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Comment by creaghpatr | Hacker News Reader

Disgusting and hypocritical. Given that the ADL already has outsized censorship abilities on Google and Twitter amongst other platforms, everyone should read the transcript to see how self-righteous and presumptuous Cohen is and their aligned vision of controlling what information you are allowed to access: https://www.adl.org/news/article/sacha-baron-cohens-keynote-...

This coming from the guy who played Borat and Bruno- it was ok when he did it, because he is on the right side of history you see.

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> Given that the ADL already has outsized censorship abilities on Google and Twitter amongst other platforms

Can you explain this? I dont know what censorship ability the ADL has on Google and Twitter?

Then you're not paying attention. The ADL and the SPLC, though the latter is suffering some issues presently, are basically the key arbiters of what is classified as "hate speech" today. FAANG will not go to bat for the free speech rights of anyone the ADL has classified as verboten, because going up against anything the ADL does or says is anti-Semitic.

Please no name-calling. I knew about the SBLC but did not know about the ADL. If they’re similar, this is interesting information.

May I refer you to this comic? https://www.xkcd.com/1053/

I'm glad to have made you aware. They wield considerable clout.

Except that he pointed out in this, that tech's arent removing some white supremacy stuff because it would remove politicians when ADL wants them to.

https://www.cnet.com/news/adl-anti-defamation-league-faceboo...

>Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft, among others, are joining with the ADL to form a Cyberhate Problem-Solving Lab, the companies and the civil rights group said Tuesday. They'll exchange ideas and develop strategies to try to curb hate speech and abuse on the companies' various platforms and across the internet.

>"These companies have an added responsibility to do everything within their power to stop hate from flourishing on their watch," ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. "We look forward to tackling this pressing challenge together."

That article does not describe any censorship abilities being granted to the ADL. It merely says that they're looking for solutions without stating what those solutions would be.

What is with all the ad hominem attacks in the comments? What a bizarre thread.

Some people want to use social media as a propaganda engine. Dismissing all criticism is par for the course.

If by "controlling what information you're allowed to access" you mean removing hate speech, then yeah they have the right and the duty to do that. I really wonder why you're against that.

Maybe it's because the definition of hate speech is subjective.

Maybe you shouldn't limit what other people say because of your subjective views. Moreso if you define hate speech as "The incomfortable truth that I don't want to hear" and not "insults or objectively proved deceit"

I'm such a dumbass. I wanted to reply to the comment above this one in the comment hierarchy.

There's no such thing as "hate" speech. The label is a tool to suppress speech the accusers don't agree with and I've never encountered anyone who uses the term to do so objectively.

That's quite the claim and I don't really think it's defensible. Hate speech definitely exists. Your claim is equivalent to saying there exists no speech meant to demean or harm others based on race, gender, religion, etc. Why does this kind of speech need to be protected from removal? Surely we wouldn't tolerate it in this forum, why should it be tolerated in others?

> Hate speech definitely exists.

In the USA, it does not exist, in the sense that freedom of speech is absolute, even when you're demeaning or "harming" others with your words. The only way in which it is limited is when it is directly inciting action as a call to violence.

In Canada, hate speech laws exist, but again are designed around the case where a reasonable person would view the speaker as making credible threats and inciting violence.

Neither country prohibits you from saying mean things about groups you don't like. Certainly neither country prohibits you from saying true-but-uncomfortable, even scientifically backed things that are banned outright on most platforms for being hateful.

> Hate speech definitely exists.

There’s plenty of stuff that you and I would both look at and say, “yep, that’s definitely hate speech”. There’s lots of stuff that I might call hate speech under any definition of it but you might think is perfectly reasonable. Since you’re defending censoring hate speech, I suspect there’s even more stuff that you would call hate speech but I would think is perfectly reasonable. And as we’ve seen over and over again, once you allow for censorship/cancellation based on “hate”, the definition of “hate” grows without bound.

Speech that's meant to demean or harm others? Who judges the intentions and what criteria is used to make that determination?

I find the claim that there are not clear double standards within this context to be indefensible.

Is wearing a MAGA hat in public hate speech?

Is telling someone their opinion doesn't count because of "white privileged" or "the patriarchy" hate speech?

What about calling evangelical's red neck climate change deniers?

You see, I've never encountered anyone that's vocal in this realm to apply their own standards logically and objectively.

I think your claim that hate speech is indefensible. Because in order to show it exists you would have to define what it is and what it isn’t entirely, and not allow that definition to expand. But that’s not really possible, so really what does exist is people who try to call things hate speech things and then make others conform to that.. but what do you do when they start defining legitimate criticism as hate speech? You can’t do anything if they’re enforcing things by law (ie guns).

