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EU Threatens Twitter And Facebook With Possible 'Hate Speech' Laws (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Gizmodo:
On Sunday, the European Commission warned Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and Microsoft that if the companies do not address their hate speech problems, the EU will enact legislation that will force them to do so. In May, those five companies voluntarily signed a code of conduct to fight illegal hate speech on their platforms within 24 hours... But on Sunday, the European Commission revealed that the companies were not complying with this code in a satisfactory manner.
"In practice the companies take longer and do not yet achieve this goal. They only reviewed 40 percent of the recorded cases in less than 24 hours," a Commission official told Reuters. The Commission's report found that YouTube responded to reports of harassment the fastest, and unsurprisingly, Twitter found itself in last place. "If Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft want to convince me and the ministers that the non-legislative approach can work, they will have to act quickly and make a strong effort in the coming months," Jourova told the Financial Times on Sunday.
"In practice the companies take longer and do not yet achieve this goal. They only reviewed 40 percent of the recorded cases in less than 24 hours," a Commission official told Reuters. The Commission's report found that YouTube responded to reports of harassment the fastest, and unsurprisingly, Twitter found itself in last place. "If Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft want to convince me and the ministers that the non-legislative approach can work, they will have to act quickly and make a strong effort in the coming months," Jourova told the Financial Times on Sunday.
Will this apply to slashdot as well?
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Sounds like the mega-companies need to step up their bribery efforts. I mean "donation" efforts.
"Kill all white people" are ok, because fuck white people. That is perfectly acceptable statements on Twitter and are not considered racist, but everyone else demands that you bow down to their bullshit.
also:
Twitter User Replaces Word 'White' With 'Black,' Gets Banned
https://www.informationliberat...
Define hate.
Translation: "If you do not censor anti-government statement, we will censor you".
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
If these companies even tried to end "hate speech" or whatever nebulous crime where a specific group of pigs are more equal than another group of pigs, we will see the end of these platforms and companies full sail.
I personally feel that Twitter will be first. They will probably ban Donald Trump's twitter account for some pointless reason. After a day or two of silence, he'll re-emerge on a platform like Gab and not be encumbered by these stupid rules. The second Twitter fractures like this will be their death.
Looking forward to see what the future holds.
"freedom of speech" is not the only freedom in the world. It has to be balanced against all other freedoms. These freedoms may be weighted differently in different regions of the globe, but even in the US "freedom of speech" ist not universal above everything else. Just try crying "FIRE" in a crowded theatre and then claiming freedom of speech.
In these cases the problem is *really* hate. Hate in "you f*cking b*tch! I hate everything you say and if we ever meet i will rape you and hang you on your own intestines" (withouth the * of course). Should posts like these *really* be protected with nothing the person attacked can do? EU law says otherwise, but twitter&co rather do nothing - some say because a good hate-filled "discussion" gives more page views and therefore more ad revenue.
Good, good. Let the hate flow through you. Strike those companies down and complete your journey to the dark side.
Good! Your hate has made you powerful. Now, fulfill your destiny and take Zuckerburg's place at my side!
Opinions I disagree with.
Hmm, thousands. I think that the Moooooooooooslims would be out then. They've only got 1.5 thousands so far. Christianity has 2 thousands, so technically we should tell them. I think we've going to have to go back to both of those religions' roots, though. Abraham's religion has been ethnic cleansing for at least 3 thousands, not to mention that weird little merger with Baal worship MikeeUSA likes. If we can consider Mooooooooslims and Christianity to be forks, then we might be in business.
Every now and then Buddhists get antsy, but they tend to set themselves on fire instead of other people.
It's too bad we don't have reliable records of Germanic paganism or really any history for African religions. I think the Inca and Aztecs and others in that area were going strong for a while but those also died out or were conquered by Christianity.
So, Abraham's religion it is. Let's write them a strongly worded letter.
