In my opinion, censorship is a bad way to combat hate speech.
(Let me make this clear before you continue reading, I don't know any good solutions)
Recently, all over the internet, I feel like I am seeing more and more companies filtering out content that are considered hate speech. I personally do not like this for two reasons.
- I think it is a band-aid solution. People who have their voice taken away from themselves are not suddenly going to change their mind.
- In a way, it is a form of removing freedom of speech. Now, I understand that a lot of the companies that are censoring hate speech are doing it primarily for the sake of sponsors, but I mean this in a more broad scope.
- It is effectively hiding societal problems.
I think one argument for the increased censorship is: even if it doesn't combat hate speech, it stops the spreading of hate speech. By spreading, I mean more people believing that hate speech. Though at first this could be a good idea, I think it is the wrong way to go about it. I really don't know what exactly is the right way to deal with this issue. Maybe more inclusion of different communities? Maybe education? Learn how to think critically?
Here are a couple other things I have been thinking about, but I am not too sure about. I do not know if they are true or not, but if any of you could provide more insight, I would like to know more:
- Hate speech is actually lower than ever. The reason why some people feel like it is higher is because the hate speech is entering to people's bubbles through the internet. Before the internet, there was still that kind of talk, it was just in a different medium.
- Though not hate speech, but in a way related, with Anti-vax, the people who are most susceptible to converting to an anti-vaxxer, are parents. A lot of times these are the people who didn't grow up with the internet, the way they view the internet is not exactly how younger people view the internet. There is more doubt in what we see online between younger people than older.
And I have had people say I must be a white upper class person to have these kinds of opinions. No. I am not white. Not upper class. I have dealt with racism in one way or another for all of my childhood, less so as an adult.
Okay. Let's look at how this would play out. You do not like companies removing hate speech from their website. I'll therefore assume you want those companies to retain hate speech on their websites. You might not like the hate speech itself, but you dislike its removal even more, so you want hate speech to be retained.
Let's imagine one such site, shall we? A site which promises not to remove hate speech when it is posted: "We don't want to censor anyone here at FreeForAll.net, so we're not going to remove anyone's comments. Everyone is welcome here, and everyone can have their say."
So, anyone can post hate speech at FreeForAll.net. People who want to be racist and misogynist and homophobic and transphobic and otherwise bigoted can say what they want on this site. And they settle in and get comfortable.
Meanwhile, people who don't like racism and misogyny and homophobia and transphobia and other bigotry find FreeForAll.net is a bit too toxic for them. For instance: I, as a gay man, don't really want to read repeated messages saying "Homosexuals: Hell awaits you" and "I also enjoy the fact that [fags] often give each other aids and die." Reading that sort of stuff over and over on a website is just going to annoy me. I don't need that shit in my life. So, I'll unsubscribe from FreeForAll.net where that sort of speech is allowed and common. People who don't like hate speech will withdraw from FreeForAll.net and look for sites which don't allow that sort of thing (such as Tildes).
We'll end up with a division across the internet: sites which have a "free for all" approach to speech, and sites which have some sort of restriction on speech. The former will become hotbeds of bigotry, while the latter will attract people who want to have reasonable discussions without some idiot interrupting to spout hatred.
Are you okay with that outcome?
If parts of this comment look familiar to people, that's because I'm plagiarising myself. ;)
EDIT: Typo.
Since we're "plagiarising" ;)... I really like @Amarok's take on the related subject of banning "troublemakers" too, and think it applies equally well here:
Hate speech is like pissing on the floor and in everyone's cornflakes, and if allowed the only people who will stick around are those who like the smell and taste of it.
And in the same comment he also quoted a really good article on the subject:
Wow, this is actually a really good argument. I can see the benefits of removing it. Unlike words, your posts will stay there as a constant reminder.
Thank you! :)
I’m an optimistic and hope interactions such as this one remain part of Tildes's culture when it goes open.
Judging by where your hypothetical went, do you believe "everyone is welcome here and everyone can have their say" is code for "we welcome hate speech, here"? Or, do you think it's inevitable that a website that claims to welcome everyone's ideas will become a nexus for hate speech? Also, in your scenario, could there be hateful speech that is concordance with your views (but not necessarily how you'd express them) that coexists with hateful speech that is antithetical to your views, and would that speech also dissuade you from visiting?
I believe derogatory speech for the sake of being derogatory and inciteful directed towards race, religion, gender-identity, sexuality, etc. to be abominable. But, when given no restrictions, why do you think a non-ignorable amount of people will devolve into it? Systemic problems, sure. Well, that probably needs a societal fix that's above a website's ability and I think I've lost the plot, now... but I think this voluntary segregation you suggest has been going on for some time, now.
I was imagining the declaration as naive and honest, rather than coded and intentional. Some wide-eyed innocent person created a website, decided not to censor it - and then unintentionally ended up hosting hate speech. (Sort of like what happened to Voat.)
That's not to say that there aren't websites out there which deliberately choose this impartial-seeming language to deliver a coded message to purveyors of hate speech that they're welcome on those sites... but my hypothetical was intended to demonstrate how a naive impartial website can be unintentionally overrun by hate speech.
I do believe that, as I explained in my linked comment which I plagiarised here.
