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Alex Stamos: Asking tech companies to police hate speech is “a dangerous path”
- blueboo 8y agoThe choice is: police hate speech or promote hate speech. Observation: promoting is cheaper (even profitable). But they can promote it with plausible deniability. Which is a more "dangerous" path? And to whom? Society? Shareholders?
- onewhonknocks 8y agoWhy are those the only two options available?
- macspoofing 8y agoIndeed. Also who defines what 'hate speech' is and isn't?
- dmix 8y agoIf recent history is any example it's an ever expanding and often arbitrary list depending on an individuals sensitivity level (particularly when it comes down to the individual level like mod's on subreddits or employees at Twitter). It seems many very vocal people on the internet are essentially pushing an idea that the most sensitive people should be defining what those boundaries are for everyone and the list of things people can be outraged could change at any time, and ignorance of these boundaries is not sufficient excuse.
- dx87 8y agoA Google presentation titled "The Good Censor" was recently leaked where they talk about how themselves, Twitter, and Facebook, should censor free speach. They say that they want to move to a "European model" where civility is valued over freedom. https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/10/17961806/google-leaked-research-good-censor-censorship-freedom-of-speech-research-china https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/10/17961806/google-leaked-r...
- Tomte 8y agoI cannot speak for the whole of Europe, but the German model certainly isn't "civility over freedom", but practical concordance: you have several basic rights which unfortunately almost always collide in some form with each other, and you find a way to give maximum effect to all of them. The difference between America and Germany — very broadly speaking — is that America goes for the local maximum (free speech trumps everything) and Germany goes for a global maximum.
- blueboo 8y agoThe dead, at the very least.
- charlesism 8y agoMod does. Don't like the mod, get out! Social networks don't control the police and jails. They have always had the right - though they neglected it because they are lazy and delusional - to moderate content on their own servers. It's so clear to me that "one size fits all" social networks will go away. They are inherently dysfunctional. Putting everyone from terrorists to toddlers on the same forums was never a good idea.
- nopzor 8y agoNo, they neglected it because they originally wanted protections afforded to “common carriers”. Now they are trying to have their cake and eat it too.
- thetrumanshow 8y agoWhy doth [the suppression of uncomfortable opinions] never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason.
- snackbugs 8y agoHate speech is made in full faith by a group that has dominance and power to influence others to harm groups who live under that dominance and power. How many gradations do you think there are between the two?
- macspoofing 8y agoI don't agree with that definition at all. It is an atrocious and immoral definition of 'hate speech' (and dare I say probably racist in practice).
- snackbugs 8y agoWhat can be done to correct this definition? What should be adjusted?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- macspoofing 8y agoFor one thing, this definition eschews a common standard. Rather, violations are based on arbitrary criteria of "dominance" - which is popular with certain ideologues but has very little support in showing that this is actually a good metaphor for understanding our society. Anyway, in practice (and probably in your mind), this definition would entail grouping people by their skin color and labeling one group as extra susceptible for violating YOUR hate speech code and another group being completely exempt.
- snackbugs 8y ago>Rather, violations are based on arbitrary criteria of "dominance" - which is popular with certain ideologues but has very little support in showing that this is actually a good metaphor for understanding our society. I'm fascinated with why people don't acknowledge power structures as having any influence in how one part of society views another; that there is currently no hierarchy in society. You just haven't ever needed to interface with this idea and therefore believe it's not a defined concept.
- blueboo 8y agoYes, there's a third: that the balance they strike is infinitely perfect and the net benefit is zero in all dimensions. It struck me as childishly pedantic to address, so
- chrisco255 8y agoSpeech isn't "dangerous". You know what you do about people that say stupid things: you call them out on it. The answer to hate speech is more speech.
- irishloop 8y agoSpeech can absolutely be dangerous. Much of the run-up to the Holocaust was in dehumanizing and characterizing the Jews as money-sucking leeches bleeding Germany dry.
- natestemen 8y agospeech is dangerous. hate speech promotes and incites violence.
- jshevek 8y agoWe already have laws that deal with explicitly inciting people to violence. So called "hate speech" generally is not an explicit endorsement of violence.
