University of Cambridge researchers are hoping to launch technology that blocks online "hate speech" similar to how an antivirus program stops malicious code.
Thanks to researchers at the University of Cambridge, the largest social media companies in the world may soon have the ability to preemptively quarantine content classified by an algorithm as "hate speech"." On October 14, 2019, researcher Stephanie Ullmann and professor Marcus Tomalin published a proposal in the Ethics and Information Technology journal promoting an invention that they claim could accomplish this goal without infringing on individual rights of free speech. Their proposal involves software that uses an algorithm to identify "hate speech" in much the same way an antivirus program detects malware. It would then be up to the viewer of such content to either leave it in quarantine or view it.
The basic premise is that online "hate speech" is as harmful in its way as other forms of harm (physical, emotional, financial...), and social media companies should intercept it before it can do that harm, rather than post-facto by review.
Tomalin's proposal would use a sophisticated algorithm which would evaluate not just the content itself, but also all content posted by the user to determine if a post might be classifiable as "hate speech". If not classified as potential "hate speech", the post occupies the social media feed like any regular post. If the algorithm flags it as possible "hate speech", it will then flag the post as potential hate speech, making it so that readers must opt-in to view the post. A graph from the proposal illustrates this process.
The alert to the reader will identify the type of "hate speech" potentially classified in the content as well as a "Hate O'Meter" to show how offensive the post is likely to be.
The goal of the researchers is to have a working prototype available in early 2020 and, assuming success and subsequent social media company adoptions, intercepting traffic in time for the 2020 elections.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:11PM (35 children)
There is plenty of precedent. Back in the gulf war we were still paying 'remote sensors' aka clairvoyants, and there was that guy that got insanely rich selling explosive detectors that didn't work...
You can't detect sin, but you can make bank by pretending you can.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:33PM (14 children)
How, exactly, is Arik offtopic here? Mod abuse in action?
(Score: 5, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:58PM (13 children)
Someone testing their algorithm.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday January 01 2020, @09:17PM
They should just ask Microsoft if they can watch the logfiles from Tay. Hate ahoy!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 01 2020, @10:32PM (11 children)
Didn't we run all comments through a Google toxicity algorithm for April Fool's one year? I can't find the original story or when we did it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday January 01 2020, @11:00PM (10 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @09:33AM (9 children)
Hate speech is free speech, some comments on your journal were targeted abuse. I modded 2 comments troll but perhaps the spam mod would be suitable? Clearly the same AC, adding nothing to the discussion.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:28PM (7 children)
Hate speech isn't free speech in Canada, and that's where the killing took place. The people arguing the 1st amendment need to keep in mind it doesn't apply, same as in any of the states with hate speech laws. Same as the 1st amendment isn't absolute protection of speech in any state or at the federal level. Death threats and child pornography are just two examples. Julian assange and Kim dot Com are specific cases that many here should be familiar with where the feds have acted to criminalize "speech".
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:14PM (6 children)
It is if you can argue it's within a reasonable limit. Common law countries define reasonable [wikipedia.org] in a way that would clearly exclude Justin Trudeau and all of Ontario ;P
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:23PM (5 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @09:54PM (4 children)
And it is now readily apparent you don't know what common law is. Canada is a common law system, even within the criminal sphere. The sole exception is Quebec's use of a Napoleonic system for their provincial laws.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 02 2020, @10:06PM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @10:13PM (1 child)
Seems you're correct. [wikipedia.org]
Where can I find the definition of "reasonable" for the purposes of the Criminal Code? If there's no definition then interpretation is surely a matter of common law?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04 2020, @06:09AM
Nope, you are, as I said, both wrong. "Criminal law is uniform throughout Canada. It is based on the constitution and federal statutory Criminal Code, as interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada," from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Canadian_federal_law [wikipedia.org] The Supreme Court of Canada interprets the law and promulgates precedent rulings that are binding on lower courts. Such law made by judges is the definition of a common law system. For example, most standard defenses to crimes are in the common law instead of being codified.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @10:07PM
Correct. I meant Quebec, my Canada is bad but I guess the joke worked anyway.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:39PM
No, the Spam mod is not suitable for cases of obvious trolling.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ilPapa on Wednesday January 01 2020, @09:31PM (19 children)
No, they're not. And it was easy enough to check, since the entire paper is published online under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Further, if you'd taken the time to read the paper, it's absolutely nothing like a "ghost detector". The work was surprisingly rigorous. But to be fair, it's a holiday, and it's a lot easier to express an opinion without information. So, I'll cut you a break since you're normally a pretty thoughtful commenter.