I would feel uncomfortable with a website that allowed any form of hate speech, no matter who it's directed at.
I would also like to emphatically make the point that there is no hate speech that is in concordance with my views. I do not believe hateful things.
I don't believe that people who don't normally think hateful things will suddenly start spouting hate speech just because a website doesn't censor hate speech. I believe that people who do think hateful things and who want to spout hate speech will go to places where they're allowed to do so.
Of course it has. Reddit versus Voat. Twitter versus Gab. And so on. When websites crack down on hate speech, the speakers of hate find other websites that allow hate speech.
Of course I wasn't implying people spontaneously resort to hate. But, then, "free for all" websites act like a bright light attracting insects? I'm just wondering why people who would spend their energy on hurtful negativity outnumber those who would spend their energy on impactful positivity. Probably a topic for another time. I'll try to find literature on the phenomena...
Thanks for the reply!
Yes. There's a "push" factor from websites that don't allow hate speech, and a "pull" factor from websites that do. If you want to use your laptop while drinking a coffee, and one café has a sign saying "no wifi here" and another café has a sign saying "free wifi here", which one will you go to? You'll go to the place which allows the behaviour you want to perform. And one café will have very few laptop users while the other café will have a lot of laptop users.
I tried to explain that in the original comment you replied to. The presence of hate speech on a website annoys people who don't like hate speech, so they leave the website. It's not that there are more negative people than positive people overall, it's that the negative people cause the positive people to leave, thereby leaving the negative people as a majority even if they started as a minority.
I'm dense. My questions are mostly rhetorical, thinking out loud...kinda helps my train of thought sometimes to type as I think but it can also lead to badly-edited mish-mosh of ideas. Sorry!
I guess on a neutral playing field, Team Helpful will always concede to Team Hateful, then... Well, I'd like to see it go the other way, at least once, where hateful people get fed up with positive people and decide to spew their words elsewhere. Without the need for "referee" intervention, that is. This metaphor is sloppy.
May I ask what you view as an alternative outcome, and how you'd achieve it?
In a situation where some websites allow hate speech and other websites do not allow hate speech, I don't see an alternative outcome.
If a behaviour is permitted in some places but not permitted in other places, the people who want to perform that behaviour will go where it is permitted. There's no other possible outcome on that side of things: behaviour will be pushed away from places where it's not permitted towards where it is permitted. This collects all the hate speech in one set of websites.
The only possible difference is if people who don't like hate speech decide to tolerate it in those places where it is permitted, or whether they choose to leave those places. However, you'll usually find that people who don't like hate speech will not tolerate it (otherwise they wouldn't be people who don't like hate speech!). So they will tend to leave places which harbour hate speech.
To get an alternative outcome, one would need to start from a different set of premises, but I don't see how that's possible.
One would need to step outside this scenario of websites and hosting hate speech, to look at the root causes of hate speech, in order to achieve a different outcome. Disallowing hate speech on websites is only addressing the symptom, rather than the cause. As the OP rightly says, this is only a band-aid solution. It just quarantines the disease, rather than curing it. One would need to find out why people want to post hate speech in the first place, in order to stop it.
Unless, of course, one agrees with hate speech. Maybe it's not hate speech which is the problem. Maybe it's political correctness which is the problem. It all depends on one's point of view. We therefore need to take another step back to define the problem in the first place.
The only way to achieve an alternative outcome is to change the underlying premises. In a world where some people want to post hate speech on the internet and some people don't, there is only one outcome in my opinion: a segregation between pro- and anti-hate speech websites. To change that, we need to change the world, not the internet.
I see, thanks for the lengthy explanation.
I agree with you that disallowing hate speech is a band-aid solution, and I'm not too bothered by the existence of hate speech echo chambers as I much prefer their existence to some sort of legislation that would destroy access to those sites across the board. However, band-aids have a purpose, and I'm all for communities regulating themselves on a case-by-case basis.
My hope is that the free speech internet will eventually moderate itself as people become more aware of how it influences mob mentality over time. Cultural norms should transform as people become more fluent with technology and how it can be used against us. The internet has only just achieved market saturation in industrialized countries within the past decade. We still suck at using it but I'm optimistic we'll learn—it will require patience.
But some parts of the free-speech internet embrace those influences on mob mentality. There are people who celebrate the radicalisation that can come from hate-speech echo chambers. Why would they want to change something they approve of? There's no reason for those groups to self-moderate when what they're currently doing is achieving the outcomes they want.
Remember: their goals are not the same as your goals. They do not want what you want. You can't assume they'll behave like you.
Out of interest, I checked FreeForAll.net.
It's currently being sold by what seems to be a Korean reseller ('cause of course it wouldn't be available). There's no content of its own on the website under the domain at the moment, aside from the advertising of reselling, which is in Korean.
I had already checked that this domain was unused when I first used it as a hypothetical example, but thanks for doing the research for anyone else who might not be aware I made up this imaginary website.
And?
I despise this kind of argument. "It is just a band-aid", "it is merely palliative care", "you are only treating the symptom, and not the underlying problem" - but there isn't anything mere about this.
Sometimes, you can't "treat the underlying problem", and treating the symptom is the only thing you can do. More often, you can treat the underlying problem, but you first need to tackle its symptoms to keep the metaphorical patient alive for long enough for the treatment to be useful.