- lukifer 8y agoTo the extent that speech is dangerous, it's pretty easy to pivot to defending it on 2nd Amendment grounds, in addition to the 1st. (Relevant: https://xkcd.com/504/ https://xkcd.com/504/)
- manfredo 8y ago
- jachee 8y agoHate is an absolute. If you're not against it, you're supporting it. EDIT: So, I see I've angered the privileged, white, tech-bro, capitalists. Downvote away. Don't dare speak up about how hate is bad here. Got it.
- macspoofing 8y ago>If you're not against it, you're supporting it. I can be 'against' hate speech, but still support someone's right to utter it. Also, whose definition of 'hate speech' are we using?
- jachee 8y agoIf you're supporting an attacker's right to denigrate, abuse, or harass other people, you're supporting violating the victim's rights. One of these has a real social cost, and the other is just literal lip-service.
- mitchty 8y ago> If you're supporting an attacker's right to denigrate, abuse, or harass other people, you're supporting violating the victim's rights. Can you diagram how you arrived at this travesty of a logical leap? You're mixing in at least 5 suppositions completely outside of the stated parents post. Ignoring the other foundations coming alongside by implication.
- jachee 8y agoLet me simplify further, in the face of your ad hominem: If you're not actively trying to make the world a better place for everyone, you're passively making it worse for everyone.
- mitchty 8y ago> Let me simplify further, in the face of your ad hominem: Sorry? I attacked your phrasing and logic, not YOU. Its like you're wanting to get angry at nothing. I'm done here if you don't want to act civilized.
- ilovecaching 8y agoThere's still too many unsolved philosophical questions here. What is hate speech? What should the limits of free speech be? How do we contended with the multitude of religious, legal, and cultural differences and anomalies when policing news and thought across the world? How do we react to people weaponizing the policing of hate speech to remove free speech? I have yet to hear compelling answers to this problem, and I am not that optimistic that it can be solved in the next few decades. I do agree that trust busting is the wrong approach. At least the problem is currently centralized.
- atmosx 8y agoSpeech is either free or not free, there is no middle path. If you want free speech, you accept the consequences. If you want “regulated” speech, there are consequences. That’s it. I would argue that the level of satire a society can cope with, is directly proportional to the quality of democracy the society has.
- ilovecaching 8y ago> I would argue that the level of satire a society can cope with, is directly proportional to the quality of democracy the society has. So where does that put America :)
- dwaltrip 8y agoIgnoring nuance doesn't make it disappear. Every developed country on earth regulates speech to varying degrees.
- matt4077 8y ago> the level of satire a society can cope with, is directly proportional to the quality of democracy You're contradicting yourself: First, you deny that there are graduations in "freedom", saying it's all-or-nothing. But then, a democracy's quality is apparently proportional to its freedom of speech, implying that there are, indeed, nuances.
- basch 8y agoFree speech is a principal (one that existed before the United States) and a goal. You can have a goal, and operate principally, and still have univerally agreed upon edge cases and exceptions.
- IBM 8y agoAlex Stamos doesn't realize that the political tides have shifted. The technolibertarianism that has been prevalent in Silicon Valley since at least the 1990s is on its way out. Governments around the world are increasingly asserting their sovereignty, and that's not going to change. The internet is not a wild west where a bunch of tech people are free to do whatever they want, ignoring all the consequences and negative externalities they create. It's a coincidence that John Perry Barlow died at the height of all this, but I think it's extremely symbolic that governments are asserting their power just as technolibertarianism's radical cleric passed away.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- golemiprague 8y agoIf tech companies just accepted the first amendment as it is they would have much less problems and will have to police much less than what they do today. The government doesn't request from them anything more than the law of the specific land. The problem is that those tech companies run by people who lean left ideologically and as such they got butthurt from the recent political wins of the right all over the world. So they want to censor based on their ideology, not based on what the law allow or not allow. I don't see the government coming to arrest Alex Jones, it is tech companies that banned him, not even because of hate speech, just because they don't like his brand of humour. It won't help them because right wing people hold this ideology not because of some Alex Jones rant, this is just a classist assumption, they support it from various real reasons and no censorship is going to change it.
