Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement
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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.
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.
I could I suppose go over more of them. The point though, that I was making when I mentioned in exempting fictitious future governments, is that it can be used NOW by real governments. Sure there will be nations that don't abuse it indefinitely, but you can't ensure a governments intent 5 years from now let alone 50. There are plenty of cases I could see in some of those nations where it could be used against the people that may be less black and white, like organization efforts for the yellow vest protests being censored and removed or any peaceful protest that could get out of hand for that matter. Or maybe even Google and Facebook making anti-tech protests less visible because black bloc may show up.
"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."
Well for one the idea of a "non geocentric universe" literally had a man burned at the stake for blasphemy, people were burned as witches, religious wars were all over the planet, so the problem isn't technology, it's humans. And I'd argue the only thing that has made us more tolerant is the freedom of information, the freedom of speech, and the exposure to ideas. Debate changes minds, telling them to stay hermits doesn't. Not only does it not change minds though, as others have pointed out, in this age, the intolerant will spread their message somehow some way.
I would also argue, that the bubble you are talking about doesn't have much to do with the ability to connect and instead has more to do with the way social media has designed their platforms. They are just like casinos. Just look at twitter. There is no down thumb, only likes and views. So you don't get the "oh you lose" social cue, you only get the flashy bling of increasing likes and views. In normal society you get a disgusted look or ridiculing laughs to tell you if you are saying something unacceptable in public. But that's not how "social" media works. And I think that specific point is what needs to be worked on. So I think we might have a common agreement in that at least. But I still think censoring is the wrong way to go. Just let the world see the true social acceptance score and I think you will see a lot of that isolation of bad ideas.
"Or maybe even Google and Facebook making anti-tech protests less visible because black bloc may show up."
Google and Facebook can do anything and everything they want right now. And we know that they, among others, bring forward the most contentious and the most divisive because it draws engagement. We know that they immerse people in their own filter bubble where suddenly they live in a world where seemingly everyone is a flat Earther, or believes in Pizzagate, or whatever.
"so the problem isn't technology, it's humans"
This is specious. In a period of ignorance, ignorance reigned supreme (not to mention a theocracy, which is dangerously close to re-emerging in the US). We now, at least in some realms, have an ability to reason and to cite and use fact.
That argument goes both ways, if they can do what they want now, then there is no need to sign it and it's just a fluff feel good piece of paper. But the fact is, there is power behind people, governments, and organizations throwing in public support.
"This is specious. In a period of ignorance, ignorance reigned supreme (not to mention a theocracy, which is dangerously close to re-emerging in the US). We now, at least in some realms, have an ability to reason and to cite and use fact."
This is literally the point I'm trying to make. The hate is ignorance, and the only way to stop that ignorance is to allow the flow and freedom of information and the exchange of ideas. That's the only way we are going to be able to change any minds.
Two good, but arguably separate points. I'd say that the internet generally (besides the .0001% of it that is of bonafide intellectual content) has gone down the same road as slot machine design and they're getting better at it.
The main point (and threat) of agreements like this is that they set up a legal framework and the physical ability to control what people see from a central switch. Combine that with the ever-improving ability to both addict people to pictures on screens and to nudge them in a desired direction, it's really all about power.
I suppose in the final analysis it's all just takes the place of state sponsored religions.
You don't get the silent downvoting that occurs on sites like reddit, but you do get overt disagreement which can go viral and result in consequences in real life such as being fired and harassed. Added to that, twitter is very proactive in banning people. My point is that the absence of one form of feedback does not preclude the use of other kinds.
I'm genuinely curious, has it really? I wonder if it's just more widely reported?
I tried looking up terrorism statistics and found this: https://ourworldindata.org/terrorism
For most countries, it doesn't look like much has changed from 1970-2017.
I glanced at hate crime stats on the FBI website (just looking at 2008 and 2017), with 7,783 and 7,175 crimes reported for each year). So not much change there either.
Obviously this is a half-assed attempt, but I just wanted to counter the idea that the world is falling apart. Hopefully someone who has more interest in these things can provide some studies with more comprehensive statistics.
https://www.npr.org/2015/04/05/396359930/explosive-protests-...
I suspect people just like to have a boogeyman to blame so that they feel they have more understanding or control of the situation than they actually do. "It's a bad situation and we don't know what the cause is or how to fix things" isn't something you'll hear very often, particularly from politicians.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/politics/georgia-offic...