Regarding the funding:
And no, the Humanities and Social Change International Foundation doesn't take "tax money".
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday January 01 2020, @09:41PM (9 children)
So whose monies are they taking, then? George Soros? The Epstein Post-Humous fund for Social Justice?
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @11:22PM
Nah, from Trump's beauty pageant pedo fund.
(Score: 5, Touché) by ilPapa on Wednesday January 01 2020, @11:47PM (7 children)
Same place most foundations get their money: from people and institutions who give it willingly.
Do you have a problem with people using their money the way they want to?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday January 02 2020, @02:32AM (3 children)
With stuff like this, follow the money tends to be interesting. It's possible that this is just a vanity project by the founder, Erck Rickmers [wikipedia.org]. But it could be the face of a German government project or a dumping ground for bribe money, Clinton-style.
It depends. Is it their money? And are they buying anything illegal with that? A hate filter/meter does sound pretty shifty to me, but it would be legal.
(Score: 0, Troll) by driverless on Thursday January 02 2020, @03:10AM (1 child)
You missed a few there. You got Erck Rickmers (whoever that is, I assume some random conspiracy-theory target), a foreign government, and the Clintons, but you missed the obligatory anti-semitism (Soros), and there's no mention of the Deep State anywhere I can see.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 02 2020, @04:06AM
Founder of the non profit funding the research. Random in the sense that someone would have his role. Deep state is Germany and EF already got Soros. We got this.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday January 02 2020, @11:23PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by shortscreen on Thursday January 02 2020, @06:40AM (2 children)
Funny you should say that.
There was an infamous court ruling which asserted that "money is speech" and led to certain spending restrictions being lifted based on the premise that it wouldn't be acceptable for speech to be restricted in that manner. In the context of this story we see money being spent to promote the idea of "hate speech" and develop a censorship tool. Isn't it deliciously meta to then ask whether one should pass judgment on this use of money? The whole thing is starting to sound like a chapter from Godel Escher Bach.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 02 2020, @01:55PM
If you're speaking of the Citizens United ruling, a key aspect was the ruling that corporate speech could not be treated differently than individual speech. Individuals were allowed to spend in such a manner.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:28PM
Everyone has an agenda - this one appears to be a combo of money (charge social media providers for the filters) and deciding who can say what in which context.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @11:41PM (2 children)
So they are not getting Tax money as in the government is not paying them directly. But they are getting Tax money as in the government is not taxing their operation while taxing EVERYTHING else....
(Score: 5, Informative) by ilPapa on Wednesday January 01 2020, @11:51PM (1 child)
Today must be the day for people talking out of their asses.
The Humanities and Social Change International Foundation is not an American organization. Your donations to them are not tax deductible.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday January 02 2020, @01:23PM
>The Humanities and Social Change International Foundation
This is how a frontend for SPECTRE would be named in a 007 movie.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 02 2020, @02:15AM (2 children)
They're work is rooted in the premise that free speech is bad -- like it is actual physical violence -- and that it should be censored.
The way things work though, is that when we don't protect the rights of the worst of us, they eventually get around to everyone else as well. Like how that case about a purse snatching telephone stalker became a pillar of support for warrantless mass surveillance because the easy way to make sure Smith did his year or two in the pokey after the police got sloppy and didn't get a warrant for phone data, was to determine if a person shares info with a 3rd party like phone company by dialing a number, you have no privacy interest in that info. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland [wikipedia.org]
Returning to the utter nonsense that words are violence, if taken to its logical conclusion means goodbye 1A, hello increasingly large prison camps for speech. Heck, while you're at it, why not get rid of the 4th and 5th amendments -- it sure would be easier to imprison people who commit actual violence if we did away with pesky inconveniences like civil rights and due process.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday January 02 2020, @06:20PM
4th and 5th amendments are gone if you are on the list, see my journal and this:
https://archive.is/YkJr8 [archive.is]
You have now been warned by someone who reports this first hand, if you have questions contact me.
It is however apparent to me that the way you get on the list is by having 'ideas', aka wrongthink in the classic totalitarian sense, that is defined in secret so you are in a trap thinking you can speak freely, and a dangerous one. A diabolical one.
