Social media posts inciting hate and division have “real world consequences” and there is a responsibility to regulate content, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted on Friday, following Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking programme in the United States.
Who decides what is hateful and worthy of removal? How is it not censorship? This is such a dumb article lol
You don’t have to be a free speech advocate. It’s fine if you want censorship, just quit changing definitions to make yourself sound less authoritarian.
Some might argue that calling what happens in Gaza a genocide might be hate speach against Israel, and it should be censored. So who decides what is "hate" and what is not?
In your example, there is clear, observable evidence of genocide occurring. They are killing civilians and demolishing critical civilian infrastructure. So, saying Israel is committing genocide has a certain amount of truth/accuracy in it, and the intent isn't to smear Israel, it's to point out what they are actively doing, while the world is receiving constant updates. In other words, there is objective evidence behind the claims.
Hate speech is the opposite. It has no objective evidence behind it, and the intent is to make specific people/groups look a certain way. We can typically infer the intent of hate speech by the words they choose to use, and the way they frame their "argument". We employ critical thinking to do this. This process can also be peer reviewed for further accuracy.
It IS censorship and they should stop saying it isn't, but they should clearly say "we will censor X because Y" and be transparent about it. Censorship where the majority of population agrees with it is still censorship, but approved and accepted for the greater good.
Now, the question is what does "hateful" mean? And where does "hateful" start and begin? Is saying "I hate my neighbour" and "I hate Nazis" the same? Is "I hate gay people" and "I hate Manchester United" the same? Why not focus on violence instead of hate. We should have the freedom to hate (hear me out...) but in the end it is a feeling and a preference and no censorship will change that. What should be prevented at all costs however, is violent content. People can love or hate whoever, but they shouldn't be allowed to call upon any type of violence towards them.
Someone hating someone doesn't change a thing, but someone calling for attacks against someone - this is a whole new dimension and deserves total censorship.
Censorship isn't policing people's feelings, you're allowed to hate. Why should you be allowed to express hate, and make those people feel unwelcome?
Your questions are also not as morally grey as you think. Manchester United isn't hated for a core part of their being, they're not victims of violence, they're not a class of person who has been enslaved or erased or mistreated throughout their existence.
Individual freedom needs to take a back seat to collective freedom, and the freedom to self expression, identity, and well being for all. Freedom to oppress isn't freedom. Nobody is free unless we're all free.
It's simple. If your rights infringe on my rights, and there is no way for me to avoid the "you", whatever it may be at the moment, it should be regulated.
Go ahead and hate gays, but on a multicultural/multi-national platform that over a 3rd of the population use, you shouldn't be allowed to project that because it makes gay people feel unsafe. It infringes on their humanity.
Just because a group is immune to the intricacies of this, re: straight and white, shouldn't be a license for them to say and do whatever they want.
Try a group of gay people against straights, see how long that group lasts.
Why the double meaning
I think the difference is between protecting wealth and power vs protecting basic human rights.
It's censorship one way or the other. The paradox of tolerance comes into play. We can't ignore hate, it needs to be visible so people can be on guard, but we also can't let it take over by letting it run roughshod and unchecked. Those in charge of media and social media are in the first camp - protecting wealth and power, letting hate run rampant. It drives profits and engagement, the extremes of politics they support give them control.
Suddenly they care. One dead CEao and a bunch of whiny scared Billionaires is enough to stop 10 years of hateful content. Interesting lesson right there. Censorship is only good if it protects the rich.
Who decides when the content is "hateful"? The perpetrators of genocide characterize themselves as marginalized and their victims as a force seeking to eradicate them. That is the problem with censorship. Those are the people who end up with the control of speech. You end up with an Orwellian inversion of concepts like hateful speech for the exact reason that they can be weaponized for profit and power.
You show me which fascist government is going to censor the fascists living under it. It's a paradox. They will not. They will censor the resistance.
We've come to decide 'hate content' on ideological basis that the question of 'who decides' arises. If people could be more realistic than idealistic, that would've never been the issue. In this situation, what's in your head becomes more important than what you really need because something didn't go your way.
The majority of advertising we see in the US should be banned for sure. It is just thinly veiled psychological fuckery designed to manipulate us. Not cool.
It actually is. It's making the online space feel sterile and unnatural IMO.