- mrkstu 8y agoCockroaches thrive in the dark corners. Sunlight is antiseptic. And forcing ideas/speech into those dark corners don't keep them from growing, it merely allows it to grow unobserved and un-countered. Ideas are the only counter to other ideas and how we communicate those idea is via speech. Suppression only invites martyrdom on the behalf of those suppressed, increasing their credibility.
- weregiraffe 8y ago>Cockroaches thrive in the dark corners Viruses thrive through exposure to new hosts. See, you can prove anything using an analogy.
- OmarIsmail 8y agoThere is evidence that deplatforming works (https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-bans-work https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-...)
- gdix 8y ago> though it may have some unintended consequences that have not been fully understood yet. I think no one disagrees that it "works" insofar as it stops the bad person from getting their bad ideas out there. Opponents of deplatforming generally argue that the long-term reaction to the deplatforming is worse than the problem the bad person's ideas were causing. Better to counter the bad ideas with good ideas to do long term good.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- OmarIsmail 8y agoThis is already going down the path of "what is hate speech". Here is what I think is a pretty simple definition: Speech that explicitly or direct line implicitly dehumanizes anyone. Then the arguments become pretty simple: does a statement dehumanize someone? Does it indicate that they are any less human than another? That's a much easier discussion to have.
- umanwizard 8y agoYour definition makes no sense. "We should kill people from country X" isn't hate speech by your definition - it doesn't imply anyone is any less human than anyone else.
- OmarIsmail 8y ago"should kill people" = "those people aren't deserving to live" = 1) either all humans are not deserving to live or 2) those specific humans are not deserving to live = if 2) country X are being dehumanized. if 1) do you consider yourself a human? A) yes, then why haven't you killed yourself? Since you haven't you think you're more deserving of life relative to everyone else and therefore are dehumanizing everyone but yourself, if 2) ok, you've publicly proclaimed that you don't think you're human which then let me add a second rule. Only humans have right to speech.
- umanwizard 8y ago> if 1) do you consider yourself a human? A) yes, then why haven't you killed yourself? Since you haven't you think you're more deserving of life relative to everyone else and therefore are dehumanizing everyone but yourself, This is circular reasoning. If we've already established that I might not think all humans deserve to live, you can't claim that thinking I deserve to live means I think I'm more human than everyone else. It's perfectly possible to think someone deserves to live less than I do while still thinking they're human. Such tortured logic is hardly "direct line implicit", which is exactly why your definition doesn't work.
- xtreme 8y ago
- the_snooze 8y agoTech companies are using algorithms to prioritize the messages we see, which makes them incredibly valuable as advertising platforms. It seems like Mr. Stamos wants these companies to have all the rewards and none of the complicated responsibilities to match it. If they don't want that responsibility, then they need to get out of the business of sorting and recommending. Let them be like Craigslist.
- snowwrestler 8y ago"Tech companies" is just way too broad a designation to use here. No one is seriously asking Apple to police hate speech in iMessage or Facetime, for instance, or Verizon to police hate speech in SMS. No one expects AT&T to police hate speech in a phone call. What people are concerned about are the newsfeeds and timelines, specifically. Companies like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube love to pretend that their newsfeed/timeline products are just like chat apps or phone calls--neutral messaging platforms. They're not. And the specific reason they are not, is the algorithmic timeline and content suggestions. It's silly to worry about giving these products "the power to determine what people can—and can’t—say online." They've already seized it for themselves--by deciding for me which content will show up in my newsfeed/timeline/suggested list. They decide which content gets promoted to me. Yes they use an algorithm to do so, instead of human decisions. But guess who built the algorithm? Companies that run algorithmic newsfeeds and timelines need to own their role as a publisher and a gatekeeper of content. Instead of pretending they don't make choices, they should be introspective and thoughtful about the criteria they are using to make those choices. "Engagement" is not neutral criteria because emotions are not symmetrical. Engagement is higher on topics of fear, anger, rage, violence. That's down to our evolution; that's down to the amygdala. So if you build a publishing system designed solely to maximize engagement, it's going to become a system that preferentially serves content that feeds negative emotions. There are articles and case studies where a person starts with a fresh account and sees what kind of content gets pushed to them; inevitably they get horrible conspiracy theories and fear-oriented content. Making decisions about what content your audience sees is an act of publishing, even if it's executed via complex algorithm. The companies doing this need to accept their responsibility for what they decide to serve and promote.