Which means that the free speech and free assembly are gone also, I sincerely doubt thomas jefferson would think an assembly is 'free' if there are 50 undercover agents there trying to disrupt it, that is what we have.
The way this is going in media owned by jewish people is that all free speech leads directly to nazism, and irrational hatred of jewish people, and so the only way forward is to carve a vast exception to the first amendment around the expansive, bullshit term anti-semitism. And we are seeing this propaganda tidal wave in full motion as I write this, while at the same time try to find a single article on huffington post that mentions Jeffrey Epstein was jewish and hung out with Ehud Barak, or that Trumps entire administration is puppeted by israeli zionist jews who pretend they are white supremecists.
All the oligarchs can do to hide now post panama papers and epstein is to light the entire journalism industry and free culture on fire with hypernormalized linquistic bullshit.
https://archive.is/QBVQJ [archive.is]
https://archive.is/GBoQt [archive.is]
https://archive.is/HTALt [archive.is]
https://archive.ph/aSHRw [archive.ph]
https://archive.ph/cPx5h [archive.ph]
https://archive.is/ET5w1 [archive.is]
https://archive.is/G3JtL [archive.is]
https://archive.is/OPkTH [archive.is]
https://archive.is/N15xT [archive.is] (this is what we are ultimately facing, join in a totalitarian empire with zionism that does all nazi warcrimes, or be called nazi by people doing this, and I have picked my side.)
https://archive.is/FMvgZ [archive.is]
https://archive.is/G3JtL [archive.is] (these two go together quite nicely)
Real american values of tolerance, like I show to jewish people who campaign for the 'end of the white race' including Jordan Peterson and Noel Ignatiev, and safe harbor laws, so someone can't just post something obscene or violent just to get your site shut down, are obvious solutions. But as with .org, they do not want solutions, they want automated push-button population control mechanisms and idea-eradication mechanisms, which we should resist or face being enslaved in a living hell.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Aegis on Friday January 03 2020, @12:14AM
Does the AI evolve into Skynet on it's journey from fancy Twitter filter to concentration camps?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:08AM (2 children)
If you're naïve.
Governments know how to launder money, and if you think they don't do that routinely you need to take a look at how often they've gotten caught doing it in the past.
I took a look at the foundation but that doesn't mean I was able to identify and verify where their funding really comes from.
"The work was surprisingly rigorous."
Damning with faint praise?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 02 2020, @02:03PM (1 child)
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:32PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:12PM (29 children)
There is no such thing as a technological solution to a moral problem. Besides which, who gets to program the AI as to what is and is not hate speech? What happens when the far right inevitably gets their hands on this through the big corps and the packed courts? Don't give yourself any power you don't want turned against you.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:16PM (1 child)
Look at these Happy Nazis! How can they be the Bad Guys(R)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7u5Knj5Uj4 [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday January 01 2020, @09:20PM
Eventually they grow up and get angst ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:30PM (20 children)
Exactly. Except, I'm more concerned about what the liberal left is going to call "hate speech". I'd much rather listen to you tell me that I'm going to hell, than to have both of us censored out of existence.
How's that saying go? I disagree with almost everything you say, but I'll fight to the death to defend your right to be so utterly wrong.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday January 01 2020, @09:15PM (4 children)
Never mind the use of AI, that's just a distraction, and it will not be any more effective than DRM is. Chatbots who kick participants for saying 4 letter words such as "porn" were nuisances that were never effective at censorship, ridiculously easy to defeat by such things as saying "pr0n" instead, and this Hate O'Meter doesn't sound like it's going to be any better.
The whole idea of censorship, that it is possible and desirable, and won't backfire, is the problem. Seems every generations has to learn all over again, the hard way, that censorship is just stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @10:08PM (1 child)
You are thinking of filtering, an “AI”. Should learn what you mean from context. But of course that “learning”. Will n the early years seem like misguided opinions.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 02 2020, @02:06PM
Well, that is what this product is, after all. They aren't looking for hate speech so that you can read more of it.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday January 01 2020, @10:19PM
if all it did was add mod points/flag score/whatever and allowed the user to pick a threshold, it *could* work.. but anything that requires the user to *do* something (actively changing threshold/'playing' with settings) will fail - or FB, twitter and other "social media" comments-as-opportunity-to-piss-others-off, sprout slogans or just be dumb... would be more like SN.. and likely, not as 'profitable'..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:34PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @01:44AM (10 children)
Who cares about the liberal left? They're liberal; they don't give a flying fuck what you say.
