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What qualifies as hate speech and what to do about it is certainly arguable, but the underlying issue is that in both the U.S. and rest of the world there's a l

What qualifies as hate speech and what to do about it is certainly arguable, but the underlying issue is that in both the U.S. and rest of the world there's a long history of powerful social groups fomenting actual, measurable, real-world violence and suppression of minority social groups. It's true that social media is full of pearl-clutching, and that's what you propose to remedy with your "sticks and stones" curriculum, but it doesn't address the real problem of hate speech. And again, I can't stress this enough: I'm not saying that Facebook deleting posts is any kind of answer; what I'm saying is it seems you think the question of hate speech has to do with people being offended rather than people being actively harmed. Given the hyperbole in the media (social or otherwise) it's understandable why you would think that was the case, but social media isn't the best place to get your information.

logicalmonster 5y ago
Imagine making a phone-call and talking with your friend about some hot political topic and then an AT&T operator bursts in and says that this call is now blocked because you're engaging in hate-speech that might theoretically cause harm. Is this where we want society to go? As far as real world harm when it comes to permitting or not permitting speech goes, I'd put the danger of effective societal censorship creating authoritarianism that harms masses of people as so far beyond the level of harm created by some random insane person who sees some negative comments about some group on social media that it's not even on the same planet of harm. In and of themselves, words cannot cause anybody harm. As far as your concern about people being actively harmed, that's a big topic that's certainly debatable, both in terms of whether anybody is being harmed to a discussion of who is being harmed. I'm not sure if this is the best venue for this kind of debate because there's a lot that cannot be spoken about in a forum like this. But I think your preferred social media network of choice isn't the proper avenue for this task. Society has developed a police and criminal justice system over thousands of years to prevent and punish actual criminal acts (violations of life, liberty, and property) while at the same time taking great care to protect the rights of the accused. It's imperfect in many ways, yes of course, but at the moment it's the system that's actually credible. The idea that society is expecting people like Mark Zuckerberg to effectively become the society-shaping, crime-prevention czar seems insane to me.
- hairofadog 5y ago
  It's like talking to a wall.

logicalmonster 5y ago

Imagine making a phone-call and talking with your friend about some hot political topic and then an AT&T operator bursts in and says that this call is now blocked because you're engaging in hate-speech that might theoretically cause harm. Is this where we want society to go? As far as real world harm when it comes to permitting or not permitting speech goes, I'd put the danger of effective societal censorship creating authoritarianism that harms masses of people as so far beyond the level of harm created by some random insane person who sees some negative comments about some group on social media that it's not even on the same planet of harm. In and of themselves, words cannot cause anybody harm. As far as your concern about people being actively harmed, that's a big topic that's certainly debatable, both in terms of whether anybody is being harmed to a discussion of who is being harmed. I'm not sure if this is the best venue for this kind of debate because there's a lot that cannot be spoken about in a forum like this. But I think your preferred social media network of choice isn't the proper avenue for this task. Society has developed a police and criminal justice system over thousands of years to prevent and punish actual criminal acts (violations of life, liberty, and property) while at the same time taking great care to protect the rights of the accused. It's imperfect in many ways, yes of course, but at the moment it's the system that's actually credible. The idea that society is expecting people like Mark Zuckerberg to effectively become the society-shaping, crime-prevention czar seems insane to me.

hairofadog 5y ago
It's like talking to a wall.