The interesting thing is that this really doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things.
Consider weapons treaties, like the UN ones banning the use of land mines and cluster munitions. The only countries that have signed them either don't have any reason to use them, or are allied with a nation that hasn't signed that treaty.
This is much the same story. The US hasn't signed this, and never will (because it explicitly contravenes a cornerstone of its supreme law), and at that point what the other countries do is pointless unless they outright block US services from their networks- in which case there will be riots in the streets. Governments don't survive for long when they alienate the vast majority of their population, and the majority of the population uses US services.
Combine that with the simple fact that 100% effective moderation of an online service is unscalable to the point of being impossible without prohibiting any meaningful content/conversation means that countries that do sign this and implement it in their law will never be able to develop a competitive Facebook alternative, and all you've accomplished (as a signatory nation) is political posturing and shooting yourself in the foot.
You can't outcompete a free nation. That's kind of its main advantage.
Hell 4chan trolls moderation with really bad content for sport from time to time. I hate to go there but I think its sometimes necessary to see it happen to prove that laws dont stop people already violating laws from gasp violating laws. You cant moderate them IRL what makes you think you can stop them online?
This may or may not be true, but a free nation can collapse on itself. The Weimar republic and modern day Hungary and Turkey are just a few examples.
People aren't going to be rioting in the streets because they lose access to Google and Facebook, come on.
People in western democracies put up with a hell of a lot worse than that from their governments without rioting.
> You can't outcompete a free nation. That's kind of its main advantage.
I'd like to believe that was true, but I think China will prove us wrong in the coming decades.
This is an idea worth examining more closely. In one view, social media acts as simply a passive reflection of an existing culture; in another, social media reproduces that culture which later becomes (in part) a reflection of social media etc. The causality goes both ways.
Organised white supremacists have decided that social media can also be used to help steer society, and it can be -and is- used as a recruitment vector, two things that wouldn't be possible if the 'passive reflection' model was accurate.
For what it's worth, I'm undecided as to whether this particular proposed response is workable or harmful or effective or whether it risks liberties collaterally. But I view that as a separate question from whether social media plays a significant role in white nationalist recruitment.
The other issue with the concept of winning a war of ideas is that the other side isn’t usually available in the venues espousing white supremacy. They are already private circles in that sense with moderation. So we’re in the situation of hoping the people being actively radicalised by them happen on other side of the argument and haven’t already been poisoned to it. Which seems like wishful thinking.
Then again, the same way people can become aware of the problems with their political system through the internet. I understand this has happened in Syria within the last generation or so.
What growth are you talking about? Is there an actual research, that indicates that number of flat-earthers have grown compared to previous decades?
And why do you think, that there is a relationships between flat-earth nuts and social media, as opposed to, say, HIV, cancer and other diseases and social media? Social media made you more aware about flat-earthers than before, but it didn't turn you into one.
> The hate isn't "spreading through social media" the hate and the fear were already there.
If extremism couldn't be effectively spread, extremists wouldn't bother trying. But they put quite a lot of effort into recruiting and propaganda.
For those interested, I strongly recommend Neiwart's "Alt-America": https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MT2KCB2/
He's a journalist who in the 80s and 90s was covering extremists (e.g. violent white supremacists, "patriot" militias). He makes a very good case that the Internet has been an enormous boon, enabling significant growth and normalization.
Yes but not as quickly, cheaply, or effectively. You might as well say "planes do nothing because people were migrating between continents before they existed".
Sure I can go down in the streets, shout my hate speech at the top of my lungs, put propaganda flyers in random mailboxes, &c ... Or I can upload a video to all video hosting websites and reach more people a single day than I could do in a lifetime of organic propaganda.
It's like saying internet didn't reshape the world because we could already send data over long distance before, yeah sure if you consider that a boat going from EU to US with hand written letters is just as good as our current 60 Tbps ocean internet cable.
Also, don't forget that the Nazis were elected to power and were the official government, it's much easier to use propaganda when you're in that kind of position.
Because the printing press, newspapers, filmed movies, radio and television never existed? /s
Mass media has been around for a long time.
Second, yes, they did exist, and they also did increase the reach of ideas over what was available before them, so what's your point ? You're basically extending my argument.