Freedom of speech is the essential civil right, second only to freedom of thought, which when lost describes total oppression.
Without free speech you cannot:
- Say what is true.
- Say what others are thinking and do not realize they are not alone in that.
- Say what true and so expose lies and fabrications, thereby rejecting falsehoods and those who publish them.
- Expand the debate beyond what the majority say.
- Offer alternatives to the accepted and protected norm.
- Choose, for yourself, your direction and intentions.
- Ask others to join with you and oppose.
Speech is critical.
And next, after that, nearly (pr perhaps) equal, is self-defense, which is necessary to your right to life. First, to claim your right to live, then to reject in speech (ideas for you who struggle with some plain talk) those who would deny you life, and then to defend that life.
From there, to be left alone to do as you wish, insofar as you deny no one else that, is the beginning of liberty. To defend others ensures their rights and collaterally yours, preventing oppressors from merely outnumbering you.
Speech. Without this freedom, you would not be able to present your demands for this and the others. You would know it, in your heart, you would just not be able to exercise it and others, and defend any.
And balancing rights against each other is a lie. Balancing your exercise of rights is necessary, sometimes, in current civilized society, but such accommodations are properly limited and focused.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Hate is an emotion. That everyone feels about some things or another.
Hate is even good and useful. Psalms 97:10 says "Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked." Hating slavery, poverty, injustice, are all good things.
This hate speech nonsense is just political control and has nothing to do with "hate." They'll only ban the types of "hate speech" that come from the opponents of those in power while letting their allies run wild.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
"freedom of speech" is not the only freedom in the world. It has to be balanced against all other freedoms.
Nope. No, it doesn't. It needs to be absolute, or it's useless. There are no freedoms that speech impinges upon. At all, ever, in any way.
but even in the US "freedom of speech" ist not universal above everything else. Just try crying "FIRE" in a crowded theatre and then claiming freedom of speech.
You're simply wrong. It is universal. It doesn't need to be "above" anything, because it's not possible to impinge on other rights with it. It is perfectly legal and acceptable to yell "FIRE" in a crowded theatre. It's free speech. You, like everyone else, misquote the SCOTUS opinion that stated it, in an dissent from the majority opinion. The full quote is "Falsely yelling 'fire' in a crowded theatre and causing a riot." The operative parts are NOT that someone said there was a fire - it was that they (1) Lied about there being a fire, and (2) caused a riot. We have laws against fraud and inciting a riot for reasons, and those things can cause harm to others. Even the "falsely" part is not enough to take someone's free right to speech away, because they may be performing satire, protesting the lack of adequate fire exits available in a theatre, or simply making a joke for the crowd. All protected speech. Even if it caused a panic the intent must be proven.
In these cases the problem is *really* hate. Hate in "you f*cking b*tch! I hate everything you say and if we ever meet i will rape you and hang you on your own intestines" (withouth the * of course). Should posts like these *really* be protected with nothing the person attacked can do? EU law says otherwise, but twitter&co rather do nothing - some say because a good hate-filled "discussion" gives more page views and therefore more ad revenue.
You can always come up with extreme, indefensible statements bordering on credible threats to point to and say "this should be banned" and lots of people will agree with you. But where is the line? It's very subjective, and the line can be moved this way and that on a subjective basis without anyone really noticing. Until it affects them. And that's why the right to free speech must be absolute. Because as that line gets moved, and the censors' conscious and unconscious biases creep into the censorship decisions, soon there are simply ideas and voices and opinions that are important and relevant that will never get heard. That way leads inevitably to tyranny.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Yeah we get it. Europeans are enlightened and superior to Americans. Plus you like nipples, and Americans don't, I guess. The point is that you are just masking the problem by limiting speech, not solving it. Do you think the crazy people who deny the Holocaust will stop believing it just because you have a law against it? That is the problem with Europe in general: they pretend everything is fine but don't solve the root problems. It is better to identify the problem and come up with solutions.
