
Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried - myrandomcomment
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/tech-companies-are-cracking-down-on-hate-speech/
======
Iv
I say yes. Because you probably disagree with what most people will call hate
speech. Criticism of religion, criticism of some historical events, is
considered by some as hate speech.

Ex-muslims routinely complain that youtube censors their videos criticizing
islam. Videos of brutality (that often contains legal proofs of crimes) are
removed if they are used by some hate groups, even if the intent of the
recorder was to denounce violence.

In France, hate speech laws are now extended to jail terrorism apologists. OK,
why not, I don't have a lot more love for them than I have for nazis. But we
are also at war with ISIS, that is labeled a terrorist group. So taking its
defense potentially leads to jail and censorship (it has already, actually)

And this is a worrying situation for a democracy: we are at war but we can't
have a debate on the justification of that war, because such a debate would
require making arguments in favor of ISIS, which is illegal.

Remember, fascism is an ideology that comes from many sides. It is not because
there is a racist buffoon in the white house that we must not watch the other
fronts it could come from.

~~~
idibidiart
"Ex-Christians _routinely_ complain that youtube censors their videos
criticizing Christianity." Has that not happened, too? Just reversing roles
for the sake of argument. Curiously wondering...

~~~
Iv
It is harder to present criticism of christianism as racists. Youtube is not
anti-exmuslims, simply when you have a guy named "The Masked Arab" who has a
dozen of videos explaining why islam is a violent and backward religion, that
a hundred people have tagged "arab haters" it is hard for youtube to see
through it.

------
cgb223
One of the things that bothers me about recent censorship on hate speech is
how selective, and how inconsistently it's applied, if it is to be applied at
all.

My grandfather escaped the Soviet Union. Stalin's regime killed all of his
siblings. All of them.

But yet when I check YouTube, Twitter, and so on I see lots of videos
professing communisms values. Hell I've seen a pro-communist march in a city I
recently moved from.

Neo-nazis are awful, and Nazis have done unspeakable terrible things in this
world.

But to me the Neo-nazis are being actively forbidden from expressing support
for another ideology that has been responsible for tens of millions of deaths,
while the communists are allowed to do the same thing.

I hate nazis and I hate communists. But to pick and choose which people are
allowed to express support for these regimes is inconsistent at best, and
tacticitly implying a preference at absolute worst.

This needs to change.

~~~
mambodog
Hold on. I'm not a fan of Communism, but there's a pretty clear difference.
The Soviet Union was a particular __implementation __of Communism which chose
killing. Killing is not an inherent requirement to the ideology. Contemporary
proponents of Communism or Socialism usually aren 't claiming that the Soviet
Union's implementation was good. In Neo-Nazism the ideology itself has the
elimination of other races as its goal. The ideology itself is violence. Talk
about false equivalence.

~~~
mnm1
Killing is indeed an inherent requirement of communism. That's the only way to
gain and hold such authoritarian power and to subjugate the masses as
communism does. There has never been a communist regime that did not kill
large numbers of people and that's because this is an inherent quality of
communism without which it cannot come to or hold power.

~~~
OtterCoder
It's an inherent quality of government. Since WWII, the US has killed
somewhere around 20 million people during their various adventures around the
globe. The Soviet Union killed an equivalent amount, perhaps up to three times
as much, but both are staggering, horrifying numbers.

------
Mikeb85
It's all good, just reinforces that they never were free platforms to begin
with. Free speech has always been an illusion, society always ostracises those
who go against the status quo anyway.

Seriously though, you can use neo-Nazis to justify censorship, but then what
about the less extreme alt-right? How about the slightly less extreme
religious right? How about economically right-wing libertarians? Neo-
conservatives? Where do you draw the line? At what point do you decide to move
the line slightly one way or the other? This is the problem. You'll always
need to draw the line, and wherever you draw it, you're essentially imposing
your worldview since your worldview governs where you think that line should
be.

And for the record, I don't think tech companies are akin to utilities, they
can do what they want within the law, but just drop the charade that their
platforms were ever totally free...