And this very much applies to "censorship" of hate speech.
You say "it's a band-aid", and that "it doesn't stop the people from thinking that".
The only answer I have to that is a resounding and?
That band-aid prevents harm from hate speech. That band-aid might not stop transphobes from thinking "lol t***ies should kill themselves", but when it stops them from posting it on LGBT subs, or telling that to vulnerable people, why does it matter?
They might keep on thinking that, sure. They might even feel emboldened by the fact that they can't say it, and cry censorship, and deem themselves "martyrs" to "political correctness", but it'll still stop - or at the very least, reduce - the amount of harm that they can concretely cause.
Is it censorship? Some think it is. I don't care, because I don't believe that the right to free speech is somehow "more important" than any of the other rights that people have, or are given. All rights are limited to some extent when they would impinge on the rights of others, and free speech is not special.
That's a very good point. People wouldn't turn down a painkiller because it's only treating the symptoms of a broken arm and not actually fixing the fracture itself. Sometimes you want to treat the symptoms first, before addressing the underlying problem.
I wonder what would have happened if, for example, places like Youtube had been invested in deleting hate from day one. What if Alex Jones was simply never allowed to use the service in the first place? Would we be in this current mess where hate speech seems so ubiquitous across all major sites? These people used to be isolated, and I suspect most of them kept their ill-founded beliefs to themselves for fear of repercussions in their real world social circles. Now they've all found each other and started a 'movement' of sorts.
I wonder if it's simply too late to take it all back. These strange hate communities met each other on the same sites we all did. They formed their groups, and now those groups will continue to exist and run their own sites if that's what it takes to give them a platform and a place to get their two minutes hate on.
Part of me is disappointed - I thought we were past Orwell's bad dreams. Turns out, not so much.
...and I think that here you hit on the crux of why censoring bad actors IS so important.
If they're able to spread their hate and lies, people will be enticed by it and buy into it. When it was just fringe talk-radio or public access TV at 1:30 in the morning, they didn't have an audience to buy into their bullshit. Now that we have the internet that preserves their article that anyone can get to at any time, their YouTube channel that anyone can watch at any time, their SoundCloud that anyone can listen to at any time, etc. etc. then they have a bigger platform for spreading hate and disinformation.
Do I dislike censorship? Absolutely. However, sometimes...many times...it's either the only or the best weapon we have against trying to pull the world back into the 1600s.
At this point, the genie is out of the bottle and censoring people on YouTube, Twitter, et. al. isn't going to help those who have already been radicalized...but maybe it helps keep more from becoming radicalized.
Hell, people like Alex Jones made good money with hate speech on Youtube. There are more noble pursuits, but there are few incentives more compelling than plain old green-back cash money.
Yep. Many reputable solutions are band-aids. The entire field of medicine is a band-aid. Furthermore: band-aids are actually band-aids, and you know what? They're quite useful.
If you weren't already aware, you should read about the paradox of tolerance.
Oh my god I was trying to find this a few weeks ago! Thank you so much. I completely agree with what they are saying.
' In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise'
the next couple lines are very key though.
people that claim
but muh free speech!are the exact ones he's talking about who arenot prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument. censorship of hate speech isn't detrimental when the only goal is malicious and to test and push the levels backwards the levels of tolerance society is willing to accept. see also the people that try to slippery slope pedo acceptance in with gay/trans rights.this is interestingly applicable to modern politics in which the bar for tolerance has gotten so low/high that the climate has degraded into a very heated battle and not many people are able to have constructive conversations
Maybe I am misunderstanding the quote now. I thought it was saying that if people try defend their intolerance by force, then we should use force back to stop it. Which I agree with, but I don't think that's what you're saying here. Are you interpreting the quote as we should use force if they don't accept rational argument (regardless of them using force)?
since society (or any community) and its moderators typically control the systems of power in these situations, given we're talking about a tolerant society, what for you would be an example of intolerant citizens/users using force?
Well I was thinking stuff like terrorism or any sort of violence (or even threat of violence). But this could applied to restrictions like not being allowed to use/buy/etc. something because you are part of some minority.
that's not really the point of making hate speech unlawful or banning people who engage in it on the internet. the point is to ensure that people who express views like "we need to kill all the sandniggers" or whatever cannot do so without punishment for doing so. and yes, it is a band-aid solution: you're probably going to suddenly get someone to reanalyze their shitty, hateful views because they get banned on reddit or whatever for expressing them, but i feel pretty comfortable saying most people who advocate for banning hate speech don't think that they're going to address the underlying structural and societal issues which lead to it by doing so. all they want to do is prevent it from being used to propagate such ideas.
this idea is really only a thing in the american conception of what freedom of speech is. pretty much the entire rest of the world outlaws or punishes hate speech in one form or another, and does not categorize it as a form of free speech. also yeah, it's technically an infringement on freedom of speech--so is preventing people from inciting imminent lawless violence, but people probably aren't about to complain about that being unlawful, so i don't see why suddenly not allowing people to say "Day of the rope all the niggers, race war now" is such a huge stretch from that.
i think that's fine in this case. i don't really want people calling for genocide and mass murder and not getting reprimanded for it just because it hides societal problems, lol.