- olivermarks 8y agoEssence of article IMO "If democratic countries make tech firms impose limits on free speech, so will autocratic ones" Free speech is what defines a democratic country. Terms like 'Hate Speech', 'Fake News' are buzz phrase distractions that get in the way of the core of this reality. We already have a legal system in place that defines libel, threats etc. We don't need a new layer of corporate jurisdiction over our ability to speak online or monitoring what we can or can't say
- foobarbazetc 8y agoCounterpoint: no it isn’t. US law isn’t global anyway, and companies already do it.
- menacingly 8y agoPutting aside that it's a slippery and malleable label to apply to undesirable speech, there is an elitism hiding in these ban-hate-speech arguments. The core assumption is that while _I_ am able to see these vile ideas for the lies they are, the unsophisticated masses must not be allowed to hear them, lest they fall prey. This is problematic in ways that used to be obvious to people in free societies, but for some reason seems lost now.
- wccrawford 8y ago>This is problematic in ways that used to be obvious to people in free societies, but for some reason seems lost now. I don't think this is true. I think some people always got it, and some people still do. The difference is that the internet allows anyone to post their opinions, but it used to be a lot harder to reach other people. We still have people that we hold up on pedestals for saying the right things, and the people that we remember from the past are the ones that said things that were incredibly right, or incredibly wrong. We don't remember what every common Joe used to say daily.
- menacingly 8y agoThis might be true. When I was a kid, I saw a full hooded KKK march on TV, and I said "why do we let them march?" and my mom said "because you have to hear from people you don't want to hear from to know free speech is working" I cannot fathom that this conversation would even be considered good parenting today.
- rhacker 8y agoToday's parents are creating this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/08/17/a-satanic-idols-3-year-journey-to-the-arkansas-capitol-building/?utm_term=.cb8420e8c0ba https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/08...
- hnbroseph 8y agoi dig it. would be cool to see buddhist, hindu and islamic emplacements as well. personally i'd like to see something for atheists but i don't know how well that plays into government religious definitions.
- neves 8y agoWell, these unnamed "tech companies" are responsible for the proliferation of absurd lies that will elect a far right authoritarian candidate in my country, Brazil. The spread of this lies happens with the support of a well financed organization. I always thought that the Internet would be a democratic platform that would improve the debate in society. Maybe we would go back to a democracy without intermediaries. I was wrong. We are entering a dystopian world where the profits of a handful of companies are more important than the rest of society.
- tedunangst 8y agoModest proposal: The government should appoint a Department of Truth to review and approve all social media posts in a country to eliminate election misinformation.
- ethanwillis 8y agoWhat's really depressing is that I can't tell if you're joking or not.
- Arubis 8y ago(s)he's joking, but the only reason I'm sure is the use of "modest proposal", not the actual content.
- soule 8y agoMinitrue!
- halfnibble 8y agoI just read an article today about a named tech company banning marketing accounts associated with said far-right candidate. But I don't think that will stop him from a landslide win. The knife was the opposition's best hope.
- neves 8y agoIt was too late and hardly made a dent in their fake news network. One of the blocked accounts were of the son of the candidate.
- lsh123 8y agoI don’t understand why someone needs to censor anything in the first place. If a user finds posts of another user offensive, etc, then the first user can unsubscribe/unfollow/block/... the second user. If everyone thinks the same way then the offensive user will just speak with her/himself.
- twinkletwinkle 8y agoThat's how you end up with echo chambers and parallel online universes.
- lsh123 8y agoI think censorship is the way to create echo chambers in a much faster way
- draw_down 8y agoRight... unless the speech being silenced has to do with BDS, or pointing out various things about Israel. Then all of a sudden not moderating it would be "a dangerous path". Look, I'm on board with the idea that speech shouldn't be policed in these ways, but I find it incredibly disingenuous how the matter is discussed lately. The US government as well as digital platforms have routinely curtailed, surveilled and (in the case of the government) outright punished certain forms of speech by people on the left, but now it's a problem because some people on the right got banned by Twitter and YouTube. Given this, I find it very hard to take seriously the "free speech" stuff. Show me one person or group on the right who will go to bat for someone who got in trouble for supporting BDS, and then we can talk about free speech. Until then, it's just a tactic, and quite frankly I respect the tactical savvy of people on the right pushing this issue. They at least understand how to fight for their side, which is more than I can say for Democrats and other left-leaning centrists. But that's all it is, a tactic. It isn't about freedom at all. If you're only concerned about people on your side, your concern is not freedom.
