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Combatting online racist abuse: an update following the Euros
- nsizx 5y ago"protecting the conversation by censoring the part of the conversation we don't like"
- LightG 5y agoWhat would you suggest?
- nsizx 5y agoThat they let people post whatever they want and if someone doesn't like it then they shouldn't read it.
- mattlondon 5y agoThat is the same as saying "Just don't listen to people screaming racist abuse at you in the street! Simple!" Free speech law in the UK does not protect hate crime. Sure no one has to read it, but you also don't need to give these people a platform to broadcast their views to an audience that is larger than the perpetrator's living room or pub.
- refenestrator 5y agoIt's not the same at all, trivially. Feeling unsafe around a psycho shouting at you on the street is reasonable, feeling 'unsafe' because someone tweeted a bad word is not. I'm not even saying you're wrong but that's a terrible analogy.
- LightG 5y ago"A bad word" ... is that really what is being discussed here? How about "a sustained torrent of racist abuse". I can imagine some feeling unsafe in that situation. Can't you?
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- refenestrator 5y agoI can imagine someone feeling all sorts of things but you can also just look away from the screen. If we're talking ongoing, targeted individual harassment, that's different but still less immediate than a dude physically in your grill on the street.
- LightG 5y agoThere are countless examples of situations where sustained abuse has happened online and then carries on offline. Sure, post anonymously, and that's fine, but not everyone does (nor should be required to). It's all roses at the beginning, but when they are targeted, your "look away from the screen" is looking distinctly weak. I'll stop now. I can't keep up with your edits.
- mattlondon 5y agoYou cant give people a pass on hate crime because it is happening online. You risk excusing it and ultimately then normalising it. "Oh it is ok - their hideous torrent of systemmatic abuse calling for <ethnic group A> babies to be drowned at birth is totally A-ok because they said it on twitter so no harm done." No no no. This sort of thing cannot have any "get out" clauses where it is allowed in some circumstances but not others.
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- blacktriangle 5y agoGive individual users the power to personally ignore anybody they find objectionable based on their own personal standards.
- nisegami 5y agoDo you mean automatically? Because every site I can think of already allows this to be done manually via blocking.
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- yardie 5y agoWhat part of harrassment and racism is meant to be conversational? You are still free to be an asshole. Twitter just wishes you'd do it elsewhere.
- nsizx 5y agoIf Twitter wishes assholes stopped posting on their site they should just close shop immediately.
- hef19898 5y agoSame for any other social media platform. I for sure wouldn't miss them. Not gonna happen, so. I used to think we will figure out social media, after all we figured out mass media as well. I'm not sure anymore that I'll like the process of us figuring it out...
- yardie 5y agoTwitter has to do no such thing. You agreed to a TOS when you signed up. You violated it. Goodbye. Assholes shouldn't sign up for Twitter knowing they'll be kicked off.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y agoDoes anyone on Twitter really support that, though? There are some small niches where people are consistently nice, but in general it seems like snarky, mean-spirited takes are a big part of what people go to Twitter for.
- AutumnCurtain 5y agoI've found said assholes have an attitude that they are entitled to platforms and it's incumbent on everyone else to go out of their way to avoid them. Farcical, but they will scream and cry when the idea is challenged.
- pyronik19 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eitland 5y ago> While we have always welcomed the opportunity to hear ideas from partners on what will help, including from within the football community, our data suggests that ID verification would have been unlikely to prevent the abuse from happening - as the accounts we suspended themselves were not anonymous. Of the permanently suspended accounts from the Tournament, 99% of account owners were identifiable. Even higher than expected but absolutely no surprise. Full name policies prevents the thoughtful, the vulnerable and the shy from communicating, not the trolls and abusers who either just create fake but real looking accounts or who doesn't care.
- Brakenshire 5y agoIf the accounts are subject to ID verification then the abuser can be prosecuted.
- eitland 5y agoCorrect. If the transgressions are bad enough and police have resources. But it still keeps the thoughtful, the vulnerable and the shy out of the public debate.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoI will admit, prior to FB I totally thought the opposite would happen. I couldn’t imagine saying anything political under my own name, because I would rather say nothing than incite controversy over text (which is a sub par medium of communication), because the probability of real dialog approaches 0%. The fact that there are people who don’t care surprises me somewhat, but it must be a huge cultural difference (something akin to the curse of knowledge).
