So many HN replies amount to "we all agree this is a problem, but we can't fix the entire problem perfectly, and it has some hypothetical drawbacks, so we shouldn't even try."
(Never mind that as a result of inaction in the face of disinformation and hate speech our societies are rotting from the inside, and many, many real-world atrocities are being carried out as a direct result.)
This is, by the way, a fundamentally conservative viewpoint. Cf. gun violence, homelessness, living wage, etc. Just because something is a complex issue with imperfect solutions doesn't mean we have permission to do nothing.
That’s the “slippery slope” argument. If you define what’s allowed, people will ask for more, and others will push past it saying it’s not much different than previous.
And besides that, the line has been drawn many times by the Supreme Court. Hate speech is allowed by the First Amendment, but inciting violence may not be. There’s “tests” for these sorts of issues that lower courts are supposed to apply.
Facebook is influential yes, but they are still one private organization of many. Why do we need a consistent definition of hate speech between facebook, twitter, reddit etc?
The definition will be less than ideal, open to abuse, and problematic, but having it is better than not, just as having a definition of "adult", "self defense", and "libel" are better than not having them.
And why would we engage in a "complex negotiation" (that sounds to me like a euphemism for right/left extremists and massive unprecedented violence) to reach a "less than ideal" outcome over an issue that 250 years of history prove is not only unnecessary but in all likelihood extraordinarily dangerous??? Again, why was free speech the first one???? It f-ing works, that's why. It's the foundation for the best governance human beings have ever achieved. To have people now in 2021 just kinda shrug about its importance is mind-blowing to me.
In any event, the Internet changed things. Before, it was very difficult to light the entire country on fire.
With the Internet, and social networks in particular, that has changed. The reach is unprecedented; it is a difference of kind, not just magnitude. Anyone can reach very specific groups of people and incite hatred and violence through targeted propaganda campaigns. There's more than one reason rhetoric and mass violence has increased since the late '90s (on a national scale), but I believe this is one of the biggest contributors.
Myanmar's language and culture are completely alien to people drafting Facebook policies, driving forces behind intercommunity violence include things like [likely at least partially true] news reports of other intercommunity violence and official government statements, and then there's nuances like Burmese people seemingly accepting the false claim the ethnically-cleansed Rohingya actually were Bangladeshi regardless of where they stand on other things, and the outpouring of support for Aung Sung Suu Kyi after Western criticism that might have been signals that they believed the conflict was the generals' doing rather than hers or might have been mass endorsement of the government's violence. I suspect my Myanmar-based Facebook friends' one or two allusions to burning villages and politicians are probably calls for peace and meditation, but honestly, I don't know.
That was largely a result of campaigning against giving rights to the Rohingya.
> the outpouring of support for Aung Sung Suu Kyi after Western criticism that might have been signals that they believed the conflict was the generals' doing rather than hers or might have been mass endorsement of the government's violence
Yeah, because Aung Sung Suu Kyi keeps denying, on live TV, that any problem exist other than the insurrectionists are responsible for everything thats happened thus far. The insurrectionists/terrorist according to her are composed of muslim Rohingya that are financed by foreign "Muslim" powers.
The matter of the fact is that most power is held by the military, NOT Aung Sung Suu Kyi. Thus, Aung Sung Suu Kyi stance on this issue is probably a result of the military's position. At any moment, the army can choose to remove her from power. Her position is that fragile.
I like Indian curry.
Yes, Indian curry is the best curry.
Yes, Indian curry in Japan is not the same. They don’t know how to make it.
Yes, Indians are better at making curry. After all it was invented in India and we have the local spices.
Definitely, I would not buy curry inJapan unless it’s made by an Indian who knows how to make it.
I mean you can see this potentially going in an unwanted direction. But is it hate?
To me hate is when you have immediate violent outcomes in mind.
(Indian curry is good too but most people have access to try it)
My point was that people can have discussions about who or what is better and it can diverge into other areas that could be considered hate by very sensitive people. Japan notoriously claimed for example that their snow is unique[1] and thus made it difficult to import European skis some time ago. Today this would be viewed and xenophobic or something when all it was was protectionism.
[1] kinda true. It’s ‘wetter’ than snow in some other places, but doesn’t mean Rosignol should not be sold in Japan.
As I understand it Facebook, if it did anything at all, did id months/years after the fact, essentially doing CYA not anything meaningful.
Reasonable people can disagree
> Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity. It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate".
One post is not it.
