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We have heard the rumblings, now it comes.... the Code of Conduct for social media along with the banhammer.
From Bloomberg we get this warning:
U.S. Internet giants Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., Google and Microsoft Corp. pledged to tackle online hate speech in less than 24 hours as part of a joint commitment with the European Union to combat the use of social media by terrorists.
Of course terrorists are defined down to "unambiguous hate speech that they said promoted racism, homophobia or anti-Semitism" before the short article ends.
Buckle up folks, the ride is is about to get bumpy.
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Tech Giants Vow to Tackle Online Hate Speech Within 24 Hours
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @04:09AM
Hate speech is bad for business. So is anti-gay and anti-Muslim and anti-Jew.
That's not intended to be sarcastic or ironic... that's the way it is. A forum that's a cesspool of hate turns people away, people that could be customers, and better customers than most of the trolls.
Main Street businessman were always among the most enlightened in the Deep South, because they counted on business from black folks as well as whites.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Jiro on Thursday June 02 2016, @04:44AM
There's a difference between actual hate speech, which can be bad for some (but not all) businesses, and what Europeans call "hate speech", which is often criticism of immigrants or of Islam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @05:33AM
Say something bad about Israel in USA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @06:24AM
You'll get some people calling you an anti-semite. Which is probably true in your case. But it's certainly NOT illegal, and often not censored depending on where you're posting.
On the other side, Angela Merkel directly ordered Zuckerberg (caught on camera BTW) to silence anyone who doesn't like importing and paying for a million Muslims.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @07:58AM
Not to diminish your statement regarding Merkel, but you can get COINTELPRO tortured for saying shit about Israel in the USA, so, fuck off.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 02 2016, @11:46AM
It's as good as censorship. It's character assassination, shunning, and other targeted attempts to take you down. Look at what happened to Walt and Mearsheimer when they wrote their paper, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy [uchicago.edu]." The paper's premise was that the United States has no real strategic interest in Israel, not as a major trading partner, not as a supplier of strategically important commodities or products, etc. Now, Walt and Mearsheimer are the fathers of modern International Relations, but they were decried as anti-semites for their paper and smeared in a thousand ways, despite it having been very well researched and based on rock-solid facts.
Look at what happened to Jimmy Carter after his book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid [wikipedia.org]." Again, he was denigrated as an anti-semite and smeared in a thousand ways, despite the fact he's done more for Israel's security in the last 70 years through his Camp David Accords.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @09:22AM
Fucking Israel; I don't care either way about religion, but picking up a whole country and dumping it on top of Montana is just an arse of a thing to do
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday June 02 2016, @02:07PM
You mean picking up the country that the Jews didn't have before Israel existed?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @04:45AM
That is why Voat has failed to go anywhere. It got famous for all the people fleeing reddit's hate-speech policy. And guess what happened? It became a cesspool and no normal people want to swim in that, so its pretty much stuck with a toxic community.
> Main Street businessman were always among the most enlightened in the Deep South, because they counted on business from black folks as well as whites.
Pretty low bar that was.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Thursday June 02 2016, @06:02AM
The problem with defending freedom of expression is you spend most of your time defending scoundrels. I can't stand bigotry but when I defend a bigot's right to speak *in principle* people confuse that for supporting the content of their message. Or when I attack someone's ideas, that criticism is transferred in the minds of spectators to the person themselves, making me appear to be the bigot.
This is one of the reasons free expression is such a fragile and precious thing. It's hard to get and easy to lose; most people won't even notice it's slipping away and a disturbing amount can easily be made to feel they're better off without it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Thursday June 02 2016, @10:21AM
That is not what it happened but it has become a meme to argue from your POV and get the reply you have gotten. What really happens and happened is that most people don't like to be making final decisions on the internet as most people run to reddit to relax from the stressful life where they have to make uncomfortable decisions. That is the majority. They will argue all day long but won't do anything as their real life is unaffected by most of what they are so passionate bout online. These people are malleable and they stick with majority. And majority was already on reddit. That is why single cause forks of community don't survive. It has got nothing to do with 'cesspool'. If tomorrow reddit decides everyone who mentions linux will be banned, any resulting fork will also not survive. Even in case of slashdot, multiple fuckups for multiple years, multiple ownership and policy changes didn't make SN. It was when CmdrTaco wrote that slashdot is not his anymore, when old timers got convinced there is no hope and an alternative is needed.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Vanderhoth on Thursday June 02 2016, @11:06AM
Partly right with the Voat migration. I don't think anything you said is incorrect, but the Voat migration stopped when the person being blamed for all the censorship and crap that was going on on Reddit (Ellen Pao) was let go / resigned. In hindsight she was really just a scapegoat. She did have some hand in the events (firing a really well liked community manager) that lead to mass protests (major subs that went private) and the initial migration to Voat, but she wasn't the sole provocateur, she was just the face of the shitty decisions that were being made.
Also Voat wasn't really equipped to handle the massive amount of traffic they started getting. There were days I'd go to Voat several times a day (I just keep tabs open) and the whole day was spent refreshing the "be patient" message, I eventually just stopped going. Since things on Reddit more or less went back to normal after Pao left, there was no reason to keep going to Voat to see if they'd upgraded their servers.
I also agree with you AC was full of it. I didn't see any "hate speech" going on on Voat, no more so than what I see on Reddit or any other internet forum.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @12:14PM
Voat was DDOSed during the Reddit troubles and gained a reputation as that broken site that couldn't scale to support a migration. That's why it failed to gain traction, and then nobody used it because nobody was using it.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday June 02 2016, @03:58PM
Of course the most motivated users, i.e. the banned, migrate first to a new platform. Why do you think Tor is also a cesspit? They think they can swap pedo pics without being busted and those guys were instantly the early adopters. Illegal drugs were the mainstay of Silk Road. Hell, for the first decade the majority of Internet traffic was porn and 'piracy.' Then it became spam and now at last the majority of traffic is 'legitimate' content but it is Netflix. Wow, what an improvement, can we get the pirates and porn back?
The forking problem is the network effect in reverse. Until reddit, twitter, facebook, etc. manage to piss off a critical mass a fork will languish. But once a critical mass moves and begins a new network effect it will cascade quickly. See MySpace.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday June 02 2016, @05:57AM
On what street was the Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina?
http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/6-legacy/freedom-struggle-2.html [si.edu]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 02 2016, @02:08PM
132 South Elm Street
Is there some significance to that address? A tree name - hmmm - the Goddess tree? Meditation? Magic?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday June 02 2016, @06:06PM
Thank you. I just wondered whether it was a Main Street business.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 03 2016, @01:34AM
From my youth, Woolworth's was located on a downtown main street, just like Kresge's, or Murphy's, or any other retailer. Back then, the further from "Main Street" a business was located, the less successful it was. Sometimes, "Main Street" isn't precisely the main street in town. Or, maybe that's just how things worked out over time - Main will be a thoroughfare through town, and the businesses will be set a block or two off of Main.
But, looking at the photos, the young men who staged the sitins appear to be walking along a typical downtown business street for the time. They most certainly aren't out on the edge of town, or on the "wrong side of the tracks".
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday June 03 2016, @02:02AM
Thank you for your comments. I do understand the expression "Main Street." I didn't mean to cause you to waste your time explaining it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @09:40AM
Great business for lawyers.
Very slippery slope here.