Uh, isn't "whiteness" the color of his skin and "maleness" his gender? You should judge people as individuals, not simply based on their race or gender. Until you do that, you are a racist, PopeRatzo.
Freedom of Speech matters more. It also is the key to fighting racism with anti-racism. The door swings both ways. Someone can post horrible racist shit to people, and then ten people can post about what a douchebag the racist is, and make him look like a shithead.
Censoring racist speech helps racism, it really does, because it hides racist attitudes in a place where it can fester and become worse. Don't confuse racism with White Supremacy, or Christian Supremacy. There are many non-white racist out there. ISIS, Al-Queda, and other terrorists are racists. They are not racists in the same way that the KKK is racist, but they are racist.
It is a little known fact that ISIS and Al-Queda have executed African Blacks and Indians, and untold numbers of Persians because they were not of the same Ethnicity as Saudi Arabs. These groups are as racist, if not worse than the KKK, or the various racist Neo-Nazi militia groups in the USA.
The hate speech laws in Germany and other parts of the EU, are empowering groups like the Golden Dawn, because people on the Secular left have been conditioned to see Racism in the Prism of White Supremacy only, and while yes that still exists, the secular left is seen as a defender of the Right wing Saudi-Arab supremacist ideology these hate groups present. I still don't think the answer to fighting hate is more hate. I don't think the White Supremacist right wing Demagogues is a way to save western civilization from destruction.
I think that the way to stop this cycle of madness we are trapped in is to expose the lunatics on both sides for the sick madmen they are. If an individual person is trying to make everyone's life miserable, that person should become the object of everyone's ire.
>To those of us whose parents or grandparents had to live and suffer through WW2
>That is very much what the rules on hate speech are about, preventing those very things to happen again.
I see you didn't learn from WW2. Hate speech didn't cause it. Hate speech caused the jews to be targeted in particular, yes, but the war itself was caused by terrible economic conditions as a result of WW1. Censorship will not prevent WW3.
... I have a hard time with the typical US notion of free speech and no censorship.
To those of us whose parents or grandparents had to live and suffer through WW2, I is pretty much unthinkable to allow someone to deny the horrors of the concentration camps and all things associated.
We didn't sacrifice a million casualties and $4 trillion in treasure for your political ideals and way of life, we sacrificed them for our political ideals and way of life, and that includes unfettered freedom of speech.
Yes, various Authoritarians — from Franco in the West to Stalin in the East — made elimination of the freedom of speech their top priorities:
The proper reaction to "bad" speech is good speech.
But if you are willing to justify other nations' not having an equivalent of the First Amendment by their history, what other freedoms and liberties would you excuse them not having, uhm? Maybe, Iran is justified in its persecution of gays by some terrible homosexuality-related episode of the past — I'm sure, one or two can be named by an expert on the country's history? Or, perhaps, it is Ok for the sunny and cheerful people of Mexico to continue banning abortions — because of some exquisite evils taking place in Chichen-Itza centuries ago?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
as christopher hitches was wont to point out. the case in which oliver wendall holmes made the "fire" analogy, was decided against the person, who in this case, was distributing pamplets, which encouraged young men to resist the draft for world war 1.
by our present standard, the pampleteers were convicted and imprisoned for political speech.
no calls to violence. no calls for violent acts. no mass panic.
Resist entanglement in foreign wars, that's all they were saying.
Provable, eh? So, tell me how a middle class white guy is more privileged than Obama. How is a white family in a trailer park more privileged than Jonathan Butler?
If there is privilege, wouldn't Asians be the top of the list of privileged? They make more money and are better educated than any other demographic in the USA. Where is the Asian privilege?
You know why 'race/gender/orientation' privilege is bullshit? It takes complex socioeconomic circumstances an individual may experience and reduce them down to a single attribute to be extrapolated to a group that shares that attribute. Where is that same logic applied anywhere else that isn't thoroughly rejected as bullshit?
