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How do you think social networks should handle hate speech?
A bit of context: in July 2017 germany implemented the Netzdurchsetzungsgesetz, a law which allows german authorities to fine Social Media companies with over 2 million users if they persistently fail to remove obvious hatespeech within 24 hours and all other cases within a week. A write up of the law and background information. Information about the definition of hate sepeech in germany.
I am interested in your opinion: Is this governmental overreach and infringes on the freedom of speech or is this a long needed step to ensure that people feel safe and current german law is finally being followed?
It depends on how they define obvious. Obviously a comment saying
gas the jewsshould be removed. But if someone is claimingall muslims are terrorists? Probably. What aboutMuslims are more likely to be terroristsor the factual statementBlack people commit more crimes per capita than white people in the U.S.? At what point is a statement obviously hate speech. I would say that the first two are, but the last two, as offensive as they can be, are not, or at least not obvious hate speech.the problem with this kind of statement is it jumps across several other points to purposely imply a suggested interpretation.
yes, being black is correlated with committing crimes, but being black is correlated with lower median income, and lower median income is correlated with committing crimes.
when you include more of the available information it can present an entirely opposite viewpoint; the first statement without context is deliberately built to justify the point of view that black people are violent, while the reality of it doesn't support that viewpoint.
That is exactly the point I am making. It is a true statement, but it can be used, and often is used, for the purpose of inciting hatred against black people. What I am asking is, where will Germany draw the line. Does a statement like that obviously qualify as inciting hatred against blacks and must be removed, or are companies not required to remove it under German law?
it's very hard to prove intent, but that doesn't stop laws from existing based on intent. Fraud is illegal, but you have to prove it wasn't an honest mistake.
in that sense, the intent of the statement "black people commit more crimes than white people" is extremely obvious and it's the intent that makes it hate speech, not the content.
edit: its -> it's
If we have to spend time deliberating the intent of someone's comment, I would argue it is not obviously hate speech. I also believe that if someone is saying something purely factual, it should not be removed because its hate speech. Banning factual statements is absurd.
Crime consists of Actus Rei and Mens Rei - a guilty act combined with a guilty mind.
If I walk out of a shop with something in my hand I haven't committed theft unless I had the intent to take the item. Absent-mindedly walking out of the shop with something in my hand isn't a crime.
Courts have spent hundreds of years working out what people's intentions are.
The law is not just for obvious hate speech, that is just used in the 24hrs time frame, there is also a provison for all other cases where a decision has to be made within 7 days on whether it constitutes hate speech.
In my personal opinion that depends on the context of the use. If statistics are misused in order to justify discriminatory action that is a case of hate speech, if people present this in the case of a constructive debate then no action should be taken in my opinion.
I think that's just a continuum fallacy. Wherever you draw the line, wherever you think the gray area is, there are going to be clear cut cases in addition to the gray.
Examples of clarity and ambiguity co-exist, and you don't have to believe there's no gray area to want to be proactive against the egregious examples.
You are correct that there are things that should be removed, and not all cases are gray. However, I can see several different places where the line could be drawn, and I am curious where it will actually be drawn by Germany.
The third statement is not factual the way you wrote it. There is no evidence black people commit more crimes per capita, but rather black people are arrested and convicted for more crimes. Context is everything.
I am a white women who was raised affluent. As a teenager I was a hell raiser. But, because I was white and my parents were rich, I was never convicted of anything. Hell, I got caught a bunch of times doing illegal stuff and response was to call my parents, not arrest me. If I was a poor black male my criminal record would be very lengthy. But I’m not, so I don’t have a criminal record.
The criminal justice system and especially policing target certain groups. Arrest and convinction statics say more about systematic discrimination than they do about the “criminality” of groups.
As an example, more white people per capita than black people use marijuana. But more black people are arrested for marijuana offenses than white people.
I think the third statement as written is false and I’d consider it hate speech. Whenever I see that argument made it’s always trying to incite hatred against black people, which I consider hate speech.
Is it though? Depending on the context that would seem more like ignorance than anything. As you said context is everything. If someone is discussing it in the right context and not in one to be racist you could reply the same thing you did here.
Ignorance and hate speech are not mutually exclusive. In fact, more often than not they go together.
Well like I said. How the statement is presented is what should be what differentiates the two. Banning someone for having different views should not be bannable offense.
Some people hold views that are so repugnant as to not have value. It doesn’t matter to be whether they are sincere or how they are framed.
I don’t think racism, sexism, homophobia etc. should be tolerated, regardless of how polite the ideas are framed.
Who decides on this though? Some of these view points make sense to pop up in certain discussions. If someone were to talk about Religion and one guy says "In my religion we believe that gays will be forever condemned in hell. It is because of that I blah blah blah". Should that person be banned? It's not an uncalled for answer when it relates to the topic.
People have different levels on what they find offensive. Some may find using terms like "retarded, asshole, bitch, bastard" as offensive and others may not. So something like "That's retarded", "What a bitch", etc...may be fine to some but not to others. If there is no clear line drawn people will just be banned willy nilly.
Yes, my fourth is often used to incite hatred against black people. However, someone can say it and back the statement up with relevant statistics. Without proper interpretation, it can be used to incite hatred. However, it is still a factual statement. I believe that banning a factual statement because it is easily misinterpreted is wrong. Calling facts hatred is a quick path to banning non-acceptable viewpoints.
“More black people per capita are arrested and convicted of crimes” is a factual statement.
“More black people per capita commit crimes” is not a factually correct statement.
And what about "more black people per capita commit more violent crime" or "more black people per capita commit murder"?