Progress in communication technology means increased propaganda / hate speech / whatever reach. Now you have two choices, do nothing, or try to curb down their reach. Should we be ok with live executions on twitch/yt/fb ? You're free to think that we should, but I'd argue most people are against it.
Pirate radio, printers, peer to peer sharing, digital formats in general, not controlled by the state and you can still use or access much of that equipment or content. It's not convenient or easy for people, but for the most part it is doable.
"Progress in communication technology means increased propaganda / hate speech / whatever reach. Now you have two choices, do nothing, or try to curb down their reach. Should we be ok with live executions on twitch/yt/fb ? You're free to think that we should, but I'd argue most people are against it."
Those are private entities and they can choose what they want to do on their site. Also, you have distorted the argument as against any type of action against all forms of speech. No one here is saying we should allow streaming of rape, child pornography, murder, etc. Those are already illegal and that problem is already dealt with. The issue we are talking about is allowing people's ideas to be spread.
Already in this thread within a day you see people talking about anti-vaxers and flat-earthers in a debate that is actually supposed to be about extremists and terrorists. But, as these things do, you start pondering the scope and what other bad ideas we shouldn't have let spread or could have been stopped if only we capped our freedoms.
I don't think the state should be in charge of deciding what is and isn't protected speech in this case. Once it is done, when its in the hands of the state, good luck trying to get it undone. It's the edge our understanding. We are more connected than we have ever been before and the complexity of the issue is extremely high. Rushing into the situation and putting a blanket ban on types of speech is a bad idea.
Well, hate and fear maybe we all share. But the idea to express them in terms of killing innocent people is factually "spreading through social media".
There is a certain fringe of society which believes that the real reason for the censorship of the Christchurch attack is not because it motivates and inspires further killing, but that it shows he was not a lone wolf and had handlers helping him step through the scene - and the video clearly shows evidence of this.
IF this were true - and I'm not saying it is - then yes, we have reason to be concerned about being lied to in this fashion. If the general public is never able to tell the truth about these kinds of incidents because they are wrapped up in even more dire secrecy, then the incidents themselves become even more dangerous to society as a whole.
Whether we like it or not, there are very powerful actors and groups out there would seek to profit at every turn from terrorising the general public - they're not all jihadi's or right-wing nutcases, but certainly know how to present themselves - and/or their Manchurian candidate co-criminals - as such.
This sort of duplicity is only going to get worse in a culture of utter secrecy - the only thing that can save the general public from the nefarious deeds of those who would use terror to control our minds, is the light of truth.
This means having the courage to let videos of these events be accessible to the general public. This means, not living in a protective bubble provided to us by higher powers, but rather living the kind of life that will be unhindered by such evidence, when it is presented.
This is a very difficult subject, precisely because people are overly sensitive about the kinds of things they wish to be exposed to. In the same sense that the American public are virulently anti-war when presented with real evidence of the effects of War - e.g. Vietnam - they are violently pro-war when they only see one side of the mighty military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex's pitch deck.
If we want to be ruled by terror, we must merely allow the locks of secrecy to be closed around our eyes. If we want to live in a world where different cultures and different religions, and people with vastly different points of view to our own nevertheless get along, we must never hide from the truth, no matter how traumatising it can be.
This move by the coalition governments is a cynical, duplicitous attempt to make it harder for whistle-blowers and evidence seekers to know the truth about these kinds of attacks, and puts us all in the position of being liable for the lies told to us by those who have the means to pull off such operations - i.e. the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex.
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.
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/
A common misconception: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
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.
The market isn't going to do what we want, so we're going to implement it using centralized power instead.
I didn't elect these big companies to censor the public discourse, and it's highly disturbing that they're working hand in hand with the government to do this.
Note that none of this logic depends on normative judgments
The "logic" depends on the normative judgement that what would result from a free market would be bad. There have been too few big players doing too much meddling and manipulation of the markets contained within their walled gardens to know whether that would be the case or not.
Well, there are things you can do about it, but I didn't want to get into that when describing the incentives that make it difficult or impossible for them to censor the public discourse unilaterally, but possible to do as a cartel. I think it's important for people to have a solid factual understanding of what's going on in order for their normative judgments, and the plans they make based on those judgments, to be well-founded.
The "logic" depends on the normative judgement that what would result from a free market would be bad
No, none of the cause-and-effect relationships I described depend on anything being bad. They function in exactly the same way regardless of whether that would be good or bad.
