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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: 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.