YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft Will Create 'Hash' Database To Remove Extremist Content (reuters.com)

bongey writes: Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft are teaming up to create a common database to flag extremist videos and pictures. The database is set to go live in 2017. The system will not automatically remove content. Reuters reports: "The companies will share 'hashes' -- unique digital fingerprints they automatically assign to videos or photos -- of extremist content they have removed from their websites to enable their peers to identify the same content on their platforms. 'We hope this collaboration will lead to greater efficiency as we continue to enforce our policies to help curb the pressing global issue of terrorist content online,' the companies said in a statement on Tuesday. Each company will decide what image and video hashes to add to the database and matching content will not be automatically removed, they said. The database will be up and running in early 2017 and more companies could be brought into the partnership."

Comments

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[Anonymous Coward]

they'll censor whatever the fuck they want to.

Re:and tomorrow

[Rockoon]

This slope is so slippery that there is no possible way to move any direction but down.

Re:and tomorrow

[Zandamesh]

This slope is so slippery that there is no possible way to move any direction but down.

The problem with this reasoning is that it avoids engaging with the issue at hand, and instead shifts attention to extreme hypotheticals. Because no proof is presented to show that such extreme hypotheticals will in fact occur, this fallacy has the form of an appeal to emotion fallacy by leveraging fear. In effect the argument at hand is unfairly tainted by unsubstantiated conjecture.
source: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...

Re: and tomorrow

[taskiss]

And the problem with your reasoning is that content isn't an issue yet you insist it is. Sticks and stones don't exist virtually, it's just bits and bytes.

Re: and tomorrow

[Zandamesh]

And the problem with your reasoning is that content isn't an issue yet you insist it is. Sticks and stones don't exist virtually, it's just bits and bytes.

By exaggerating, misrepresenting, or just completely fabricating someone's argument, it's much easier to present your own position as being reasonable, but this kind of dishonesty serves to undermine honest rational debate.
source: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...

Re: and tomorrow

[spire3661]

The point is Liberty is more important than censorship. If you have to choose, always side with Liberty.

Re: and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Liberty, independent thought, seeing "the whole picture", etal are the very things the pro-censor folks absolutely do not want to happen because they don't have control and control of the "discussion" is what they want to serve their own ends. It's a bad idea all the way around.

Re: and tomorrow

[Zandamesh]

The point is Liberty is more important than censorship. If you have to choose, always side with Liberty.

At what point did I, or anyone else say anything about Liberty? In what way is your liberty being infringed? Nobody is forcing you to use Facebook. Perhaps you should look up what the Straw Man fallacy means, which I so cleverly pointed out in my above post, while you're at it, also look up the definition of Liberty. Please learn critical thinking skills, they will server you well in life.

Re: and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Extremist meaning content actually calling for immediate violence against others, or just being against safe spaces, multigender pronouns, and other nonsense like that?

This is what happens when we let all our content be hosted by a few companies. Whatever happened to making your own damned website? Oh, right: that requires actual if minimal knowledge and learning and stuff.

No good can possibly come of this, though plenty of good will doubtless be claimed.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

As private companies, they can censor whatever they want. Don't like it? Don't use it.

Re:and tomorrow

[Rockoon]

The problem with this reasoning is that it avoids engaging with the issue at hand

The issue at hand is that a bunch of companies are joining forces to control what you are allowed to see, and are starting off with one of the biggest boogie-men available to them as their reasoning for doing it.

Perhaps you thought that there was a more important issue here?

Re: and tomorrow

[Rockoon]

Extremist meaning content actually calling for immediate violence against others, or just being against safe spaces, multigender pronouns, and other nonsense like that?

Whatever they want it to mean.

Re:and tomorrow

[Joe_Dragon]

and when they flag trump well they may be like put him back or lose all of there H1B's

Re: and tomorrow

[JackieBrown]

Found a new favorite site?

Re:and tomorrow

[Bite The Pillow]

So we are back to personal responsibility and vigilance, instead of trusting a free content host not to enforce its terms of service?

Yawn. It's not censorship, you're playing in their yard, and you are free to start a competitor if it seems like they overstep.

I'm okay with this until tales of abuses show up, and then I'm judging each side accordingly. Until then, there's nothing to do but spread the information.

And the first loon to cry censorship is an ignorant ass, not the first of your slippery slope.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever the DNC tells them to.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the fusss...?

