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Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

122 points by _mgr 7y ago

kken 7y ago
More internet censorship?
writepub 7y ago
Oh the hypocrisy of this!! ISIS and ilk have mastered the art of propaganda using online tools, and have been ignored for well over a decade. But ChristChurch was the moment of reckoning? Do not let the bad actions of the extreme corrode your civil rights - the right to free speech is both a fundamental human right, and that enshrined in the US Constitution with the first amendment. Banning trucks because terrorists have routinely driven over civilians to wreak havoc, is no way to deal with the matter I fully support the US government, and it's upholding of the first amendment on this matter: "It cited freedom of expression and freedom of the press as reasons it would not be joining the agreement, and said promoting credible, alternative narratives was the best way to defeat terrorist messaging."
- notfromhere 7y ago
  The first amendment is against government censorship, not private companies providing platforms for free speech on their private networks.
  - Taniwha 7y ago
    The 1st amendment also only applies in the US, in this case the US has essentially decided that it likes nazis and doesn't want to get involved with this international coalition
    - writepub 7y ago
      See how you setup the perfect straw-man here - "If you aren't on the side of our perfect, morality infused, turbo-boosted censorship, you must sympathize with Nazis!". The only time free speech matters is when the nature of speech is controversial! "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." is a more accurate summation of the U.S. govt., and the history behind the first amendment. Also worth noting that an actual incitement of violence is expressly illegal under U.S. law, and the ChristChurch shooter's manifesto et.al. is probably already illegal, without requiring a new speech police
      - prolepunk 7y ago
        > See how you setup the perfect straw-man here - "If you aren't on the side of our perfect, morality infused, turbo-boosted censorship, you must sympathize with Nazis!". In your example of a strawman you are making up a strawman. > "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." This sounds nice in theory, but no, you won't and this argument is high-flying bullshit. The argument about free speech is used only when the defense of nazis are involved. When the discussion comes to any other topic such as police brutality, racism, discrimination etc. these voices are conspicuously absent. > ChristChurch shooter's manifesto et.al. is probably already illegal, without requiring a new speech police In other words -- things are illegal but let's not make any laws or have any clear legal mechanisms to effectively enforcing this.
        writepub 7y ago
        > When the discussion comes to any other topic such as police brutality, racism, discrimination etc. these voices are conspicuously absent. Patently untrue, and a baseless accusation. If anything, the recent spate in enforcing compulsory body-cams for cops, and livestreams of actual police brutality have faced ZERO calls for censorship, especially from free speech advocates. > things are illegal but let's not make any laws or have any clear legal mechanisms to effectively enforcing this What does this even mean? If something is illegal, those with standing can obviously enforce the law.
        fzeroracer 7y ago
        Digging up the profoundly dirty history and reality of the US is unfortunately not taken very seriously, and actions by the police towards minorities etc are excused as justified by the same people that would argue against government tyranny. It's easier to claim that the US is an absolute bastion of free speech when you can conveniently hand wave all of the instances where it is not. Especially when it never actually affects you. It came to absolutely no surprise when i saw almost zero reaction from the 'free speech' crowd when a woman was prosecuted for laughing at Sessions.
        7y ago
    - int_19h 7y ago
      This guy was a socialist who literally killed Nazis. Please, spare a couple of minutes, and read what he had to say, and note that this was originally written in 1945. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
- spamizbad 7y ago
  Huh? The US has been very aggressive about shutting down websites that spread Al-Qaeda and ISIS propaganda on most websites. ISIS basically caught everyone with their pants down spreading their stuff on social media, but once people started noticing it, it was purged rapidly. It's not my view, but you could make the argument than the original sin was censoring Al-Qaeda content post-9/11. Obviously, nobody complained. Now the same tactics are being turned against the far-right and people have discovered a new love for free speech.
  - Miner49er 7y ago
    Yeah, maybe I wasn't paying attention, but I didn't see any people protecting ISIS's free speech. Now that this censorship is targeting other hate speech, suddenly everyone is shouting "free speech". The fact is, most people calling for free speech don't truly believe in it, they just want to be able to spout their own version of hate.
    - spamizbad 7y ago
      FWIW, there were a small group of people raising concerns about how the government went about shutting down "terrorist" websites after 9/11 but it largely fell on deaf ears. These people have been ideologically consistent, but they're outside of the political mainstream.
      - brianmc21 7y ago
        Also consider the fact that even if you do support free speech speaking out against censorship of a terrorist organization is only going to lead to blowback because you are supporting the enemy.
        Joakal 7y ago
        First they came for al Qaeda content, Then they came for ISIS comtent, Then...
        7y ago
- Miner49er 7y ago
  What do you mean? I was under the impression that ISIS was extremely censored online, particularly by the companies that signed this. Is that not the case? On the otherhand, I see white supremacist propganda basically daily at this point.
  - dx87 7y ago
    A couple of years ago, Cloudflare refused to remove access to ISIS websites, and said it's not the job of ISPs or themselves to police content. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/anonymous-opisis-cloudflare-refuses-block-service-pro-isis-websites-1495758 https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/anonymous-opisis-cloudflare-refuse...
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      The policy of one internet infrastructure firm doesn't validate the original claim of ISIS' online activity being 'ignored for well over a decade.'
      - DuskStar 7y ago
        It does imply they take it less seriously than stormfront, though.
        anigbrowl 7y ago
        Do you mean Cloudfront? I suppose so, but I don't know enough about the company to reach a firm conclusion.
        yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
        No, stormfront was a ... racially charged... website that Cloudflare actually did refuse to host.
        anigbrowl 7y ago
- disordinary 7y ago
  But you already censor things much less damaging than the live streaming of a terror attack. Instead of creating a beach head on freedoms which are damaging you should look at why the US rates do low on freedom, civil liberties and democracy and why most of the signatories of this call rate so highly and try and inact positive improvements.
mr_spothawk 7y ago
I guess they're not going to ban content that glorifies war, though? That would be a bridge too far.
- cf498 7y ago
  Dont be mad, the military is paying quite a bit for advertisement.
- basetop 7y ago
  Of course not. They are going to promote it. They are going to give the pro-war "authoritative sources" preferential treatment. It's funny how so many of the pro-censorship comments here reference ISIS. These same people would defend the pro-war news companies which has spread false propaganda leading to illegal wars that killed millions of innocents in the past few decades. If these companies are going to censor "extremism", then they should start with the "authoritative sources".
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cprayingmantis 7y ago
<This comment has been removed due to it's violent nature>
- salawat 7y ago
  The Aristocrats!
jamsch 7y ago
[removed]
seany 7y ago
This is horrifying
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  Why? I'm honestly surprised by the brevity of your comment and by how strong your opinion apparently is in one direction.
  - cf498 7y ago
    It is organized censorship across a large part of media people use to communicate today. As a cooperation between governments and those companies. It really doesnt need more then OPs comment, this is abhorrent. Its quite a big step towards an authoritarian society and the transformation into dictatorships. In hindsight the generation of the anti-authoritarian left growing up after the fall of the USSR got rather careless with authoritarian tendencies on the left. Lessons learned my ass, here we go again.
  - seany 7y ago
    Imagine the rules that are codified because of this being used by people to ideologically disagree with. Generally laws are very _very_ hard to get rid of.
- ploika 7y ago
  Live streaming murder is horrifying.
  - fwn 7y ago
    I thought that (as an example) the pioneering video recording of the Vietnam war was essentially in shaping the US American public opinion on the war matter. I could be wrong, but it wasn't seen as something horrifying back then. It's of course the actual murder which is horrifying. The problem isn't the documentation, but how we as a global society chooses to work with those documents. I'm not particularly deep into the issue, but I feel there must be something between glorifying it in some engagement-metric heavy filter bubble and making it an agenda to purge whole vaguely defined categories of content from the internet.