Sorry, I don't know how you do the quoting thing, I will try and it may not work.
See I don't think getting your voice taken away is the right punishment though. People are never going to learn like that. Maybe I am expecting too much? idk
I guess this is very individualistic. I am not american, didn't grow up in America, live in a pro censorship community, but I think the american approach is the way we should be. I don't know if hate speech is a part of free speech is worth debating or not.
I am an American so I grew up being instilled with "you should always tolerate others, even if they're being hateful" and that our first amendment was perfect. In practice, though, that's not how it works, just look at anti-vaxxers. Despite the enormous amount of evidence proving vaccines are safe beyond a reasonable doubt, anti-vaxxers live in a bubble and will staunchly reject any and all attempts at reasoning with them, and prey on others to recruit them into their cult. The results are astounding: it's literally everyday that more kids get infected from entirely preventable diseases and put others at risk - not only the other children of anti-vaxxers and those who cannot have certain vaccines due to allergies, but by allowing the virus to mutate it could end up making our current vaccines useless, and an epidemic could occur.
But with regards specifically to hate speech, although it's easy to say the free marketplace of ideas will shut down the idiot racists eventually, it's not very comforting, and it doesn't work. Last year, I wrote about my own experience with hate during GamerGate, and although allowing hate speech may cause rational, mentally stable people to turn away, for those who are in a vulnerable state or feeling disaffected, it can be a gateway to radicalization. Although I got out of that line of thought, some of my former friends from high school went much further down the white supremacist rabbit hole.
Hate groups are illogical, and their members do not argue in good faith, so although many people will view them as repugnant, others will buy into it and further their causes. It's all well and good to point out that the reason black people commit more crimes might have something to do with the cycle of poverty and how subconscious bias (in addition to outright hate) still exists in society, but a Klansman won't care, they'll keep posting their bullshit crime statistics as justification for discrimination. Similarly, Islamophobes don't care that two-thirds of US terrorism is done by right-wing extremists, they'll likely view it as justified and that that statistic needs to go even higher. Giving these people a platform is a terrible idea, it just allows them to recruit others to their cause (and they know this).
like i said, the intent isn't to make people learn or anything like that, because in general people who engage in hate speech aren't exactly out here eager to hear the good gospel of why minorities are good for a society or why we shouldn't kill all the queer people in society. it's so they can't use their speech to do things like encourage violence against people or use it to convince other people that what they are saying is correct and good.
speaking as an american: the american approach sucks and is responsible for a massive amount of headache because it means people can basically advocate for actually killing people and it's considered legal speech that is not actionable against under the law. it would be a nightmare if it was the worldwide standard and not the anomaly.
Right, I see your point. But the thing is people from all over the world still advocate for killing in the same manner that some of these americans do. They just do it through a different medium.
right, I see your point.
Just as sort of off topic: On the flipside of censorship, do you think people have become more reflective on what they are saying? (Maybe even to a fault?) An example of this, if someone says 'yellow people suck in bed' on twitter. And they get called out for it, are people reading that (who may have had a similar thought) reevaluating how they think, and if it is hate speech or not. (I hope this question makes sense)
I was a moderator on Reddit for over 6 years. I can assure you that, when someone calls out racism on the internet, the racist does not reconsider what they wrote and become more reflective about what they're saying. They double down on their racism, and also start personally abusing the person who called them out. They repeat their bigotry and also start attacking people.
Bigotry doesn't come from a logical rational place. People don't make a logical rational decision to become bigoted, so you can't use logical rational arguments to change their minds. People become bigoted for emotional irrational reasons: they absorb the bigotry from copying their parents, or because they fear something or are disgusted by it. It's an emotional irrational response based on fear or disgust, which are very primal feelings. And people will defend their bigotry when it's called out. They won't become reflective. That's a very naive expectation.
Yea I agree with ya. But I don't mean the original commenter, I mean readers who may have had a similar thought, but realize that maybe their way of thinking was kinda racist. Now I am not necessarily saying some hardcore death to all x type. For instance someone talking about all white people liking starbucks (i know its dumb). Also, I know you called my expectation naiive, but I wasn't trying to say I expect anything like this, it was just a question. I have been around the internet long enough to know better.
This is my first comment on this site. I’m actually really fed up with the level of bigoted bullshit on Reddit now which is why I finally made the leap.
Correct me if I’m wrong but this site was specifically set up as an alternative to Reddit wasn’t it? Maybe you aren’t so familiar with Reddit but it is basically the real world example of the ideals you set out here.
At first glance you might not notice how toxic the discussion there has become since the perpetrators generally are as dishonest as possible about their intentions. But make no mistake about it, the intention is solely to sow hate, and it’s been accomplished almost entirely under the banner of free speech fundamentalism.
With due respect, the fact that this is currently the top submission to this site does not reflect well on tildes in my opinion. I’m not trying to leap to judgement but it’s such a trite attitude in the context of Reddit etc, sorry, and as I said, it’s a simplistic mindset that can easily lead to some very toxic repercussions.
Welcome to Tildes!
The default sort (by activity) works much differently than reddit's default sorting, so this thread isn't the "top" submission, just the most recently commented-on thread at the time you visited.