It's simple: PAY AND HOST your own FU*&ING SITE...!!! And then you could not care less what FB, or anybody else does.

There is no such thing as a free lunch...

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

This slope is so slippery that there is no possible way to move any direction but down.

The problem with this reasoning is that it avoids engaging with the issue at hand, and instead shifts attention to extreme hypotheticals. Because no proof is presented to show that such extreme hypotheticals will in fact occur, this fallacy has the form of an appeal to emotion fallacy by leveraging fear. In effect the argument at hand is unfairly tainted by unsubstantiated conjecture.
source: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...

How is this off topic? Extremists love to present slippery slope arguments. Don't allow gay marriage or people will marry their cat. Don't let in any refuges because they will kill us all, etc, etc. Some content clearly has no purpose in the public discourse. The votes are rigged because cousin bob heard someone dead was voting, etc, etc.

Private companies can do what the hell they want as for as content removal. Nothing in the constitution protects that. If they don't want their sites covered in filth, they have that right. About the only action I see worth taking as a result of such things is to support net neutrality, but trump's people don't, so good luck with that.

Re: and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like a petulant child who just learned what a logical fallacy is and now sprays it around like gold.

Slippery slope may be a fallacy, but I have seen it happen over and over so being worried that something may be taken to the extreme may be fallacy, or it may be experience telling us it's happened before and it can happen again and without anything to stop it, there is no reason to believe it won't. Unless you think people are inanely good in which case you wouldn't need this BS to begin with.

Re: and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

DisgraceBook

They disabled by account yesterday, for having a picture of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz on it. A movie that came out in... 1939. I'm not going back. DisgraceBook is ultimately a waste of time. Nobody cares about anybody's life but there own, and all your posts age rapidly and eventually tail off the bottom end and are discarded.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

It is censorship, it's just not illegal censorship. If all major media companies started to censor certain controversial positions, they could certainly shape discourse and have a negative effect on society - there's no reason to not acknowledge that huge potential downside simply because they're presently within their rights to curate what they present to people or help people find.

Re:and tomorrow

[jellomizer]

The problem is some radical views are helpful to society. They are often considered radical because it is demanding a change to a problem that is failed to be recognized. However with "Fake News" we are getting people radicalized over issues that do not exist.
Like that nut who recently shot up the sandwich shop, because fake news made it seem like they were doing human trafficking from those Evil Democrats.
Other than blind censoring where the radicalized people just discuss off the grid, and build up their anger from not feeling the ability to speak their believes. I would like to find some way to flag truthfulness of stories. So we can get a good idea on the nature of the story.
Opinions-Unvalidated: some guys rant of the day without any valid facts to back it up.
Opinions-Validated: some guys rant with with valid facts to back it up
Opinions-Untrue: some guys rants with facts shown false
Parodies: Meant as a joke or exaggeration of an event for entertainment purposes.
News - Unvalidated: News from facts that cannot be validated
News - Breaking: News with facts that are incomplete and open to change
News - Validated: News with validated facts
News - Untrue: News with facts shown false

If we can fairly classify such articles where people can trust them. And properly educate people to realize the difference.

The article about the sandwich shop seems like a parody to me, trying to pinpoint the perception of Clinton's untrustworthy nature.

Re: and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Slope? It's an overhang.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anyone is saying they can't. Why did it become such a bad thing to express disappointment in a company you support.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so fast. They are all government regulated, public companies. So you have more options available to you. You can buy in and show up at stockholder meetings and shine your ass, or bring lawyers. Hell, you don't even have to be right, even own stock, just show up with enough of a mob, or a carefully crafted activist campaign. Remember, the sanitized, pasteurized, homogenized corporate world-view has rules for avoiding bad press that include caving in to demands from loud and vociferous demands from single investors. even. Or non-invested "minorities". You know, that whole "social justice" ethos. Ethical investing, etc. Could work both ways, huh? So how is free expression worse, exactly?

But private company? Not no, but hell no, not in this fascist/socialist economy. This is *exactly* censorship. And it will get worse, cf Chinese internet rules.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

But you're right, why use 'em to begin with.

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[Anonymous Coward]

From the article (emphasis mine):

Tech companies have long resisted outside intervention in how their sites should be policed, but have come under increasing pressure from *Western governments* to do more to remove extremist content following a wave of militant attacks.