ausbah 7y ago
Everyone decried censorship, but always fails to provide an alternative to try and stop extremism online.
- BonesJustice 7y ago
  What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness.
  - solotronics 7y ago
    Extremism seemt to match up closely with an opinion that is opposite those in power.
    - BonesJustice 7y ago
      And yet those in power are the ones who get to decide what the term means.
  - krapp 7y ago
    > What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness. No, it isn't. Inevitably someone like yourself will come into threads like these and attempt to start a slippery slope argument by trying to imply that the subject at hand is meaningless and, therefore, all attempts to address it are arbitrary. It really is strange how, for certain subjects, people just forget how English works. So let's begin with the word itself. "Extremism" is a noun. The root of the word is "extreme." A dictionary will define "extremism" as "the holding of extreme political or religious views; fanaticism." Synonyms:fanaticism, radicalism, zealotry, zeal, fundamentalism, dogmatism, bigotry, militancy, activism; Now, let us address the article to provide further context: Tech company and world leaders have signed an unprecedented Christchurch Call agreement to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. Here we have a reference to Christchurch, a terrorist event. The common understanding of "extremism," as it relates to political speech, and specifically in relation to the events at Christchurch and the article posted, would understand the shooting of mosques by white supremacists to be an extremist act. So we can see that in the context of the article, and the call to action mentioned, "extremism" is not vague, nor meaningless, but specifically related to the dissemination of violent and terroristic material and propaganda, as was similarly done in the aforementioned terrorist incident. Although this is Hacker News, and I know it's futile here to suggest that standing in the way of bigots and extremists is anything but a slippery slope towards an Orwellian dystopian nightmare of fascism and thought-police and boots crushing our heads forever, there is nothing in this article, or the call to action it describes, which would suggest an intent to censor all arbitrary political speech, nor is the meaning of, "extremist" not well defined within.
floki999 7y ago
The US once again a laggard. Unfortunate but not surprising given the current tenants of the WH.
- ameister14 7y ago
  The US would be a laggard here regardless, given its enshrinement of free speech
  - floki999 7y ago
    Perhaps. Unfortunately absolute enshrinement of anything and the inability to critically evaluate when to allow for common-sense deviation from such enshrinement is a bit of a progress-stopper.
    - jakeogh 7y ago
      That's the point of inalienable rights. You cant "progress" them away.
    - ameister14 7y ago
      The problem with common-sense as a guide for law is that it changes dramatically over time, and often over short periods. It also remains to be seen whether or not this will result in progress in the long term. It's fortunate that we've been in one of the longest periods of relative peace in post dark age Western European history, but I don't generally count on that trend continuing forever. Making sure a government has significant enshrined limitations on its own power is important, not in the good times, but in the bad.
    - pathseeker 7y ago
      > common-sense deviation Common-sense deviations, a.k.a. an exceptions to the rules are often ill-conceived acts of emotional stupidity that don't age well. If it was so obvious, why wasn't it part of the rule in the first place?
      - 7y ago
mortenjorck 7y ago
This is a very hard problem that YouTube and Facebook made for themselves by becoming the world’s largest advertising platforms. They depend on engagement for ad revenue, they designed world-class algorithms to promote this engagement, and it turned out that extremist content happens to be very engaging. And so the problem is, building an algorithm that blindly promotes whatever keeps users on the site, for all its complexity, is a far more tractable problem compared to building a system that can avoid promoting content that promotes violence. In the meantime, they throw armies of people at the problem, to moderate content and respond to user reports, but it’s a losing battle. They had the technology to create a monster, but don’t have the technology to stop it.
- rcoveson 7y ago
  > They had the technology to create a monster, but don’t have the technology to stop it. At first I was going to argue that they could stop it and that they did have the "technology" to do so, but the more I thought about it the more I concluded that in the system we have built, they really cannot. Profitable ideas are unstoppable until they are proved less profitable than some other idea, or regulated out of existence. Fiduciary duty enshrines this into law. Sufficient competition ensures that it is the only winning strategy. Obligatory SSC: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
  - astrange 7y ago
    Facebook doesn't have fiduciary duties to anyone, unless they're registered financial advisors.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    > Fiduciary duty enshrines this into law. A common misconception: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
- kragen 7y ago
  Suppose you have two video-sharing platforms which use basically the same recommendation algorithms (etc.) to keep people engaged and clicking on videos, and they're equally effective — except that one of them censors recommendations based on some political criteria, for example, being "extremist", such as whoever the modern equivalent of Martin Luther King is. Let's call the censored platform "JedgarTube" and the other one "MLKTube", for lack of better terms. There are a couple of possibilities: 1. Those recommendations were actually less effective at keeping people engaged than whatever recommendations replace them on JedgarTube. In that case, MLKTube needs to copy the decision in order not to lose users gradually to JedgarTube. In fact, whichever platform blocks those recommendations first will experience improved user growth and engagement. Essentially the recommendations were just a bug of a primitive recommendation algorithm. 2. Those recommendations were actually more effective at keeping people engaged than whatever recommendations replace them on JedgarTube. In that case, JedgarTube will gradually lose users to MLKTube, again, assuming the platforms are otherwise equal. Of course, the truth is that any particular censorship decision could fall into either #1 or #2. The #1 censorship decisions will be copied by MLKTube, if they aren't too incompetent or principled, while the #2 decisions will gradually accumulate into a competitive disadvantage for eyeballs at JedgarTube. That's why the media platforms and government censors are trying to set up a global censorship system — whichever platform steps up first to be JedgarTube will lose viewers to whoever's censorship implementation is a step or two behind. Note that none of this logic depends on normative judgments such as "extremist content is bad", "extremist content is good", "people should have freedom of speech", "people shouldn't have freedom of speech", "platforms shouldn't manipulate people with algorithmic recommendations", "algorithmic recommendations are good for people", or anything like that. It's purely reasoning about objective causes and effects about people's behavior, although I've chosen my terms to weaken the evident bias against "extremism" in this discussion so readers can reason about these causes and effects instead of being thrown around by their emotional biases.
ehmish 7y ago
The approach seems fairly reasonable, it sounds like it's limited to explicitly violent extremist content, and it's being done using pension funds of various governments in a activist investment manner to try to bring about changes
- basetop 7y ago
  Historically, a combined effort by corporate and government interests to take away your rights was called fascism. But I guess if it is the far left doing it, it's okay.
  - ploika 7y ago
    Not a single one of those signatories is far left. The overwhelming majority are centre right. And historically, efforts to curb uncritical airtime for violent and dangerous people have been fairly common (albeit not entirely uncontroversial). Neither Ireland nor the UK were ever far left or fascist but RTÉ and the BBC both heavily restricted interviews with loyalist and republican paramilitaries during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
  - Joakal 7y ago
    What's the difference between left and right? The old definition was about republic vs monarchy. Now everyone keeps using those labels. Conservative? Right wing. Socially conservative? Right wing. Economically conservative. Left wing. Weird! Authoritative government that's socially conservative; Venezuela. Wait what? Thought they were labelled far left? Left and right labels are pointless, refer to the parties for what they represent; social conservatives; authoritarian; etc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left–right_political_spectrum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left–right_political_spectru...
    - dgzl 7y ago
      Today's public uses political terms very incorrectly and I think lots of us are confused because it.
  - EdwardDiego 7y ago
not_a_moth 7y ago
