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Comment by joshuamorton | Hacker News Reader

Here's the first result from Googling "hate speech":

> public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation

I might broaden the final bit to "immutable characteristics" instead of the specific list they provide. For the same reason, I probably wouldn't consider the comment under discussion hate speech, but I'm really curious what you find difficult about that definition.

Edit: see the followups for why something that is a social construct can be immutable, since multiple people have made the same flawed response.

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Encouraging violence has clear rules under the 1st amendment which is covered in my original comment.

What does "expressing hate" mean? Why does it matter what characteristics are used? Is it ok to "express hate" based on the clothes you wear or job you do? If you remove the characteristics, then it just says hate speech is speech that expresses hate. It's a tautological and useless definition.

> Is it ok to "express hate" based on the clothes you wear or job you do?

Morally? No I don't think we should go around expressing hate much at all. It's not productive and, well, hateful. I think the question you mean to ask is "do you believe that expressing hate based on your clothes or job should be censored to the same extent that hate based on immutable characteristics is?"

The answer to that question is also no. This is mostly due to the relative dangers. Hate speech can (and does!) lead to dehumanization and discrimination. Nipping that in the bud is worth it. But creating the outgroup needed for discrimination is much more difficult if it's based on a job or an item of clothing (unless that item of clothing is something you're required to wear that identifies you with a specific immutable characteristic, like a star or pink triangle).

> So hate speech is speech that expresses hate?

No, you keep changing the definition. I don't. Please stop. Your definition is useless because you keep changing it to one that you feel is useless. If you refuse to use the definitions that others use, and instead you only use one that you've defined with the intent to be nearly useless, then yes, you will find the term useless. The rest of us will continue to ignore your trolling.

I never stated a definition, only questioned them. There's been several posted, changing from immutable characteristics to others like religion, and now also including clothing. Basically any characteristic can be used to group people, in which case mentioning a list of characteristics isn't useful for the definition.

So after that, you're left with "expressing hate". So please, solve for that. What does that mean exactly?

> and now also including clothing

Who included clothing?

I've kept to one, rather precise, definition. You keep trying to change it. I keep asking you not to.

We’re going in circles. The definition you quoted says hate speech is "...speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as...".

"Towards a person or group based on something such as" => people defined by whatever characteristic (can be anything since there's no correct list to judge by).

"encourages violence" => This is a crime, already covered in the First Amendment which I said is is a good enough policy.

"expresses hate" > WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

Please explain how the primary statement of "hate speech is speech that expresses hate" is useful as a definition.

> This is a crime, already covered in the First Amendment which I said is is a good enough policy already.

No, the first amendment doesn't protect speech that incites violence. Incitement and encouragement are different things. "Punch a Nazi" encourages, but doesn't incite violence, unless one is at a Nazi rally and there are nazis standing next to you.

Similarly, "we should kill the blacks" or "we should push the Jews into the sea" encourage, but don't incite violence against a group based on immutable characteristics.

To your response, "expressing hate" is pretty much self explanatory. A dictionary would define it as "profess a dislike of". I think that definition suffices, and I don't know why you need someone to explain this to you.

Fine, so hate speech is speech that "expresses hate and encourages violence". Please explain what "expressing hate" means?

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Replying to your edit: "To your response, "expressing hate" is pretty much self explanatory."

Great, so we're still left with "hate speech is speech that expresses hate..." which is completely tautological and useless. Do you not see the problem there?

Even if we replace it with "profess a dislike of", it remains useless. Do you consider disliking any group of people based on any characteristic to be hate speech? Do you realize how common this is? Is every single Democrat and Republican now engaged in hate speech? Is everyone on either side of a debate now engaged in hate speech? What do we do now?

No, you continue to ignore the whole immutable characteristics aspect. I get that you don't lie to recognize that part because your whole tautalogical line stops working, but it remains.

So we're back to step 1. Hate speech is only based on immutable characteristics? There's no issue if you target people based on clothes, wealth, sports team, political affiliation, etc? The definition you quoted included religion so was that incorrect?

Like I said last time you asked this: I certainly think it's wrong/rude, but I also don't think there's any news to remove such speech, as the negative impact is minimal.

You didn't answer the question last time either. Is it, or is it not, hate speech?

Your quoted definition includes religion. You've contradicted yourself again by saying it's only immutable characteristics. So which is it?

You didn't ask if they were hate speech, you asked if they were okay. I answered the question you asked, twice. No they're not hate speech.

Personally I could go either way on religion falling under the hate speech/immutable characteristic category. I see good arguments in both directions.

To humor you, we'll say that yes, it's immutable and therefore protected, since belief in a higher diety is axiomatic.

Great, then Google is not removing hate speech because 共匪 is not an immutable characteristic. Instead they're censoring US citizens on a US property to appease a foreign authoritarian nation which would never let its own people have such freedom.

That's an interesting theory. But I don't think it holds up under deeper analysis. Specifically, there are lots of other phrases, including some that praise the CCP directly that are also removed.

Given this additional context, it seems much more likely that the real answer is something like "a bunch of spambots posted messages about communism in Chinese, and as a spam-prevention measure, certain strings were added to a list of auto-removed strings."

So google gets to decide what's hatespeech? One step closer to the cyberpunk dystopia I'd say.

If anything, I'm saying the opposite.

If you Google "hate speech", it shows the definition from Wikipedia, which says:

> Hate speech is defined by Cambridge Dictionary as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation".

So no, Google does not decide what hate speech is. They let Wikipedia decide, which happens to go with the Cambridge Dictionary's definition.

Neither race, sex, religion or sexual orientation are "immutable characteristics". As proponents of "hate speech" teach us they are all social constructs. Moreoever, proponents of hate speech often wouldn't consider "punching up" as "hate speech".

Something being a social construct means that when we group people by the trait, the boundaries we use are socially defined. That does not make the underlying trait mutable.

In the framework of "hate speech" it is completely aribtrary and mutable.

Race, for example, is entirely defined by genetics and interpretation. The former is not mutable, and it doesn't matter that the latter is mutable.

It's like the difference between blue and green. The boundary is a social construct, but the way an object reflects light is an immutable characteristic. No matter what you classify an object as, you're making that decision based on an immutable characteristic.

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