Do you think Cohen and his movies are hate speech? They are full of attacks, demonization, and mocking people based on their ethnicity, religion etc.

> Surely we wouldn't tolerate it in this forum, why should it be tolerated in others?

Because this is the difference between moderation and freedom of speech. It is fine to say that some things are not acceptable to say within a particular forum; it is not fine to stop people saying those things everywhere.

Yeah, I don't agree with people advocating for violence against me. That's why I don't want it in my social circles. What's wrong with that? Why do you support hate speech? Do you agree with it?

Duty, according to whom?

Couldn’t agree more. I find the defense of Cohen here bewildering, and the fact that you are downvoted sad.

My take:

1)It is a failing of our public education system if hate speech is a problem.

2)There is a significant difference between targeted hate speech and generalized hate speech, also between speech in public and private.(not to say its ever a good quality) 2b) Private speech should never be controlled under any circumstance. It’s simply unethical.

3)Just because you deliver messages between people doesn’t mean you need to preform SIG/INT on it.

In his speech, Cohen said that 2/3 of millennials don't know what Auschwitz is [0]. Our public education system already failed (or so it seems).

[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/auschwitz-...

Sorry. I don’t buy that study. I can’t believe that statistic from personal experience, and find the conducting authority partial. And nothing is stoping us from educating adults, ever heard of The Ad Council?

I also don't buy the study. Further, any questioning about knowledge of Auschwitz should also include questioning about knowledge of other 20th century atrocities, such as the British suppression of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese army in China, the Greek, Assyrian and Armenian Genocides under the Ottoman Empire, the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, the expulsion and killings of Germans at the end of WWII, the Cambodian Genocide by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, the East Timor and West Papua Genocides in Indonesia, the Anfal Genocide in Iraqi Kurdistan, etc. I would guess that Auschwitz is better known than most other 20th century atrocities.

I agree. But I'm not sure why Cohen's career is not hate speech.

Because he's pointing out hate speech by lampooning it. Very different

I agree. I'm deeply suspicious of Cohen. He has used 'comedy' to trick and ridicule people but taken it to another level by taking statements they make and twisting meanings. A religious jew disguised as a visitor to the US from Kazachstan going to a provincial US bar and singing 'throw the jew down the well' and then subsequently openly ridiculing and shaming the audience for singing along is a form of baiting and hate speech, the sort of thing the ADL should be commenting on. I'm surprised Kazachstan hasn't officially protested this misrepresentation, maybe they have....

I'm normally pretty well versed in dry humour, being a near native speaker of such. But I'm failing to comprehend whether you're being satirical or serious... perhaps I need more tea. Can you clarify?

Well, you're either employing tactical nihilism or you truly do need more tea. Cohen has shown himself to enjoy manipulating rubes in social contexts where the pressure to perform is present, not entirely dissimilar from how hypnotists work in crowd situations. Rather than letting it be all in good fun, though, Cohen has made people say offensive things, and then uses it to pretend it's what those people really think rather than admitting it's 99% social pressure.

Is your argument that none of the people Sacha has gotten to say things, actually believe those? Its just pressure to perform, so EVERYONE would say things they dont believe if put in the same position?

That, and he's also arguing that they're all somehow the victims of a hate crime.

Cohen is a great comedian, but I suspect he also has the skills of a con-artist, or a hypnotiser: he manages to get people to "sing along" with him well beyond what is normal and reasonable, and then ridicules them. It's funny, sometimes very interesting, sometimes leaves you a bit suspicious.

Yes. I'm confident that a charismatic person could walk into any bar anywhere in the world, and get some of the people there to sing along with an offensive song. I'm not quite sure how someone who's familiar with bars or alcohol in general could doubt this.

I'm equally confident that most of the people who sang along did not actually want to throw Jews down a well.

One distinction though, the rubes he targets are generally rubes with some level of power or influence. That's kind of the point.

I was being serious. Cohen plays a dangerous game of tricking people into interviews and situations under false pretenses and disguises and then ridicules their responses. This is low blow comedy but can be very funny. When you subsequently reach a point of publicly deliberately mischaracterizing and misrepresenting the tricked people it becomes defamation. You'd think the ADL would not want Cohen as a spokesperson.

I was going to point out that no one made them sing that but you've already got a subthread going where people are saying that he's hypnotizing them. You can't make this stuff up.

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