Preventing viral spreading of the videos I think is unquestionably ideal, but there's also a section in this "Call" stating another goal, to "Counter the drivers of terrorism ... to resist ideology and narratives... through education and building media literacy..." [some words removed so the message is less hidden]. It's hard not to suspect political motivation, given that Internet platforms are turf wars for politics these days.
- JudgeWapner 7y ago
  Imagine the next "favorite" presidential candidate that has $1.4 billion in corporate funding. But late in the game it seems like the people may actually vote for her opponent. What is this corporate money to do? Why, implicate her opponent's followers in some kind of "terrorist" act and get their forum taken down due to the "call" and "lessons learned from the tragedy"
m0zg 7y ago
Yeah, this is not a slippery slope at all, no sir. And the real extremists will just use Tor.
- cf498 7y ago
  The police in Germany already proposed to ban Tor as its "really not needed in western democracies".
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Laying down the groundwork for the Fourth Reich, I see. 30 years down the road someone gets elected who really doesn't want to go when the term is up. If things are well bolted down by then, they could stay indefinitely by simply sending people to jail for "extremism". It's as if history doesn't teach people anything at all, even recent history of less than 100 years ago.
deogeo 7y ago
"Never let a good crisis go to waste"
mooseburger 7y ago
Utterly nonsensical. You don't need the internet to be radicalized, people have been willing to kill in the name of their convictions for as long as humans have existed. I predict even if somehow every white supremacist were booted off the internet, no lives at all would be saved, as they just don't need the internet to kill people, or to learn to hate. This is purely giving up rights for the sake of security theatre.
- standardUser 7y ago
  You don't accept that the internet has enabled people with obscure and extreme views to better find each other, legitimize each other, spread their views and recruit others to their causes?
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    better find each other, legitimize each other, spread their views and recruit others to their causes? It's allowed everyone to do that. That's why we have more acrimony today. Allow a level playing field, and the violent stupid losers will lose. Start taking away people's rights, and you've only given those toxic people a pretext. (Which is exactly what the Christchurch shooter was trying to do.)
    - roca 7y ago
      Are the stupid flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers losing? No, they're doing much better than they ever were before, thanks to Internet platforms.
      - stcredzero 7y ago
        Are the stupid flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers losing? No, they're doing much better than they ever were before, thanks to Internet platforms. Yes, relatively speaking. Everyone is more organized and connected. Everyone has more media creation capability. Everyone is more deeply ensconced in like-minded groups and more deeply taken by groupthink. This is no different than most everyone in the industrialized world having access to refrigerators, washing machines, and antibiotics. (Note that we aren't as acrimonious about the misuse of that last one, even though it's arguably just as bad or worse as vaccine shenanigans in the long term. Could that be due to the perpetrators being of high socioeconomic level?) What you want to do is to single out a segment of the population, give up on them, and withhold the benefits of progress from them. That's a big red flag right there. We shouldn't have a society where the majority gets to arbitrarily suppress the minority. A part of the point of the US constitution is that the minority is also protected from the majority. If you are really for justice and equality, then don't ask for the power to create second class citizens.
shiado 7y ago
Considering that religious speech and the guiding religious books are often completely intolerant of all other views of the world and can thus be considered extremist, it would appear that such an agreement could ironically cause the censorship of the very religion that was brutally targeted in these attacks. Or perhaps they have specific censorship goals in mind? Think of the result in Alabama just yesterday, it is abundantly clear that Christianity as an ideology causes real tangible harm to women and ought to be completely scrubbed from social media.
abraae 7y ago
I would be interested to know what the technical difficulties are in scrubbing a banned video, and all derivatives, from a Facebook. Are there practical AI/video analysis techniques to detect that a video contains a fragment of another video? Surely.
- aeternus 7y ago
  There are, YouTube has a fairly effective algorithm that is used primarily to remove copyright-infringing content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_ID_(algorithm) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_ID_(algorithm)
elken 7y ago
The Christchurch shooter amassed a cache of weapons, and also posted a copy of his manifesto and a link to his real Facebook account to 4chan. The censorship/Facebook algorithms amplifying abhorrent content debate is one thing but I'm surprised by the lack of scrutiny of the security services over this. Especially for a member of the 5 Eyes. I can't help but feel this could have been prevented without any of the changes being proposed.
- LilBytes 7y ago
  4Chan and LiveLeak have both been blocked (via DNS) in Australia and New Zealand. So, the scrutiny albeit region specific has occurred.
  - elken 7y ago
    I don't think you understood my point. Blocking websites is not scrutiny of the intelligence services. I'm saying an individual with weapons doxed himself and telegraphed his intentions on a public forum and the security services completely missed it. That could all have been be picked up without any new laws or intervention from Facebook. We need to analyse how it was missed and learn from it.
    - LilBytes 7y ago
      Ah I see, I did misunderstand. I agree with your comments entirely.
  - 0xADEADBEE 7y ago
    Just to expand on this a little bit, it is contingent on ISP and as far as I know, the following websites: - voat.co - 4chan.org - 8ch.net - liveleak.com - archive.is - bitchute.com - zerohedge.com - kiwifarms.net I think I'm right in saying that Telstra, Optus and Vodafone are the 'Big Three', and they have blocked the above. Here in NZ, It's Vodafone, Spark and 2 Degrees, all of whom, I understand, blocked access, though I've been unable to verify this first-hand. There are also hefty prison sentences [0] (up to 14 years) and fines for people who read/distributed the manifesto and watched/shared the original footage. Edit: More comprehensive block-list can be found here: [1] [0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/world/asia/new-zealand-attacks-social-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/world/asia/new-zealand-at... [1] - https://www.citizensagainstidiocracy.com/93/internet-censorship-in-australia-and-new-zealand-who-decides https://www.citizensagainstidiocracy.com/93/internet-censors...
scottlocklin 7y ago
It's almost like they give more of a shit about people posting things on the internet than some looney slaughtering 51 people.
- EdwardDiego 7y ago
  That looney was radicalised on the Internet, by a subset of Internet culture.
  - hyperdunc 7y ago
    According to his manifesto the largest factor was a visit to France, not online activity.
    - EdwardDiego 7y ago
      His manifesto also included memes and copy pasta.He listened to meme music as he drove to the mosque, he said "Subscribe to Pewdiepie" before he shot the first victim. The fact that he was a member of an online community that considered his views normal is extremely significant.
      - scottlocklin 7y ago
        Oh yeah? How about the fact that he drove a car, or ate meat or spoke english or traveled a lot? The "online radicalization" thing is complete and total bullshit: it's an excuse to ramp up the totalitarian surveillance state in a more obvious way than the "war on terror" -now it's a war on people who read things on the internet. Magic internet forums might make me into a terrorist ... or a hacker; better put me in prison!
        EdwardDiego 7y ago
        > Magic internet forums might make me into a terrorist He found an echo chamber that reinforced his beliefs, which happened to be filled with internet edgelords that egged him on.
alfiedotwtf 7y ago
Why should the likes of Fox News be exempt
- Barrin92 7y ago
  I don't think they are. Fox News as slanted as it is, doesn't endorse terrorism or anything along these lines the way some internet communities or message boards do. There's really no comparison between even the worst tabloid newspaper and some of the stuff that festers on the internet.
  - alfiedotwtf 7y ago
    > doesn't endorse terrorism The use propaganda to make people support the war effort against the Middle East. Ask people in the Middle East who the terrorists are.
    - sadris 7y ago
      Every mainstream outlet promotes wars in the middle East. The only individual who is saying to not do that is... Tucker Carlson, who is on Fox.
    - tathougies 7y ago
      > The use propaganda to make people support the war effort against the Middle East. Didn't realize Democratic congressmen/women were taking orders from Fox News.
CodiePetersen 7y ago
