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Google and Facebook May Be Suppressing 'Extremist' Speech With Copyright Scanners (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes this article from The Verge:
The systems that automatically enforce copyright laws on the internet may be expanding to block unfavorable speech. Reuters reports that Facebook, Google, and other companies are exploring automated removal of extremist content, and could be repurposing copyright takedown methods to identify and suppress it. It's unclear where the lines have been drawn, but the systems are likely targeted at radical messages on social networks from enemies of European powers and the United States. Leaders in the US and Europe have increasingly decried radical extremism on the internet and have attempted to enlist internet companies in a fight to suppress it.
Many of those companies have been receptive to the idea and already have procedures to block violent and hateful content. Neither Facebook and Google would confirm automation of these efforts to Reuters, which relied on two anonymous sources who are "familiar with the process"... The secret identification and automated blocking of extremist speech would raise new, serious questions about the cooperation of private corporations with censorious governmental interests.
Reuters calls it "a major step forward for internet companies that are eager to eradicate violent propaganda from their sites and are under pressure to do so from governments around the world as attacks by extremists proliferate, from Syria to Belgium and the United States." They also report that the move follows pressure from an anti-extremism group "founded by, among others, Frances Townsend, who advised former president George W. Bush on homeland security, and Mark Wallace, who was deputy campaign manager for the Bush 2004 re-election campaign."
Many of those companies have been receptive to the idea and already have procedures to block violent and hateful content. Neither Facebook and Google would confirm automation of these efforts to Reuters, which relied on two anonymous sources who are "familiar with the process"... The secret identification and automated blocking of extremist speech would raise new, serious questions about the cooperation of private corporations with censorious governmental interests.
Reuters calls it "a major step forward for internet companies that are eager to eradicate violent propaganda from their sites and are under pressure to do so from governments around the world as attacks by extremists proliferate, from Syria to Belgium and the United States." They also report that the move follows pressure from an anti-extremism group "founded by, among others, Frances Townsend, who advised former president George W. Bush on homeland security, and Mark Wallace, who was deputy campaign manager for the Bush 2004 re-election campaign."
you are to draw the line at "no censorship".
Apparently our brave and fearless leaders need to learn this the hard way, again.
can block or not. Uber can block. wish the Jets could.
One easy application for this fingerprinting and hashing tech would be on FB itself! My name and picture have been getting cloned by scammers with increasing frequency, and it's now up to about once a week. I'm about to delete my Facebook presence, since I use it only for commenting on group sites anyway, now that apologizing to people on my Friends list when they get spam from cloners is taking up too much of my time.
this is and will be used to remove any "unfavorable speech" as they so well put it. no matter whether it be "extreme" or not.
I would hope this would provide a little incentive to find alternatives to Google. The Yacy project seems like a good start. Or maybe it's too kludgey like Freenet. Either way, decentralization and ad hoc networks are our only hope for an open and secure internet.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
like, oh, pro-Brexit as an example.
Do you have ESP?
I'd like a couple more decades in peace, if that's a possibility.
Truth is, Freedom of Speech is dead. We have news organizations that purposely change the message of new stories to fit their agenda. We have big internet companies pushing their political agenda via their services. We have the government watching everyone, under the guise of "our security and safety".
Everything you say is watched, everything you post is noted. If it doesn't fit the agenda of who's in charge, it will be deleted, shadowbanned or you'll get a visit from the authorities, or just as bad, a DMCA/Court order.
America was a nice place to live. Soon it might not be.
Be seeing you...
i farted and it smelled like old nanners
Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?
O'Brien: Of course he exists.
Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?
O'Brien: You do not exist.
Who is the Great and Powerful that decides what is and is not "extremist views". Damn worrisome, this kind of high handedness.
dissident, person disagreeing with the status quo. It's a slippery slope, and when the people controlling the Internet can also control and shape opinion, you can bet they will.
Putin pidaras, try to censor this
By definition extremist is extreme.
Google's job is to be relevant. Extreme is generally not relevant.
Facebooks jobs is to be a nice social place, extreme is generally not social.
I do not see excluding extreme content from being outside the self set mandates of either service.
He's an extremist but he's still allowed to express his views!!