Is it fair to say the magnitude of difference in the rates means they commit more murder per capita, or is the reasonable assumption that it's equal in reality, but every single unsolved murder is committed by a white person, and there are also a few thousand murders that the government never finds out about committed by white people, and there's a massive chunk of wrongful convictions of black people for murders committed by white people?
You have a point.
Hate speech is often employed precisely to intimidate and silence specific groups of people so they do not participate in public discourse.
When you balance the speaking of hate against other speech, to me it's obvious that equilibrium should not be tilted to favor those speaking hate.
There's a reason only one single developed country, the one with the oldest constitution, does not have some form of law against hate speech on the books: the US limitations on speech are a relic from the 18th and 19th century that are wholly unsuited to modern methods of communication.
The Brandenburg test for incitement does not cover obvious types of speech that will predictably cause violence. It is a poor legal threshold precisely because it allows hate speech that predictably encourages violence to groups of people due to their innate, unchosen characteristics that they cannot change and shouldn't be held responsible for.
I support it. Freedom of speech, like all freedoms, is not absolute. Everyone knows you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded building, and I don’t think people should be allowed to incite or encourage hatred.
I’m going to go against he flow and say I don’t support this. Maybe it’s just because I have roots in Romania, so I’ve seen first hand what oppressive government look like, but I do firmly believe that speech should never be restricted or controlled by the government. Words are just that, words. Yes, they can be hateful, but a lot of the time this decision on what is and isn’t hate is a subjective choice by those in power.
Right now, yes, it looks reasonable to ban what’s “obviously” hate speech, but once the laws and framework to do so are in place, how sure can you be that your definition of hate will always match any future government’s definition.
Hate speech can be thought of as a specific idea that goes against the moral framework of those with the most soft power (influence) within society. Philosophers have argued for millennia over what is considered right and wrong— and while we may have a loose set of rules that the majority of people agree on (don't kill innocents, stealing is bad, etc), the majority of today's political debates exist in moral gray areas, where one side can be argued equally well as the other side. For this reason, heavy handed restrictions on certain forms of speech can be abused to further one's agenda for better or worse. Ambiguities can be exploited, dissent can be silenced and truths may be snuffed out before public discourse happens.
The primary problem isn't how to enforce moderation (banning hate speech) within a social network, but how to define hate speech beyond the obvious categories. The line between censorship of controversial ideas and maintenance of civil discourse isn't always clear, and therefore, it is extremely difficult to come up with a robust set of moderation guidelines.
My fear is that a strong mechanism to cut down hate speech can just as readily be exploited to cut down dissenting opinions in an opaque manner, thus plunging us further from truth. Of course, no mechanism at all would also be disastrous, likely leading to toxic echo chambers.
Exesses of chaos and excesses of control both have unfavorable consequences for social networks, so perhaps the answer lies in between— a system of controlled chaos.
One of the fears that a lot of opponents of the law have is that it could lead to preemptive censorship because social media companies want to prevent fines at any cost so even those comments that are not covered by hate speech laws are deleted. There is the opportunity however to log complaint against any deletion and to sue the company if they deleted it incorrectly, hopefully limiting any overreach.
Hate speech has no place in society. "Opinions" like the ones defined as hate speech in Germany aren't worth defending because they go against the idea of a society. Social networks that don't take a position against hate speech are complicit in the advancement of these "ideologies" by giving them a large platform.
I think the most sustainable and healthy way involves self-policing. When platforms hire armies of people to just roll through and remove stuff there are no lessons learned. If everyone is enabled to do their part it 1) makes people aware that these horrific ideas still exist, and 2) builds a sense of ownership/community. This is harder for site developers to accomplish. It requires more thought than just 'hire tons of people to remove content.'
Germany, in particular, has strict speech laws mostly to combat an ideology from ever coming into existence again. If you're talking about the US government curtailing speech, there's a push from the fringe left wing to police certain speech to create safe spaces or tell people how to dress on Halloween. It's a wish that, if achieved, has monkey-paw type consequences. In the unlikely scenario that a principle exists that some speech is harmful to others and therefore unacceptable, it's not going to bring the right closer to the middle. It's going to mean that kids in red states are going to have their thoughts and ideas restricted to what's socially accepted in those states. The result is polarizing.
I wrote a little bit about safe spaces here: http://fourohfour.org/home/2017/2/21/endsafespaces
One of the curiosities of the german law in this case is that it claims jurisdiction in any case that can influence the situation in germany:
The NetzDG is only applicable to social media with more than 2 million users, as it was thought that it would put undue stress on smaller networks.
I go through phases of reporting comments as "hate speech" on Facebook when I think something would count under their guidelines. What I've noticed is that overt things, like the n-word, are consistently removed. Which is good. But it feels like there's a category of posts that slip through the cracks of their supposed guidelines because their context isn't considered.
One of the most recent comments I reported was on an article about efforts by autistic folks and disability adctivists to reframe autism as neurodivergence as opposed to a failed version of "normal." The commenter replied, "They make an excellent case for eugenics." Facebook decided that this was fine. I'm not sure how a comment in favor of eugenics is not hate speech, especially considering their section on hate speech.
All this to say: I don't think current enforcement of hate speech guidelines is adequate, and while some can argue about the potential for a "slippery slope," I'm generally in favor of things that will push social media companies to take some responsibility for the fact that they create a platform for people to broadcast ideas, some of which may be harmful.
I once followed a link on a hacked site to a middle eastern hacking group on Facebook that contained a lot of calls to behead infidels, pictures of groups of men posing with rifles and discussing network attacks on western targets. I reported it and received the response that it didn't break community guidelines.