2020/04/anti-roma-racism-is-spiraling-during-covid-19-pandemic/ https://www.hhrjournal.org/2020/04/anti-roma-racism-is-spira... > From Slovakia to Romania and Bulgaria, states have enacted disproportionate or militarized measures targeting Romani neighborhoods or towns. Some of these measures are driven by a racist narrative that casts Roma as a collective health and safety threat. The Bulgarian government has imposed particular measures, including road blocks and police checkpoints, on several Romani neighborhoods despite no evidence of COVID-19 positive test results there.[2] A Bulgarian Member of the European Parliament, Angel Dzhambazki, speculated that Romani “ghettos [could] turn out to be the real nests of contagion.” https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-and-travellers/anti-gypsyism-/-discrimination https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-and-travellers/anti-gypsyism...
- wbazant 6y ago
  Good point! The "whites and blacks" division and even the word racism are very Western and assume a context of colonisation. I bet there are many omissions like that in all the countries Facebook operates in, and doesn't know much about.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  It is tricky to apply American norms of political correctness in other environments, which have different history and different conflicts. I think, admitting that the norms are in fact American, might already be too controversial. Even more tricky is when you realize that SJWs in other countries often come from privileged backgrounds (practically all of them have university education), and get their ideology from internet, mostly reading American sources. So, even if you hire a local team of Slovakian, Romanian, or Bulgarian ideologically pure people as moderators, they may be very sensitive about any kind of anti-Black discrimination or stereotyping (because that's what they discuss daily on Twitter), but quite ignorant about the Roma. Also, in Europe you have lots of white groups hating other white groups, e.g. because of them speaking different language. So if the rule is that hate speech is okay as long as it is against whites...
Simulacra 6y ago
Policing one group more than another is how we got to this point in the first place. Past sins, past acts, do not justify discrimination, or selective policing in the future, it will only make the problem of disproportionate punishment worse. It's like Yelp putting a scarlet letter on black owned businesses thinking that will make things better, instead of identifying businesses for people to NOT visit. Separate but equal is over, why are we still debating this?
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  >why are we still debating this? It's cheaper to incite a race/sex/gender war than fight a class war against 300 million people.
  - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
    "oh look the peasants are ripping each other to shreds, how delightful! Jenkins! Fetch me my binoculars!" EDIT: Translation: Yes, it is quite obviously the rich that profit from the current "culture war" while the working class, regardless of their political views, are pulling the short straw.
    - dang 6y ago
      Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? It's not what this site is for, and you've been flaming up a storm. Not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
gedy 6y ago
Good timing as I was just reached out to by a Facebook recruiter. No thank you!
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  Make sure to tell them exactly why you're declining.
h2odragon 6y ago
We'll fix prejudice and bias, with prejudice and bias! The strategy has been so successful everywhere else its been tried.
aluminum96 6y ago
It's really disappointing to see such reactionary comments on HN. Obviously Facebook ought to pay more attention to anti-Black racism: this has historically been where the problem is, and so it's where the bulk of the effort should go.
- sonotathrowaway 6y ago
  Tangential (and not to attack you specifically), but I don’t understand the basis by which tech, HN included, judges itself to be more liberal and less reactionary than other industries. There’s just as many racists in tech as the rest of American society, with a special bend towards libertarian/scientific realism/racism that is much more pronounced than in other segments of America than I’ve seen. It’s traditionally been one of the most unwelcoming places for minorities (Hi Coinbase!), and has pioneered new workplace and have championed euphemisms like “culture fit” to exclude people who don’t look like them (not limited to black people).
- lovegoblin 6y ago
  > It's really disappointing to see such reactionary comments on HN. Disappointing, yes. Surprising? No.
- adingus 6y ago
  What efforts? There is no reason to weigh things differently. Hate speech is removed via an algorithm, it costs them nothing to weigh hate speech equally... Actually it's probably easier to design an algorithm where everything has the same weight.
- rabite 6y ago
  This is not the case. The vast majority of interracial violence is African on European. People will also say "what about slavery" being completely ignorant of history, which includes millions of White Europeans being kidnapped and raped and worked to death in Africa by the Barbary slave trade. There are no White descendants of the White slaves that were brought to Africa -- largely because it was the policy of many of these places to kill even the children that were borne of rape to these slaves. We need a principled stand against racially incendiary rhetoric or none at all. Either the basis needs to be the First Amendment, in which none of it should be policed, or it needs to be evenly applied regardless of race, and people who post hate about Whites need to be banned from social media instead of verified and glorified.
hnracer 6y ago
This is just going to help right wing populists get elected. When I read this I feel angry, it strikes me as deeply racist and antithetical to my values. It's the type of feeling that I imagine pushed a certain number of people towards Trump. I can guarantee that there are millions of other people who will be feeling the same way and will express that feeling the only place they can (since they have no voice in mainstream journalism or entertainment) - at the voting booth.
underseacables 6y ago
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