What's extreme about making fun of people with imaginary friends?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't like extremism, but I value freedom of speech above almost everything.
But the most concerning thing about this is where it may lead to...
But when will you actually DO SOMETHING about it?
You do realize the goal of limiting freedom of expression is to completely dominate a population? What freedom to fight back do you think we will have by the time your life is over? Do you mean to keep "rationalizing" tyranny and your inaction against it? Do you mean to keep meandering in your thought between the possible "peaceful solutions" while violence is done against your interests?
.. the destruction of free speech. I think it's double-plus-good! :)))
Post a critical comment on a news story and look at that story from another account and it looks very different. The post is only visible from your own account.
Google sucks for search, and Facebook has always been a huge invader lf privacy.
Go use DuckDuckGo and Diaspora.
So really this is not about certain speech, this is about the international companies Google and Facebook picking sides in some sort of cold war that is apparently starting up right this minute between the West and presumably the Asian, Slavic, and Middle Eastern governments.
If an international company is going to pick a side and fire the opening salvo, it really should be under governmental and democratic oversight. We, the people of the US and Europe should have a say in who our enemies are and when, if, and how we start going after them.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Nothing. Just like making fun of people with imaginary 'genders.'
Why's that? Who gets to decide what is 'extreme', 'hate', or 'political etherodoxy'?
Perhaps the tree of liberty needs more blood.
Let's all be reminded that not wanting to pay for millions of illegal immigrants' welfare, food stamps, school, college, and medical bills is officially an extremist position by our current government, who is currently doing their best to remove the word 'illegal' from all official government documents.
Chinese dissidents etc will also be suppressed, so long as it improves their profit, conversely if it will cost them more than the profit due to reputation damage they will not. So countries must either "pay" for the service received eg by giving free pas to tax evasion or threaten, which has no direct cost but which may degrade the countries net value in the long run. If there is a conflict it basically depends on which country represents the biggest profit centre to the particular company involved.
Also you should be aware that "the west" includes at least some "Slavic" (you to mix geographic and pseudo racial definitions there) and Asian governments worse by many definitions it may implicitly include some of the Middle Eastern governments too depending on who you ask. This makes "The west" too fuzzy a definition to be useful as a description, it makes an extent term in propaganda however as the fuzziness is useful in this case, particularly if you want to gloss over how many enemies you have made individually by pretending that they are all one block.
I think you missed the sarcasm.
This is the problem. What is 'extremist'?
I suspect that if defined by the alleged victims, it will be at least the opinions of those they disagree with.
And it becomes censorship.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Extremism is whatever is extremely inconvenient for whomever holds the power.
This is just sweeping the problem under the rug, instead of you know, solving it.
All they will achieve is to push the extremists to less known and encrypted places, and make em a lot harder to watch for or infiltrate.
Are they going to use the slashdot system of censorship?
When it comes to the need of the body politic to have ALL voices equally heard....
Crickets.
Crickets created by automated censors, deciding what may be said
And no one can hear the voice of the minority unless it be spoken in a loud "BOOM".
"who would make peaceful change impossible, makes violent change inevitable"
But somehow, the West will not learn
Speech promoting violence is against Youtube policy. So you'd expect it to get suppressed along with all other speech which violates terms of service. The same is true of racist views. As a private company, they don't have to allow their platform to be used as soap box for anything which can be said on soap box on a public street. I have seen some pretty disgusting stuff on Youtube and reported for removal. But I don't think anyone would or should get arrested for spewing such crap (some was regurgitation of antisemitic nonsense and some was instructions in how to add as much gore as possible to publicly planted explosiones). I don't think Google would want to a platform for spreading either, but even the one which instructed in how to make explosions gory did not actually call for violence to happen (only how to make it more graphic if it were to happen) and because it could be claimed to have artistic value to potential film makers, it would not necessarily get a conviction at a trial. Even something more innocent (instructions on how to steal cars) is probably not something that a Google streaming service would want to host. Just because we, as a society, decided we are better off not jailing ass holes, doesn't mean that everyone who has the ability to do so has to assist them in being ass holes.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
You triggered me who you said GPS coordinates for a hellfire. We shoot them off a laser designator. JDAM is dropped off GPS coordinates.