Re:and tomorrow

[Zak3056]

Yawn. It's not censorship

Yet another person who believes "censorship" means "first amendment violation." This is absolutely censorship, though it's "acceptable" because:

you're playing in their yard, and you are free to start a competitor if it seems like they overstep.

They're perfectly free to censor their content, it's their house.

And the first loon to cry censorship is an ignorant ass

I won't call you an ass, but you are the ignorant party here. That's not something to be proud of.

Re:and tomorrow

[Ol Olsoc]

So we are back to personal responsibility and vigilance, instead of trusting a free content host not to enforce its terms of service?

Yawn. It's not censorship, you're playing in their yard, and you are free to start a competitor if it seems like they overstep.

This. Your right to free speech ends at my property line. You cannot come into my house and force me to listen to your speech. The censorship zealots have strange ideas about what "free speech" even means.

It doesn't mean that you are allowed so say whatever you want to say, but others are not allowed to react.

It doesn't mean that you are allowed to threaten death or injury to people.

It doesn't mean that you can take over a venue as your own - imagine Sport's Illustrated being forced by some fringe group to fill their pages with jihadist yammering, or political crap.

It doesn't mean that you must be provided with a vehicle for your speech.

It only means that the government cannot arrest you for expressing yourself in a civil manner. That is all.

I had to open a Facebook page as part of a project I am working on. And there is a problem. Outside of my groups, which are protected realms catering to specific things, its an unholy mess. A tragedy of the commons where you see two opposite articles beside each other, and neither true. Often both claiming censorship - oddly enough, you can see both lies, claiming that their lie is being suppressed.

So while yes, its all possible to block content. As I noted in an earlier post about the tragedy of the commons and the destruction of Usenet, eventually people just drift away because the bullshit to content ratio is simply not worth the effort. Which kills the goose.

Meanwhile I have a thriving little technical community, where people don't have to deal with politics, or religion. People are free to express themselves any way they want to. Just not in the group, where the rules are well known.

Re:and tomorrow

[Cajun Hell]

Except they simply can't effectively censor anything. If spam were an easy problem, it would have been solved in the mid 1990s.

If they really want to try, then Facebook and Twitter are basically non-players in this game, and the ball is in Youtube (Google's) court to expand its malware protection to include brain malware. But if they ever push too hard, people can just use another browser.

Re: and tomorrow

[Cajun Hell]

Why did it become such a bad thing to express disappointment in a company you support.

I think I just figured out the true controversy here.

The "it's no big deal" people just assume that Facebook is already a company that you don't support. It isn't possible for Facebook to disappoint these people, so they wonder, "why all the bitching? So what if someone added a benzene off-taste to a shit-flavored shake? It's not like you were going to drink it, anyway. The benzene is irrelevant."

But for people who still use Facebook, having it get worse makes things worse. It is possible for Facebook to disappoint these people. They're thinking, "this shake is 90% chocolate with only 10% raw human feces in it. And I don't like the new benzene off-taste they added, which clashes with the fecal flavors."

Re:and tomorrow

[Travelsonic]

*yawns* Point out ANY definition that defines censorship by WHO does it, and not by the specific actions being done.

Seriously, if I had a dollar for every time this ignorant statement was made, I'd be one rich mofo.

Censorship is defined by action, not by who does it. It being acceptable or not is at least partially defined by who does it. It's an elementary difference.

Re:and tomorrow

[Z80a]

Censorship on a place like the internet is outright stupid. All you get with it is to move the discussion somewhere else, where generally there are censors for the opposite side, only aggravating the problem immensely.
The only actual way to combat those said bad ideas is to allow people to freely discuss em.
Ideas can't be killed with bullets, but they sure can be annihilated by better ideas.

There is a reason why ISIS etc also are very censorship happy.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all. It really is a slipper slope down, when there's firm ground on the way up by educating people to resist propaganda, think critically and fact check. Ideological extremism, as it turns out, thrives in the same conditions as unconscionable consumerism and institutional corruption.

Why isn't YouTube, Facebook, et al. promoting videos and articles of how to challenge fake news stories, demagoguery and FUD? Because that's where the clicks are at; they simply want to orchestrate it, not stop it.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I think I get it. You're being sarcastic, right?

Re: and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Superb story my friend ...

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Those companies will end up defining extremist content as "anything that threatens their profits".

