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Comment by naturalgradient | Hacker News Reader

'More experts: Of course, our systems are only as good as the the data they’re based on. Over the past weeks, we have begun working with more than 15 additional expert NGOs and institutions through our Trusted Flagger program, including the Anti-Defamation League, the No Hate Speech Movement, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue'

This makes me cringe. Every single one of these organisations consists of people with specific political views of acceptable and not acceptable content.

In Europe, the 'no hate speech' idea has very quickly expanded the concept of hate speech to include any rightwing opinion around certain topics (mostly religion and immigration related).

More people feel disenfranchised and excluded from the discourse, more grandstanding around fighting hate speech where the existence of countless organisations, consultants, experts and so forth can only be justified by uncovering more hate speech. Quite literally the growth of their economy requires expansion of the concept. The divide continues.

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I was about to post that. Those groups have very specific agendas. They shouldn't be allowed to block articles which disagree with their agenda.

Here's Dabiq, ISIS's propaganda magazine.[1] It's well-produced and in English. See what the other side wants. There are the usual rants: "We ask Allah to support the mujāhidīn of the Islamic State against the agents of the tawāghīt and the crusaders until the banner of the Khilāfah is raised high above Istanbul and Vatican City". Their strongest ire is raised against Arabs who oppose ISIS. The West is just the enemy, but Islamists who oppose them are committing apostasy. They're opposed to democracy on principle. Allah must rule, and that means autocratic rule by religious leaders. "Legislation is not but for Allah".

There's a concern that some people will be taken in by this stuff. That's only a problem for people who haven't seen enough extremist material to be able to evaluate it. There's a certain similarity to all that stuff, along the lines of "We're good, because God is on our side, and we have to kill the other guys because they're evil." This message is available in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic flavors. Kids should see all of those in school, to immunize them against such messages.

Will "trusted flaggers" be allowed to make Dabiq inaccessable?

("Maybe they is not evil. Maybe they is just enemies." - Poul Anderson)

[1] https://clarionproject.org/islamic-state-isis-isil-propagand...

People are taken in by this stuff. You don't have the Manchester suicide bombing without it.

It's not an abstract issue, it actually happens.

Well. People got taken by lots of stuff over the centuries. Take the Bible for example. How many people got killed because of that book.

Should we ban it?

Funny, the event that triggered the most brutal war in European history was actually the unbanning of the Bible.

Could you please elaborate? I did not get the reference.

I think it refers to the 30 years war:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War

Yep!

Can you elaborate on "the unbanning of the Bible"? Thank you.

Under the Catholic Church the Bible was number one on the list of banned books ('The Index') and it was only written in Latin (vernacular translations were a capital offence) and the only people allowed to interpret it were the clergy. One of the core elements of the Reformation was the translation into vernacular of the Bible and the propagation of the idea that anyone could interpret it. The explosion of interpretations and beliefs during that period is often cited as one of the driving forces behind the viciousness of the wars of religions. (Apologies for not having citations on hand, this was mostly pulled from memory)

The bible is written in Hebrew and Greek. Latin was the only officially accepted translation.

People in Manchester died more recently.

Bibles don't kill people. People kill people.

To be blunt, many of those people were either mentally unstable or mentally deficient before they started reading ISIS...

Social psychiatric help and better public education are also necessary tools in this battle.

I want to believe that, but I'm not sure that's as commonly the case as we'd imagine. There are plenty of stories of regular people, raised in liberal western democracies, being taken in by the isis propaganda.

"Liberal western democracy" says little about education or psychiatric health funding. Look at the US, laughable and utterly embarrassing education standards and virtually non-existent social mental health treatment.

Just last night I was watching a 1990s music video on YT of a Serbian soldier actually promoting the genocide against the Muslim Bosniaks. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq_J2C6Hrz0 . The lyrics actually say "let's bomb all the mosques". As far as I can tell this video was filmed before the Srebrenica massacre. So we've got a video promoting genocide (which I regard as worse than terrorism) of which no Google employee has anything to say.

Did you flag it?

> Those groups have very specific agendas.