69 points by burnthrow 6y ago

EDIT: Whoever flagged the post: thanks for proving my point. I could start a long outrage rant, but I don't even care anymore. I'm tired of arguing with people at this point. > Comments like “White people are stupid” were treated the same as anti-Semitic or racist slurs. [and won't be anymore] My opinion, and this won't change: This policy is racist. Whoever came up with it is racist. Whoever defends it is racist. EDIT/OFFTOPIC: Just figured out, on your profile you can enable display of flagged/removed posts. You can then vouch for their un-removal. May I consider myself a hackernews-necromancer now?

happytoexplain 6y ago
I think the blanket insistence that anybody who has an argument for this must be racist is breathtakingly hypocritical.
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
  > anybody who has an argument for this must be racist Anybody who believes people of one skin colour should be treated different than people of another is, in my books, a racist. There's no conversation to be had here.
  - wbazant 6y ago
    Well I do, I think groups of people who were treated badly in the past should now be treated a little better for a while. It's not enough to say, okay, let's all be fair from now on. I think this misses the acknowledgement of all the past violations of this principle, and any attempts to make this right.
    - caffeine 6y ago
      Hypothetical scenario: Before I was born, my father murdered your father, and got away with it. Now, after my father has passed away, the truth is revealed. What should my punishment be?
      - happytoexplain 6y ago
        For the record, I lean toward the theory that creating balance will eventually return the scale is equilibrium, and that is probably better in the long term than giving the scale a push to get to equilibrium faster. However, your analogy doesn't make sense. No individual should be explicitly punished for the sins of an individual ancestor. But if some huge group of ancestors commits an atrocity against a target group that has effects lasting generations, to the point where that target group still suffers the ancestral hatreds to this day (just look at the dead posts in this thread - on Hacker News), then it's not exactly an outrageous occurrence if the society gives some boon to the targeted group. Of course, society is a zero-sum game, and a boon to any is a burden on others, but that's how the entire system works - there's no getting away from the physics of that. But to say the other groups are "punished" with no further context implies something worse than that. There's no way to compare this scenario with an individual person committing a crime against another.
        caffeine 6y ago
        That sounds reasonable on the surface, but actually it's even worse. Groups are just sets of individuals. And "boons" are punishment if they are forced. So to adjust the example: a group of people who look like my father killed a group of people who look like your father. What is my punishment? It sounds absurd because group identity is absurd. Are there individuals who need help? Let's help them. We do already, but we can do more. Are there individuals committing crimes of real violence? Let's stop them. That's not absurd at all.
      - __s 6y ago
        If they used that murder to reap profit & you inherited that profit, you could pay some of it back
  - svrtknst 6y ago
    > There's no conversation to be had here. then why engage in one? If we assume that antiwhie and antiblack are both racism, would you argue that, in the current context, political climate, culture etc, that they have the same consequences? If yes, then, well, maybe there is no discussion to be had, it would be an inane claim. If no, some racism has more consequences, then this insistence that "its all racism" is pointless at best - the term is mostly useful to describe harmful relationships and ways to combat that harm.
    - Dirlewanger 6y ago
      This sounds like justification that some forms of racism aren't as racist as others. Sounds a lot like "separate but equal" reasoning. Disgusting.
    - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
      No. This is simple. Do you believe in treating people differently based on their race? It's a yes-or-no question, and one of them is literally the definition of racism. We can argue about the hypothetical merits of this all you want, but my point is not that it wouldn't work. You know what else works? Death penalty. Nuclear bombs. Pineapple on pizza. No, my point is that it's wrong, regardless of whether it has the intended effect. When I say there's no conversation to be had, I specifically mean about whether or not this is right or whether society should accept it.
      - happytoexplain 6y ago
        >Do you believe in treating people differently based on their race? Yes, I do, just like I believe in treating people differently based on all sorts of properties, intrinsic and otherwise. I also lean toward the anti-affirmative-action side of things, despite totally believing that the core rationale has merit. Regardless, you're irrationally insisting that a complex social problem can be distilled into an 11-word yes-or-no question that frames your side of the argument favorably.
        nojokes 6y ago
bitwize 6y ago
"A society which has for 300 years done something special against the Negro must now do something special for the Negro." --Martin Luther King, Jr.
- nojokes 6y ago
  The world is not US. There are many white people who have done nothing to the black people. Even more, they have been under similar obsession for even more time. Get over of your US centric view of the world.
  - valarauko 6y ago
    I think the usual counterargument to your point is that Europeans have greatly benefited, directly or indirectly, from the conquest & colonization of Black & Brown people. I don't know how much water that argument holds, but there it is. Sure, there were European groups that were themselves being actively colonized/conquered (eg, Ireland), but it's also true that the conditions in their home countries led many of these same peoples to seek their fortune elsewhere and to end up at the vanguard of colonization. For example, when the British were in India, there was an outsize presence of Scottish & Irish fortune seekers in the subcontinent who made out like gangbusters.
    - nojokes 6y ago
      This perspective is not any better. Try to put it into your head - most white people did not benefit from the oppression of the black people. I did not, my ancestors did not, my countrymen did not. I do not share any collective guilt with some American slave owners, or French colonists. Like it was told, this policy is racist. Whoever came up with it is racist. Whoever defends it is racist.
      - valarauko 6y ago
        Again, this is not my argument - just one that I've seen brought up in this context. It's also not completely wrong. While it's possible you, your ancestors, or your countrymen did not directly or indirectly benefit a single cent from a transfer of wealth via colonialism or oppression of non-Europeans, I do honestly doubt that would be true for most people of European descent.
rjkennedy98 6y ago
This wouldn't be so awful, if it wasn't painfully obvious that American Black people are some of the most racist people on the planet. Many of them treat acting white or being around white people as something akin to treason. This is just another piece of evidence that they cannot hold themselves to the standards of everyone else and so they must be given special treatment since their culture is so intolerance. Corporations are too happy to oblige since they don't want to kick Black people off their platforms.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  Got any hard evidence for these anecdotes? Your comment reads very poorly and is likely against the community guidelines here.
  - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
    > Your comment reads very poorly and is likely against the community guidelines here I agree with the first part, but what about it would be against any guidelines?
    - sonotathrowaway 6y ago
      Aggressively slandering and smearing racial groups on the basis of made-up anecdata seems the definition of flame-baiting to me.
      - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
        > on the basis of made-up anecdata And you're now accusing them of having made stuff up? How is that any better? Isn't the left all about respecting peoples subjective life experiences?
        sonotathrowaway 6y ago
        To be clear for future context, you’re defending the now flagged & deleted comment that said all black people hate white people as “his life experience”. Do you honestly think that was his life’s experience - that every single minority he’s met has expressed hatred towards him? It seems pretty clear that you’re concern trolling here and not arguing in good faith. Or maybe you’re not, and you genuinely believe that /rjkennedy98 has met every black person and knows us well enough to judge our hearts. Can you please explain if you think he’s met every black person, that he can pass group judgement?

