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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.
Life is not for everyone.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Thursday June 02 2016, @04:39AM
Here's the problem with the concept of hate speech: who decides? Who would you nominate to decide for you what you are allowed to read, to say, to think, or to feel? To whom would you give this power? If your answer is, as I hope it would be, that you reserve this right exclusively to yourself, then you either have to grant that same right to everyone else or reveal yourself to be a tyrant at heart. There is no one qualified to decide for anyone else what is considered hateful speech. We all have to decide that for ourselves, and it's impossible to decide if something is hateful without hearing or seeing it first. Once it's explained in this way, any thinking person should see that the legal concept of hate speech is incoherent, deeply illiberal, and morally repugnant.
If you have 20 minutes, listen to Christopher Hitchens explain this better than anyone has before or since.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Thursday June 02 2016, @05:43AM
well in this particular case, it's a program that will decide. a rudimentary approach would be to find the liberal overuse of terms deemed to be offensive to trigger a reactionary ban hammer response. however, google has been investing seriously in AI development and language processing, so they may begin leveraging that to identify trends in posts and post responses that correlate with hate speech. frankly, i don't think they should be banned because that is an ineffective way of stopping bigots. reddit's "shadow ban" system is an improvement but i think we could do much better. instead of a simple shadow ban, you could create a shadow social network where people respond to your posts... except they aren't people, they are actually just AIs. the idea is to keep hate mongers engaged so that you waste their time and keeping their hateful posts hidden from the world. this way, they won't simply post their hate somewhere else but will waste all their time in a fantasy world.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @10:01AM
...to keep hate mongers engaged so that you waste their time and keeping their hateful posts hidden from the world. this way, they won't simply post their hate somewhere else but will waste all their time in a fantasy world.
A network of interconnected computers used to be a great "fantasy world." You could sit at your machine and type whatever you wanted and engage in interesting discussions with people you'd ordinarily never meet.
Even if you didn't actually 100% believe the side you were championing, it was fun to participate in a wide variety of unusual conversations.
When I first started using a BBS in the 1990s I met my first "different" people (wiccans, pagans, homosexuals, etc.) They found a place to communicate and share their "otherness." I learned quite a bit through the experience. They/we were all vaguely afraid of having our discussion crunched under some right-wing totalitarian boot. We'd have never believed the boot would come, but that it would be on the left foot instead.
That "fantasy world" is gone now, and I'll bet most people under 30 could hardly believe such a place ever existed the way it did.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 02 2016, @01:12PM
It was that way once, and it can be again. But we have to make it so.
Let's recall though that at the time of the BBS'es it was at the tail-end of the 80's, the Reagan years, with all of its in-your-face machismo, war mongering, Christian Right Triumphalism. The BBS'es were themselves an escape from that daily reality. It was the nerds like us that built those and grew them into the Internet. We were the vanguard of greater freedom then, and we can still be if we choose to.
The people that discourage the stuff we create and discourage freedom of speech and all other aspects of freedom are stupid, reactionary, and slow. They used to have us on muscle, but now that we have robots, it's possible for us to create a future where we're not out-muscled either. Having lots of money is what they still have, so a good step toward taking their power away would be to find ways to make their money meaningless.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 02 2016, @02:30PM
" We'd have never believed the boot would come, but that it would be on the left foot instead."
Spread the word, far and wide. The left really isn't very different from the right. https://casescorner.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/boot_govmnt_l-r-nodiff_onblk_248x246.png?w=248&h=246 [wordpress.com]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 02 2016, @02:20PM
A program decides. So - we have a working artificial intelligence now? FFS man - the program is going to spit out the answers that the PROGRAMMERS designed it to spit. So, what you really have, are some special snowflakes dictating how you may express yourself by proxy.
Get the flamethrower, we've got some snowflakes to take care of.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @05:46AM
Just as with any other law that we pass, the right to judge something as illegal is achieved by consensus. Notice that I say illegal, not immoral. The immorality is something that You still decide for Yourself. The decision is to distribute this power among the people, not to give it to an individual. The only reason this power is given to individuals (though again, through popular vote), is because that is more efficient.
So, You are saying that "race X is Y" is not racist if Y is non-trivial and non-tautological? It is a broad generalization attributed to an individual because of a race that person belongs to. We often easily contend that this generalization is not only logically invalid, but also damaging to rational argument and logical inference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @11:43AM
Just as with any other law that we pass, the right to judge something as illegal is achieved by consensus.
Consensus among corrupt politicians, you mean. I certainly don't live in a direct democracy, and really wouldn't want to either.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday June 02 2016, @09:01AM
However, he doesn't address the "who judges" issue that Hitchens covers, and which was your point. But that's only the cherry on top of the counter argument, the counter argument should be "is it even right to do at all?", as if you can settle that argument with in the negative, who judges is irrelevant.
To use an example that at least Hitchens might appreciate: compare arguing against theism by simply arguing for atheism versus arguing that you can't decide which of the deities is the right one. Surely "0" is better than "can't decide which one"?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday June 02 2016, @02:02PM
"Who is the one more trustworthy than all the Buddhas and sages?"
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Thursday June 02 2016, @02:26PM
machines.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday June 02 2016, @02:38PM
Machines aren't "whos." They're "whats."
At least until somebody makes an AI that can pass the Turing Test.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Thursday June 02 2016, @03:47PM
then the question was discriminatory! ;)