I'm not sure what that means; doesn't every group have an agenda? I think the implication is that these groups' agendas are no better than any other groups' agendas. I think that's clearly wrong; we can't take politically correct relativism and openness to a logical extreme - we must make distinctions between good and bad (though carefully reasoned ones). Though I agree we should be careful, and no group or agenda is perfect, the agendas of hate groups are not just as good as the ADL's, for example.

> They shouldn't be allowed to block articles which disagree with their agenda.

Is that the standard used by Google?

The question isn't whether one group can be assumed better than the other (obviously, the ADL is less bad than ISIS). It's whether any group is "correct" enough to be trusted with controlling the spectrum of the conversation.

Beyond that basic observation, I can't speak to the other groups, but to me, the degree of anti-Arab bias that the ADL exhibits is really appalling, and I have no confidence whatsoever in their ability to fairly filter the news for the masses.

The ADL appears to be picked because they're a very powerful political lobby in Washington. This move is a fairly blatant attempt to curry political favor.

I wouldn't say that there's a moral equivalence between the ADL's agenda (promoting Israel) and, say, Amnesty's agenda (ending torture & political imprisonment).

Amnesty got hit by the latest "fake news" google update:

https://mronline.org/2017/07/28/new-google-algorithm-restric...

I had no idea that was happening. Thank you for making this important point.

> Kids should see all of those in school, to immunize them against such messages.

You'd have to go about that very carefully not to accidentally re-inforce a message that has already been planted and ending up making things worse rather than better.

>Will "trusted flaggers" be allowed to make Dabiq inaccessable?

The answer is no. This post is about YouTube. Presumably a magazine won't be impacted. Also, new content is not being removed, but rather:

"If we find that these videos don’t violate our policies but contain controversial religious or supremacist content, they will be placed in a limited state. The videos will remain on YouTube behind an interstitial, won’t be recommended, won’t be monetized, and won’t have key features including comments, suggested videos, and likes."

Which is ironically not dissimilar from your suggestion that hateful and ignorant views be taught in context to school children.

You comment reminds me of those news stories where the headline is a question. When you read the article, the answer is always, "No."

Right. The content won't be banned, it just won't be allowed to have any significant audience. Much like protests weren't banned - you can still protest, but 20 miles away from the venue, where there are no cameras or reporters.

It's already pretty difficult for magazines and pdf files to gain a significant audience on YouTube.

> See what the other side wants.

It's a shame (but understandable) that we're only doing that once they start raping, torturing and killing...

Yeah, this sucks. Another example of this is Southern Poverty Law Center's "Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists". They include Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which is disgusting of the SPLC to do. https://www.splcenter.org/20161025/journalists-manual-field-...

Ouch, that article really hurt my respect for SPL. Nawaz especially, through his discussions with Sam Harris, really opened my eyes to the struggles of moderate and progressive Muslims when it comes to reforming Islam.

Nawaz was himself radicalized as a young man, and much of his work today is around preventing other young Muslims from taking that path. It disgusts me that a man with such a important perspective is carelessly labeled anti-Muslim.

Check out the audiobook discussion with Sam Harris if you haven't, "Islam and the future of Tolerance". It was a good, respectful discussion between two very different viewpoints, and Nawaz made very insightful and logical arguments for mainstream Islam being capable of undertaking certain anti-radicalization reforms and why those matter.

> Ouch, that article really hurt my respect for SPL. Nawaz especially, through his discussions with Sam Harris, really opened my eyes to the struggles of moderate and progressive Muslims when it comes to reforming Islam.

This sort of thing from the Western left is incredibly alarming to me. Imagine hardline Christian conservatives took over America and now we live in Handmaid's Tale. You're one of the tiny minority trying to fight back. How would you feel about people in Europe apologizing for the hardliners and condemning anyone who speaks out against their culture?

Obviously it's not Handmaid's Tale bad, but it's worse than you assume. My family is from Bangladesh. A third of the people from my country think I should be executed for leaving Islam: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi... Bangladesh is a moderate country in the grand scheme of things--that number is 2/3 in Egypt, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Bangladesh was founded as a secular republic, but that was jettisoned and Islam was made the official religion the year before my family left the country. That was all part of a long societal shift away from the west towards the Islamic world. For years--long before any of this hit the radar of anyone at SPLC--my family used the number of women in Dhaka wearing head coverings as a barometer for the country's descent into theocracy (very rare in the 1980s, quite common today).