Yeah. @viborg, what the "top" submission on Tildes is depends entirely on your setup here (e.g. what sorting method + timescale you use, the groups you are subscribed to, the topic tag filters you have, etc.).
And IMO the real "top" submission, if you're basing that on the way reddit works, would be found by using most votes. And in sorting by most votes, with all groups subscribed to, and no filters, the top results by various timescales are:
12 & 24 hours = 38 votes, Experimenting with a way of avoiding deeply nested comment threads
3 days = 49 votes, Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference
7 days = 71 votes, Fire at the Notre-Dame cathedral
edit: BTW, you can change your default sort to something other than "Activity" (where highly contentious topics tend to repeatedly show up in the top position because of the comment "bump" mechanic, even if they have very few votes and the majority of people disagree with the OP... like in this case). Just pick the sort you prefer most at the top of your front page (method + timescale) then click "Set as default" beside that.
And if
free speech,hate speechorcensorshipare subjects you don't want to see topics on you can simply add those to your topic tag filters, and will never have to see a topic on them again (unless someone fails to tag a topic related to them properly).p.s. The reason for providing this level of customization is due to Tildes Overall goal of [Letting] users make their own decisions about what they want to see
Why? It is someone's argument, and we are having a quite decent discussion over it. It is not a suggestion for the community's policy. Neither it is a viewpoint I share. But we are discussing and everybody's learning. What is wrong?
While many of us are redditors, this site is not meant to be a replacement/alternative for Reddit. For many it is, but that's not the site's goal.
is your feed set to newest?
The original poster expressed their opinion sensibly and eloquently, at least in my judgment. With respect, the fact that you are upset by an opinion that's different to your own reflects worse on you than the original post does on its author.
This is such a reflexive kneejerk defense. I never said I was “upset”. Let’s have a real discussion about how online communities such as Reddit and tildes are wide open to manipulation frequently being masked by the mantle of “free speech”. Spare me your defensive comebacks.
You are correct, this was set up as an alternative to Reddit. I thought the point of this website was for people to have healthy discussions, regardless of viewpoints? As you can see the majority of the comments are of people not agreeing with me. There is not hate or toxicity in the discussion at all, at least from what I have read.
Also, I don't see why I should not post anything like this because it might be similar to something you might find on reddit, even if it may be simple minded by your standards (also, I am not saying you are asking me to stop posting stuff like this). A simple post like mine can lead to a more complex discussion.
Also, from what I read, I think the top post is always what has been most recently commented.
Fortunately/unfortunately the site is so new that it's relatively easy to get your thread on the top. I don't really see tildes as a reddit 'replacement' as it's not really a content agrigator like reddit is. The best thing to do is to generate the types of conversations you wish you could have on reddit but can't due to the problems you described, although I do wish there were fewer political themed threads on here.
Regarding your last point: he default sort on this site is “activity,” which means that the thread with the most recent comment is on the top. it’s like the “bump-sorting” on forums or 4chan.
Secondly, this isn’t too common of a position on the site. 5 votes on this site isn’t too many, and the top comment disagreeing with the op has almost 3x the votes. Also, the creator of this site has stated explicitly that they don’t take the position of absolute free speech with regard to the site.
I hope this post doesn’t sour your view of tildes too much!
I think the freedom of someone ends when the freedom of another one begins.
Hate speech often is just about that. Hate, punishment, aggression.
If you ban me from somewhere or if you think i have no rights because of my skin or anything, you are taking away my freedom.
So, absolute freedom of speech to hate speech almost always takes away the freedom of other people.
I don't understand this argument.
For example, I don't see how someone writing "fags are going to hell" on a website takes away my freedom as a gay man in any way. It annoys me, but it doesn't take away my freedom.
Could you please expand on this so I can understand your point better?
If you consider it a right to live in an environment free from harassment and hate speech, then someone publicly announcing "fags are going to hell" impinges on that freedom. Those are rights here in Canada and it's why Westboro Baptist Church was denied entry in 2008.
And as our laws relate to websites specifically, see:
R v Presseault (2007)
And Warman v. Northern Alliance, 2009
But I would still have that freedom. Even if someone creates www.FagsAreGoingToHell.com and plasters it with hate messages directed at me and my kind, I still have the freedom to live in an environment free from harassment and hate speech - because I can simply choose not to visit that website. My life is then free from hate speech, and I can enjoy my supposed right to live free of harassment. (Which is different to having hateful people turn up to a funeral I'm attending, where I would not have the same freedom to avoid the hate speech.)
Thanks for trying, but I expect there's something more substantial to @Grand0rbiter's argument than that. We'll just have to wait for them to explain it themself.
EDIT: Wording.
Sorry for the delay. Yes, i agree with you. I was thinking more long term. I think another user here explained better what happens when that kind of website starts to grow.
It will gather people who thinks the same and grow it's user base. Hatred will go rampant. The users who are on the other side of the coin will slowly go someplace else. Eventually, with enough users, things will escalate like we already see on 4chan from time to time. One or two will be crazy enough to act on it and will have a lot of users backing those actions, giving encouragement.
You're right, it doesn't take away your freedom, but i think it will eventually get there.