If you are acknowledging that a cartel in collusion with the government is acting to censor everyone's speech, that's at least a start.
No, none of the cause-and-effect relationships I described depend on anything being bad. They function in exactly the same way regardless of whether that would be good or bad.
The sneaky conceit is that you've constructed a causal scenario that presupposes the undesirability of a supposedly inevitably caused future. If we had more commerce, more free speech, more sharing of culture, and more cultural change, we would have less extremism. History shows us this quite clearly. It's when big, centralized powers start mucking about with the lives of individuals, that extremism rears its ugly head and becomes a problem.
I'm tiring of your willful redirection of referents, which I think is the point of your construction. Your "logic" (that basically amounts to censorship is necessary because it's inevitable that bad people will win) smacks of the same mental gymnastics people used to "prove" the existence of god.
people will tend to move to platforms whose recommendations aren't censored
Yes, and this will eventually result in MLK (whose positions are now centrist) winning and authoritarians on both extremes losing. Your scheme uses a lot of words to attempt a pretty transparent sleight of hand.
As to whether MLK's positions now being "centrist", I suspect you're one of those people who haven't read anything he wrote other than "I Have a Dream", and haven't even read more than excerpts from that, but all of that is irrelevant to the argument, because in my original post, I was talking about today's equivalent to MLK, who is by definition not centrist.
Your accusations of dishonesty — "You[]…attempt a pretty transparent sleight of hand" — are false and unfounded, and you need to withdraw them immediately.
They don't have the incentive to stop it.
All you have to do is make posting have an actual price, no matter how nominal, and most of this goes away.
Unfortunately for their profits, it will wipe out 90+% of their user base. And it will kill virality cold (you won't forward something to your whole address book if it costs you a dollar).
That's not actually what Section 230 does. It prevents the platform from being charged if while moderating it makes a mistake.
Removing Section 230 would do more harm than good if you consider censorship good- because then the only option to escape legal liability would be to allow everything. Remember that Section 230 was part of the Communications Decency Act and was designed to ensure that websites could remove pornographic and objectionable content without being responsible (of course, it's also the only part of that law that was found constitutional, and for good reason).
By taking the only legal immunity for half-baked censorship away (i.e. private company gets to moderate what's posted but won't suffer consequences for getting it wrong) you've closed the door even harder on it- US law won't actually let you censor consequence-free otherwise, which is the whole reason S.230 was added in the first place.
Reading a book, as bad as it is, start a well informed debate, that might improve the world. You can't critique or remedy something you doesn't know exists.
While hating a particular group of people (because you read the book, or didn't pay attention in life, or any other reason) does not improve anything.
I don't think incentives are enough to predict what YouTube will do. The future is uncertain, there are a lot of policies that could plausibly make money, and the decision-makers are people who read the news and have opinions about what's right, not paperclip maximizers. Politics matters as well as economics.
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.
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.
Saying 'this law is not authoritarian' is always a contradiction.
That's called civilisation.
And the US doesn't have absolute free speech. It never did.
Just like other democracies, it has restrictions on speech for various reasons, some good and some bad. It's about where an individual country draws their line on the spectrum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
Some US states have obscenity laws that other developed democracies don't. Obscenity laws. Just think about how insane that is as a concept.
As to the USA.. Well, I think it's important to consider that the USA is about 68 times the population of NZ. 68 New Zealands, think about that. Some of those New Zealands are quite safe even relative to other countries, and others are not. Firearm homicide rates, along with other crime rates, fluctuate wildly by region. And yet all those regions have the 1st and 2nd amendment.
IMHO, as a NZ resident, NZ is definitely safer and nicer than the bad parts of the US. However, I do not believe it has too much to do with its loose free speech protections and firearm restrictions. New Zealand is probably sturdy enough to have stronger free speech and personal liberty protections while being as safe or safer as the safest regions in the USA..
Two wolves and a sheep vote on what's for dinner. What's for dinner being our most fundamental rights as citizens.
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.
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.
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.
I agree with your comments entirely.
- 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-at...
[1] - https://www.citizensagainstidiocracy.com/93/internet-censors...
https://qz.com/1579660/new-zealands-manifesto-ban-explained-...
According to that article, having a copy is worth 10 years in the pokey.
It also falls under the US supreme court test for obscenity and is equally illegal in the US
I don't think that's correct.
