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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.