- mundo 8y agoThis strikes me as a timely and important sentiment. When we demand that Twitter ban anti-semitic tweets, or that Cloudflare block white supremacist websites, or that Youtube deplatform Alex Jones, we are taking the power to limit speech (which the founders felt was too important to be wielded by the government) and handing it to middle managers at software companies. The de jure rule is "Freedom of Speech shall not be infringed" but the de facto rule is "Don't say anything that would upset the advertisers." This seems like a Bad Idea (tm) but until/unless a decentralized Mastodon/Scuttlebutt style platform gets traction, I don't know what the solution is. It's a natural result of relying on private apps as a primary method of communication.
- dwighttk 8y agoEven Mastodon instances can get in on the banning.
- bilbo0s 8y agoYep. In the end, even most of these hypothetical distributed social network instances would have the de facto rule: >Don't say anything that would upset the advertisers...
- 51lver 8y agoWhat advertisers? I haven't seen any on mastodon. In fact, I think the network would be actively hostile to their presence.
- madrox 8y agoI've been social on the internet since the early 90s, and it's been a wonderful place for most of it. Before it became so egalitarian, the people adept at socializing on it were pretty left leaning or downright libertarian. Now everyone is in on it, so we're getting confronted by parts of society we could pretend didn't exist 10 years ago. I don't know why I didn't see it coming. There's a can/should debate hidden in here. Tech companies totally can police hate speech (or any kind of speech) on their platforms, thanks to handy things like a ToS. Whether they should is a cultural question about what kind of a society we want to have. If history has taught me anything, it's that the can side of the debate wins in the long run.
- Arubis 8y ago> Now everyone is in on it, so we're getting confronted by parts of society we could pretend didn't exist 10 years ago. I don't know why I didn't see it coming. Did you have the same biases I did? At that time and age (my teens, mostly), I just assumed people with different values than mine were ignorant, and so naturally they wouldn't be capable of using advanced technology. I'm not proud of that, but there's still a _lot_ of that sentiment kicking around, including in the form that giving people additional access to technology and knowledge will educate the masses into the "correct" set of values held by whoever's pushing for greater technological adoption.
- Nasrudith 8y agoThere was some truth to that assumption when the internet was more niche and the old ecosystems were in place - it required a certain degree of curiosity and willingness to learn and explore when there were established "reputable" ways. Greater access does help /if they are willing to use it in self improving ways/ in the first place. If they just use it for tabloids and gossip it won't be a library to them but tabloids and gossip.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tempodox 8y agoPolicing “hate speech” will just create niches where you won't be censored. It's only a question of time until someone comes up with an idea to monetise that. Imagine a platform where “moderate speech” will be banned because it's against the house rules...
- detcader 8y ago161 comments and no one has mentioned Glenn Greenwald and the Intercept's prolific coverage on this issue? I'll do a quick websearch and fix that. Should Twitter, Facebook and Google Executives be the Arbiters of What We See and Read? August 21 2014 - https://theintercept.com/2014/08/21/twitter-facebook-executives-arbiters-see-read/ https://theintercept.com/2014/08/21/twitter-facebook-executi... Facebook Is Collaborating With the Israeli Government to Determine What Should Be Censored September 12 2016 - https://theintercept.com/2016/09/12/facebook-is-collaborating-with-the-israeli-government-to-determine-what-should-be-censored/ https://theintercept.com/2016/09/12/facebook-is-collaboratin... Then: Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments December 30 2017 - https://theintercept.com/2017/12/30/facebook-says-it-is-deleting-accounts-at-the-direction-of-the-u-s-and-israeli-governments/ https://theintercept.com/2017/12/30/facebook-says-it-is-dele... "hate speech" from:ggreenwald on Twitter - https://twitter.com/search?q=%22hate%20speech%22%20from%3Aggreenwald https://twitter.com/search?q=%22hate%20speech%22%20from%3Agg...