It's that simple.

Re: and tomorrow

[epyT-R]

While it's true that these companies can set whatever policies they like, it does not mean these they are not doing harm to liberty in the society as a whole. One of the most difficult aspects of liberty is defending it from those who use theirs to attack it.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really think that only extremist videos will be censored, then you are as naive as a person who tries to reason by cutting and pasting pithy snippets from the internet.

Re: and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Slippery slope is a possible outcome of a line of reasoning. You just have to see what happened in Europe in the 1920/30`s. See how extremist views steadily gain momentum.

It is not always that things go down entirely, but things getting out of control speeding down a slippery slope is truly a fact of life. It is not a logical fallacy. The logical thing is to assume that things can [and many times will] go south.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Censorship is defined by action, not by who does it. It being acceptable or not is at least partially defined by who does it. It's an elementary difference.

I agree completely. That`s why I`m ok censoring what you will say within the limits of my property.

Re:and tomorrow

[penandpaper]

When is Social Medias influence on elections and society enough that they should be stewards of free speech? Just like phone companies are stewards by not restricting on political ideological grounds. Or a baker who becomes a steward of protected classes for wedding cakes? We seem to think 'you are a private business and do what you want' until you become a baker exercising religious belief or AT&T that has been determined critical for the nation. If medias influence on the elections are a critical issue that Obama and Media have been parading about 'fake news', then maybe we should take the next step by saying; "when you become a platform of speech you are a steward of free speech". Being an enabler of speech is no different than enabling access to the phone lines that we paid for via tax subsidies.

It maybe their backyard but it is the phone/cable lines that Social Media operate. Can an ISP restrict their access on politically ideological grounds? AT&T? A better analogy would be in AT&Ts/ISPs back yard and Facebook owns a soapbox. Are platforms of speech just as important as the infrastructure that transport that speech? When you put up soap box in the town square, why should you be able to restrict what someone says on that soap box if that soap box cannot exist without the town-square?

The baker is forced to be a steward of protected classes. AT&T is a steward of infrastructure. Why are Facebook and Twitter special when they can influence society to a greater degree? We force companies to uphold ideals we as a society deem important, such as protected classes and politically neutral access to infrastructure. Why is the freedom of speech not important enough that enablers protect it?

Re: and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Liberty is more important than censorship in America. It's not in France or Germany or China or a number of other nations that take legal action against companies that allow speech banned by the government. Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, and Google face international legal liabilities for promoting liberty over censorship. They respond by censoring; the only way to stop that is to get the US government to outlaw censorship on social media platforms and force the companies to choose where they want to face penalties (where they wish to stop having a corporate presence that can be fined or arrested).

Re:and tomorrow

[Rick Schumann]

Exactly, precisely this. Who gets to decide what is and is not 'extremist'? And of course there's always going to be someone who decides to slip something into the list that really doesn't belong there, just because they don't think people should see it. "Oh well they're obviously a supporter of {insert political candidate or cause here}, and naturally that's wrong of them, so I should protect the public from their extremist opinions, wouldn't want them poisoning anyone's minds with their nonsense" and voila, 1st Amendment right violated. How degenerate of you, Social Media.

Re: and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, for those thinking that this partnership is a knee-jerk reaction to the "fake news" faux-scandal and the Republican win in the US, it's not: big companies don't move this fast. If you take the time to read the Reuter's article linked in the summary, the Google-Facebook-Twitter-Microsoft partnership arose from an EU initiative:

The European Union set up an EU Internet Forum last year bringing together the internet companies, interior ministers and the EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator to find ways of removing extremist content.

France and Germany are pulling the strings here, not the US.

Re:and tomorrow

[Curunir_wolf]

I'm okay with this until tales of abuses show up,

They won't show up, and you'll never see them, so you'll just think everything is fine (until you notice your content has been removed). Which part of "remove content" did you not understand?

Re:and tomorrow

[Rick Schumann]

When so-called 'social media' is the primary place online that people congregate anymore to have discussions and share information, and voluntarily excluding yourself from social media causes you to be left behind and forgotten by most people, then 'social media' arbitrarily deciding what is and is not 'extremist' amounts to violating people's 1st Amendment rights, yes.

If you were talking to someone on your phone about some hot-button political or social issue and the operator cut in and informed you that your discussion was 'extremist' and against the phone company's terms of service and shut down your call, how would you fell about that?

