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Official hate speech policies and enforcement patterns on Reddit, Facebook and Twitter explicitly allow racist speech that targets whites. Facebook: https://re

Official hate speech policies and enforcement patterns on Reddit, Facebook and Twitter explicitly allow racist speech that targets whites. Facebook: https://reason.com/volokh/2020/12/07/facebook-discriminating-against-whites-males-americans-in-its-hate-speech-policy/ https://reason.com/volokh/2020/12/07/facebook-discriminating... >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. Twitter's stated policies are better, but they allow this kind of slander in practice: https://twitter.com/AyannaPressley/status/1298780540431224832 https://twitter.com/AyannaPressley/status/129878054043122483... Reddit: https://reclaimthenet.org/reddit-hate-speech-majority-groups/ https://reclaimthenet.org/reddit-hate-speech-majority-groups... >While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority Historically, Reddit in particular hosted extremely hateful subreddits against black people and other minorities. It seems they decided to correct this by inverting rather than eliminating racial bias. This is not a long-term recipe for social cohesion. For anecdata, see most online media of the past ten years: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FacehMiXEAAAO9d?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FacehMiXEAAAO9d?format=jpg&name=... University professors like Rutger's Brittney Cooper saying "I think that white people are committed to being villains in the aggregate", and "we got to take these motherf-ckers out:" https://nypost.com/2021/10/29/rutgers-professor-calls-white-people-villains/ https://nypost.com/2021/10/29/rutgers-professor-calls-white-... That was a year ago, she still has her job and none but conservative outlets seemed to care: https://africanastudies.rutgers.edu/faculty-mainmenu-134/core-faculty/140-brittney-cooper https://africanastudies.rutgers.edu/faculty-mainmenu-134/cor...

kmeisthax 4y ago
"They don't censor reverse racism as badly" is a far cry from what you are alleging. It sounds like Facebook realized they were overmoderating and backed down. And, furthermore, I would rather tech giants err on the side of less censorship. The problem that they've engendered over the past decade is that they want to punish everyone rather than just dealing with narrow problems. If you realize your platform is being used for, say, harassment; you don't need to impose stricter speech rules. You need to make it harder to use your platform to harass people and provide meaningful support to those who have been harassed. They didn't really... do that. They imposed broad "whatever pisses off our advertisers" policies. Related note: Reddit did not correct their racism problem. In fact, site administration has explicitly intervened to prohibit operators of such subreddits from closing them down (such as in the case of /r/KotakuInAction). The only time they ever bother enforcing their own rules is when those subs become enough of a problem that investors or advertisers get cold feet.
- deepdriver 4y ago
  >And, furthermore, I would rather tech giants err on the side of less censorship. Agreed, but censoring some hate speech less than others is worse than uniform censorship. >The only time they ever bother enforcing their own rules is when those subs become enough of a problem that investors or advertisers get cold feet. Yes, and investors today don't get cold feet about racial hatred of whites, or Reddit would alter their official policies accordingly.

kmeisthax 4y ago

"They don't censor reverse racism as badly" is a far cry from what you are alleging. It sounds like Facebook realized they were overmoderating and backed down. And, furthermore, I would rather tech giants err on the side of less censorship. The problem that they've engendered over the past decade is that they want to punish everyone rather than just dealing with narrow problems. If you realize your platform is being used for, say, harassment; you don't need to impose stricter speech rules. You need to make it harder to use your platform to harass people and provide meaningful support to those who have been harassed. They didn't really... do that. They imposed broad "whatever pisses off our advertisers" policies. Related note: Reddit did not correct their racism problem. In fact, site administration has explicitly intervened to prohibit operators of such subreddits from closing them down (such as in the case of /r/KotakuInAction). The only time they ever bother enforcing their own rules is when those subs become enough of a problem that investors or advertisers get cold feet.

deepdriver 4y ago
>And, furthermore, I would rather tech giants err on the side of less censorship. Agreed, but censoring some hate speech less than others is worse than uniform censorship. >The only time they ever bother enforcing their own rules is when those subs become enough of a problem that investors or advertisers get cold feet. Yes, and investors today don't get cold feet about racial hatred of whites, or Reddit would alter their official policies accordingly.