The authoritarian left, on the other hand ...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 02 2020, @02:19AM (9 children)
It is high time the distinction between liberal left and authoritarian left be given attention. I'm with the liberal left but the authoritarian left has the exact same feel as the authoritarian evangelicals of the 80s and 90s to me. Both are wrong and dangerous.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @03:16AM (8 children)
Careful. If you call yourself a classical liberal you'll get smeared as alt-right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @08:00AM (7 children)
alt-right is losing its sting as an epithet.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:42PM (6 children)
It never had a sting unless you're part of, or at least the bitch of, the ctrl-left.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:38PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 04 2020, @07:16AM
Obviously emacs users then.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:59PM (3 children)
Or, unless, when someone submits articles about the alt-right, you fear they may be painting you with too broad a brush. Tu Quoque, Buteo?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 04 2020, @07:19AM (2 children)
I'm not part of anything on the right, ari. I'm what you should be well familiar with, since you remember when its root word came to be, as a liberal. That's the left as you well know; both socially and economically. What you schizophrenic authoritarians of today are doesn't fit on the standard scale.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday January 04 2020, @08:47AM (1 child)
Your lack of education is showing again, my less than Mightily Educated Buzzard. Do you know that "liberalism" is a doctrine dedicated to the maximum freedom for all individuals? Of course you do! Do you not also realize that any actions that infringe upon the freedom of some are an anathema to liberalism, of your classic sort? Thus, any fuchering neo-nazi, or alt-right loser, or your standard Republican of these times, is not a liberal, in the classical sense. They are something else, Racists, Classists, Midichlorian counters, or Rey supporters, but in no why liberals dedicated to the principal that all humans are created equal, and endowed with certain inalienable> rights, human rights, the rights of humans as humans, solely because they are humans.
Now you, you half-breed Choctaw Chickasaw, should be aware of this more than others, that Republicans and Conservatives are dedicated to the proposition that not all humans are created equal, especially Native Americans like yourself. When did your people first get the right to vote as Americans? After Women, I believe, you should know your history, Buzzard, and not hide it in a closet white supremacist libertarian alt-right hole of asses. I am here for you, TMB! Stand up, be woke, find your spirit guide. Or do the "civilized" tribes no longer adhere to the traditions of their ancestors, and send their young (40~ish) programmers out on a spirit-walk?
The familiar spirits, in my experience, are all Democrats. Something to do with Wounded Knee. Yes, not your tribe, but there, but for the varagies of history, go thee.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 04 2020, @09:21AM
That argument is nothing but retconing by modern progressives. Your contemporaries would have mocked you endlessly for suggesting liberty is obtained by surrendering it so that the state may grant you comfort or security wearing liberty's hat.
Do you adhere to the traditions of yours? When's the last time you kept slaves? Should we expect a lecture on how it is the right and duty of the father to reject children if they are weak or women sometime soon? How long has it been since you sacrificed a bull to Zeus?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @08:26AM (2 children)
Runaway getting all silvery with the irony, again. Or just full of cognitive dissonance. Hard to tell which.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 02 2020, @08:29AM (1 child)
Careful attention to detail is necessary here. Censure and censor are not the same thing. Congress may censure the president and/or the Supreme Court. Congress may not censor either. There are plenty of dictionaries online, pick one, and learn the difference between the two words.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04 2020, @08:53AM
OK, can we Censor Runaway1956? Or Censor Runaway with Catholic incense? Or perhaps Sensor Runaway1956, to at least know when he is in proximity, likely to show up, or post, or at least we could look out for cardiac events, low brain pressure, or imminent drone attack by the non-interventionist Trump administration. I have his co-ordinates, if anyone in the Kingdom of Saud is interested.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 03 2020, @04:19AM
Same here. Fundamental rights can only be said to exist when even utter hellbound scumbags like you have them. I'll fight for your right to keep fucking yourself over every which way; when the flames take you (hint: it's not actual fire, you're doing it to yourself, it *really sucks* to die and realize there are no more illusions and that can feel like burning...) you will have no one to blame but yourself.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:37PM
When the good little sheep are brainwashed to want a government-sanctioned "AI" bleat-censor, do you really believe that censoring everything inconvenient for those in power was NOT the end goal since step one?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:45PM
So this is just another tech scam.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:56PM
It ain't often I get to +1 Insightful you but you damned sure earned one this time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @10:33PM (1 child)
These guys [catbox.moe] and these guys [catbox.moe] and these guys [catbox.moe] and this guy's guys. [archive.is]
They have already developed and deployed the AI against everyone's social media history and they use it to decide who should be banned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:06PM
yeah sure i'm just gonna go ahead and click on this unlabelled zip file on a filesharing website. what could possibly go wrong?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 01 2020, @11:43PM
Well said. That's the problem in a nutshell. It's so robust that you could have framed it "What happens when $ZEALOT inevitably gets their hands on this?" and it would be equally true.