~~~
userbinator
_Seriously though, you can use neo-Nazis to justify censorship, but then what
about the less extreme alt-right? How about the slightly less extreme
religious right? How about economically right-wing libertarians? Neo-
conservatives? Where do you draw the line?_

As I mentioned a few days ago on a related article,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15122311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15122311)
, the extremists are good "canaries" for indicating the gradual erosion of
freedom of speech. When the edges collapse, the line moves just a slightly bit
closer to the mainstream, and a new set of views are considered extremist.
Repeat until everyone is brainwashed into a monoculture. That's the scariest
part.

~~~
ubernostrum
Several places in Europe have so far failed to empirically verify your
hypothesis after passing laws to ban certain types of extremist (i.e., Nazi)
speech and symbols.

~~~
hegojuko
Really because I see people in Britain, France, and Germany being arrested for
anti Islamic sentiment expressed on social Media. It isn't just nazi speech
that's criminalised, more and more speech is added to the list of what cannot
be said. Soon it will be any speech critical of the government, aka living in
a totalitarian regeim.

~~~
cgb223
Wasn't there some guy in the U.K. Who was investigated by the police for
tweeting something vaguely homophobic?

~~~
Caveman_Coder
Yes.

[https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297128/matthew-doyle-
ar...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297128/matthew-doyle-arrest-
muslim-tweet-brussels)

"A man in the UK has been arrested on charges of inciting racial hatred on
social media, after he tweeted about asking a Muslim woman to "explain" the
terror attacks in Brussels. As The Guardian reports, London's Metropolitan
Police on Wednesday arrested a 46-year-old man believed to be Matthew Doyle, a
partner at a London PR agency."

------
eighthnate
The war on "hate speech", just like the war on "terror" is just a cover to
take away and restrict rights.

Why did the media collectively declare war on "hate speech" the past few years
- culminating in the absurd hit piece on pewdiepie?

Isn't it strange that all the establishment news organizations WSJ, NYTimes,
WaPo, etc all went on a industry-wide campaign?

It had nothing to do with "hate speech". Neo-nazis, kkk, etc have always
existed. It's about corralling social media and pressuring them to consolidate
"news" around the established media.

It's easier to justify taking away your rights/free speech if you can say it
is part of the war on "hate speech". Just like it is easier to get people to
accept intrusive TSA if you tell them it's part of the war on "terror".

Just like war on "reds/communism/etc" allowed for rights of many to be
abrogated by mccarthy. Or the war on drugs allowed for wholesale incarceration
of minorities and the toppling of latin american governments.

~~~
frik
Thanks, well said.

More and more sites remove comment functionality or hide comments they don't
like, forced real-name policy for accounts, etc. Many sites lost any
credibility these days.

------
yasp
Another poster hit the nail on the head in a related thread earlier today
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15152412](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15152412)

------
juancn
This is the paradox of tolerance, Karl Popper put it this way:

"Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to
the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those
who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society
against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed,
and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance,
that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as
long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by
public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the
right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out
that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but
begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to
rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments
by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name
of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."

------
rayiner
Free speech is the wrong framework for thinking about this. Tech companies are
not government actors, so this is not a free speech issue. The better way to
think about it is to analogize to gun sales. Gun sellers are within their
rights to refuse to sell guns to people with nazi affiliations, etc. But they
wisely choose not to go down that road, because if they did (1) they’d be
enlisted into screening all sorts of other people (hate groups, abusive
spouses, mentally ill people, etc.) and (2) when one of those people
inevitably did buy a gun, there would be increased pressure to hold the gun
seller/maker liable for failure to use their discretion to prevent to the
tragedy.

~~~
thomas_howland
This is very silly. FFLs are already prohibited from selling to abusive
spouses (if there is any sort of domestic violence conviction or restraining
order) and the mentally ill. They also reserve full rights to decline any
sale, which they do regularly with people who seem unbalanced or give
indication they're intending on misusing the weapon. Seriously, try to buy a
rifle with a swastika sharpie'd on your forehead and see how many gun shops
you get ejected from.