I get its a fine line. You can't help people integrate if you can't let them adopt western values on their own terms. At the same time, some of this stuff from well-meaning liberals is really a kick to the gut of people fighting for modernity in these countries.

[1] My family was never religious, but that's not a distinction they recognize over there. I can't count how many times I've gotten in a cab with a driver from south asia/the middle east, and someone has asked me "where are you from?" And if I reply "Bangladesh," the answer is invariably "oh so you're Muslim?"

The Nawaz drama is more complicated than this, isn't it? It's not Nawaz's overt positions SPLC is objecting to so much as his actions, which appear to profit from anti-Muslim sentiment.

Really? They list this as one of the examples of him being terrible:

>Nawaz tweeted out a cartoon of Jesus and Muhammad — despite the fact that many Muslims see it as blasphemous to draw Muhammad.

Looks like they're just upset anyone would upset Muslims.

Yes, really. All you have to do is actually read the SPLC piece on Nawaz, which makes no mention of whatever this incident you're referring to is.

I'm not defending SPLC, which again I think overstepped by targeting Nawaz. But the argument that they did so to prevent Islam from being criticized appears to oversimplify. Their problem with Nawaz is that they believe he's a profiteering fraud.

Hmm? I followed the link in this thread, then clicked his name and that was one of 3 incidents listed against him.

Yep, the splcenter page mentions and links to https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/28/speaki...

> many Muslims

There's the problem. Many other Muslims also have a representation of Muhammad on their walls on home so clearly have no problem with it.

Why should we take any position at all?

Yeah, "profiting" is a typical stupid liberal accusation to invalidate people, because liberals have this shitty idea that "making money == bad". They use the same argument against the Kochs, even though it's been clearly debunked: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-hate-koch-brothers-part-...

I have no problem with Maajid fundraising and paying himself a salary. You need to be careful with the "X profits from fundraising, therefore they're just trying to profit from Y sentiment." That argument could be applied to Planned Parenthood, Churches, and just really anything. Just because an organization is well-funded doesn't mean they're morally bankrupt.

This is a very rude response to a question that wasn't directed at you.

> typical stupid liberal accusation to invalidate people, because liberals have this shitty idea

Ugh. Ideological rants are not allowed on HN, so please don't post like this again.

If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.

The SPLC piece is kind of an unsubstantiated hit piece:

> But major elements of his story have been disputed by former friends, members of his family, fellow jihadists and journalists, and the evidence suggests that Nawaz is far more interested in self-promotion and money than in any particular ideological dispute.

The only concrete fact is that we received a bunch of British government funding. I don't know a lot about the guy, and obviously I don't stuff about surveillance. But wherever the line is for extremist, he's nowhere close.

I agree, attacking him was a mistake. It's not the SPLC's job to determine who's a good faith critic of Islam and who's doing it for a quick buck.

If I am anti-x, and I profit from it, am I an extremist anti-x-er? Do I deserves to be put on a list with nutjobs and whackos? Does putting me on a list of extremist when my positions are not extreme reduce the credibility of the organisation which does so? Is the article an obvious hitjob?

The answers are: Not necessarily, not necessarily, yes, and yes.

>"Shhh! The humanities departments still think relativism is sexy. They haven't yet figured out that to assume a position of relativism--like the claim to be neutral on issues of distribution--is really a statement that you are on the side of the powerful."

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/...

> Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Why are these people necessarily wrong to include?

I did a search and I found many articles on the issue, suggesting it's a semi-famous controversy, but no reliable sources (all partisan and either untrustworthy or unknown, from the far left and far right).

Imagine that instead of criticizing a religion, Nawaz and Ali were criticizing the Republican Party. Maybe they're a bit over the top, but would it be fair to label them "anti-Republican Extremists?" Would it be a good idea to shut down such viewpoints?

EDIT: It's worth watching the guy speak for himself: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/449004/anti-radical-mus.... As an apostate I think this guy is a hero.

Neither Maajid Nawaz nor Ayaan Hirsi Ali are particularly reliable or impartial commentators, to the extent that i'm surprised you'd find it 'disgusting' to describe either of them as 'Anti-Muslim Extremists' - the both almost by definition are.

Being anti Islam, which, as practiced by hundreds of millions, is simply not compatible with Western values, is not being anti Muslim.