Also, if you read that Wikipedia article to the end you'll realize that I pointed you to the original use of the term.
This is why I think it’s impossible to “monitor” and purge or ban violent tweets or what have you.
One, what is the intention of the speaker, two who is responsible for the audiences reaction? Do you take the most extremely negative interpretation? It cannot work.
And that’s not even taking slang into account where violent words don’t mean violence and normal words can take on other meanings.
"Let’s go and burn that police station down now"
If anyone I knew said that I would treat it as a dry joke.
Lots of people kid around about horrible things but don’t mean it. One day you find out that one of the kids was not joking and actually meant it. Even people who are friends of the perp have problems sussing this out and can only do it in retrospect.
Progressive politics will say we have to consider the background of the singer and the audience as mitigating circumstance so they might let it slide.
Objectively it would have to be banned if we use Twitter’s new rubric.
I really dislike this argument. A lot of democratic countries have defined hate speech. In the US, individual companies define it and moderate it as they see fit. In other countries, their legislators and courts define it. The US has defined lots of difficult terms to define already.
>And why ban speech that is actually legal (even if highly offensive) anyway?
I mean if we're talking about why companies should ban it, I'm sure they have a variety of reasons that range from bad PR and loss of revenue, to the founders/owners/employees don't want to build a product that's used for violence.
If we're talking about at the society level, because it threatens democracy, peace, individuals safety
>And if it's worthy of banning on a major platform, why not just make it explicitly illegal?
A lot of democratic countries already have. UK, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland (and yes, they managed to define it somehow): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country
Because we've generally dealt with that by deplatforming that sort of speech socially and/or in the private sector.
The history of the civil rights movement is filled with boycotts and other sorts of social pressure campaigns.
Because of the first amendment, and how the courts have very consistently interpreted to allow hate speech.
>and how has the US managed to do so well for centuries with it being perfectly legal?
If by "do so well for centuries" you mean the US's economic output and world status over the centuries, I would argue that profiting off of Europe rebuilding itself after two world wars probably outweighed the detrimental effects of hate speech (among probably several dozen other reasons).
If you mean "how has the US done so well handling the negative effects of hate speech for centuries without making it illegal", I would argue that hate speech has contributed to some of the most shameful and barbaric social dynamics over the centuries, and the US is historically well behind other modern countries on this front.
Maliciously categorizing someone based on skin color, race, income, social status and religion in an attempt to denounce hate speech.
Poetic
If you were a minority, it really has not done well at all.
They have very poor subjective definitions that boil down to anything any group considers offensive which is a moving needle, and that make make things like satire and certain forms of comedy illegal and have a chilling effect on valid criticism. It's also compelled speech, and in some cases leaves violence as the only resort, as opposed to a conversation and de-conversion from extremist beliefs. We've seen abuse of it in several cases, if no one is offended, they'll create a group or pay someone to be offended. There's no burden of proof beyond someone's emotional state upon hearing the words. You can say something to two people of a group, one might think its funny and laugh, another might report you and call the cops.
Also, turns out you can yell fire in a theater, especially if you at least believe it to be true, and that's something courts can't determine, lots of people say things that they believe to be true, that turn out to be false. Likewise, if speech is dangerous but true, its still should be protected.
In either case, best this be settled in courts and legislation, not corporate meeting rooms that are echo chambers of opinion.
>If we're talking about at the society level, because it threatens democracy, peace, individuals safety
We already have laws against that, its why hate speech laws are usually redundant and likely to be abused and scope creep into silencing valid criticism of an individual or group of individuals who can then be offended and have you arrested, at the very least putting you through months and years of legal trouble before you're acquitted, and that's only if you can afford proper defense.
You people need to look at history. It boggles me how uneducated people are today on the context of this issue.
Even the person that did the Parlor leak is a Meiklejohnian absolutist.
I'm really confused by what your points is. You spend most of your post talking about how laws against hate speech are ineffectual because courts can't determine a persons emotions and beliefs, and then say it's best handled by laws and courts.
Some of the BLM counter-protests in the UK also became rather heated: https://www.politico.eu/article/johnson-condemns-racist-thug...
Of course the Belgium bombing was a political attack: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/world/europe/iran-disside...
Are you suggesting only the US has political violence?
Yeah, Weimar Germany could teach you some lessons, apparently.
That violates freedom of speech
I'm sure this experiment of ripping up the constitution in our de facto new online lives that usurp what the government is capable of doing will go just fine...