It's purposefully hiding the complexities of human experience/perception and expression.
You don't have to agree with something or think it's good - but you should be allowed to be aware of it.
You should be able to "feel how people breathe" online and if there is censorship and sterilization - you can't.
You don't get the full picture.
If in a work of fiction I have a villain call my hero the n-word to demonstrate that the villain is an unapologetic racist, and I am told that I can't have that because the word is bad in and of itself and that racist behavior cannot be tolerated even in fiction..
That is censorship, even if your goals are noble they are also ignorant, as showing disgusting things in fiction is often done in order to condemn similar behavior in real life.
If you call a black person the n-word in real life, and he stomps your ass.
This isn't censorship, this is comedy.
If one goes onto an online community and calls its members radical insults in an unfriendly clearly non-joking hostile manner. Then the guilty party should be removed from that community,
Censorship or not, tolerance is a social contract, and those who want to undo this system must be stopped by any means possible. Content moderation is actually the compromise.
Pretty much the exact same thing in pretty much the exact words is being said on the other (right wing) side of things. Its just the things being tolerated are different
I honestly think that the bigger issue here isn't so much tolerance but certain parties that keep pointing out relatively small things to the common people (mostly on the right side of the political spectrum) and go "ooohhg my God can you believe these evil fuckers and they will do that to children too and won't anyone think of the children". Basically I'm talking trump, musk, Fox news, that sort of shit.
I've long held the believe that Trump did untold damage and harm to millions, but the biggest harm he has done is the division he's sown. There has always been a rather steep divide in the US, but that divide has grown into a fucking ocean between the two sides.
I think most people in the US, when receiving the actual proper facts, would really not think and feel that different. Nobody would rage against universal healthcare, why would they? You only do that when you're misinformed.
Not trying to excuse anyone, not trying to say that most trump supporters aren't insufferable assholes, but the vast majority of them wouldn't be as bad had they have access to actual news sources, had they not been constantly lied to.
Now with what you said, please understand that there are loads of highly armed militia groups out there in the US that would love to go into detail of that "any means necessary". Were this to happen, you're basically talking civil war. once that happens, everyone loses, you will too.
I think that the only way to repair this divide is to keep building bridges, keep talking, keep listening, because once it gets too far, then that's it. One only has to look at Yugoslavia as an example of what happens when neighbor starts massacring neighbors. There is no winning for anyone.
That depends on who's doing the moderation. If it's a government entity, that's censorship, and the only time I'm willing to accept it is if it's somehow actively harmful (i.e. terrorist plots and whatnot). If it's merely disgusting, that's for private entities to work out, and private entities absolutely have the right to moderate content they host however they choose.
Why is a private entity significantly different from a government entity? If a coalition of private entities (say, facebook, twitter, youtube, ... ) controls most of the commons, they have the power to dictate everything beyond the fringes. We can already see this kind of collusion in mass media to the extent that it's labeled a propaganda model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model
I just don't think the private/gov dichotomy is enough to decide when censorship and moderation is valid.
Delete the data on my device and let me in control of the sliders and ban words. Make the defaults reasonnable to stop hate. This would not be censorship anymore, just deamplification and no one is a martyr now.
Simple as. Why censor when you can just let the users have the power to see what they want to see? In voyager I have all of the annoying headline keywords filtered. Makes browsing the fediverse much more pleasant.
Here on Lemmy, people who claim to advocate for freedom of speech and information, demanding for social networks to be shutdown and people to be censored based on unknown and ambiguous criteria, without even understanding the implications of it.
in a year Lemmy will be a cesspool of extremist thoughts and opinions. left, right, doesn't matter.
the average Lemmy user is become far more caustic towards any differing opinions and that directly increases the toxicity of the platform.
this is why mods are trying to be pedantic about the rules in communities, but unfortunately they're only accelerating it.
for a truly free and moderated platform a mechanism must be put in place that allows the community itself to self-moderate. unfortunately every new platform wants to start out as Twitter or Meta or Reddit. All three of these platforms failed in their goals of becoming a better socialmedia platform while exceeding expectations for financial viability.
IMO communities should have a cap limit of members that can grow over time of positive growth. if there's negative growth the community must resolve the issues together or be forced to shrink and lose members.
this doesn't mean the community blocks access, it just means you can't post content or comments.