- mattlondon 5y ago> 99% of the accounts suspended were not anonymous... Of the permanently suspended accounts from the Tournament, 99% of account owners were identifiable. They did not mention, but presumably these people were reported to the police and charged appropriately? Banning someone's twitter account is not exactly a deterrent - they'll just create another throw-away one and start up again.
- gorwell 5y agoThis is like the Apple photo scanning issue. Start with something all of society agrees is reprehensible and implement the tools of authoritarian censorship on that basis. "We will shortly be trialling the development of a new product feature that temporarily autoblocks accounts using harmful language" "We are also continuing to roll out our replies prompts, which encourage people to revise their replies to Tweets when it looks like the language they use could be harmful." "Everyone has a role to play - including the government" Who defines what's harmful? How long until merely unpopular views or any form of dissent is harmful language? Perhaps you think the current set of harmful-language-definers are infallible and on your side. What if that changes in 2024? What if these tools are in the hands of your enemy?
- gtirloni 5y agoWhat do you propose instead?
- hef19898 5y agoRegulation, ideally coming from an elected legislative branch of democratic governments. Like was done with mass media, e.g. radio and TV. Definitely not outsourcing that kind of stuff to companies having quasi monopolies on their services.
- gtirloni 5y agoLaws against racism already exist.
- bedhead 5y agoAllow it. Let the racists be racist. Let them expose themselves so we all know who to ridicule and ignore. Not only has this wacky notion of free speech worked well for a long time, society has grown far less racist despite no official policing of speech. The insidiousness that comes from controlling speech is far greater than the insidiousness of a small group of assholes who say mean things. The short-sightedness of many continues to astonish me.
- Leparamour 5y agoIn my opinion, much of today's online racism is merely the counterreaction to fashionable "woke-ism", the overabundance of interracial ads and the undeserved praise for underperforming individuals, as long as they are black, especially in sports, as seen during Euros or the Olympic Games in Japan. https://imgur.com/a/4EWFK9C https://imgur.com/a/4EWFK9C
- pyronik19 5y agoAnd they nobody even cares about racism when it's in "reverse". Look at reddits policy towards hate, they specifically carved out an exemption where hate directed to CIS white males is acceptable.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoThis is painfully true but also hard to discuss. Similarly, different musical verses are being censored for one reason (abuse against some subset of gender), but not for another (violence against women). Interesting times indeed…
- smhenderson 5y agothey specifically carved out an exemption where hate directed to CIS white males is acceptable. Do you have a link to a policy or some other written statement that this is the case? I find this difficult to believe without further information on what you are referring to.
- josephcsible 5y agohttps://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043503951-What-are-Reddit-s-rules- https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043503951-Wh... > Vilifying, humiliating, harassing, promoting identity based attacks against, promoting hatred against, or threatening violence against marginalized or vulnerable groups. The carve-out is the phrase "marginalized or vulnerable".
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- finiteseries 5y agoFor context, European football and especially England have a very prominent discussion going on right now re: online racist abuse, with very large figures that span the sporting and political spheres like Marcus Rashford MBE coming out in favor of e.g. immediately deleting accounts associated with racial abuse. The players, the leagues, and the government itself in the UK tend to place the blame on social media companies with recommendations like filtering & blocking posts, swift removals, and improved account verification processes that allow law enforcement to pursue the criminals behind racist abuse: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/05/euro-2020-arrests-racism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/05/euro-2020-ar...
- gadders 5y agoGiven the coverage in the UK papers after the abuse, I was surprised to find out only 34 of the racist tweets were from the UK. https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/05/there-was-no-outburst-of-racism-after-the-euro-final/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/05/there-was-no-outbur... And the graffiti on the Marcus Rashford mural wasn't racist.
- finiteseries 5y agoYou are discussing reports to the UK Football Policing Unit, not tweets. By 14th July, 1,961 Tweets had been removed proactively following the Final, with a total of 126 removed from reports. the UK was - by far - the largest country of origin for the abusive Tweets we removed on the night of the Final and in the days that followed. https://blog.twitter.com/en_gb/topics/company/2020/combatting-online-racist-abuse-an-update-following-the-euros https://blog.twitter.com/en_gb/topics/company/2020/combattin...
- gadders 5y agohttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58094408 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58094408 "The UK Football Policing Unit received 600 reports of racist comments sent to England's black players after the defeat and judged 207 to be criminal. Of these, 123 were posted by people overseas, while 34 came from the UK." //edit// Yes, criminally racist tweets. A higher bar than Twitter's.