That would never happen! I'd sue them!

But Bitey, the phone company is a private corporation, they can do whatever they want, right?

Re:and tomorrow

[Curunir_wolf]

Like that nut who recently shot up the sandwich shop, because fake news made it seem like they were doing human trafficking from those Evil Democrats. Other than blind censoring where the radicalized people just discuss off the grid, and build up their anger from not feeling the ability to speak their believes. I would like to find some way to flag truthfulness of stories. So we can get a good idea on the nature of the story.

Well, you can start by not embellishing stories to make a point. The guy that went into Comet Ping Pong fired one shot into the floor, which is bad enough, but your description made it sound like he did lots of damage with multiple gunshots. Should your post be censored as "fake news"? I would flag it "mostly true", since he did fire a shot inside the place. 7 out of 10 for truthfulness, but still misleading.

Unfortunately I think you'd be hard pressed to find much that fits into the "News - Validated: News with validated facts" category, even using mainstream sources. They send out LOTS of stuff with nothing to back it up but some vague "sources say" statement, indicating some anonymous statement from who-knows-who, far from anything "validated". How long did the story about Libyan soldier using viagra to rape thousands of women before it was outed as bullshit?

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not censorship if it's not done by the governmetn you frozen peach!

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[Anonymous Coward]

So why do I have to do business with neeggers?

I run a private business and I fucking hate neeggers - like yourself - yet I am forced to treat them as human beings.

Explain this to me, mr "bake me a gay cake" libertarian.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

So why do I have to do business with neeggers?

I run a private business and I fucking hate neeggers - like yourself - yet I am forced to treat them as human beings.

Lets see. If you needed a kidney transplant and there was only a black man`s kidney available [which would be amazingly compatible with you - maybe because there`s very little difference between humans` DNA and you never know if there is a ~neeger~ or two up your blood line], would you choose a pig`s kidney instead?
I

Re:and tomorrow

[computational super]

And we'll sidestep it by changing one single bit at the very end of the video or picture.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically, you are correct.

The OP was referring to censorship in the 1st amendment kind of way. If I was autistic, it would be difficult for me to discern that, too.

Re: and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a moron. Censorship is censorship regardless of who does it.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

And they will be subject to electronic retaliations from a lot of people.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear total strangers in bars and malls and other locations suggest military action against Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, etc is in order.

I encourage everybody to think outside the box and use peaceful means. Block those services from networks, so nobody on your network can use Twitter, or Youtube or Microsoft. Don't allow them on any level and don't use their products.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing Google is not a Browser-Vendor and Microsoft is not an AV-Vendor / OS-Vendor.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I own a pizza shop I can have a Restroom for Republicans and another one for Democrats? How about water fountain for Republicans only? After all it's my yard, my shop.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

:|

How about if i instead present you the math of the situation, showing how many false positives will be removed repeatedly from these services without recourse?

Do you need the net functional effect of this explained to you?

Re: and tomorrow

[unrtst]

... Nobody is forcing you to use Facebook. ...

When an individual company censors some stuff and it's within their rights, some grumble, but there are other outlets that can be used.
This case has YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft all sharing their censor lists. This isn't a question of slippery slope, but cause we already slid. This is, "holy crap, look how far we just slid!"

The first amendment applies to the government, but that does not mean that it's not censorship when a company limits others speech, it's just that we allow it. It already was a loss of liberty**, but the scope just got a lot bigger.

** Liberty, the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.

Re:and tomorrow

[AHuxley]

Selected teams of SJW and party political hero's will do it for them.

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[Anonymous Coward]

"it's a slippery slope from using slippery slopes to becoming nazi germany"

Re: and tomorrow

[david_thornley]

Except that a private online forum should not have Liberty, but has to play by your rules?

Re: and tomorrow

[david_thornley]

Once the trolls become too common, and roam unchecked, there's a slippery slope to a completely worthless forum and drastically reduced stock prices. I watched the fall of soc.history.misc.

Re:and tomorrow

[david_thornley]

If all major media companies started to censor certain controversial positions

That "If" is completely superfluous, and has been for decades. The difference is that, when the MSM decided to censor a position, it was a lot harder to find out about it.