The law should tolerate intolerance, outside of credible threats of violance/restrictions of others' rights. However, society shouldn't tolerate intolerance, meaning we should shut down intolerance in all privately controlled spaces, and confront intolerance in all public spaces.
This is extremely wrong. The government is most definitely our society. Trying to pretend the government is not made up of us is ridiculous and reeks of othering.
I have read several of your posts and they all rely on government bad private sector good methodology. It reminds me of good old fashioned anti-government propaganda pushed by corpo bootlickers.
The government is and always will be a tool of society. I can certainly appreciate your apprehension with our current government in the US. I also appreciate your diligence in defining the difference between public and private spaces.
Sure, but there's an lot of people classifying disagreement as hatred and using that to stamp out the discourse we need to have as a society.
Take positive discrimination. Some see it as corrective action for historical injustices. Some see it as newspeak it for just another form of discrimination and two wrongs don't make a right. There's a societal discourse that needs to happen there.
Nobody is preaching hatred, but I expect I'll get shit for even suggesting there's a ethical argument against DEI.
DEI, when applied in the real life, usually means if there's two people with similar enough skillsets, one hires the more disadvataged one. Some programs use a scoring system, where being marginalized grants you extra scores on top of what you get on the tests, sure, but it's usually pretty low (10-20 max for a 450+ max score system). It also involves training for the HR, so their prejudices can be overwritten with actual fact.
However, when I first heard about DEI in 2012 (!), it was that people told me I could get fired for being white just so the workplace can expand its "diversity", while the guy telling me its existence told me how can I help Fidesz to win the next elections, and that I should become a hardcore conservative ASAP because I would grow out of leftism.
It would help if you re-thought your argument from the perspective of a person with the intelligence to understand the difference between discourse and intolerant hate speech. Yes. We are discussing hatred.
No, don’t drag DEI into this. There is no equivalency in this discussion. It just shows your biases to even remotely associate it.
Running a company with people who are all exactly the same is such a stupid idea that it doesn't even merit a discussion. How are you going to understand your market, your demographics, cultural changes? Dumbest shit I've heard in awhile.
Misinformation and violent rhetoric about minorities is hate. It has no place in society and allowing it achieves nothing expect the proliferation of bigotry.
Why is this just about “minorities” and what is a “minority”? Who is going to define this definition? Why is this not also for hate of any kind such as calls for violence to “non-minorities”?
Sure, but should it be illegal? Unless it's causing direct harm, I think the answer is no, regardless of how disgusting and hurtful it is.
For example, I can stand on the corner with a sign saying something disgusting like, "all Jews must die" or "all GOP members must die," and as long as it's not seen as an actual, credible threat, it's not and shouldn't be illegal. Should we, as a society, tolerate it? No, I fully expect people to confront me about it, I expect to lose friends, and I also expect businesses to choose to not serve me due to my speech. However, I also don't think there should be any legal opposition.
The same is true for platforms, they should absolutely be allowed to tolerate or moderate speech however they choose. That's their right as the platform owner, and it's a violation of free speech to restrict that right. However, people also have the right to leave platforms they disagree with, other entities have the right to not boost that content, etc. That's how free speech works, you have the freedom to say whatever you want, and others have the right to ignore you and not let you onto their platforms.
the law shouldn't dictate this because that would require rigid definitions of misinformation and minorities. are Nazis minorities? What about Israelis? Or Palestinians?
is spreading a rumor misinformation? What if it is later found out to be true?
"iffy" isn't the same as "illegal." They can change their policies whenever they want, provided that doesn't violate any contracts, express or implied, with their customers. If they do violate a contract, they need to make fair restitution as per whatever the enforceable terms of the agreement are.
Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. 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 most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
He just wants more censorship. They will ban “hateful” content, and then reclassify anything they don’t like as hateful. We’re already seeing a number of platforms and institutions labeling criticism of Israel as hate speech.
I feel like it is still censorship, but a degree of censorship required for public safety is tolerable...
Unless he's saying that social media sites policing content on their platform isn't censorship, because it's not. It's only censorship if it's a government doing it, you have the right to control what is said on a platform you own
Lemmy was created because Desaulines(sp?) got "censored" on reddit. Now he famously over-censors his darling instance lemmy.ml.