There are no federal obscenity laws. The U.S. government does not expressly prohibit obscene conduct. In fact, the U.S. government expressly protects some communications in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Ignoring the state law requirement (which you haven't cited), the video does not depict sexual conduct.. and there's no way you can twist this into being illegal in the US. It's not illegal. Period. ISIS videos aren't illegal either.
You've clearly misunderstood our laws.
I fail to see how a shooting video appeals to the prurient interest in any way.
Don't know about the other sites.
The only people who don’t have access to these sites are the people who don’t want to see it.
There wasn't any system for gun tracking that would let any agency detect he was amassing a cache. That is likely to change.
The fact that he was a member of an online community that considered his views normal is extremely significant.
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!
He found an echo chamber that reinforced his beliefs, which happened to be filled with internet edgelords that egged him on.
Coming to “the truth” seeing the reality of the world at first hand is a much more stirring story than being radicalised by lies on the Internet. Plus it fits directly into all the other racist propaganda put out by white supremacists about the state of Europe and France in particular.
Lastly, it is a mistake to take a document intended as propaganda directly at face value; for instance, his claims of "ecofascism" on inspection seem to be more intentionally selected to inspire infighting between political left and right (one of his aims he claims to have regarding gun legislation) rather than motivated by any genuine concern for the environment; for example, his manifesto was devoid of environmental concerns unless we were to first concede a fascist obsession with racial birthrate disparites is an "ecological" concern.
His efforts to use the web as a platform for inciting hate and further violence led to our government's response. If the US President incites hate and violence via Twitter we would be having the same discussion no?
No. We might be having a conversation about the inappropriateness of such comments, but we have no laws against hate speech. In fact, a sitting president can call for imminent violence against a person or group (which is illegal) and the only recourse would be impeachment or waiting until the next election (he can be prosecuted after his removal though). So there wouldn't be much we could do if the US President did call for violence.
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".
It may be worth considering that it might be acceptable to not choose censorship as a policy. Some might opine that an inability to find an alternative should not be construed as support for censorship, and that this is merely the politicians syllogism at work.
Better than censorship.
So there's that.
Surely it can get tricky (and it will) but we have to do something. This is not new, we always have. Every nation has some kind of hate law, applied one way or another.
The reason why I bring this up is because I've often seen people embracing laws or actions targeting immigrants, but isn't this in effect the same slippery slope as attempting to define extremism when we talk about free speech? Especially as immigration law is often expanded over time, encroaching on the rights of 'citizen' (a term which is also eroded over time) as we define a secondary class of people of which your typical rights do not apply to.
If we want to play the definition game, the exact definition of the word 'immigrant' depends entirely on the ruling class, ergo makes laws affecting immigrants equally as likely to cause the slippery slope effect as laws that affect extremists.
Would you rather live in North Korea with no extremism?
You have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than dying from extremism and yet you'd give up your right to free speech for some remote threat?
That kind of thinking is the cause of north korea and nazi germany. Authoritarians always use remote threats to justify taking your rights away.
It is important to remember, that no nation no matter how great its tales of freedom or historic shame might be is immune against extremism.
I agree with you that censorship is extremism and it should be fought against.
I know this is pedantic, but you got me curious so I went to check the numbers.
Odds of death in mass shooting (US only): 1 in 11,125
Odds of death by lightning strike (US only): 1 in 161,831
So it seems that it's actually a lot more likely for an American to die in a mass shooting than it is for us to die in lightning strikes.
Edit:
Sorry. The source was the National Safety Council, National Center for Health Statistics, and the Cato Institute.
https://www.businessinsider.com/mass-shooting-gun-statistics...
Odds of death by police: 1 in 7700
Odds of death by car ("any motor vehicle incident"): 1 in 315
I'd agree with basetop, I'd rather live in a world free of censorship and "full" of extremism.
Odds of death by car ("any motor vehicle incident"): 1 in 315
Per the source, "any motor vehicle incident" is actually 1 in 108.