Re:and tomorrow

[david_thornley]

The bakers in that case, if you're interested, started an internet harassment campaign against the people who wanted to be their customers. From what I could tell from the finding of facts in the case, they started out being extremely rude and offensive (which isn't illegal), and got worse from there. If they had merely refused and accepted the small fine for not living up to the legal duties of a public business, we'd never have heard of the case.

Re:and tomorrow

[david_thornley]

Do we need to make guidelines on how big and successful a business can be before we nationalize it? That seems to be what you want.

The phone company is a regulated monopoly, and operates under certain rules. If I were to start a new phone company, I'd have a tremendous amount of expense running fiber to all my subscribers. If I were to start a new social medium, I'd probably just spin it up on Amazon Web Services, and have it in operation tomorrow, without having to spend a lot of money until it became successful. There's a difference here.

Re:and tomorrow

[david_thornley]

Political party affiliations do not constitute protected classes anywhere I know of. Go ahead.

Re:and tomorrow

[david_thornley]

It's not possible for a private party to directly violate your First Amendment rights. Only the government can do that.

These are social networking sites. If you don't like what's out there, you're perfectly free to start your own. Most cloud providers will allow you to get started without spending unreasonable amounts of money.

This is how it's always been. Newspapers have always decided what they would and wouldn't print. If you didn't like it, you could print your own stuff, which is why freedom of the press is in the First.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed! You certainly don't want people exposed to ideas that might run contradictory to their own. That might cause them to stop and think about something for awhile.

Re:and tomorrow

[penandpaper]

There were a couple instances of this occurring; one in Oregon and one in Colorado that I know of.

http://aclu-co.org/court-rules...
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015...

If they had merely refused and accepted the small fine for not living up to the legal duties of a public business, we'd never have heard of the case.

I don't think so because in Colorado there is blatant hypocrisy in the enforcement of the law. Like anything there is more to it than just the headlines of course.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

And the first loon to cry censorship is an ignorant ass, not the first of your slippery slope.

Actually it is censorship your just too ignorant to look up the meaning so there it is from wikipedia

Censorship is the suppression of free speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.

I do believe that pretty much covers it. Maybe this is legal according the the TOS you agreed on but it is still censorship.

Next month:
  'We hope this collaboration will lead to greater efficiency as we continue to enforce our policies to help curb the pressing global issue of CAT content online,'

Yes let's rid ourselves of cat videos next.

Please learn the meaning of big words before you use them child and yes we are headed down a slippery slope here.

Re:and tomorrow

[Rick Schumann]

We're not talking about a 'private party'.

Re:and tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm okay with this until tales of abuses show up, and then I'm judging each side accordingly.

And a fine time you'll have finding out about it, let alone both sides of the story or an unbiased account, if they're censoring everything.

Re:and tomorrow

[RockDoctor]

Are you trying to say that if FaceBook were to mark Trump as being hate speech, then Trump or one of his team would threaten to revoke all of the H1B (some sort of American work permit?) visas for FaceBook's staff?

OK, say that happens. Why would FaceBook give a flying fuck? At absolute worst a significant number of their staff who happen to be in America on one of those visas would get deported back to Mexico, or Britain or India or where ever they came from and would then be either re-hired by FaceBook(Mexico), FaceBook(Britain) or where ever, and probably at reduced pay rates. Any complaints and/ or lawsuits from the staff involved can safely be redirected to the White House.

Explain again why FaceBook would be unhappy about being given an excuse to reduce their employment costs.

Re:and tomorrow

[david_thornley]

No, you haven't shown hypocrisy. The Oregon bakers refused the couple's business because of their sexual orientation, and got really nasty about it. The Colorado guy refused to make a particular cake Those are two different things. If you find a case of a baker prosecuted for refusing to put two grooms or two brides on top of a cake, please let us know.

Re:and tomorrow

[syntotic]

How do I know about my fine material? I do have an African wind flowing dandruff on my face then eating his own mucus, for instance, in video... The ONLY way such idea, (the database, not the mucus eating), can hold, is by letting users consult the database themselves! Will this be suppressed or will it go through? Attackers can, of course, test their material then slightly modify it, but it does not matter, these companies can keep using computing resources in not letting people decide by themselves if they want to see the evidence or have the case censored.