This just sounds like a giant can of worms that is going to blow up in people's faces. Remove for a moment any potential future government alignments, just so we aren't talking about hypothetical fictitious governments. Let's just examine the governments currently signed to it. Indonesia has harsh religious laws, crack downs on illegal reporting, and literally raids on LGBTQ gatherings. The Senegal government arbitrarily arrests dissidents, the LGTBQ community has to hide because it's illegal, and protests are outlawed. India already overuses counter terrorism laws to charge dissidents and activists and there are religious minorities that suffer heavily from discrimination. This type of call to action will only further entrench government strangles over freedom of speech. Now people have given them moral authority to curb an already very broad and ambiguous category of terrorists and now extremists. Sure I get it, there is a bunch of vile on the internet and the world would be a better place without it. But my "better place without it" is different from somebody else's and so is the "it". This won't end up like what is in your head. The hate isn't "spreading through social media" the hate and the fear were already there. These people grew up with it. Social, cultural, religious, sexual, moral borders, you name it, every border we have is being rewritten and when you rewrite those borders, especially this quickly, people are gonna get scared, they're gonna lash out, and because of it more people are getting scared and want to control one of the most powerful tools to freedom.
- endorphone 7y ago
  "Let's just examine the governments currently signed to it." You picked three. How about Australia, Canada, European Commission, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom. Are you going to examine those? Most of those are the most free, most protective countries. "The hate isn't "spreading through social media" the hate and the fear were already there." There has always been hate. There have always been incredibly ignorant beliefs like flat Earth, anti-vaccine, etc. Usually it is isolated and the community -- the village -- keeps it in check and provides a pressure valve. Social media, however, allows us to surround ourselves with a bubble that makes us think that it's normal if not somehow heroic, our graph of similarly extreme believing people cementing our resolve. That guy who became curious and got some bad information isn't being reasoned with by rational people, he's being indoctrinated by a distributed group that only reinforced their own beliefs. It absolutely has made the problem worse in otherwise reasonable societies.
greggeter 7y ago
That'll fix it.
sonnyblarney 7y ago
I find it problematic that there have been oodles of very classical kinds of 'terrorism' and 'extremism' on Social Media since the start. ISIS has been recruiting with absolutely brutal kind of stuff on Twitter, etc.. But now we have this nutbar thing in New Zealand and it's a 'global action'? Aside from the complications mentioned in some other comments ... ... the Jacinda / Trudeau / Macron triumvirate I think were looking in the wrong places. So it's probably good that we're taking action, and just beyond repulsive that that some massacre was broadcast live on Facebook, but I hope we accomplish do this without too many existential issues.
- boltzmann_brain 7y ago
  Because it's against the narrative. ISIS stuff was ignored because of "mah islamophobia", but can't ignore "evil white people" and we must call for global action.
anigbrowl 7y ago
It'd be great if people who want to explore this as a free speech issue would engage with the question of what happens to the free speech (and other) rights of people who are killed by extremists, and whether they are more or less important than the rights of people who advocate such killings.
- BigJono 7y ago
  The comparison isn't between 40 people's right to live vs every terrorist's right to free speech. It's between some probabalistic chance that 40 people's right to live isn't violated in the future due to these actions, versus some probabalistic chance of millions of innocent people being silenced and having their privacy violated in various ways due to the collateral damage from this kind of policy making for the foreseeable future. This shit never gets revoked once it's in place. History is wrought with examples of people's free speech being violated. How many examples do we really have of when someone's free speech was successfully violated to protect proportionally more important rights? The entire western world is slowly giving up every single ounce of privacy and freedom, in exchange, and for what? ISIS is finished, the rate of Muslim terrorist attacks seems to be falling off pretty fast, and the swell of fascist sentiment will slowly wind down too once the factors that triggered it are no longer present. This isn't some new concept that's never happened before. And in 10 or 15 years are we going to be happy with the state of government control in countries like Australia, NZ, UK etc given what we've got out of it?
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    There's a lot of counterfactuals here, both numerical and historical - for example, your suggestion that policies put in place to deal with a problem never being revoked which is simply not supported by fact. As your whole post is dedicated to invalidating the question I posed I hope you'll excuse me for not spending an hour on a point-by-point refutation of your numerous and very broad claims.
- Rapzid 7y ago
  Free speech is just as much about those on the receiving end as on the producing. And, once the information passed into other hands your dealing with producing end again. Your thesis is a non sequitur as well; people sharing and receiving the information are not necessarily advocating the killings. In fact, just like with War footage from the past, they could be using it to the opposite effect.
mattnewport 7y ago
> Tech companies and governments sign up Two wolves and a sheep vote on what's for dinner. What's for dinner being our most fundamental rights as citizens.
- asdf21 7y ago
  Only Americans have fundamental rights. Everyone else has "hate speech," which depending on how that's interpreted, can mean anything from thinly veiled blasphemy laws, an inability to bluntly criticize Scientology or Islam, or charges for making Nazi jokes.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Rapzid 7y ago
It's amazing to me how political this is and how oblivious to that fact a large portion of the NZ population is. This horrible act happened on the current governments watch. I've seen more outrage and effort from the government on the spreading of the video and manifesto than introspection into how this slipped through in the first place. I suppose in a country where carrying a weapon for the purpose of self defense is considered a crime, something this terrible shattering the illusion of nanny government protecting you requires a whole lot of deflection and ultra maneuvers to secure the next election cycle. New Zealand's knee has jerked so hard I'm feeling it in my groin 8k miles away.
- roca 7y ago
  NZers have observed the USA's experiment with reducing violent crime by flooding the nation with guns, and there is very strong support across the political spectrum for trying something else: restricting access to the most dangerous guns, and deplatforming murder advocates. It is not some authoritarian ploy.
  - eadmund 7y ago
    > It is not some authoritarian ploy. Regardless of whether you think it's a good idea or not, restricting access to guns and free speech is an authoritarian play: it's using the authority of the State to restrict certain liberties in the intent of doing good.
    - roca 7y ago
      All laws "use the authority of the State to restrict certain liberties in the intent of doing good".
      - tathougies 7y ago
        Sure, all law is an exercise of authority, and hence authoritarianism. The commenter was merely calling out that... no matter how you dice it... a new law is always authoritarian, whether you acknowledge it or not. Saying 'this law is not authoritarian' is always a contradiction.
sarcasmOrTears 7y ago
I hope one day we will be able to condemn these politicians, bureaucrats and big corps for their crimes against free speech, just like we did with the nazis when they tried to subvert Europe. We need serious laws with draconian punishments to protect our rights, what we have now is insufficient.
TheLuddite 7y ago
Make internet more expensive therefore limiting its impact among the stupidest members of society - the working class.
DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
Aren't they missing the point here? The problem isn't that this guy streamed what he was doing on facebook, it's the fact that he did it in the first place? As these large hosts move more and more away from mere platforms to content curators it does make a lot of sense that they'd also be more responsible for what they curate, but at the same time, it seems like this responsibility will ultimately leak back into the parts of these services that are really just platforms and ultimately to those that don't curate content at all.
- roca 7y ago
  A big contributing factor to him doing it in the first place was him marinating in online murder advocacy groups.
- dredds 7y ago
  > The problem isn't that this guy streamed what he was doing on facebook, it's the fact that he did it in the first place? The Las Vegas shooter we're told had no motive, but there's a public sense that each massacre is trying to "out do" a previous kill count. With Facebook being the go to place when one occurs, it's instant fame and notoriety for the perpetrator. For this reason our government and media took the immediate response of "de-naming" the killer, but with instant global online platforms this is after the horse has bolted. This approach of involving platforms directly is to neuter the draw of instant notoriety. To remove fame (or widespread publicity if there is an agenda) from being another contributing factor.