Many now are forgetting the wisdom that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:13PM (4 children)
This will fucking fail the second it flags a Big Leader as engaging in hate speech. Then pressure will get applied in delicate places until the app gets rewritten to do the exact opposite of what it was originally supposed to do. Hello fascism!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @10:13PM (3 children)
Nah, beore that it will fail hard when they discover that the model has just been trained on "shit white people say", and starts flagging every post by african americans as hate speech.
DAS RASIST NIGGA!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Wednesday January 01 2020, @10:24PM (1 child)
surely the opposite will occur - pro- LGBTQ1X+, disabled, black, yellow, polka-dots would surely be 'protected'/'promoted', while anything even *slightly* anti- anything would end up 'binned'...
probably including anything anti-stupidity.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 01 2020, @11:46PM
Yes, because muzzling the vast majority in favor of the fraction of one percent will work out so very well, and won't rebound on that minority and lead to horrible things at all. The people pushing garbage systems or even the illusions of systems like this will rue their work.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @11:50PM
JFC... African Americans use the N word more often than the KKK. Is it hate speech? But if a cracker says it, it's SJW fodder.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:40PM (2 children)
*cough* Social Credit System [wikipedia.org] *cough*
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday January 01 2020, @09:18PM (1 child)
So what, virus "definitions" pulled straight from the ADL and SPLC databases, that consider a cartoon frog and hand symbol which traditionally meant "OK" to be hate symbols? It doesn't end there, you look at all their definitions and "hate symbols" and you'll be wanting those schizos to start taking their meds, and fast!
How about virus "heuristics?" Such as disagreeing with one of the algorithm's approved Jew curators during discussion? Or perhaps having a writing style similar to, I dunno, whatever writing styles have been curated via a proprietary process they won't tell you about from "racists" you had no idea even existed?
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Thursday January 02 2020, @04:56AM
It is a given that input from various anti-hate activist organizations would be leveraged.
What your are referring to is known as the 'quiet part' and is not intended to be said out loud - that only those sources will be used which align politically with the social media companies' socio-political world view.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Tokolosh on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:40PM (2 children)
“I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it.” - Voltaire (attr.)
(Score: 2, Touché) by barbara hudson on Wednesday January 01 2020, @11:08PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Codesmith on Thursday January 02 2020, @03:19PM
Serious question:
Did Voltaire say anything about dealing with the consequences of said speech?
Not all speech is free, and most countries define 'hate speech' pretty closely. It would be interesting to see if this tool can be adjusted for each locale.
Pro utilitate hominum.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Wednesday January 01 2020, @09:15PM (4 children)
How? So I'm allowed free speech under restrictions, is that really free speech then? Not if you ask me, but then I doubt they will. So who is going to define this hate speech? I'm fairly sure the laws are not exactly the same across the globe and if this is going to work on the Internet and not just your own national snowflake lan you might be in a bit of a problem. Not to mention that I doubt everyone as previously noted and mentioned are going to agree. That said a lot of the "comment" platforms used by a lot of the large media companies already does this sort of thing. So I guess they are the potential future customer of this shit.
I do admit that I have not really kept up with anti-virus technology the last decade or so, it was kind of crap before and from what I know it has not really developed all that much as an idea or concept, but are they still not mostly working from signature files and possibly also system monitoring of various important files and such? So that is what the amazing algorithm of hate is going to do then? Cause it worked so great with virii and malware, sure there might have been more without the software but still the user-error behind the keyboard is still around infecting system after system with malware due to stupidity and having the urge to click all the attachments.
I predict this will be more or less as successful as the various porn filters meant to keep the kids away from the naughty images that are online.