Freedom of speech is about the government stopping you to express some speech. It has never been about the government watching you , which is more akin to the safe from search, and it has never EVER been about a private entity censoring what they want. If google censor every republican for example, then it is censorship, but it is not about freedom of speech. Why do american keep making that error ?
By the way this is also why I laugh myself hard when people in the US states they prefer private entity over the government. Guess what ? The government is bound in most countries by some form of constitution. Private entity are not. You can be far more repressed by a private entity (e.g. censorship) than you are by a government, and you may not vote them out contrary to a government. Private entity are far more repressive and arbitrary than governments (at least in our western part of the world). That is why I do not want private entity having a say in what should be important sector of a country , energy, communication, defense, justice, health care among others.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Obviously, it is always difficult to opose white male people, but this is right thing to do. Es an European, I can't see any contribution of hate speech to our societies. Perhaps European Commision could form protected rooms ("hate clubs") where those people (white male uneducated + "fachidiots" angry mob) can express their frustrations towards various minorities, while not disturbing normal people.
839*929
Well, duh. Most countries do have limits on what can be encouraged or admired via public speaking: From child rape and hate crimes to anorexia.
"Except it's obvious that the targeted material does and has inspired many of the multiple terror attacks over the course of the past several years"
1. the Bible, Koran, Das Kapitol, Snow White, etc. etc. have all inspired people to do both great good and great evil.
a. slippery slope
2. "...it's obvious that the targeted material..."
It is? If it's censored* who gets to see it? Is there stuff banned that we don't get to see, so how do know what it is?
3. False positives occur. Which is probably worse because and algorithm does it, and algorithms may be worse than people at recognizing irony, satire, sarcasm.
a. But then, some people, and some algorithms operate on the principal that merely to speak of something is an evil. With no exceptions.
* Using censored in a wide sense. The term may more accurately apply only if a government does it. But the power of mega-corporations and the effect on our lives is in many ways far surpassing that of government. They already have "rights," the right to free speech and to give money to political campaigns without restriction. There is talk of giving corporations, aka legally as a "fictional person," sovereignty. What's next? Do corporations have the right to vote. And how many votes? One, or one for each share of stock?
I would love to be Grand Poobah or President if corporations are ever granted sovereignty. There are quite a few I would immediately declare war on.
Would you like your phone service to come with a convenient bad words bleeper?
In the US that too is predominantly a commercial service, and in fact by now in most of the rest of the world too, though it didn't used to be. On another note, in the UK there is a legal precedent that talking on the phone to one other counts as "publishing" so saying rotten things on the phone is in fact punishable there. Quite harshly too.
I think you should be free to put any candidate's sign on your lawn, as a private individual. If you're a business, selling billboard space, then no, you probably should not be free to pick and choose. This is why, at least over here, political campaigning happens on government( municipality)-provided billboards ment only for campaign posters from any registered political party. If you're not a political party, you don't get to put up your posters there. If you are a party, then yes, regardless of what anyone else thinks, you can put your posters up there.
If you're a business in some other business space then you probably should show some restraint with trumpeting your political choices. The incessant lobbying is made of businesses, you know, drowning out the people's voice. Then again, I don't think businesses ought to have the right to free speech. They're not there to have opinions, they're there do to a job.
What I think businesses like telcos and ISPs ought to do is do what they promise to do: Transport your (voice, data) traffic and not diddle with it. We regularly get up in arms when companies do stupid stuff like inject their own adverts, replace competitor's adverts, and so on, though we let them get away with (too) much already. But this is what net neutrality is about, too.
So I don't think that businesses should diddle with our traffic, for any reason really. Companies like google and facebook likewise don't transport their own content, it's other people's content. That then gets censored because "ZOMG nipples visible" but the latest beheading videos, or just grainy videos of sordid beardy types praising beheadings as the ultimate cure to all they perceive objectionable in some way, are left well alone. Alright, so now they're after beheadings. Will they leave the nipples alone, or will they continue to impose American Prudishness[tm] on the rest of the world? How about local sensitivities in parts forn, and what will we end up with then, "maximum milquetoastness world-wide"?