And extremeist? I'm not sure what they say is even remotely extreme.

The ADL, which fights Antisemitism, has also included advocacy for Israel in their agenda. See f.e this report in which several peace groups are wrongly accused of being "anti-Israel": https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf...

The ADL is of course free to propagate for whatever they want, but it being included in the Trusted Flagger program might lead to more news stories like this one: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/facebook-blocks-accoun...

The reason for mentioning this is that it is not only right-wing ideas that will be censored. Groups working for ending the occupation and advocating peace between Israel and Palestine are generally associated with the left-wing. They will equally be at risk of being silenced with programs like this.

Couldn't agree more. This is extremely dangerous, and extremely poorly thought out on Google's part.

In Europe, the 'no hate speech' idea has very quickly expanded the concept of hate speech to include any rightwing opinion around certain topics (mostly religion and immigration related).

This is an outright lie. There are an astonishing plurality of mainstream, right-wing views about religion and immigration in every European country.

There is a big right wing, but it has faced repression. Being classified as hate speakers, with all that that entails, is one of those aspects.

What does it entail exactly? You get negative opinion from some people on twitter, but it doesn't stop you being on the news, political programmes, political parties or in the newspapers.

I see many ex-muslim atheist complaining that their calls for critical thinking is often successfully flaged as hate speech and removed from Facebook and Youtube.

And yes, being in Europe, the "no hate speech" laws make me cringe, even if they are not really abused nowadays, censorship is censorship and seeing "my guys" doing it does not make me particularly comfortable.

> In Europe, the 'no hate speech' idea has very quickly expanded the concept of hate speech to include any rightwing opinion around certain topics (mostly religion and immigration related).

That's because last time rightwing speeches about religion and races (that's "immigration-related" really) were permitted and tolerated in Europe the result has been WWII and the Shoa, probably.

You could just as easily say "the last time leftwing speeches about equality and social justice were permitted and tolerated in Russia the result has been The Cold War and the gulags". Neither side has a clean history and it is quite unfair to deny either side participation just because of past mistakes.

> In Europe, the 'no hate speech' idea has very quickly expanded the concept of hate speech to include any rightwing opinion around certain topics (mostly religion and immigration related).

Can you provide examples of this?

I wonder if our respected peers on the Left will ever decide that their politics are the ones supported by "The System" and that they are perhaps not the rebels they thought they were?

When Google and Facebook (among others) are explicitly enforcing censorship favoring the leftist worldview it really makes me wonder who stands to benefit and whether it is done with good intentions.

Getting their politics injected into "The System" was an explicit policy goal of the Left. The term typically used is "entryism".

Yes but the amount of griping over the need to fight the status quo is absolutely there to keep the bulk from noticing they are the status quo.

I don't believe being against hate is a "leftist" worldview; it's a widely accepted and healthy one. In a way, you agree:

> their politics are the ones supported by "The System" and that they are perhaps not the rebels they thought they were?

Certainly there is a very well-established and long history, and continuing practice, of prejudice in government against (almost any group besides white Christian males, as a shorthand for a long list). There is also now a countervailing force, protecting the freedoms and asserting the interests of the oppressed groups. The existence of both forces can't seriously be questioned.

But going back to my first sentence: Really, that's the fundamental debate going on in this HN thread and in many others: Some assert, implicitly, that the hate groups are just another point of view, and that they are inherently no better or worse than other POVs. Others, including Google, disagree.

Sometimes that argument is made using extreme relativism or political correctness: All POVs have the same merit and deserve equal treatment; it's politically incorrect to discriminate at all. While that's an interesting and valuable philosophical discussion - how do we distinguish perfectly between good and bad - we can and must still distinguish between them. We don't have to wait for the perfect philosophical solution.

But we can approach the question with reason: First, I believe that many (not all) arguing that the hate groups should be heard simply support the hate groups - it has nothing to do with public interest or freedom of speech; probably that's true on the other side too. Second, a more reasoned argument: Why should we tolerate groups who don't tolerate others? It breaks a fudamental social contract of free societies: If you want me to respect you, you must respect me.

As a citizen of a country that fought a war for independence against another much more powerful country, I believe that it is a mistake to set up a system for removing all violent rhetoric.