dandare 6y ago

What really angers me about this - and the radical left in general - is not that it is dangerous per se. It dangerous because it gives free munition to the populists and alt-right cranks, who are dangerous per se.

orbifold 6y ago
What is dangerous is if a country has radical groups in both directions , which demand allegiance from moderates. It is also interesting how class (laborer, burocrat,farmer,...) has been replaced by race or “privilege” (basically inconsequential for changes in wealth distribution) in radical-left circles. Which is why it is easy for big companies to be “woke” because it doesn’t threaten the established order, but caters to special interests. This navel gazing and self-absorption by a large fraction of young people that otherwise could protest economic inequality like the occupy-wallstreet movement did is pretty intentional I think.
- wbazant 6y ago
  I like this distinction of class and privilege you've made, I think it's interesting how they differ and how they're similar. What do you think about the argument that in a knowledge economy, a person's "privilege" which involves their education, but also a stable life and lack of stuff that distracts them from thinking clearly is more or less what gives a person their middle class status, and their "privilege" which involves connections to people with capital and ability to impress them, is crucial to making it rich?
meowfly 6y ago
I don't see how people think that it isn't dangerous. Ezra Klein wrote the following on Vox. > A few years ago, it became popular on feminist Twitter to tweet about the awful effects of patriarchal culture and attach the line #KillAllMen. This became popular enough that a bunch of people I know and hang out with and even love began using it in casual conversation. > And you know what? I didn’t like it. It made me feel defensive. It still makes me feel defensive. I’m a man, and I recoil hearing people I care about say all men should be killed. > But I also knew that wasn’t what they were saying. They didn’t want me put to death. They didn’t want any men put to death. They didn’t hate me, and they didn’t hate men. “#KillAllMen” Ezra admits that viscerally it didn't sit right and it took some understanding to come to the conclusion that what was being said wasn't what was actually meant. This is the exact same argument people like Peter Thiel make, "take Trump seriously not literally". The idea that people have to read through the lines of hyperbolic and aggressive speech and understand the intentions and history is absurd. It just seems obvious that incendiary and zero sum language is going to push people into more extreme (and authoritarian) politics.

