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from the can't-we-all-just-get-along? dept.
From a recent Science Reports paper:
Online debates are often characterised by extreme polarisation and heated discussions among users. The presence of hate speech online is becoming increasingly problematic, making necessary the development of appropriate countermeasures. In this work, we perform hate speech detection on a corpus of more than one million comments on YouTube videos through a machine learning model, trained and fine-tuned on a large set of hand-annotated data.
Our analysis shows that there is no evidence of the presence of "pure haters", meant as active users posting exclusively hateful comments. Moreover, coherently with the echo chamber hypothesis, we find that users skewed towards one of the two categories of video channels (questionable, reliable) are more prone to use inappropriate, violent, or hateful language within their opponents' community.
Interestingly, users loyal to reliable sources use on average a more toxic language than their counterpart. Finally, we find that the overall toxicity of the discussion increases with its length, measured both in terms of the number of comments and time. Our results show that, coherently with Godwin's law, online debates tend to degenerate towards increasingly toxic exchanges of views.
Journal Reference:
M. Cinelli, A. Pelicon, I. Mozetič, et al. Dynamics of online hate and misinformation. [open] Sci Rep 11, 22083 (2021).
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-01487-w
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 18 2021, @04:15PM (9 children)
The trouble with, and fatal flaw of, calling any speech "hate speech" is that it depends entirely on who you're asking to define what hate speech is. That is, there is no objective measure of what constitutes hate speech.
The answer to speech you don't like is more speech, not censorship. Churchill said, "jaw, jaw, jaw is better than war, war, war." If we don't listen to him, we will get war, war, war. I guarantee it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 18 2021, @04:59PM (5 children)
Thing is... this only works so long as the noise doesn't swamp the signal. There comes a time when some folks should STFU for $DEITY's sake.
--
/ Hush hush / Keep it down now / - 'Til Tuesday, Voices Carry
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 18 2021, @05:23PM (1 child)
Yes, only APPROVED speech should be allowed.
Someone told me about the First Amendment and free speech being one of the foundations of our country, but I had him reported. All the sources I choose to read tell me that isn't true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 18 2021, @05:29PM
Excess of speech is a deadly poison.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday November 18 2021, @07:34PM (2 children)
Who decides what is the noise and what is the signal? It might, it probably is, be different for different folks. So you just land in another definition problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 18 2021, @08:57PM (1 child)
By definition, noise contains no information.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 18 2021, @10:17PM
That's an interesting point. What if we used the tools of censorship to tamp down the noise instead of targeting wrongthink? It would be informative to see the results if there was a platform that blocked all of the regurgitated talking points, memes, truisms and such but otherwise allowed all novel arguments and ideas.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 18 2021, @06:41PM (2 children)
This. It always amazes me that the people pushing systems of censorship and control think they they will always be in charge and will always get to decide what is censored and who is controlled. My personal test if something is a good or bad idea is how I would feel about it if extremists on the 'other side' were in control of the system. If it's a bad idea then, it's a bad idea now. For those in the USA, how would you feel if Trump and company had got to decide what is 'hate speech' and control you accordingly? How would you feel if AOC gets to decide? Once the system exists, it can and will be used against you once the 'other side' gets control, which they will eventually. The only winning move is not to play.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 18 2021, @08:56PM
That is an excellent test. Everyone should use it.
The people who support using the FBI to intimidate parents who attend school board meetings will really not like it when the people with ideas they don't like get control of the FBI and return the favor. (Of course, I personally think it might be time to dissolve the FBI; they got a second chance after the Hoover era and yet here they are attacking democracy again)
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday November 19 2021, @02:48AM
"You should not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would
do and the harm it would cause if improperly administered."
-- Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th President of the United States
.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.