122 points by _mgr 7y ago

kken 7y ago

More internet censorship?

Oh the hypocrisy of this!! ISIS and ilk have mastered the art of propaganda using online tools, and have been ignored for well over a decade. But ChristChurch was the moment of reckoning? Do not let the bad actions of the extreme corrode your civil rights - the right to free speech is both a fundamental human right, and that enshrined in the US Constitution with the first amendment. Banning trucks because terrorists have routinely driven over civilians to wreak havoc, is no way to deal with the matter I fully support the US government, and it's upholding of the first amendment on this matter: "It cited freedom of expression and freedom of the press as reasons it would not be joining the agreement, and said promoting credible, alternative narratives was the best way to defeat terrorist messaging."

notfromhere 7y ago
The first amendment is against government censorship, not private companies providing platforms for free speech on their private networks.
- Taniwha 7y ago
  The 1st amendment also only applies in the US, in this case the US has essentially decided that it likes nazis and doesn't want to get involved with this international coalition
  - writepub 7y ago
    See how you setup the perfect straw-man here - "If you aren't on the side of our perfect, morality infused, turbo-boosted censorship, you must sympathize with Nazis!". The only time free speech matters is when the nature of speech is controversial! "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." is a more accurate summation of the U.S. govt., and the history behind the first amendment. Also worth noting that an actual incitement of violence is expressly illegal under U.S. law, and the ChristChurch shooter's manifesto et.al. is probably already illegal, without requiring a new speech police
    - prolepunk 7y ago
      > See how you setup the perfect straw-man here - "If you aren't on the side of our perfect, morality infused, turbo-boosted censorship, you must sympathize with Nazis!". In your example of a strawman you are making up a strawman. > "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." This sounds nice in theory, but no, you won't and this argument is high-flying bullshit. The argument about free speech is used only when the defense of nazis are involved. When the discussion comes to any other topic such as police brutality, racism, discrimination etc. these voices are conspicuously absent. > ChristChurch shooter's manifesto et.al. is probably already illegal, without requiring a new speech police In other words -- things are illegal but let's not make any laws or have any clear legal mechanisms to effectively enforcing this.
      - writepub 7y ago
        > When the discussion comes to any other topic such as police brutality, racism, discrimination etc. these voices are conspicuously absent. Patently untrue, and a baseless accusation. If anything, the recent spate in enforcing compulsory body-cams for cops, and livestreams of actual police brutality have faced ZERO calls for censorship, especially from free speech advocates. > things are illegal but let's not make any laws or have any clear legal mechanisms to effectively enforcing this What does this even mean? If something is illegal, those with standing can obviously enforce the law.
      - fzeroracer 7y ago
        Digging up the profoundly dirty history and reality of the US is unfortunately not taken very seriously, and actions by the police towards minorities etc are excused as justified by the same people that would argue against government tyranny. It's easier to claim that the US is an absolute bastion of free speech when you can conveniently hand wave all of the instances where it is not. Especially when it never actually affects you. It came to absolutely no surprise when i saw almost zero reaction from the 'free speech' crowd when a woman was prosecuted for laughing at Sessions.
        7y ago
  - int_19h 7y ago
    This guy was a socialist who literally killed Nazis. Please, spare a couple of minutes, and read what he had to say, and note that this was originally written in 1945. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
spamizbad 7y ago
Huh? The US has been very aggressive about shutting down websites that spread Al-Qaeda and ISIS propaganda on most websites. ISIS basically caught everyone with their pants down spreading their stuff on social media, but once people started noticing it, it was purged rapidly. It's not my view, but you could make the argument than the original sin was censoring Al-Qaeda content post-9/11. Obviously, nobody complained. Now the same tactics are being turned against the far-right and people have discovered a new love for free speech.
- Miner49er 7y ago
  Yeah, maybe I wasn't paying attention, but I didn't see any people protecting ISIS's free speech. Now that this censorship is targeting other hate speech, suddenly everyone is shouting "free speech". The fact is, most people calling for free speech don't truly believe in it, they just want to be able to spout their own version of hate.
  - spamizbad 7y ago
    FWIW, there were a small group of people raising concerns about how the government went about shutting down "terrorist" websites after 9/11 but it largely fell on deaf ears. These people have been ideologically consistent, but they're outside of the political mainstream.
    - brianmc21 7y ago
      Also consider the fact that even if you do support free speech speaking out against censorship of a terrorist organization is only going to lead to blowback because you are supporting the enemy.
      - Joakal 7y ago
        First they came for al Qaeda content, Then they came for ISIS comtent, Then...
        7y ago
Miner49er 7y ago
What do you mean? I was under the impression that ISIS was extremely censored online, particularly by the companies that signed this. Is that not the case? On the otherhand, I see white supremacist propganda basically daily at this point.
- dx87 7y ago
  A couple of years ago, Cloudflare refused to remove access to ISIS websites, and said it's not the job of ISPs or themselves to police content. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/anonymous-opisis-cloudflare-refuses-block-service-pro-isis-websites-1495758 https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/anonymous-opisis-cloudflare-refuse...
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    The policy of one internet infrastructure firm doesn't validate the original claim of ISIS' online activity being 'ignored for well over a decade.'
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      It does imply they take it less seriously than stormfront, though.
      - anigbrowl 7y ago
        Do you mean Cloudfront? I suppose so, but I don't know enough about the company to reach a firm conclusion.
        yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
        No, stormfront was a ... racially charged... website that Cloudflare actually did refuse to host.
        anigbrowl 7y ago
disordinary 7y ago
But you already censor things much less damaging than the live streaming of a terror attack. Instead of creating a beach head on freedoms which are damaging you should look at why the US rates do low on freedom, civil liberties and democracy and why most of the signatories of this call rate so highly and try and inact positive improvements.

mr_spothawk 7y ago

I guess they're not going to ban content that glorifies war, though? That would be a bridge too far.

cf498 7y ago
Dont be mad, the military is paying quite a bit for advertisement.
basetop 7y ago
Of course not. They are going to promote it. They are going to give the pro-war "authoritative sources" preferential treatment. It's funny how so many of the pro-censorship comments here reference ISIS. These same people would defend the pro-war news companies which has spread false propaganda leading to illegal wars that killed millions of innocents in the past few decades. If these companies are going to censor "extremism", then they should start with the "authoritative sources".

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

cprayingmantis 7y ago

salawat 7y ago
The Aristocrats!

jamsch 7y ago

[removed]

seany 7y ago

This is horrifying

happytoexplain 7y ago
Why? I'm honestly surprised by the brevity of your comment and by how strong your opinion apparently is in one direction.
- cf498 7y ago
  It is organized censorship across a large part of media people use to communicate today. As a cooperation between governments and those companies. It really doesnt need more then OPs comment, this is abhorrent. Its quite a big step towards an authoritarian society and the transformation into dictatorships. In hindsight the generation of the anti-authoritarian left growing up after the fall of the USSR got rather careless with authoritarian tendencies on the left. Lessons learned my ass, here we go again.
- seany 7y ago
  Imagine the rules that are codified because of this being used by people to ideologically disagree with. Generally laws are very _very_ hard to get rid of.
ploika 7y ago
Live streaming murder is horrifying.
- fwn 7y ago
  I thought that (as an example) the pioneering video recording of the Vietnam war was essentially in shaping the US American public opinion on the war matter. I could be wrong, but it wasn't seen as something horrifying back then. It's of course the actual murder which is horrifying. The problem isn't the documentation, but how we as a global society chooses to work with those documents. I'm not particularly deep into the issue, but I feel there must be something between glorifying it in some engagement-metric heavy filter bubble and making it an agenda to purge whole vaguely defined categories of content from the internet.

ausbah 7y ago

Everyone decried censorship, but always fails to provide an alternative to try and stop extremism online.