dilap 6y ago

It's interesting to watch language evolve. Racist: bias against PoC Race-blind: no bias on the basis of race Antiracist: bias against non-PoC (perceived to be "anti"racist because it goes against historical racism against PoC)

bart__ 6y ago
Please note this language change is only for the US
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
  Considering how aggressively the US is exporting its culture: forget it.
  - bart__ 6y ago
    I guess that's true, but I must say that in my direct vicinity there is a lot of anti-US sentiment, especially on their politics and culture "indoctrination" of other west countries. I'm a student in the NL
    - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
      I'm from (east) Germany and over here it's kinda mixed. Most people have a sort of passive acceptance for american cultural imports, but many also dislike large parts of it.
      - effingwewt 6y ago
        As an American, I hope more people see us as a warning, rather than something to aspire to. I can't even watch Shark Tank anymore (was a guilty pleasure), because I'm tired of hearing about 'the american dream'.
  - dang 6y ago
    Adding nationalistic flamewar to the race flamewar you've already been fomenting is seriously not ok. Please stop posting flamebait to HN.

_iyig 6y ago

>In the first phase of the project, which was announced internally to a small group in October, engineers said they had changed the company’s systems to deprioritize policing contemptuous comments about “Whites,” “men” and “Americans.” Facebook still considers such attacks to be hate speech, and users can still report it to the company. However, the company’s technology now treats them as “low-sensitivity” — or less likely to be harmful — so that they are no longer automatically deleted by the company’s algorithms. If you want to destroy a multi-racial democracy, alienating and scapegoating its largest, poorest (in absolute population terms [0][1][2]), and most well-armed ethnicity during a period of economic instability seems like a great approach. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+impoverished+black+people+in+america https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+impoverished+black+... [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+impoverished+hispanic+people+in+america https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+impoverished+hispan... [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+impoverished+whites+in+america https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+impoverished+whites...

okprod 6y ago

Privilege is invisible to those who have it

DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
That has a bit of an "emperors new clothes" feel to it if you ask me
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Viliam1234 6y ago
> Privilege is invisible to those who have it This is tricky, because in theory it can apply both ways, but in practice people who accuse others of having invisible privileges will deny having their own. It's like having your cake and eating it too. "You are so privileged!" "No, I am not." "Yes you are, but you can't see it, precisely because you are privileged." "Well, you are privileged too, in a different way." "No, I am not." "How could you know, if the privilege is invisible to those who have it?" "Well, I just know for fact that you are privileged and I am not. And my friends agree with me. Unlike your friends, who agree with you, because they are as wrong as you are."

badconvincer 6y ago

So HN is being brigaded now? Nothing stays good.

Knufen 6y ago

Lets replace one type of racism with another. Maybe instead of aiming for a swinging pendulum we should try to balance it to make sure everyone is treated fairly.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
Bean counters have deemed that too expensive. /s? I'm not even sure tbh.

caffeine 6y ago

This is a rational economic response to outrage culture. Anti-white speech elicits minimal economic damage (ie no backlash). Anti-black speech elicits enormous consequences. So Facebook is simply calibrating their model to accurately reflect the real world cost for the company of different types of speech.

dandare 6y ago
Based on the same logic, not letting black people in your neighbourhood is the same rational economic response to crime. That is why we don't allow for discrimination based on race or gender.
- caffeine 6y ago
  I think the variable of interest with crime is poverty, not race. Rich black people don't commit more crime than rich white people. And we DO discriminate economically in our neighborhoods - people move to wealthier areas where the opportunity cost of crime is higher and better schools + better police make crime unattractive.

msla 6y ago

How about hate speech against Romani? Most would see them as White (at least inasmuch as they're not Black) therefore discrimination against them isn't as bad, as per Facebook, and yet anti-Romani discrimination is much more prevalent (and vicious!) in Europe. Is this Facebook saying it's an American-only company? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiziganism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiziganism https://www.hhrjournal.org/2020/04/anti-roma-racism-is-spiraling-during-covid-19-pandemic/ https://www.hhrjournal.org/2020/04/anti-roma-racism-is-spira... > From Slovakia to Romania and Bulgaria, states have enacted disproportionate or militarized measures targeting Romani neighborhoods or towns. Some of these measures are driven by a racist narrative that casts Roma as a collective health and safety threat. The Bulgarian government has imposed particular measures, including road blocks and police checkpoints, on several Romani neighborhoods despite no evidence of COVID-19 positive test results there.[2] A Bulgarian Member of the European Parliament, Angel Dzhambazki, speculated that Romani “ghettos [could] turn out to be the real nests of contagion.” https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-and-travellers/anti-gypsyism-/-discrimination https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-and-travellers/anti-gypsyism...

