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Comment by CM30 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I don't think this will work out well. Twitter removes a lot more negative posts from those on the right side of the political spectrum than the left, and seems genuinely biased to treating bad behaviour from the former as somehow worse than the latter on ideological grounds.

And with stuff like the trust and safety council on Twitter and the news topic biases on Facebook (as well as documented examples where they worked with governments to remove speech the government didn't like, such as that about immigration in Germany), I suspect it'll just cause yet more political divisions and drama on these sites.

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> Twitter removes a lot more negative posts from those on the right side of the political spectrum than the left

Do you have data showing this? The last thing this debate needs is rumor and speculation.

That's a standard of proof that's impossible to meet.

Consider:

- Twitter is structured in such a way that direct censorship can't be differentiated between somebody's finger on a button and technical difficulties. (Did this hashtag disappear from autocomplete because someone removed it, or because the backend index is messed up?)

- Differentiating between "left" and "right" political posts is not possible from an objective, programmatic standpoint.

Political identity doesn't work either. Someone who's an unabashed Republican tweeting about, say, abortion, there's a very high likelihood that whatever they say about it is negative regardless of the content of the message, but how do you get a computer to understand that without a lot of false positives?

- Nobody from the companies is ever going to admit to hiding/removing content for political reasons. (Barring whistleblowers of questionable veracity, c.f. Facebook)

That only leaves generalities and user reports to work from, which have their own reliability problems. We're talking sociology/political science at the end of the day, and it's opinions all the way down, with very little hard data.

I'm not sure you're correct:

> Twitter is structured in such a way that direct censorship can't be differentiated between

Twitter provides data to researchers, at least in some situations, and may provide data about these events.

> Differentiating between "left" and "right" political posts is not possible from an objective, programmatic standpoint.

AFAIK, there are well-known methods in political science for defining left and right.

> > Differentiating between "left" and "right" political posts is not possible from an objective, programmatic standpoint.

> AFAIK, there are well-known methods in political science for defining left and right.

Small problem: political science isn't computer science.

Let alone a 'science'.

> Twitter provides data to researchers, at least in some situations, and may provide data about these events.

Small problem: if the data they provide to the public can't be trusted, then why would the data provided to scientists be any better?

They send tweets in real-time to data miners. The delete requests don't show up until later. All you need to do is break their terms of service by not honoring the deletes

What viewpoint are you endorsing? Given your standard, CM30's assertion is neither verifiable nor refutable.

The parent comment is valid. hackuser isn't asking for a double-blind study with p=0.05 and n=[all Tweets ever produced] ; she or he is asking for any evidence whatsoever to substantiate the claim.

Hopefully more people will discover and patron anonymous messageboards that don't adhere to these ridiculous new directives.

But few people want to participate in message boards filled with hate speech. Any public forum needs rules of decorum, just like any public or social setting in real life - few would want to participate in forums where others behaved like 4chan message board posters.

>But few people want to participate in message boards filled with hate speech.

I predict that more people will want to visit if they see it as the only outlet where they can freely express their opinions on a topic. The vast majority of people don't seem to be able to sustain silence when they have a differing opinion, they need an outlet.

If they cannot express that on Twitter/FB, they Will find another way.

Funnily enough this will have a much larger negative effect on the "hate speech" movements goals than the existing presence of so called "hate speech".

Plenty of people belong to forums and social networks with reasonable rules though. Which say, remove actual personal attacks but use common sense in regards to what should be removed rather than promising to 'remove hate speech in 24 hours' under some general 'framework'.

I'm not sure these rules won't be widely seen as reasonable. The forum we are participating in, Hacker News, removes hate speech much more quickly than that, though it doesn't provide an SLA with a response time.

It's not about left or right removal quantity. It's about hate. And there are a lot of easy cases on social media. I don't know what the do with not so easy cases. Maybe the same as before.

What if a black person says "To all my n*ggers out there, x,y,z" on twitter, vs. a white person saying the same thing. Will the white person's tweet be removed, or both?

And how would Twitter know which race the tweeter identifies as?

Interesting point. How can anybody know? If I have a penis, under today's standards I can claim to be female. If I have caucasian ancestry, can I claim to be black? Why not?

There are people who claim to be "politically black", for whatever reason. https://heatst.com/uk/nus-at-war-over-politically-black-anti...

More substantive comment: why do we care about a person's race or gender when they use particular words?

"We", meaning the readership of this site probably doesn't (I hope?), but it is a common trope that what you are allowed to say (meaning: be accepted without immediate backlash) is based entirely on your identity.

I'll not go into that concept further for fear of igniting another tired flame war.

Because all of these factors will necessarily have to be taken into account when we come up with our speech rules, don't you see?

Sure it's complex, convoluted, and controversial.. but as long as we put the right people in charge to make the decisions for us, it will all work out fairly.