BonesJustice 7y ago
What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness.
- solotronics 7y ago
  Extremism seemt to match up closely with an opinion that is opposite those in power.
  - BonesJustice 7y ago
    And yet those in power are the ones who get to decide what the term means.
- krapp 7y ago
  > What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness. No, it isn't. Inevitably someone like yourself will come into threads like these and attempt to start a slippery slope argument by trying to imply that the subject at hand is meaningless and, therefore, all attempts to address it are arbitrary. It really is strange how, for certain subjects, people just forget how English works. So let's begin with the word itself. "Extremism" is a noun. The root of the word is "extreme." A dictionary will define "extremism" as "the holding of extreme political or religious views; fanaticism." Synonyms:fanaticism, radicalism, zealotry, zeal, fundamentalism, dogmatism, bigotry, militancy, activism; Now, let us address the article to provide further context: Tech company and world leaders have signed an unprecedented Christchurch Call agreement to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. Here we have a reference to Christchurch, a terrorist event. The common understanding of "extremism," as it relates to political speech, and specifically in relation to the events at Christchurch and the article posted, would understand the shooting of mosques by white supremacists to be an extremist act. So we can see that in the context of the article, and the call to action mentioned, "extremism" is not vague, nor meaningless, but specifically related to the dissemination of violent and terroristic material and propaganda, as was similarly done in the aforementioned terrorist incident. Although this is Hacker News, and I know it's futile here to suggest that standing in the way of bigots and extremists is anything but a slippery slope towards an Orwellian dystopian nightmare of fascism and thought-police and boots crushing our heads forever, there is nothing in this article, or the call to action it describes, which would suggest an intent to censor all arbitrary political speech, nor is the meaning of, "extremist" not well defined within.

floki999 7y ago

The US once again a laggard. Unfortunate but not surprising given the current tenants of the WH.

ameister14 7y ago
The US would be a laggard here regardless, given its enshrinement of free speech
- floki999 7y ago
  Perhaps. Unfortunately absolute enshrinement of anything and the inability to critically evaluate when to allow for common-sense deviation from such enshrinement is a bit of a progress-stopper.
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    That's the point of inalienable rights. You cant "progress" them away.
  - ameister14 7y ago
    The problem with common-sense as a guide for law is that it changes dramatically over time, and often over short periods. It also remains to be seen whether or not this will result in progress in the long term. It's fortunate that we've been in one of the longest periods of relative peace in post dark age Western European history, but I don't generally count on that trend continuing forever. Making sure a government has significant enshrined limitations on its own power is important, not in the good times, but in the bad.
  - pathseeker 7y ago
    > common-sense deviation Common-sense deviations, a.k.a. an exceptions to the rules are often ill-conceived acts of emotional stupidity that don't age well. If it was so obvious, why wasn't it part of the rule in the first place?
    - 7y ago

mortenjorck 7y ago

This is a very hard problem that YouTube and Facebook made for themselves by becoming the world’s largest advertising platforms. They depend on engagement for ad revenue, they designed world-class algorithms to promote this engagement, and it turned out that extremist content happens to be very engaging. And so the problem is, building an algorithm that blindly promotes whatever keeps users on the site, for all its complexity, is a far more tractable problem compared to building a system that can avoid promoting content that promotes violence. In the meantime, they throw armies of people at the problem, to moderate content and respond to user reports, but it’s a losing battle. They had the technology to create a monster, but don’t have the technology to stop it.

rcoveson 7y ago
> They had the technology to create a monster, but don’t have the technology to stop it. At first I was going to argue that they could stop it and that they did have the "technology" to do so, but the more I thought about it the more I concluded that in the system we have built, they really cannot. Profitable ideas are unstoppable until they are proved less profitable than some other idea, or regulated out of existence. Fiduciary duty enshrines this into law. Sufficient competition ensures that it is the only winning strategy. Obligatory SSC: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
- astrange 7y ago
  Facebook doesn't have fiduciary duties to anyone, unless they're registered financial advisors.
- deogeo 7y ago
  > Fiduciary duty enshrines this into law. A common misconception: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
kragen 7y ago
Suppose you have two video-sharing platforms which use basically the same recommendation algorithms (etc.) to keep people engaged and clicking on videos, and they're equally effective — except that one of them censors recommendations based on some political criteria, for example, being "extremist", such as whoever the modern equivalent of Martin Luther King is. Let's call the censored platform "JedgarTube" and the other one "MLKTube", for lack of better terms. There are a couple of possibilities: 1. Those recommendations were actually less effective at keeping people engaged than whatever recommendations replace them on JedgarTube. In that case, MLKTube needs to copy the decision in order not to lose users gradually to JedgarTube. In fact, whichever platform blocks those recommendations first will experience improved user growth and engagement. Essentially the recommendations were just a bug of a primitive recommendation algorithm. 2. Those recommendations were actually more effective at keeping people engaged than whatever recommendations replace them on JedgarTube. In that case, JedgarTube will gradually lose users to MLKTube, again, assuming the platforms are otherwise equal. Of course, the truth is that any particular censorship decision could fall into either #1 or #2. The #1 censorship decisions will be copied by MLKTube, if they aren't too incompetent or principled, while the #2 decisions will gradually accumulate into a competitive disadvantage for eyeballs at JedgarTube. That's why the media platforms and government censors are trying to set up a global censorship system — whichever platform steps up first to be JedgarTube will lose viewers to whoever's censorship implementation is a step or two behind. Note that none of this logic depends on normative judgments such as "extremist content is bad", "extremist content is good", "people should have freedom of speech", "people shouldn't have freedom of speech", "platforms shouldn't manipulate people with algorithmic recommendations", "algorithmic recommendations are good for people", or anything like that. It's purely reasoning about objective causes and effects about people's behavior, although I've chosen my terms to weaken the evident bias against "extremism" in this discussion so readers can reason about these causes and effects instead of being thrown around by their emotional biases.

ehmish 7y ago

The approach seems fairly reasonable, it sounds like it's limited to explicitly violent extremist content, and it's being done using pension funds of various governments in a activist investment manner to try to bring about changes

basetop 7y ago
Historically, a combined effort by corporate and government interests to take away your rights was called fascism. But I guess if it is the far left doing it, it's okay.
- ploika 7y ago
  Not a single one of those signatories is far left. The overwhelming majority are centre right. And historically, efforts to curb uncritical airtime for violent and dangerous people have been fairly common (albeit not entirely uncontroversial). Neither Ireland nor the UK were ever far left or fascist but RTÉ and the BBC both heavily restricted interviews with loyalist and republican paramilitaries during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
- Joakal 7y ago
  What's the difference between left and right? The old definition was about republic vs monarchy. Now everyone keeps using those labels. Conservative? Right wing. Socially conservative? Right wing. Economically conservative. Left wing. Weird! Authoritative government that's socially conservative; Venezuela. Wait what? Thought they were labelled far left? Left and right labels are pointless, refer to the parties for what they represent; social conservatives; authoritarian; etc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left–right_political_spectrum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left–right_political_spectru...
  - dgzl 7y ago
    Today's public uses political terms very incorrectly and I think lots of us are confused because it.
- EdwardDiego 7y ago

not_a_moth 7y ago

Preventing viral spreading of the videos I think is unquestionably ideal, but there's also a section in this "Call" stating another goal, to "Counter the drivers of terrorism ... to resist ideology and narratives... through education and building media literacy..." [some words removed so the message is less hidden]. It's hard not to suspect political motivation, given that Internet platforms are turf wars for politics these days.

