
Twitter’s Speech Problem: Hashtags and Hate - dsr12
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/01/french-anti-semites-and-the-american-cloud.html
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dinkumthinkum
Well, it's just ridiculous. YouTube can be a cesspool of racism but if Twitter
has any comments related to one particular group, it faces legal action. I
don't want to preach to the choir about free speech; however, what do people
really expect from censorship?

Let's say some racist group was spewing hatred on Twitter. Now, let's say
someone was, rightfully, offended and then went and tattle tailed to Twitter
or the legal authorities. What is their benefit from that? Those people still
think and believe exactly the same things. You could say at the very least it
reduces the spread of certain and so forth, but I don't think it does; just
because they can't say it on Twitter doesn't mean it is not said hundreds or
thousands of times a day. I don't know why anyone would want the government to
be our nanny in this case. If anything, taking action like this just eggs them
on.

~~~
monochromatic
More and more, people think that nannying is the essential function of
government.

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hakaaaaak
I am not for hate, but once you go down the road of censorship and get called
out for specific types of censoring you are doing, troubled times are ahead;
more groups will jump on the bandwagon and cry foul on more and more tweets.

~~~
rahoulb
The corollary being that I have just shut down one of my websites because I'm
sick of the racist and other abuse that myself and my brother were receiving
(the justification being "you take offence, not give it"). There's only so
many times you can use the block button.

~~~
hakaaaaak
I'm sorry. Racism should not be ignored. But I'm not sure how censorship
initiated by the provider solves it. It is truly a tragedy that you had to
shut your site down, and I think those that caused you to have to do that
should be punished. However, when a provider starts censoring specific types
of speech, there is much left ahead that they will be asked to censor, which
is all I was trying to say.

I hope that you and your brother find a safe place to share your information
without being harassed.

~~~
rahoulb
For the most part, I agree.

But "free speech" has real, human, costs; just as censorship does.

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dantheman
The obvious solution is for nations that want censorship is for them to censor
through filtering at their ISP level. By offloading the cost to private
organizations it allows the cost to be hidden, and when people have to pay to
censor their neighbor maybe they won't do so.

Though, on the other hand having this brought up in the news whenever they
want to censor a new company keeps the arguments about censorship current and
lets people see the backwardness of countries not embracing free speech.

The argument against offensive or incorrect speech is not less speech, but
more speech. Win in the argument with words not violence.

~~~
tlrobinson
I agree, but in practice they'd have to block entire sites due to HTTPS.

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shurcooL
This seems like a significant event.

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adventured
It's certainly not trivial, but it was very predictable. France has had strong
censorship laws for years when it comes to what is deemed to be 'hate speech.'

For example, what they've done to Brigitte Bardot for voicing her opinions
publicly.

~~~
masklinn
> what they've done to Brigitte Bardot for voicing her opinions publicly.

Made her pay fines under "incitement to racial hatred"?

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tkahn6
Sounds like France is pretty racist and hateful in general. Can you imagine
#AGoodJew or #AGoodNegro trending in the US? That's absurd.

I don't see how censoring the tweets will fix that or change anything. So much
for fraternité.

~~~
byroot
Nobody blame Twitter nor ask it to censor those tweets.

There is a law in France (and in most west europe countries as UK, Germany
etc) that prohibit racist/sexist/religious/etc discriminations and hate
encouragement.

Unlike USA, most european countries put boundaries to free speech. It do not
mean that there is censorship. Nor it mean that it's illegal to think that
jews stinks or whatsoever. You can think whatever you want, and tell whatever
you want in your private circle, nobody will arrest you for that. But if you
use your _public_ free speech to propagate these ideas you will have to face a
court.

I know it can seems strange to US people, just like the ability to buy an
AR-15 in a WallMart seems strange to us...

But that's our law, and it have been democratically voted.

Now the interesting question in the article is: Do French people that tweet
are subjet to French or US laws ? Should Twitter obey to the laws of it's
users or only to american laws ?

"All the French are racists", "French should filter web content at ISP level",
etc subjects are just bullshit.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Please. You can only buy hunting rifles at Wal-Mart. Hey, maybe they could sue
you in France for that defamatory statement?

~~~
byroot
It seems that it was true not so long ago: [http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-
intelligence/2012/12/17/wal-m...](http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-
intelligence/2012/12/17/wal-mart-takes-an-assault-rifle-off-its-virtual-
shelves/)

And yeah they could sue me if they prove the diffamation i.e. that my
statement was false and only stated in the attend to cause damages to WalMart.

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Svip
I am slightly disappointed. I was hoping the article would be about what to
call 'hashtag' in other languages. What do the Swedes call it? What about the
Polish? Then it just turns out to be another relevant article about free
speech.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I will say when I saw the headline I thought was going to be about something
along those lines.