> 1 in 108
Oops you're right, I picked the wrong line :D
If the US population is 328,000,000, and each of us has a "1:11,125 odds" of dying in a mass shooting, that would seem to indicate that there are 328m/11,125 = 29,483 "mass shooting deaths" in any given year (I'm happy to accept corrections on my math here, maybe I'm completely missing something). That's patently false, and quite a spurious definition of "mass shooting". My definition of "mass shooting" is an unprovoked attack for terroristic reasons. i.e. NOT a { jealous spouse/drug dealers/gang bangers }. I don't keep an active tally, but I would estimate the number on an "average" year to be about 50, double that during the year we had the vegas shooting. 50/year puts the odds at rougly 1:6,560,000, or about 40x less likely than getting killed by a lightning strike.
"There is no broadly accepted definition of a mass shooting. The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as a single incident in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are "shot and/or killed" at "the same general time and location."
Also from the business insider:
"There is no broadly accepted definition of a mass shooting. The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as a single incident in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are "shot and/or killed" at "the same general time and location."
Another source suggests that death rate from "Islamic terrorism" in the US is somewhere around 1 in 3,500,000. If you presume other types of extremism are similar, there is still a significant difference from the mass shooting rate.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-many-mass-shootings-in-a...
https://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/since.html
Yeah, that can't be right. Or, it can be, if one only takes into account years after 2001, when at least 3000 people were killed, or 1 in 100 000 US residents.
See page 4 of the previously referenced document.
We also need to collectively care about stopping extremism with other approaches. One thing that is that most people who commit these heinous acts have reached a point where their lives have to perceived value. They are then easily radicalized. (See blue collar America blaming all their jobs lost to automation on Mexicans) People who have money for their family and are generally happy don't go around killing for some cause. Addressing wealth inequality can help.
The challenge of supporting this kind of "good censorship" is always who will watch the watchers? What passes for terrorism in the US is different than in a country like Russia or North Korea or .... A lot of people (even in the US) are very careful about what they post on socials. What happens if people who attack a certain viewpoint or organization are suddenly declared "evil" and the cause of all our ills? Is someone on a bowling team with a closet Nazi or KKK member also guilty? You only need to look back at McCarthyism to see how easily "good" people can be weaponized into something terrible.
nit- Among others, neither the 9/11 gang nor the Christchurch shooter were poor.
The danger here is the government starting to weaponize this 'freedom', by designating mundane crimes as 'terrorism' and then holding secret trials. Given that this is precedented, and leads to significantly worse outcomes (including full-on genocide), it seems that it's probably better to just accept that there will be mass shootings. After all, even adding up all the mass shootings in the world, you will still not come close to the slaughter's perpetrated by governments holding secret trials of dissidents
Companies need censorship to make money. They shouldn't have to lose money simply to satisfy your or my idea of not censoring.
Now the government? Yeah. That's a whole other issue.
Companies need to trample on your human rights to make money.
Now the government? Yeah. That's a whole other issue.
False. Freedom of speech outweighs property rights and the right of corporations' "Freedom of association."
Consider the situation in Australia, where all ISPs acted in concert to block websites. It's technically not government censorship, but the effect is the same - so any utilitarian rationale behind restrictions on government censorship should apply here equally.
Or maybe this should just be considered a form of illegal cartel.
"The censor was a magistrate in ancient Rome who was responsible for maintaining the census, supervising public morality, and overseeing certain aspects of the government's finances." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_censor
When its not government censorship it's called self-censorship or something entirely different.
Making up speech/expression filters that are explicitly enumerated by governing laws, is censorship too -- but this one is not 'selective', instead it is mandated.
So the opposition that people have on these topics, is towards 'selective censorship', not the 'mandated' one.
The next argument for 'selective sensorship' -- is that a private business can make up their own rules.
My view is, yes, private business can -- but then, the content where selective-censorship was applied, cannot be available publicly without a fee.
So, if Facebook wants to do selective-censorship, then ok --
however, that filtered content should be available only to people who selected to participate in explicit business relationship with Facebook.
Here in Germany it's very popular to talk about, chastise and silence "Nazis" (be it real or assumed), which sort of makes sense knowing Germany's history. From my perspective -- of a Slav whose people were exterminated en masse by real Nazis.
At the same time various, frequently militant, extremists (e.g. anarchists, AntiFas, Islamists) are allowed to speak their mind, openly recruit and even spread calls to violence against their political opponents.
Mind you, Wahhabist groups were literally spreading their message just a few years ago (still in 2017) in front of shopping malls here in Berlin.
And yet it doesn't even prevent the core of the problem, which is that the supreme law of the land is easily abusable as a weapon once the Nazis get in power (and if the German economy tanks to the point where people can no longer buy bread for a day's work, which was true in the Weimar Republic, they will).