Are you referring to this comment?
So, it's not about freedoms at all. It's about hate speech leading to violence. Thanks for clearing that up!
Yes to both.
Though i think violence violates freedom.
Check the author of that other comment by that "other user". ;)
That's an interesting interpretation, and not one I necessarily agree with. Violence can certainly be used to violate someone's freedom, but I'm not sure that violence in and of itself violates freedom. In fact, I'm pretty sure there are some worldviews where violence is the ultimate expression of freedom: if you & I resort to a physical fight to sort out our differences, that's us being free to deal with matters one-on-one, rather than having some third party impose a resolution on us against our will.
Not violence in the context i am talking about. If you want to fight me just because you hate me, you are not giving me a choice.
Of course you have a choice! If I attack you violently, you have at least a few options:
You can choose to counter-attack me with violence.
You can choose to block my attack with some type of defensive shield.
You can choose to respond verbally. (Before you dismiss this option: I have de-escalated two different physical attacks by talking to the attackers.)
You can choose to move away from the attack.
I have not removed your freedom of action by attacking you: you choose how to respond. Why do you believe your freedom would be violated by a physical attack?
Man... If you shoot me, what choice do i have? If i'm a frail person, if i'm crippled, what choice do i have?
I could have some small choices, but in the end i will get shot and probably die. Didn't you violate my freedom?
So, if i force you to work for me, because you can choose not to work and instead be beaten, this means you still have your freedom? I'm constricting it.
We almost always have some kind of choice.
Okay. There are circumstances in which violence violates people's freedom.
So hate speech on a website can lead to possible radicalisation, which can lead to possible violence, which can possibly violate people's freedom. It's a tentative connection, with a lot of if's and maybe's, but it's there.
See here.
I think you have misread that quote (and it is a bit confusingly worded tbh). They mean that when freedom of speech includes hate speech, it impinges on the liberties of the victims of such hate speech.
I understand that. What I don't understand is how me reading "fags are going to hell" on a website impinges on my liberties in any way. What liberty of mine is being restricted by reading that phrase? How am I less free because someone wrote that phrase?
That phrase is annoying and rude and hateful and a whole lot of other bad things, and I don't want to read it if I don't have to... but I don't understand how it makes me less free in any way.
I agree with you, at least part of what youre saying. When I mean hate speech I mean general insulting some community. So as an example if I were to say 'Black people are stupid' Not banning someone from entering/shopping/etc. because of their skin color/sexual orientation/... An example would be 'You are gay so you cannot enter' Though you can regard that as a form of speech, I am talking about the former not the latter. With the latter, I agree with you. The former is not taking anyones rights away.
Every kind of speach has its time and place and it's become clear that people with certain political agendas want to voice that opinion at inappropriate times and act in bad faith in order to be disruptive. I'm a firm believer that people are entitled to quiet enjoyment of their lives. That means that if someone is minding their own business they have a right not to be harassed for the sake of it. If you decide to voice your opinion at an inappropriate time it's appropriate to ban you to prevent you from disrupting the users who didn't wish to engage with you. You wouldn't expect to be able to follow someone down the street with a megaphone telling them that their skin color is wrong without repricussions so why do you think it's acceptable to do it on the internet?
Maybe I am being pedantic but 'follow someone' wouldn't that equate to someone messaging you in your private messages, at that point you wanting to block them is completely OK.
But if you don't include 'follow someone', you do find people with signs like 'homosexuals go to hell' on the streets. Obviously if they start yelling and it disturbs peace inside your house, that is different.
I agree with you, honestly. I have mentioned this to other people too, I agree with most of their opinions. People need to have repercussions, but I don't think taking their voice away is a good way to fix this problem, censorship is simply masking the problem. There has to be a reason why the people who participate in hate speech do so, I am just saying that that needs to be the main focus.
These groups intentionally coordinate to visit sites they know have people that will dislike their views, and make attempts to be as visible as possible on those platforms. They attempt to frame arguments in a disengenuos way in an attempt to look more moderate. When someone is being dinengenuos in that way could removing them even be considered censorship? They're not even stating what they really want to, they're using other arguments and framing them in an attempt to further their agenda.
All the more reason to ban it from the Internet, when possible.
But that is just hiding the problem. Hate speech isn't going to stop because they cannot do it in one of the many methods. There needs to be a deeper fix. There is a reason why we (the majority) don't hate specific communities like we did 100 years ago.
Making something socially unacceptable is an effective strategy to combat bad behaviour. The cultural shift around smoking is a good example of that.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3894634/
The internet isn't a face-to-face communication medium. It's pseudononymous in most cases. It's easy to depersonalize a group of people like minorities if you don't need to face the consequences of your words.
Good luck doing whatever it is that you're looking to do.
Ahh I am just trying to have a discussion. Nothing more nothing less. I like talking about these kinds of things, but people physically around me don't seem as interested.
I think you are right, people dont need to face the consequences. I don't think that should change. But I think there needs to be a change in why people feel the need to do that.
Do you have any data to back this up?
Or data on this? When companies remove speech they dislike from platforms they own, how do you know what their reasons / intentions were?