wbazant 6y ago
Good point! The "whites and blacks" division and even the word racism are very Western and assume a context of colonisation. I bet there are many omissions like that in all the countries Facebook operates in, and doesn't know much about.
Viliam1234 6y ago
It is tricky to apply American norms of political correctness in other environments, which have different history and different conflicts. I think, admitting that the norms are in fact American, might already be too controversial. Even more tricky is when you realize that SJWs in other countries often come from privileged backgrounds (practically all of them have university education), and get their ideology from internet, mostly reading American sources. So, even if you hire a local team of Slovakian, Romanian, or Bulgarian ideologically pure people as moderators, they may be very sensitive about any kind of anti-Black discrimination or stereotyping (because that's what they discuss daily on Twitter), but quite ignorant about the Roma. Also, in Europe you have lots of white groups hating other white groups, e.g. because of them speaking different language. So if the rule is that hate speech is okay as long as it is against whites...

Simulacra 6y ago

Policing one group more than another is how we got to this point in the first place. Past sins, past acts, do not justify discrimination, or selective policing in the future, it will only make the problem of disproportionate punishment worse. It's like Yelp putting a scarlet letter on black owned businesses thinking that will make things better, instead of identifying businesses for people to NOT visit. Separate but equal is over, why are we still debating this?

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
>why are we still debating this? It's cheaper to incite a race/sex/gender war than fight a class war against 300 million people.
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
  "oh look the peasants are ripping each other to shreds, how delightful! Jenkins! Fetch me my binoculars!" EDIT: Translation: Yes, it is quite obviously the rich that profit from the current "culture war" while the working class, regardless of their political views, are pulling the short straw.
  - dang 6y ago
    Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? It's not what this site is for, and you've been flaming up a storm. Not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

gedy 6y ago

Good timing as I was just reached out to by a Facebook recruiter. No thank you!

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
Make sure to tell them exactly why you're declining.

h2odragon 6y ago

We'll fix prejudice and bias, with prejudice and bias! The strategy has been so successful everywhere else its been tried.

aluminum96 6y ago

It's really disappointing to see such reactionary comments on HN. Obviously Facebook ought to pay more attention to anti-Black racism: this has historically been where the problem is, and so it's where the bulk of the effort should go.

sonotathrowaway 6y ago
Tangential (and not to attack you specifically), but I don’t understand the basis by which tech, HN included, judges itself to be more liberal and less reactionary than other industries. There’s just as many racists in tech as the rest of American society, with a special bend towards libertarian/scientific realism/racism that is much more pronounced than in other segments of America than I’ve seen. It’s traditionally been one of the most unwelcoming places for minorities (Hi Coinbase!), and has pioneered new workplace and have championed euphemisms like “culture fit” to exclude people who don’t look like them (not limited to black people).
lovegoblin 6y ago
> It's really disappointing to see such reactionary comments on HN. Disappointing, yes. Surprising? No.
adingus 6y ago
What efforts? There is no reason to weigh things differently. Hate speech is removed via an algorithm, it costs them nothing to weigh hate speech equally... Actually it's probably easier to design an algorithm where everything has the same weight.
rabite 6y ago
This is not the case. The vast majority of interracial violence is African on European. People will also say "what about slavery" being completely ignorant of history, which includes millions of White Europeans being kidnapped and raped and worked to death in Africa by the Barbary slave trade. There are no White descendants of the White slaves that were brought to Africa -- largely because it was the policy of many of these places to kill even the children that were borne of rape to these slaves. We need a principled stand against racially incendiary rhetoric or none at all. Either the basis needs to be the First Amendment, in which none of it should be policed, or it needs to be evenly applied regardless of race, and people who post hate about Whites need to be banned from social media instead of verified and glorified.

hnracer 6y ago

This is just going to help right wing populists get elected. When I read this I feel angry, it strikes me as deeply racist and antithetical to my values. It's the type of feeling that I imagine pushed a certain number of people towards Trump. I can guarantee that there are millions of other people who will be feeling the same way and will express that feeling the only place they can (since they have no voice in mainstream journalism or entertainment) - at the voting booth.

underseacables 6y ago

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.