Re:and tomorrow

[penandpaper]

A particular cake expressing a religious belief or a particular cake that celebrates a same-sex couple's wedding that is against the bakers religious belief. Religious belief informed the bakers policy of use. Religion is a protected class for public accommodations under federal law. Yet, it is not being treated the same as sexual orientation which is a protected class for public accommodations under state law.

The Colorado(I haven't read much about the Oregon issue) law and CCRD does not make that distinction that the courts decision applied to: "religious freedom is important, no one’s religious beliefs make it acceptable to break the law,". The state law that ignores religious discrimination to public accommodations and the CCRD does not handle cases about. In other words, the State through the CCRD ignores a federally protected class in regards to discrimination of public accommodations.

How is using a state law to ignore a federal law when both laws are about ending discrimination not hypocritical?

Re:and tomorrow

[david_thornley]

The situation is that an individual businessperson can refuse an individual order for pretty much any reason (there are social and business pressures to discourage being unreasonable), but may not deny service to someone by reason of being in a protected class (through experience, we've found that social and business pressures don't stop people from being unreasonable on this). This isn't hypocrisy. It's the result of experience, translated into law, and law is a blunt instrument.

The laws on protected classes don't apply to everyone, only people in business. I don't run a business, or make personnel or customer decisions in one, so I don't have to care. When retired, I won't have to care either. The law says that, if you run a business, you may not discriminate in certain ways. If this is too onerous for you, for whatever reason, find another way to make a living. . As far as religion goes, I can find plenty of historical religious references supporting racism or religious discrimination.

In the case of the Oregon bakery, the bakers refused the order (apparently with extreme rudeness) because the customers were in a protected class. In the case of the Colorado bakery, the bakers apparently refused the order on an individual basis, because they didn't want to make those particular cakes. It wasn't because the customers are heterosexual. It wasn't because of their religion. The cake was a political statement that the bakery did not want to make, and as far as I know there are no protected classes based on politics. Freedom of religion doesn't mean you get to make anyone else to do something that you think is according to your religion. It means you may practice your religion freely, as long as you don't break the law, and anti-discrimination laws make it illegal for someone covered by such laws to refuse you service or employment based on your religion.

Re:and tomorrow

[penandpaper]

by reason of being in a protected class

Religion is a federally protected class. The cake with bible quotes was informed by their religion in the same way their policy was just like the wedding and the couples wedding. They were denied business because they wanted their religious belief expressed on a cake and the baker denied them on the basis of that belief.

as far as I know there are no protected classes based on politics.

This is part of the issue because if the Colorado couple had used the right politikespeak, denying business because couple assumed liberal, it would have been acceptable to deny the couple business but because they were honest in saying that their policy was influenced by their religion they are in violation of the law even though religion is a protected class. Why isn't religion afforded the same protections as sexual orientation when it is protected under federal law?

It wasn't because of their religion.

It was entirely because of their religious belief and religion. It is a religious belief founded from religious text. They were denied expressly because of the text and the morality that the text presents. The baker did not like the religious views of the christian customer and did not want to be complicit in those views by baking them the cake.

Yes, the law is blunt and in the Colorado case I don't see how it isn't hypocritical. The baker was forced to be complicit that was against their religious belief despite being a federally protected class. But as a customer was not given the same protections for their religious belief.

I am not saying what the Oregon baker did was right. I am not saying that the Colorado baker (in both instances) is right or wrong. But I don't understand how someone can be denied business for a purely religious belief when that is a federally protected class just like sexual orientation is a state protected class. When is a religious person protected from discrimination for public accommodations like a gay person?

anti-discrimination laws make it illegal for someone covered by such laws to refuse you service or employment based on your religion

His religion found gay marriage wrong and he didn't' want to act in a complicit manner counter to his religion but was forced by government; "No one is asking the baker to change their beliefs". The other baker felt that that religious belief is offensive and denied service to the religious because of a religious belief; Yet, "No one is asking the baker to change their beliefs." doesn't' apply.

From what I can tell in the Colorado case, the bakery was okay with baking other cakes, just not cakes that "celebrate a same-sex couple's wedding" because it was against their religious belief. A policy entirely informed by their religion. Why is the religious not able afforded the same protections as a gay couple?

Re:and tomorrow

[david_thornley]

In Oregon, the couple was turned away because of what they were. In Colorado, the customer was turned away because of what the customer wanted to do. There's a difference. There is no selection of one protected class over another, just a case where anti-discrimination laws apply and a case where they don't, because there is a great difference between being something and doing something.