In general I think "censorship" is an unproductive word to use in these sorts of conversations. It's such a loaded term that any discussion of "is X censorship" and "is X therefore bad because censorship is bad" almost invariably gets lost in the weeds of semantics and hair-splitting.
There's a company. That company owns some computers. They hook those computers up to the internet and run some software that allows people to read & post messages like a shared bulletin board.
If that company dislikes some of the things posted to the bulletin board it owns, it can remove them. I don't see it as an issue of free speech, but of property rights.
No sir, I do not have any data on either. Especially the first which I have stated I don't know is true or not, but would like to know. The second, I was referring to stuff like Youtube comments being blocked and videos being demonetized.
I think that is completely fair. This is why I said a more broad scope.
Could you elaborate more, I don't understand.
While I completely disagree with you, OP, I applaud you for starting this discussion in good faith. You actually seem receptive to counterpoints, are responding respectfully, etc. I haven't been on this site for very long yet, but I've seen related discussions popup a few times already and they're usually people looking to start a fight and they double-down on their opinions when confronted, rather than discuss and explore them.
I would rather use websites that censor hate speech, but I think a reformulation of Blackstone's ratio [1] should apply to moderation on such websites:
I consider this formulation to be a just one as my personal opinion is that suppression of speech is a bigger issue in my country (the UK) right now than hate speech is. That's not to suggest that hate speech isn't an issue, of course. However, a proportion of the government and the population are considerably more amenable to censorship than I would like to be the case. Neither side of the political spectrum is blameless here. Authoritarian Tories, having pushed through the repugnant Investigatory Powers Act (without real objection from the Labour party), are now introducing unworkable porn blocks and are greedily eyeing up other civil liberties to attack. Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, admittedly well-meaning left-wingers are eager to suppress and deplatform anyone who has the 'wrong' opinion on contentious issues such as immigration and transsexuality.
I am more repulsed by a society where people are unable to voice dissenting opinions than I am by one where people sometimes say hateful things. I can already hear the comments which will cite my white male privilege, and I do respect that as a valid attack against my position. But I like to think that I am worldly enough to have at least a modicum of understanding of the differing experiences of various groups in my society, and I want to emphasize that I have taken that understanding into account when striking the balance I have detailed above.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
Every community requires unique moderation. For some, that is no moderation at all. For others, it can mean extreme censorship. I would support administrative discretion in this matter—but vehemently oppose legislative intervention. There's no single definition of hate speech, and one group should not decide what that definition is for every other group.
Had the weirdest exchange with one of the mods on Raddle this morning. Apparently I stand accused of "ableism," which is not allowed under their terms of service. In the end I told them to go ahead and ban me if they felt so strongly about it.
Some people here have made some really good arguments on why deleting them is a good thing. I really do suggest you read them as well. I don't know if I am convinced, but I definitely understand a different perspective.
There's still one thing that bothers me a bit about the way we ban people here. It doesn't bother me that much, but it lingers as a problem that hasn't been solved yet... and that's what evidence remains behind. Whatever submission or comment chain results in a ban gets deleted because it's offensive content, or because the banned party requests it - and shouldn't they still have that right? The result is the same - there's nothing left to point to and say 'that's why' after the fact.
That lack of evidence does allow people to misrepresent what happened, and that's what bothers me. I'd like to find a good solution to that but I haven't hit on one yet. Leaving a 'tombstone' on a banned user page doesn't work if there's nothing to link it to... but do we let the bullshit remain and stir up more trouble? I don't think so. Some threads here where users were banned would re-ignite days later and continue their merry descent into flamewar territory.
Meanwhile, there are still consequences to allowing trolls to misrepresent their situations.
We could put a 'reason' on the banned user's page, but that's still asking everyone to take it on faith - and wouldn't nearly all of those reasons be the same reason anyway?
I was sort of thinking about how a community moderation system would work and realized that we have one in the judicial system with a "jury of peers" you could prevent mod abuse or takeover by putting bans through randomly picked groups of more trusted users if the offender chose to appeal their ban.
Separation of powers. That'll probably play a role someday once the higher levels of moderation start to be handled by larger groups of users. I don't see how that helps make clear the reasons for someone's ban with evidence, though. I'm not worried about if the ban is justified or appealed so much as I am about how we demonstrate the why of the ban to everyone who goes looking for it.
I have to say that it's incredibly refreshing to read that. It's nice to know you actually seriously considered the viewpoints expressed by others here, even if you ultimately still disagree with them. Massive kudos to you! :)
what you're not accounting for is entropy. very, very few people are either willing or able to go along with the scenario you describe for that long. when reddit banned fatpeoplehate for example, what happened was people made alternatives that got banned, then scurried to voat, but then only a fraction of the community really survived and most people just integrated back into reddit (and subsequently got less bigoted)
Did they get less bigoted, or just end up with fewer opportunities to bandwagon together circlejerking each other over their 'enlightened' views? A campfire burns brightly and hot, but what if you scatter the embers all over the forest?
Another example is /r/theredpill. That community fell light-years into the abyss since its earliest days when it was an interesting place to visit. Now it's an alt-right recruiting ground, just like gamergate over at /r/kotakuinaction. Both of these places created their own sites to get around being banned, so if reddit ever does grow the balls and the brains to take action against them, they'll relocate overnight with zero hassles... and their users will remain unbanned on reddit, and probably continue to coordinate their reddit (and other) activities through their own websites.