That said, I do actually think the terrorists have an inherently worse POV. That's one of the reasons I'm ok with them spouting it.

>Why should we tolerate groups who don't tolerate others? It breaks a fudamental social contract of free societies: If you want me to respect you, you must respect me.

That is not now and never has been a part of the fundamental social contract.

> That is not now and never has been a part of the fundamental social contract.

Interestingly, not only is it almost universal, but it's even present on HN and in our immediate interaction.

"I don't believe being against hate is a "leftist" worldview;"

It sure is not. If you take the dictionary definition of the word hate. But what a lot of people do is use one word which have different meaning for them than for the public. When hate comprise any contrary view from yours, suddenly being against hate is not a healthy worldview.

You have the exact same word-play with equality, equity, meritocracy etc.

Set a good goal which everyone can accept, then swap the meaning of the words used to describe your goal and go after those who "don't think of the children".

>I don't believe being against hate is a "leftist" worldview This is the exact trap I was referring to. There are many political issues that are not as morally clear-cut as "people should not enslave other people", but are still lumped in with the "don't hate" rhetoric. The refugee crisis in Europe is one such controversy: it is easy to say "don't hate, all people are equal" but many view it as ethnic replacement which is a form of genocide. Hatred should of course be resisted but you have to understand that the word is being used as a boogeyman right now.

> many view it as ethnic replacement which is a form of genocide. Hatred should of course be resisted but you have to understand that the word is being used as a boogeyman right now.

I believe that view is hatred. A necessary premise is that some group of people is inferior to your own.

Well, they can only flag the videos. It will still go through Youtube's review system if anyone appeals.

What we've seen over and over again with DRM is that that's enough to shut down content, though.

First, because the review system is unreliable - it's prone to acting defensively in the interests of the host (Google) and making the fastest defensible decision, regardless of accuracy.

Second, because the review system is slow. Even 24-hour turnaround is slow in a setting where display rankings risk exponential falloff if they don't get traction quickly. A brief delay on a Facebook post or Youtube video can be a death sentence in terms of engagement.

I'm not sure this system will have problems; "input from" doesn't mean "giving control to". But I certainly wouldn't want to rely on the review system as a reason to trust that nothing legitimate will be restricted.

Fighting WrongThink is double plus good comrade!

In unrelated news Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto professor with 350k subscribers was banned today. He's about as centrist as you can get but occasionally speaks against marxism and postmoderism. Apparently not being communist is now terrorism according to youtube.

And reinstated within a day. That's how reporting content works at scale - it takes a minute to get it right.

Reinstated mysteriously after he explicitly appealed, and got a reply he did not qualify for reactivation because of unspecified policy violations.

Let's not pretend this system is doing what it says on the tin. He was reinstated because they realized how it looked and because he has the clout to make a fuss. The next potential Jordan Peterson will be snuffed out before that can happen.

Which is exactly how these Trust and Safety councils like it. Soft power with plausible deniability, like the two faced authoritarians they are. It's always set up as a one way ratchet, they can never allow this stuff to be rolled back in any form. Disagreement is harassment, after all, and harassers are guilty until proven super guilty.

True, for better or for worse Google does this with basically everything.

They still haven't apologized or corrected their major mistake nearly destroying Fark.com last December.

> He's about as centrist as you can get but occasionally speaks against marxism and postmoderism.

He also occasionally says transphobic things about gender pronouns.

He has no issue with gender pronouns, he has issues with the government legislating how people think and speak.

I admit I've not been following his work closely but has he brought up these issues on any other topic than gender pronouns and "SJWs"?

A quick search also suggests he does have actual transphobic issues -

> At the event, Peterson outlined his criticism of transgender people, arguing that the idea that biological sex and gender were independent quantities was “wrong.”

And misogyny issues -

> “I think disciplines like women’s studies should be defunded,”

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/4/11/peterson-talk-dr...

How is defunding women's studies mysogyny? There are so many crap useless majors I would defund given the opportunity.

If you dont like this, its not hard to get your own video codecs for your own website, and stream your own videos/content. Google owns a private platform, its their rules.

I know what you mean, and I don't like some of those groups either, but speech and the limiting of it is an unavoidably political issue. Objectivity isn't truly an option here.

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