There is also the tangent that policing content makes you liable for having failed to police content in some way. Saying "oh but at least we tried" isn't enough, and further, if you failed, what are you going to do by way of redress? For you will fail, we know this from many high profile failures.
As a further tangent, it does mean that the DMCA's "safe harbour" provisions are more of a danegeld sort of deal, creating a law-vs-philosophy dilemma. The only real way out is to make a distinction between doing a "common carrier" job, I believe the term is, or really taking responsibility and policing. The latter means that effectively the company is becoming the government, since it exercises those functions.
So it does not matter a whit whether the company is a company. If it makes like a government, certainly with enough market power, it effectively is the government. At the very least it's sitting on the government's chair wearing the government's boots. If it wants to be a company instead, then it best make like a company and stay out of policing content that isn't theirs. IOW, no censorship.
The censorship should come from the people's rejection, but not from the messenger. The very fabric of our Nation is free speech that means speech you may like or not like. You have the right to ignore or reject it personal. But that speech has a right to be heard. Otherwise, what are we fighting for? Yes, I get groups like ISIS are using social media for recruitment and that preventing that kind of information could be considered a defensive act against them. But you have to be careful with the broad strokes of allowing a Facebook or Google or anyone placing censorship of words, ideals, or ideology.
For whaling, death sentence and failing to promote its people to become as fat as Americans?
If extremist speech were being censored, surely Trump's rantings would be high on the list to be censored. They aren't, so clearly this isn't happening.
Right?
People better than you. There's a reason democracy is at best mob rule and important decisions should be left to experts not tied to the whims of "public opinion". As if the public were informed or learned enough to form an opinion! No, thanks.
Look, either we find a peaceful solution or there are no solutions at all. Violence is simply out of the question: besides the loss of life and the damage, we're hopelessly outmatched. There is simply nothing we can do but try to find a compromise, and soon. We're losing ground each day and the other side is less and less keen on making concessions. They already dictate the conditions and they have the power to enforce their will. We have next to zero negotiating power. Let's be realistic and save what we can.
If this is about recognizing and deleting already banned video even if recoded and/or edited, it's basically de-duplicating. If this is about actually recognizing extremist speech it must be miracle code...
But I'm pretty sure that the copyright thing just works by recognizing music/video that already has been taken down in other clips.
This is definitely using the wrong policies on the wrong targets. You will ultimately corrupt both the copyright system and the moderation system using these algorithms in such a manner.
This coming weekend I an going to set off some explosives, and possibly launch some missles.
Explosives are 10 ^ (-10) kilotons per unit ( firecrackers, non-nuclear ),
and the missles are only good for a few 2*10 ^ (-12) AU. ( bottle rockets, no warhead ).
> The systems that automatically enforce copyright laws on the internet may be expanding to block unfavorable speech.
This is why the United States of America is founded on principles. Especially the 2nd Amendment.
Every time I post "I HATE FACEBOOK" on my Facebook account they close another account.
This is not just about censorious governmental interests, this is also part of company's interest. These companies that depend on users producing content are supposed to increase the quality of their "product", which was supposed to make people feel "happy" and maximise "likes". This is coming for sure, and expect more and more of this with better ML algorithms for natural language processing.
Expressing nationalist or patriotic speech is considered "extremist" speech by many these days. Who sets the bar on "extreme" speech? Once you start restricting things like speech, history shows an organization will only tighten in restrictions.
NRRPT/RCT
How you go about labeling it as extreme can effectively clamp down on utterly essential criticism--when it's something like the third gender person is suggesting someone probably need to see a mental health professional about the whole Apache helicopter thing or an open Islamist saying those guys are too over the top about jihad, they're very likely right. It can also prevent important discussions about how it may not matter if some people's overly-delicate feelings are being hurt, what's being asserted may be at its core a mass of privilege, entitlement, wishful thinking, and the implicit or explicit belief that...well...everybody is equal but some people are more equal than others, to paraphrase Orwell.
It is entirely possible for the censors to not only undergo radicalization and see all opposition to what they see as obviously Right and Good as eeeevil extremism, this could happen without them even noticing it.
Just because it's being done by private companies does not make censorship have no chilling effect, especially given the nature of the platforms they control.