Ah so it's going to be some kind of naughty word filter then cause those have not been enough of a massive fucking flop all around. So not only will the post take into account what you write but also everything you have ever written online. So it will flag you as some kind of a hate monger then if you routinely call people cunts and tell them to fuck off when they are being annoying. Assuming this is not going to be looked up every time but saved in some kind of database of haters is this thing GDPR compliant? I know they are BREXIT:ing in a month or so but still if you wanna do biz with the rest of euroland this will still apply.
Hate speech is probably one of the more stupid ideas around. Why not just live with that not everyone is going to like what you like, think what you think, say what you say and eventually tell you to go fuck yourself when you are being a bit of a cunt. If you can't just learn to ignore idiots then you are just to soft for this world.
(Score: 2, Informative) by barbara hudson on Wednesday January 01 2020, @11:11PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:12AM
Kind of a worthless reductio ad absurdum style of argument.
A Polish, Soviet-era joke that sums up the left wing "speech has consequences" attitude:
In Poland, there is freedom of speech.
In America, there is freedom after speech.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @08:05AM
From my reading of it, GDPR won't technically apply, the scheme looks at the content, not the poster of the content, and decides if it offendeth whatever sensibilities these crypto-fascists have biased..sorry, trained their system with, and if the e-RMVP says 'ja' then your content passes, 'nein' it gets blackholed....
Nothing along the lines of 'personal data' is stored, per se, as they wouldn''t want to subject themselves to any inconvenient legal scrutiny, but I suppose if your missives flag as 'hate speech' on part of their content, you could argue that this is procsssing of personal data if the rest of it is then mined for new data to further train their AI, but legally you'd be very hard put to prove which chunk of their neural net/other code fuckwittery personally identifies you alone.
Ok, so the crowd who're spouting this shit are based in Cambridge, which is probably why you've thrown in a snide remark about Brexit. I would point out that the Foundation behind this is the brainchild of a German..and the muppets employed by said foundation to come up with this scheiße are probably (by their profiles on the foundations webshite) all conformist europhiles, no doubt all sorely vexed by the fact that the normally sheepish population of England didn't swallow all the EU funded/orchestrated pro-EU propaganda but went for the anti-EU 'hate speech'', hence the need for this jolly little project..
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 03 2020, @02:50AM
If freedom of movement is restricted by driving speed limits, is that really freedom of movement?
(point: the moment you accept living in a group, you already gave up a good part of your "freedom". The larger the group, the more your personal freedom is restricted by more and more abstract rules - to the point of groups as large as society that rely on laws so much that they may justify them by inventing the abstract concept of "justice", which should "fiat" even if "pereat mundus")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @09:20PM (6 children)
When they get the algorithms tweaked to whatever they want, I wonder if they'll not only use it on current stuff being put up on social media, but also go back to things like Usenet posts. Twenty years ago no one had yet thought up the Newspeak term "hate speech", so people still spoke mostly freely, and many under their actual name.
Imagine being hauled off to
the gulagsreeducation campssensitivity training for something you wrote decades ago in a Usenet post. I always knew posting to alt.hentai.sailor-moon might be a bad idea.(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @09:51PM
I always knew posting to alt.trump.grab-her-crotch-and-build-a-big-fucking-wall might be a bad idea.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:32AM (3 children)
I doubt you will be hauled off to a gulag for your comments and viewpoints...
But I am quite sure anything you leave online, anywhere, will be aggregated into personality profiling databases.
These databases will be used by hiring managers.
No one wants to be the guy who hires a problem maker. Especially with the legal problems of getting them back out of the company once they are in.
One good online hate rant, and your job prospects are probably nil.
All that college wasted. You may have dressed to impress, bought the fancy car that signals you expect to be "paid like a gentleman". But that one rant you left somewhere, messes up that handshake you wanted so much.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:47AM (2 children)
Unpaid weirdos engaging in cancel culture are a bigger threat than Google and web crawlers alone. They will bombard your employer with messages, get you fired, tarnish your name, drive you to suicide, and dance on your grave. All in the name of virtue signalling for likes and retweets.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday January 02 2020, @01:35AM (1 child)
That kind of crap has been going on as far back as recorded history. Even the Bible has numerous instances of false witness to smear someone else.
Along with many other things, technology has made even this disgusting aspect of life easier.
But, on the flip side, it has also made identifying the makers of mud easier as well.
Hell, I'm guilty of expressing my opinion online too...but 99.9% of the time, it's some paradigm or state of things that draws my ire. I don't want anyone nailed...I see things I see as just plain wrong or inefficient....and I will run it up the pole to see if anyone else salutes.