Anti-speech laws have never been about stopping Nazis. It's all about the feeling that they stop Nazis, which (especially in majoritarian-biased politics) is all that really matters.
So do Neo-Nazis quite regularily. But the problem runs deeper. I find it acceptable for a society to say, that it doesn't want certain types of messages to be brought forward. E.g. if your political message is to basically disallow any other political message other than your own, why should society tolerate your message? Or if you are going in all inflamatory and start to divide people and spell out goals of genozide – why would any society that wants to remain civilized not in some form penalize that kind of behaviour?
As much as I am for free speech, censorship in any form (be it your collegues who stop interacting with you because of your shitty ideas) fulfilled certain societal functions and a lot of the change we saw in the recent years has also to do with the fact, that this censorship is not only gone, but the polar oposite: 30 years ago extreme opinions would have drowned out in the sea of mainstream opinions.
Today we have digital systems that penalize mainstream opinions and reward extreme opinions on the fringes. This leads to entirely different discourses and also ultimately to the need of more censorship to retain social stability.
The crucial question is how this censorship looks like once it comes (and it will).
My lack of an alternative doesn't make your idea good.
The problem is youtubes recommendation algorithm, which rides users ever deeper into weirder and more outrageous videos, if they are susceptible to it. It's a bit like balancing on a knifes edge, and that very system feeds directly into those generating revenue from it. It is a system that rewards cheap outrageous lies over intelligent and balanced truths.
In today's age where every truth will be declared to be just an opinion while every opinion will be presented as the truth, we don't need such a social experiment.
Where is the evidence that this is better than the status quo?
Isn't this the way the US government treats islamist terrorist propaganda too? I am not sure why we should treat rightwing terrorists different. Both are inhumane, cruel and undemocratic ideologies, that would end free speech as soon as they get in power.
Note that this is meant to target right wing extremism, not right wing ideas per se. I am all open for discussion, but when people start promoting violence, genocide and hate, maybe a society is better off not protecting them unconditionally.
Free speech is also a cultural issue, e.g. in Europe you could shock some people with explicit violence, while nobody cares about exposed female nipples. In the US it is exactly the other way round – they are extremely open to violence, while in other areas free speech doesn't seem to count as much.
No.
The same as always. Criticize it. Maintain our freedoms. Continue to live as free people. It's only when we sacrifice our freedoms for security that the terrorists win. Unfortunately, we have been doing exactly the wrong thing by dribs and drabs for going on 2/3rds of a century now.
So now, what is extremism?
Are there practical AI/video analysis techniques to detect that a video contains a fragment of another video? Surely.
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.
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.
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.
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_spectru...
This particular pathology seems to arise from the idea that "far $TYPE" is inherently de-legitmizing. And once you've de-legitimized someone or some position, you don't actually have to take them seriously, so...
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.
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.
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.
But that's not the agenda proposed at all. The agenda is to prevent violent extremism and terrorism promoting content from spreading on social media, not stopping war reporting.
Also I'm Irish, living in Ireland. Apart from maybe funding a health service that's not fit for purpose, it's a serious stretch to say that my taxes are sponsoring the killings of anyone.
This is purely giving up rights for the sake of security theatre.
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.)
Say by allowing a clearly incompetent and deranged lunatic the same airtime as his opponent? Or by giving a racist grifter airtime on a flagship political program?
> and the violent stupid losers will lose.
Alas, Trump won. Farage won. Bolsonaro won. Duterte won. The violent stupid losers keep winning despite their views getting wide public airings.
A cable news channel doesn't get carte blanche to broadcast uncensored beheading or mass shooting videos at any hour of the day so why should a website not be obliged to take steps to curb the exact same thing?
There's really no comparison between even the worst tabloid newspaper and some of the stuff that festers on the internet.
The use propaganda to make people support the war effort against the Middle East. Ask people in the Middle East who the terrorists are.
The only individual who is saying to not do that is... Tucker Carlson, who is on Fox.
Didn't realize Democratic congressmen/women were taking orders from Fox News.
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?
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.
Luckily, we don't need to consult your 'view' to see how these systems operate. Given that violent crime is at an all time low, especially when considering the entirety of history, I think it's safe to say that if we consult reality, things are for the most part working just fine.