My point is just that nobody really thinks it should be a free for all. Everyone is human and doesn't want to hear anything that they consider egregious, or in the case of lemmy.ml "against rule 2".
.ml is garbage lead by legit garbage people. But, open source means we can take lemmy code made by garbage people and repurpose it for good. Unfortunately it seems like Lemmy image is forever stained by those people and the network will never be adopted by normal people fully.
Lemmy is fine. It will blow up in the next 2-5, guaranteed. We will also learn new ways disinformation techniques will evolve in that time frame to adjust.
Social media probably shouldn't, but the law should allow for a free for all. I personally think we should be closer to "free for all" than "completely locked down," but everyone has their preferred balance.
The creator of Lemmy is just one example. They remove a lot of content that isn't hateful, just against their political ideology. I used that as an example of a private social media website which does a lot of censoring, even though the creators are sort of, somehow, outwardly against censoring? So everyone is human is my point.
The article in question is about hate speech, not political dissent. Hate speech is pretty widely moderated away on Lemmy, and I think a majority of people here are cool with that. Some here are arguing semantics which is fair. Censoring is censoring which is the definition of censoring. I'm in the camp that if someone online is threatening another person or group of people, that should be hidden/removed.
My point is just that nobody really thinks it should be a free for all.
Don't made judgements about everybody based on one guy. I'm on an instance that doesn't defederate lemmygrad or lemmy.ml, so I commonly see utterly insane tankie takes in popular, and of course also in various comments - and yet I don't want those people to not have a platform. Because I trust just about noone to decide whether my opinions should be censored, and if that means also not censoring the opinions of people who I think are very wrong, I'm willing to take that trade.
While I still think their over zealous daddy sheepooh and pootin speech policing is rather clown, their mod style is more reasonable vis-a-vis.World mods who are just same as reddit lol
Poor reading comprehension and regime narrative weaving...
These are platforms. It isn't censorship because they are private for-profit entities. They can host or deny any speech they want. And we can post on them or not and take our content elsewhere.
Meta's anti-LGBT rules are closely knit to their ending the fact-checking: It is science denialism and linked to racism and vaccine skepticism.
Homosexuality and gender identity are not considered mental illnesses, Sex is not a binary, and Race is not connected to intelligence.
Bigots never liked science on these three, and now they use political power to impose their narrative.
Meta never moderated such discourse. Nor reddit nor twitter nor youtube. There was no censorship to end here. What this is, it is a free pass to punch down trans and gay people. It is incitement to violence, and Zuckerberg and Musk must go to the gallows for it.
Don't get me started on the toxic harassment these platforms have allowed against African and Carribean reparation activists, how they have destroyed the lives of feminists, and how they have named all Palestinians terrorists.
At this point race realists and gender essentialists have ensured political and technological control of the narrative.
There is no room for debating sealioning trolls on this one. If they don't understand the social dynamics against gender/sex/minorities at this moment, they are no better than brownshirts.
It is permabans and hooks and jabs all the way, for every single weird freak that backs this deranged hateful shit.
And we say we are living in a democracy. Mark my word, there is not a SINGLE democracy in the world. It sounds good on paper but the technicalities are far from theory.
True democracy (Direct Democracy) can't happen - you'd need to vote in every single decision. Without everyone's decision, nothing could get done. It's bad enough for a family of four to agree what movie to watch, let alone a whole country. It would be democratic if most people watched what they wanted, but the logistics for a country ain't gonna work.
That's why most Western countries in the world have Representative Democracy - we elect people to do that stuff on our behalf, and are aware of affecting factors. And by and large, it works. Sure, there are always failings and scandals and someone can point these out, because human beings like to cheat and have their own agendas, and of course, power corrupts. Sadly, there is no form of government that is safe from subversion.
If you don't like a decision, vote for a representative that you think will do more of what you want. Or form an effective protest.
The voting system used is important. "Pick the one you want, most votes wins" sounds perfectly usable but it trends towards two main parties. There is undue pressure on the voter to choose the main party they dislike the least so avoid the main party they dislike the most. It gets worse the deeper we look at the "winner take all" (first past the post) voting system (used in the USA, UK).