JudgeWapner 7y ago
Imagine the next "favorite" presidential candidate that has $1.4 billion in corporate funding. But late in the game it seems like the people may actually vote for her opponent. What is this corporate money to do? Why, implicate her opponent's followers in some kind of "terrorist" act and get their forum taken down due to the "call" and "lessons learned from the tragedy"

m0zg 7y ago

Yeah, this is not a slippery slope at all, no sir. And the real extremists will just use Tor.

cf498 7y ago
The police in Germany already proposed to ban Tor as its "really not needed in western democracies".
- m0zg 7y ago
  Laying down the groundwork for the Fourth Reich, I see. 30 years down the road someone gets elected who really doesn't want to go when the term is up. If things are well bolted down by then, they could stay indefinitely by simply sending people to jail for "extremism". It's as if history doesn't teach people anything at all, even recent history of less than 100 years ago.

deogeo 7y ago

"Never let a good crisis go to waste"

mooseburger 7y ago

Utterly nonsensical. You don't need the internet to be radicalized, people have been willing to kill in the name of their convictions for as long as humans have existed. I predict even if somehow every white supremacist were booted off the internet, no lives at all would be saved, as they just don't need the internet to kill people, or to learn to hate. This is purely giving up rights for the sake of security theatre.

standardUser 7y ago
You don't accept that the internet has enabled people with obscure and extreme views to better find each other, legitimize each other, spread their views and recruit others to their causes?
- stcredzero 7y ago
  better find each other, legitimize each other, spread their views and recruit others to their causes? It's allowed everyone to do that. That's why we have more acrimony today. Allow a level playing field, and the violent stupid losers will lose. Start taking away people's rights, and you've only given those toxic people a pretext. (Which is exactly what the Christchurch shooter was trying to do.)
  - roca 7y ago
    Are the stupid flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers losing? No, they're doing much better than they ever were before, thanks to Internet platforms.
    - stcredzero 7y ago
      Are the stupid flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers losing? No, they're doing much better than they ever were before, thanks to Internet platforms. Yes, relatively speaking. Everyone is more organized and connected. Everyone has more media creation capability. Everyone is more deeply ensconced in like-minded groups and more deeply taken by groupthink. This is no different than most everyone in the industrialized world having access to refrigerators, washing machines, and antibiotics. (Note that we aren't as acrimonious about the misuse of that last one, even though it's arguably just as bad or worse as vaccine shenanigans in the long term. Could that be due to the perpetrators being of high socioeconomic level?) What you want to do is to single out a segment of the population, give up on them, and withhold the benefits of progress from them. That's a big red flag right there. We shouldn't have a society where the majority gets to arbitrarily suppress the minority. A part of the point of the US constitution is that the minority is also protected from the majority. If you are really for justice and equality, then don't ask for the power to create second class citizens.

shiado 7y ago

Considering that religious speech and the guiding religious books are often completely intolerant of all other views of the world and can thus be considered extremist, it would appear that such an agreement could ironically cause the censorship of the very religion that was brutally targeted in these attacks. Or perhaps they have specific censorship goals in mind? Think of the result in Alabama just yesterday, it is abundantly clear that Christianity as an ideology causes real tangible harm to women and ought to be completely scrubbed from social media.

abraae 7y ago

I would be interested to know what the technical difficulties are in scrubbing a banned video, and all derivatives, from a Facebook. Are there practical AI/video analysis techniques to detect that a video contains a fragment of another video? Surely.

aeternus 7y ago
There are, YouTube has a fairly effective algorithm that is used primarily to remove copyright-infringing content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_ID_(algorithm) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_ID_(algorithm)

elken 7y ago

The Christchurch shooter amassed a cache of weapons, and also posted a copy of his manifesto and a link to his real Facebook account to 4chan. The censorship/Facebook algorithms amplifying abhorrent content debate is one thing but I'm surprised by the lack of scrutiny of the security services over this. Especially for a member of the 5 Eyes. I can't help but feel this could have been prevented without any of the changes being proposed.

LilBytes 7y ago
4Chan and LiveLeak have both been blocked (via DNS) in Australia and New Zealand. So, the scrutiny albeit region specific has occurred.
- elken 7y ago
  I don't think you understood my point. Blocking websites is not scrutiny of the intelligence services. I'm saying an individual with weapons doxed himself and telegraphed his intentions on a public forum and the security services completely missed it. That could all have been be picked up without any new laws or intervention from Facebook. We need to analyse how it was missed and learn from it.
  - LilBytes 7y ago
    Ah I see, I did misunderstand. I agree with your comments entirely.
- 0xADEADBEE 7y ago
  Just to expand on this a little bit, it is contingent on ISP and as far as I know, the following websites: - voat.co - 4chan.org - 8ch.net - liveleak.com - archive.is - bitchute.com - zerohedge.com - kiwifarms.net I think I'm right in saying that Telstra, Optus and Vodafone are the 'Big Three', and they have blocked the above. Here in NZ, It's Vodafone, Spark and 2 Degrees, all of whom, I understand, blocked access, though I've been unable to verify this first-hand. There are also hefty prison sentences [0] (up to 14 years) and fines for people who read/distributed the manifesto and watched/shared the original footage. Edit: More comprehensive block-list can be found here: [1] [0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/world/asia/new-zealand-attacks-social-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/world/asia/new-zealand-at... [1] - https://www.citizensagainstidiocracy.com/93/internet-censorship-in-australia-and-new-zealand-who-decides https://www.citizensagainstidiocracy.com/93/internet-censors...

scottlocklin 7y ago

It's almost like they give more of a shit about people posting things on the internet than some looney slaughtering 51 people.

EdwardDiego 7y ago
That looney was radicalised on the Internet, by a subset of Internet culture.
- hyperdunc 7y ago
  According to his manifesto the largest factor was a visit to France, not online activity.
  - EdwardDiego 7y ago
    His manifesto also included memes and copy pasta.He listened to meme music as he drove to the mosque, he said "Subscribe to Pewdiepie" before he shot the first victim. The fact that he was a member of an online community that considered his views normal is extremely significant.
    - scottlocklin 7y ago
      Oh yeah? How about the fact that he drove a car, or ate meat or spoke english or traveled a lot? The "online radicalization" thing is complete and total bullshit: it's an excuse to ramp up the totalitarian surveillance state in a more obvious way than the "war on terror" -now it's a war on people who read things on the internet. Magic internet forums might make me into a terrorist ... or a hacker; better put me in prison!
      - EdwardDiego 7y ago
        > Magic internet forums might make me into a terrorist He found an echo chamber that reinforced his beliefs, which happened to be filled with internet edgelords that egged him on.

alfiedotwtf 7y ago

Why should the likes of Fox News be exempt

Barrin92 7y ago
I don't think they are. Fox News as slanted as it is, doesn't endorse terrorism or anything along these lines the way some internet communities or message boards do. There's really no comparison between even the worst tabloid newspaper and some of the stuff that festers on the internet.
- alfiedotwtf 7y ago
  > doesn't endorse terrorism The use propaganda to make people support the war effort against the Middle East. Ask people in the Middle East who the terrorists are.
  - sadris 7y ago
    Every mainstream outlet promotes wars in the middle East. The only individual who is saying to not do that is... Tucker Carlson, who is on Fox.
  - tathougies 7y ago
    > The use propaganda to make people support the war effort against the Middle East. Didn't realize Democratic congressmen/women were taking orders from Fox News.