I don't think banning them does anything for their bigotry. If anything, it'll just make them angry, and that's mother's milk, it's what keeps them going, for most of them it's quite probably the only emotion they ever feel. They feed off of it and take it as proof that they are right and the world is out to get them. They imagine themselves the victim of some sort of leftist censorship agenda, and never stop for a nanosecond to think that their own narrow-minded intolerance is the cause of their problems, both online and in real life.
Banning them isn't about teaching them... people who think with their gonads rather than their grey matter can't really be taught. It's about making sure there's a place out there somewhere that isn't being dragged down by all of their nonsensical, offensive bullshit. There are better and far more important things to talk about than the piteous tribalism of a bigot's worldview.
someone literally did a study on this with respect to reddit. they found that:
their analysis also doesn't reflect the knowledge we have now, which is that the community that exists on voat which took the place of the FPH community on reddit has largely been an unsuccessful, small venture in part because of entropy. most people just don't seem to give enough of a fuck to entirely relocate their ability to hate on people if you take it away from them or limit them from doing so.
i said somewhere upthread that bans explitly aren't supposed to do anything for their bigotry, and nobody should present them that way--they are entirely for keeping dumb assholes out of good places and nothing more. that they happen to generally make people less bigoted when the communities that reinforce such views get nuked is mostly a bonus.
Can we identify hate speech with NLP and lock all hate speech OPs in a single sub?
Let haters hate each other. Cluster them together. Let the rest have a civil discussion.
Facebook's hate speech detection algorithm has a 50% success rate (implication: why would one developed by Deimos work any better). There isn't a major hate speech problem on Tildes and probably won't be as long as the invite system remains.
Containment doesn't work well (e.g. 4chan and /pol/, reddit and TD). What it actually does is create a toxic reaction chamber that attracts/generates even worse actors and taints the wider community in a way that drives away decent people.
containment also honestly just... doesn't work, even if you try to enforce it. for one thing, those people can--and do--go elsewhere. /pol/-esque posting for example infests other boards on 4chan semi-regularly, and the_donald on reddit obviously is not the only place where asshole conservatism and crypto-fascism proliferate relatively unchallenged. for another thing, even giving a space to them, as you said, pretty much spoils the whole site for people even if the entire rest of the site is perfectly fine and the complete opposite. not to mention the fact that, honestly, the existence of a "containment" space is often totally antithetical to the whole point of many websites--on tildes for example, it'd be entirely contrary to the don't be an asshole rule, in all likelihood. unless your website is one of those free speech absolutist spaces, it doesn't make much sense to cater an area of a website to people who are most likely just going to use it to be shitheads about things.
I agree that containment generally doesn't work, and as you've stated for Tildes in particular, a core "feature" is quality of discussion. I think Tildes has done a decent job so far at moderating poor behavior while allowing mostly free good-faith discussion.
Thinking out loud for the more general case, like a more pure news/link aggregator or general social media community site, I wonder if there's some implementation that could work at least for preserving good users' pleasant experience.
Most containment tried or discussed for these environments is related to the topics, where BadTopicX is allowed and only allowed in sub/group/area BadGroup, and BadGroup may be hidden from the wider audience. PosterZ, a prolific contributor to BadGroup, but is also allowed to post anywhere else as long as they only talk about BadTopicX in BadGroup. Since the boundaries of such are usually at least a tiny bit bit grey, plus phrasing and framing and tone can change how things are seen, there's some leakage that eventually will poison the well. In the end, it fails, just more slowly.
A full containment solution, however, completely separates such users. Several online multiplayer games use this approach, where cheaters and bad actors are flagged for segregation (or, in some cases, an entire geo-region is blanket segregated based on frequency of offenses). They're still able to have the full experience - all of the maps, items, whatever - but the only people they will ever play with either through server selection or matchmaking are other flagged people. It keeps both the specific issues as well as the users themselves, from spoiling the rest of the community's gameplay.
I wonder what effects a full containment solution would have on a site like Tildes, or what it might look like. There's a range. You could completely segregate the group, where everything in topics are only seen by either GoodPosters or BadPosters. You could have everything by BadPosters only be seen by other BadPosters, but everyone can see everything done by GoodPosters (i guess that sounds a bit like a shadowban with a shadow community). You could modify that last one and have only GoodPosters topics seen by everyone, but comments are completely separate. There's plenty to tweak, and that's without getting particularly creative.
Regardless how it's sliced, you might be able to give GoodPosters options; default to the maximum separation, but allow them to configure how much they see from the other side. Some people like to see even the toxic dissenting opinions, others like the challenge of trying to reach and rehabilitate these people. Perhaps there can even be a redemption system, where enough trusted GoodPoster nominations after a certain time can bring someone back into the primary community, encouraging (however little) self-reflection and improvement if the main community experience is good enough.
What's "NLP"?
Natural Language Processing, which is more or less what it sounds like. In OP's case, using that to detect automatically, algorithmically hate speech.
Thanks!
I'd like to chime in with this one simple fact of the universe.
All systems descend into chaos unless energy is applied to achieve and maintain order.
Human systems are no different.