If enough salute it, maybe it will influence someone who has the power to change things.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @02:28AM
The difference today is that the neighborhood busy body doesn't have a reach limited to a couple hundred people at the high end -- they have worldwide capabilities. So while it has been going on for as long as people lived in groups, humans haven't experienced the type of damage those people could do when given a world stage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @06:57PM
> something you wrote decades ago in a Usenet post.
Look up "milkshake duck". It's one of the terms the Twitter mob uses for just that. Because when someone digs through a decade or so of your posting history in order to find one thing to get you pilloried over, that's YOUR fault.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Wednesday January 01 2020, @09:48PM (8 children)
Hate speech = criticism to the status quo. Might itself be propaganda. Any criticism can be turned into hate speech by conflating criticism of an action with the criticism of some aspect of the author of an action. There are entire organizations devoted to this fallacy, notably the anti defamation league and lots of Islamic centers, labeling people antisemitic or infidels respectively.
hate o'meter = censorship. "It would then be up to the viewer of such content to either leave it in quarantine or view it" if you notice, comes after the detection and is totally unrelated to the detection. It is clear that a totally unrelated aspect has been brought in the conversation as a way to mask censorship as mere classification. There is no way the current leadership of the system will restrain from using a tool of control, as control is the ultimate aim of modern "society".
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @10:32PM (7 children)
Ok, just one question.
Let's take a call on social media to immediatly kill all muslims. Or to kill, let's say, all white males older than 40.
Would you consider these examples hate speech ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @11:23PM (1 child)
Anyone and everyone hears their share of insane rants daily. Not a soul went crazy from that sole cause.
If you lump everyone into the loony bin by default, why are you excepting the self-assigned wardens of the world asylum then?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 03 2020, @03:10AM
Next time a junkie crazed by meth (ab)use [theguardian.com] gets to you [wikipedia.org], remember that no people were murdered from the use of drugs as the sole cause either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @11:25PM
He is too dumb to comprehend. He calls himself Bot so he doesn't feel so bad failing the Turing test.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:13AM (1 child)
>Let's take a call on social media to immediatly kill all muslims.
OK
>Or to kill, let's say, all white males older than 40.
one genocide at a time please.
Free speech is not free from consequences speech. If somebody has reasons to kill muslims or old people, and the primary reason is that the system will create any division just as long it's not slaves against the system, plus the almost primary reason is that muslims are a socio-political movement, not a religion, so people would be acting in probably excessive but always present self defense, they should be free to voice their reasons and to suffer from the consequences.
To expand and not labeled a muslims hater, if your nation were next to an expanding catholic theocracy (which necessarily would be headed by temporal power of one pope), you would be justified to expel/off any believer/priest who DID NOT pledge loyalty to your nation (and being still a 100% Christian by "giving back to Caesar").
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @01:40PM
Why are you using Christianity as an example?
Why don't you use a real and present example that exists, such as the many Muslim theocracies? I guess it's essier to attack non-existent problems than real ones.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 02 2020, @02:30AM (1 child)
No.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 02 2020, @02:35AM
To expand, it depends on what you mean by "hate speech" -- I'm guessing some legal definition with prison in the consequences list. It is hateful speech to be sure, but let's be honest about this, by not censoring the speech you get to know exactly who the hell you need to watch out for. By censoring the speech, it's a surprise when they come to kill you and the act of censorship may make it more likely they come to kill you by making them feel all the more self-righteous. So making hate speech illegal is a way to decrease safety, and accepting that hateful speech exists and then using it for good -- keeping close tabs on haters for example -- increases safety.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @10:24PM
Eric Idle: Now say "Big floppy donkey dick"
Cartman: No!
Eric Idle: Success! The boy is cured, he doesn't want to swear.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thesis on Wednesday January 01 2020, @10:47PM
This is IMHO, nothing more than propaganda used to legitimize restricting speech and information. When it comes to puplished papers, I want to know if there is bias, and from where or whom. In this case, this paper is funded by the Humanities and Social Change International Foundation. Who is this you may wonder? A foundation founded by a Socialist Democrat in Germany, Erck Rickmers (German politician).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erck_Rickmers_(German_politician) [wikipedia.org]
As for the Social Democratic Party of Germany, it was established in 1863, the SPD is the oldest existing political party represented in the German Parliament. It is also one of the first Marxist-influenced parties in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany [wikipedia.org]
There is plenty of information from other sources, feel free to search.