The meaning of speech depends on context, always. If I say something by myself, in the privacy of my home, it's much different than if I say the same thing with a microphone to an angry mob. Yelling "fire" when a building is on fire is different than yelling it in a crowded theater where there is none (a classic example from law).

Similarly, if a white person publicly says something discriminatory against black people, it's a much different context than if a black person says the same thing. As an simple example, imagine a two black people in a room of 40 white nationalists: If one black person says to another, "hey n-!", that's much different for the person hearing it than if one of the white nationalists says the same thing.

There's a lot more to that word, including black people taking power for themselves and away from racists by using it (really a brilliant, innovative way to push back), but that's too much to write here and now.

Don't forget that there's a vast number of African Americans who do not condone the use of the n word freely and for fun as it happens these days. I believe their main objection is that it takes away from the meaning and history associated with it. If we consider another N word (Nazi), then it's also use popularly but only to mean something very negative and not in the sense of "my buddy".

I thought about things we "kill all n*ggers" or "kill all white men". Thats an easy example of hatespeech for me.

What he is saying though is that (there is at least a perception that) right wing hate is removed far more frequently than left-wing hate due to biases that cause those with their finger on the button to perceive it as somehow more justified.

I think there are cases that should be easy on both sides and I would hazard a guess that they simply aren't dealt with the same. Sure, hate being removed is objectively good, but if only one side of the hate is removed, it will cause friction.

The New Black Panthers are vastly outnumbered by bigoted and racist readers of right-wing news sources such as the Drudge Report and Fox News. The objective truth is that hateful right-wing views are openly disseminated in the media, and that's going to result in a lot more right-wing hate being spread online. If this bothers you, then take it to the right-wing news sources that push these views and profit from them and make them so prevalent in the first place.

Today I learned the New Black Panthers are literally the only source of left-wing hate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche

"The New Black Panthers" is not even close to what would come to mind for me when I think about left-wing hate. I specifically didn't mention any of the groups that do come to mind because I have no interest in getting in to a shouting match with someone who identifies with them.

Said groups could however be characterized by a mob mentality that leads to attacking peoples livelihood, harassing peoples families, sending death threats, etc, usually driven by social media, and hopefully something we could both agree is over the top, unacceptable, and indeed openly hateful.

My comment was ridiculously measured. I didn't even pick sides in the actual topic. I definitely didn't pick sides politically. You seem to have chosen one for me, although I regret to inform you you have assumed incorrectly.

Your comment was not measured. You made it impossible to have or continue a productive conversation. If I would have been the person you apparently think I am, you would not have won me over. You would have alienated me further. But I suspect that's part of it all. Some people don't care about productive conversation. They care about being "right" in front of other people who also want to be "right".

It will cause friction and it doesn't matter what you are doing. Hate will produce friction. Counter speech is friction. Removing or blocking will cause friction.

This actions are made BECAUSE OF right-wing hate on facebook/twitter where people post that they should kill other people, politician, refugees. That's why they focus on this problem right now. Does this mean left-wing hate speech at the same level will not be deleted? I don't think so.

Twitter removes a lot more negative posts from those on the right side of the political spectrum than the left

I've yet to meet the democratic nominee who refers to an entire ethnic group as "rapists and murderers".

Maybe twitter removes a lot more posts from the right because those posts are actually racist.

He didn't refer to an entire ethnic group as "rapists and murderers". He was speciffically refering to... the ones who were rapists and murderers. (Drug cartels, cayotes, and other criminials).

He was claiming the Mexican government was purposefully or tacitly sending their problems across the border.

You can disagree with this claim, but don't misconstrue what his message was.

He's also cited this article[0] in reference to the point he's trying to make.

http://fusion.net/story/17321/is-rape-the-price-to-pay-for-m...

Right, you can make excuses and quibble and apologize for his hateful demagoguery as much as you like (his quote of course as we all remember suggests most immigrants are rapists and murderers and criminals, but concedes that it's possible some might be decent), but the point here is that there's a pretty significant difference that you'd have to be willfully blind to not recognize.

One side of the spectrum goes out of their way to spew hate and abuse and incite violence. The other preaches tolerance and respect. You can't really play the "there are two sides therefore the two sides are equivalent just opposed" game here, I think even if you still could manage to do it pre-Trump, Trump killed it by choosing to be objectively worse by all measurements and accounts.

> The other preaches tolerance and respect.

Wait, the Catholic Church is a political party now?

The hashtag #KillAllMen is an active phenomenon on twitter, tumblr, and facebook. Feminists make excuses for it.

Here's an ArsTechnica article on climate change[1] where the very first comment advocates the murder of those who disagree with the liberal position. It has a positive score and many others in the thread defend it.

Liberals can dish it out too, and moderators let them get away with it.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/climate-hustle-wants-...

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