------
TheCowboy
I was directed to a good talk on the idea of "legal talismans" or legal terms
like free speech that can end up being out of place, such as in terms of
service:
[https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2016/10/Albert](https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2016/10/Albert)
(transcript) [http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/beyond-legal-
talismans...](http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/beyond-legal-talismans/)
(Also accessible as a podcast)

This isn't to mean they should avoid supporting "freedom of expression" but
that these terms come with history and obligations that aren't always obvious.

If a company mentions 1st amendment rights, it isn't realistic to assume it
will also have the capacity to correctly and quickly adjudicate all cases of
expression that will occur within its service boundaries. People forget how
parts of constitutional law itself are specializations with a lot of legal
history and precedents.

The summary takeaway seems to be that service providers should avoid using
these shorthand legal terms in their terms of service. Providers should try to
spell out ToS specifically avoiding as much legalese as possible. Avoid using
shorthand legal terms to give the illusion of a neutral position in an attempt
to avoid liability.

------
thomas_howland
I don't see this in terms of whether tech co's should "ban hate speech". I see
it in terms of whether they should decide to turn themselves and their
employees into political targets, especially in the context of escalating
political violence and willingness by political actors to go after
oppositional infrastructure (cf, hostility towards left wing journalists).

Con Ed doesn't have this problem and manages to make tons of money, despite
providing power to I assume some number of _literal nazis_.

------
Ace17
This is closely related to the "paradox of tolerance" by Karl Popper:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

(whose TL;DR is "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of
tolerance." )

Of course, it raises the question of who's to say what/who should be "not-
tolerated".

~~~
pdkl95
[https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-
precept-1...](https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-
precept-1af7007d6376)

> [Tolerance] is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be
> peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide
> pact.

------
OtterCoder
It's absolutely a threat to free speech, but I don't think the article goes
far enough. Consider the following from Randall Munroe:
[https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

On the surface, he's right. You don't have to listen to what you don't want
to. On the other hand, I have seen his comic frequently cited as justification
for not ignoring, but actively hunting down and quashing dissent. In many
oppressive regimes, it's not the government enforcing speech restrictions, but
rather the party and its independent zealots.

~~~
wallace_f
Ok, private entities can refuse you business--or can they? The court system
told us that we actually do have to bake that cake. In other words, we can't
selectively serve customers based on our disagreements with their personal
lives or politics.

But if you're a libertarian congressman, and Google doesn't like your videos,
apparently that is not the case anymore.

If you dont think these infringements on free speech will be used to serve the
1%, empower authoritarianism, and be selectively applied: you are already
wrong.

~~~
NegativeLatency
That's a bit of a false equivalence. Hate speech and harassment are not equal
to being openly gay.

I agree with your last point, care to explain more?

~~~
paulddraper
Uh huh. And what exactly is "hate speech"? Black lives matter? White lives
matter? The NRA? Abortionists?

~~~
pdkl95
> And what exactly is "hate speech"?

Generally, it's public speech intended offend, harass, or threaten a group of
people that is defined by an inherent trait (e.g. skin color, sex/gender,
sexual orientation), in addition to legally defined protected classes (e.g.
religion, disability).

The SCOTUS has generally ruled that hate speech _is protected_ by the first
amendment, with only _very narrow_ exceptions (e.g. credible, imminent
threats).

> Black lives matter?

Obviously not hate speech. Asking for the rights of black people to be
respected isn't a threat or harassment.

> White lives matter?

Assuming you are referring to groups such as those protesting recently in
Charlottesville, then this _might_ be hate speech. A lot of speech wouldn't
qualify, but the chants that specifically targeted protected groups probably
do count as hate speech. Details matter a lot, but it's probably reasonably
safe to assume the protest became hate speech when the chant "You will not
replace us!" became "Jews will not replace us!"

> Black lives matter?

Obviously not hate speech. Political opinions are never a protected class.

------
neelkadia
I'm doing a bit to improve Sarahah - (that Anonymous feedback app) by making
it's Open source alternative with Text Sentiment analysis, so people
anonymously can't submit abusive and hateful feedback

------
RickJWag
Yet another left-leaning article working to demonize freedom of expression.

Note there is no condemnation of antifa or BLM-- two organizations prone to
violence, intimidation and destruction.

The left must stop their downward spiral and restore a decent balance to
politics. Help right the ship, please.