CodiePetersen 7y ago

This just sounds like a giant can of worms that is going to blow up in people's faces. Remove for a moment any potential future government alignments, just so we aren't talking about hypothetical fictitious governments. Let's just examine the governments currently signed to it. Indonesia has harsh religious laws, crack downs on illegal reporting, and literally raids on LGBTQ gatherings. The Senegal government arbitrarily arrests dissidents, the LGTBQ community has to hide because it's illegal, and protests are outlawed. India already overuses counter terrorism laws to charge dissidents and activists and there are religious minorities that suffer heavily from discrimination. This type of call to action will only further entrench government strangles over freedom of speech. Now people have given them moral authority to curb an already very broad and ambiguous category of terrorists and now extremists. Sure I get it, there is a bunch of vile on the internet and the world would be a better place without it. But my "better place without it" is different from somebody else's and so is the "it". This won't end up like what is in your head. The hate isn't "spreading through social media" the hate and the fear were already there. These people grew up with it. Social, cultural, religious, sexual, moral borders, you name it, every border we have is being rewritten and when you rewrite those borders, especially this quickly, people are gonna get scared, they're gonna lash out, and because of it more people are getting scared and want to control one of the most powerful tools to freedom.

endorphone 7y ago
"Let's just examine the governments currently signed to it." You picked three. How about Australia, Canada, European Commission, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom. Are you going to examine those? Most of those are the most free, most protective countries. "The hate isn't "spreading through social media" the hate and the fear were already there." There has always been hate. There have always been incredibly ignorant beliefs like flat Earth, anti-vaccine, etc. Usually it is isolated and the community -- the village -- keeps it in check and provides a pressure valve. Social media, however, allows us to surround ourselves with a bubble that makes us think that it's normal if not somehow heroic, our graph of similarly extreme believing people cementing our resolve. That guy who became curious and got some bad information isn't being reasoned with by rational people, he's being indoctrinated by a distributed group that only reinforced their own beliefs. It absolutely has made the problem worse in otherwise reasonable societies.

greggeter 7y ago

That'll fix it.

sonnyblarney 7y ago

I find it problematic that there have been oodles of very classical kinds of 'terrorism' and 'extremism' on Social Media since the start. ISIS has been recruiting with absolutely brutal kind of stuff on Twitter, etc.. But now we have this nutbar thing in New Zealand and it's a 'global action'? Aside from the complications mentioned in some other comments ... ... the Jacinda / Trudeau / Macron triumvirate I think were looking in the wrong places. So it's probably good that we're taking action, and just beyond repulsive that that some massacre was broadcast live on Facebook, but I hope we accomplish do this without too many existential issues.

boltzmann_brain 7y ago
Because it's against the narrative. ISIS stuff was ignored because of "mah islamophobia", but can't ignore "evil white people" and we must call for global action.

anigbrowl 7y ago

It'd be great if people who want to explore this as a free speech issue would engage with the question of what happens to the free speech (and other) rights of people who are killed by extremists, and whether they are more or less important than the rights of people who advocate such killings.

BigJono 7y ago
The comparison isn't between 40 people's right to live vs every terrorist's right to free speech. It's between some probabalistic chance that 40 people's right to live isn't violated in the future due to these actions, versus some probabalistic chance of millions of innocent people being silenced and having their privacy violated in various ways due to the collateral damage from this kind of policy making for the foreseeable future. This shit never gets revoked once it's in place. History is wrought with examples of people's free speech being violated. How many examples do we really have of when someone's free speech was successfully violated to protect proportionally more important rights? The entire western world is slowly giving up every single ounce of privacy and freedom, in exchange, and for what? ISIS is finished, the rate of Muslim terrorist attacks seems to be falling off pretty fast, and the swell of fascist sentiment will slowly wind down too once the factors that triggered it are no longer present. This isn't some new concept that's never happened before. And in 10 or 15 years are we going to be happy with the state of government control in countries like Australia, NZ, UK etc given what we've got out of it?
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  There's a lot of counterfactuals here, both numerical and historical - for example, your suggestion that policies put in place to deal with a problem never being revoked which is simply not supported by fact. As your whole post is dedicated to invalidating the question I posed I hope you'll excuse me for not spending an hour on a point-by-point refutation of your numerous and very broad claims.
Rapzid 7y ago
Free speech is just as much about those on the receiving end as on the producing. And, once the information passed into other hands your dealing with producing end again. Your thesis is a non sequitur as well; people sharing and receiving the information are not necessarily advocating the killings. In fact, just like with War footage from the past, they could be using it to the opposite effect.

mattnewport 7y ago

> Tech companies and governments sign up Two wolves and a sheep vote on what's for dinner. What's for dinner being our most fundamental rights as citizens.

asdf21 7y ago
Only Americans have fundamental rights. Everyone else has "hate speech," which depending on how that's interpreted, can mean anything from thinly veiled blasphemy laws, an inability to bluntly criticize Scientology or Islam, or charges for making Nazi jokes.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Rapzid 7y ago

It's amazing to me how political this is and how oblivious to that fact a large portion of the NZ population is. This horrible act happened on the current governments watch. I've seen more outrage and effort from the government on the spreading of the video and manifesto than introspection into how this slipped through in the first place. I suppose in a country where carrying a weapon for the purpose of self defense is considered a crime, something this terrible shattering the illusion of nanny government protecting you requires a whole lot of deflection and ultra maneuvers to secure the next election cycle. New Zealand's knee has jerked so hard I'm feeling it in my groin 8k miles away.

roca 7y ago
NZers have observed the USA's experiment with reducing violent crime by flooding the nation with guns, and there is very strong support across the political spectrum for trying something else: restricting access to the most dangerous guns, and deplatforming murder advocates. It is not some authoritarian ploy.
- eadmund 7y ago
  > It is not some authoritarian ploy. Regardless of whether you think it's a good idea or not, restricting access to guns and free speech is an authoritarian play: it's using the authority of the State to restrict certain liberties in the intent of doing good.
  - roca 7y ago
    All laws "use the authority of the State to restrict certain liberties in the intent of doing good".
    - tathougies 7y ago
      Sure, all law is an exercise of authority, and hence authoritarianism. The commenter was merely calling out that... no matter how you dice it... a new law is always authoritarian, whether you acknowledge it or not. Saying 'this law is not authoritarian' is always a contradiction.

sarcasmOrTears 7y ago

I hope one day we will be able to condemn these politicians, bureaucrats and big corps for their crimes against free speech, just like we did with the nazis when they tried to subvert Europe. We need serious laws with draconian punishments to protect our rights, what we have now is insufficient.

TheLuddite 7y ago

Make internet more expensive therefore limiting its impact among the stupidest members of society - the working class.

DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago

Aren't they missing the point here? The problem isn't that this guy streamed what he was doing on facebook, it's the fact that he did it in the first place? As these large hosts move more and more away from mere platforms to content curators it does make a lot of sense that they'd also be more responsible for what they curate, but at the same time, it seems like this responsibility will ultimately leak back into the parts of these services that are really just platforms and ultimately to those that don't curate content at all.

roca 7y ago
A big contributing factor to him doing it in the first place was him marinating in online murder advocacy groups.
dredds 7y ago
> The problem isn't that this guy streamed what he was doing on facebook, it's the fact that he did it in the first place? The Las Vegas shooter we're told had no motive, but there's a public sense that each massacre is trying to "out do" a previous kill count. With Facebook being the go to place when one occurs, it's instant fame and notoriety for the perpetrator. For this reason our government and media took the immediate response of "de-naming" the killer, but with instant global online platforms this is after the horse has bolted. This approach of involving platforms directly is to neuter the draw of instant notoriety. To remove fame (or widespread publicity if there is an agenda) from being another contributing factor.