Racists and sexists use that bullshit to justify racist behavior. Like this cunt or this bitch.
When is statistical disparity not indicative of racism? Or is the NBA and NFL just a bunch of racists because of black privilege in sports.
what is an opinion though, is what classifies as "hate"
And my opinion is that "all Xs are terrorists/drug-dealers/criminals/rapists/inferior" is hate.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I'm sure this belief of the Mooooooslims will be exempt amirite? Leviticus 20:13 MSG:
If a man has sex with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is abhorrent. They must be put to death; they are responsible for their own deaths.
But it'll be illegal if it's a Christian quoting it???
I think I'm getting the hang of this!
The recent election in the US shows that disturbing xenophobia* is alive and well in the US also
The recent election in the US show that the left's tactic of calling the opposition disturbing xenophobes (also: racist sexist isalamophobic transphobic and whatever else) doesn't work. But keep trying that same approach, so that Trump gets re-elected.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
In the case of this particular person, I do not assume status or success and I certainly don't assume ability and effort.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It doesn't. But there IS stuff on Slashdot that qualifies, although IMHO there's not a lot. But if you browse at -1 as I always do, you'll see it.
Arguably, the moderation system here already takes care of the problem. Users who aren't logged in won't see much if any hate speech; it almost never makes it higher than +3, and if it does then it drops below that threshold pretty quickly. So they actually have to drill down to find it - it's not immediately obvious. Users who ARE logged in are unlikely to see it if they browse at +1 or higher, (again, unless they drill down), because most of it is posted by AC's whose comments start at 0. People who browse at lower than +1 soon know what to expect and can determine if they want to see that stuff or not.
Godwin time: Mein Kampf is still available for anyone to read, but it isn't unexpectedly waved in front of anyone's face - people have to seek it out. Hate speech on Slashdot is similar to that. And this kind of speech SHOULDN'T be banned; we need to maintain an ongoing awareness that those attitudes exist and are actively shaping our world. People should be able to easily avoid most of it if they so desire, but hiding it entirely and driving it totally underground is dangerous.
Spot on, in all respects.
There's sometimes a hate-speech reply at the very front of every article here, you can sometimes see it when you view an article right after it gets posted. When there are very few replies. There haven't been any recently, but there was a time (recently) when every article had one at the very beginning.
It's usually a single-line message "gay faggots" or "gay n*ggers" or about cows. "You are all cows. Cows go moo". That sort of thing.
(There hasn't been any recently, so perhaps it was either a) a paid poster during to the elections, or b) Slashdot has a better filter.
Since it's always always a first post, I suspect it's a bot. Since some of it is complete nonsense (cows? really?), I suspect it's an anchor for forum sliding.
1) The bot ensures that the post is first, and the text ensures that it gets modded down.
2) If something appears in the discussion that the owner wants to suppress, they log in and post a reply to the invisible first post.
3) We see the reply (at +2), but not the first post. The text to be suppressed is now slipped further down the page.
As a corollary to #3 above, the poster might have several accounts and post a fake argument about spelling or grammar. It all seems above-board and legit, but the interesting bits get pushed down the page, hopefully below the fold.
And finally, I read an analysis online (with links and references) that estimated that the *maximum* number of white supremacists in the US is less than 50,000, and most of those are passive. The article (which I can't find right now) notes that only 200 people showed up at a KKK national meet. It estimates that there are less than 1000 people across the US who are the stereotypical "Banshee" style member, who actively perform hate crimes against other races.
Their exploits get amplified by the media, so we see the problem as bigger than it is.
(Am I wrong? Let's have some links.)
I think most of the hate speech comes from teens and young adults looking to rile people up. I don't think there's really a lot of white supremacy activity going on in the US any more.
Note that I did *not* say that there was no predjudice or bias, only that there is no lynching, cross burning, and such. Blacks can be around anywhere in the country without fearing for their life due to the color of their skin.