I don't know what an effective protest would look like but that's probably the better option. People tend to get insulted or bored if you try to explain how their vote doesn't really matter.
That's the problem. You can elect any representative but you can't ensure its a good one if the voters themselves are the choke-point, maybe you decide not to vote, vote based on trends, vote in panic or vote for some ideology rather than what should really matter to everyone in a long term.
I wonder how is US a true democracy. Its a two-party system, you can argue its better than China's one-party system or Democratic People's Republic of Korea (ahem!) but that's all there is to it.
Some might call it a.. what's that word? Responsibility?
Like that whole neighbor and community upstanding injustice and leveraging their privilege for the have nots thing that has defined modern human society up until Cambridge Analytica?
In what sense is algoritmically-amplified, targeted data transmission speech? It's of a scale that makes it qualitatively vastly different, and its impact has nothing to do with human speech or the press before the time of the internet (with the exception of yellow journalism, and we all know how well that served us).
I defend the right for you to say what you want, with few restrictions. But that doesn't mean you can set up a 250 kwatt PA system outside my bedroom window and 3 AM and shake me out of my bed with the subsonics. And that's where we are with the oligopoly social media providers.
Free speech is absolutely an acceptable concept, but it's merely a restriction on government.
Private platforms are free to drop you from their platform if they don't like your speech, and you can be prosecuted if your speech violates a law (e.g. hate speech). Platforms can also restrict the types of speech allowed on their platforms. None of that is a violation of free speech.
Free speech is only violated if governments place a restriction on the speech itself, or force private entities to enforce restrictions.
Free speech without consequences is what fascists are after. Free speech is an action to which they want no reaction or even worse when there is a negative reaction (also a desired goal) they will use that to attack the structures attempting to uphold peace.
Whole censoring content should get flipped otherway round. Meaning instead doing it from up to down like it is done now, it should be done down to up. Instead coverments, companies, platforms doing censoring, there should be tools to do it by end user.
If I say "X is shit", then that is my opinion. But if some other user do not like that i said "X is shit". Then that person should have way to filter out "X is shit" content.
So end user is person who decides what is shown, not some higer entity.
individuals create echo chambers: if someone spouts intolerant garbage, and the people who fight that garbage block the speech, there’s nobody to oppose it and without voices speaking out against it, it becomes mainstream
if society doesn’t enforce rules around hate speech, it places a burden on minorities to defend themselves from hate, otherwise hate becomes the mainstream viewpoint
The First Amendment exists to protect controversial speech. No one is getting jailed for discussing the weather or the latest Marvel movie (well, except maybe in North Korea). When governments and corporations can arbitrarily classify things as "hate speech" you better believe they're going to use it to silence dissent.
Exactly. I can say disgusting things all I want in public, and I can absolutely be shut down on private platforms like SM for saying the exact thing without there being a violation of free speech.
The EFF and Techdirt have already said that it is hate speech and effectively suppresses the free speech of gay and trans. Do you know better than these sources? Where were you when bigots banned books? Did you protest for First Amendment when three racist groups banned books all over the country? Did you protest when these same platforms shadow banned lgbt voices? So you don't care about First Amendment, you are just against LGBT lives in particular.
Which is absolutely disgusting, especially when they try to apply it to private platforms, where that right doesn't exist.
Free speech means the government cannot arrest you purely for your speech. It doesn't mean social media has to let you on your platform or retain your hateful posts.
Language works when words have a common meaning between the speaker and the listener. When 2 parties have 2 different interpretations of the same word because 1 decided they were going to manipulate into meaning something different from the commonly understood one, language breaks down, and we get senseless arguments among people who otherwise agree outside of semantics.
Yeah, "purchasing" movies or shows comes to mind. When streaming services revoke access and never grant a way to download them, did you ever really purchase the movie or did you just rent it?
I don't disagree with you. But calling it anything other than what it is is disingenuous and misleading. Like when you buy a movie and it isn't available to download and the streaming service takes away access, did you really purchase that movie or did you just rent it? Words have meaning is all I'm saying.
Censorship means that some higher authority wants some information not to be seen by certain people. The target of censorship is therefore the readers/listeners and not primarily the person writing/speaking. Hence if the readers/listeners don't actually want to read/hear the hateful drivel that some person shouts into the void, removing it isn't censorship but content curation.