You're perfectly free to be a Christian. Nothing about that compels you to ask for a specific cake. You're perfectly free to run a public business, and there are restrictions that apply, including not refusing a customer specifically because he or she is a member of a protected class. And, as a Christian, you have no right to demand that other people do things according to your religion.

The law here is not hypocritical.

Re:and tomorrow

[penandpaper]

They wanted to do the same thing the gay couple did. Get a specialty cake. The customer wanted the baker to do something that was against their own personal beliefs in both instances. Putting specific quotes is a specialty cake just like a wedding cake is a specialty.. The Colorado baker was fine with giving them a different cake, just not a wedding cake for a gay wedding. It wasn't about them being gay, they could have gotten a different cake. It was about them getting a cake celebrating a gay marriage that was against the bakers religious belief. Just like the baker that denied the specialty cake because of their belief that the religious text is 'offensive hate speech'.

"You're perfectly free to be gay. Nothing about that compels you to ask for a specific cake. You're perfectly free to run a public business, and there are restrictions that apply, including not refusing a customer specifically because he or she is a member of a protected class. And, as a gay couple, you have no right to demand that other people do things according to your sexual orientation. "

FTFY. Rules for thee not for me, religion is a protected class but it is not treated as such. In Oregon, it sounds like service was denied specifically because the couple being gay. But in the Colorado case, it wasn't because they were willing to sell a different cake. Just not a wedding cake for a gay wedding.

Re:and tomorrow

[david_thornley]

The Colorado baker is the one who refused to make that specialty cake. I'm not completely sure, but I think the Oregon bakers refused the couple's business. At any rate, the Oregon bakers got extremely hostile, which the Colorado baker apparently wasn't. In Oregon, it wasn't a case of "we'll make the cake but not put the two bride figures on top". It's been a while since I read the Findings of Fact, and it wasn't completely clear about exactly what the couple and the bakers did and said in the shop.

It looks to me like the couple went to the Oregon bakers, and were treated with extreme rudeness, almost certainly extending to denying their business on the basis of their sexual orientation. The bakers wound up launching an internet harassment campaign. If you have evidence to the contrary, please cite it. Otherwise, I'm going to continue to maintain that a polite refusal of a specific cake is not the same thing as a hostile refusal of business.

Re:and tomorrow

[penandpaper]

Let's clear things out real quick because there are 3 instances being discussed.

1) Oregon where I have limited knowledge of the case that (will take your word for), there was rudeness and a harassment campaign after the denial of service.

2) Colorado where a gay couple was denied a wedding cake from a baker whose policy was to deny service of cakes that "celebrated gay marriage".

3) Colorado where a Christian customer was denied a specialty cake because the baker thought the bible quotes were "offensive hate speech".

With 1, I would say rudeness is not illegal but could have spiraled out of control into an illegal act (and continued). West Borrow Baptists might be rude and ass holes but nothing they do is illegal (that I know of). It sounds like a number of laws were broken; denial of service to protected class and continued harassment. While it sounds bad, for the original comparison it was specifically about the denial of service. The actions that may have resulted in that act or after are not relevant to the original comparison about a private business controlling their use policy without government intervention. It sucks to the couple and the baker sounds like an ass but it doesn't relate to the precedent where there government intervenes in private business to ensure public accommodations without discrimination. For this case, the motivations of why the baker denied service isn't as important as the fact that the government steps in to say: "Your personal beliefs do not matter. Be impartial because law.".

With 2 and 3 it is about denial of service of a specialty cake to two different protected classes where one class is protected by the courts and the other was thrown out. I think there is blatant hypocrisy in these two cases.

Re:and tomorrow

[david_thornley]

I hadn't even heard of #2. It sounds like a possible issue, but I'd like to know more of the details.

I don't remember the details from the findings of fact in #1, but I believe it was rejection for being a member of a protected class. That has been illegal most of my lifetime (and probably all of most Slashdotters' lifetimes), although sexual orientation as a protected class is fairly new. There have been businesses that claimed religious reasons for not serving blacks or members of certain religions.

Re:and tomorrow

[penandpaper]

The links to 2 and 3 are further up in one of my posts, sorry a little lazy right now.

I believe it was rejection for being a member of a protected class. That has been illegal most of my lifetime (and probably all of most Slashdotters' lifetimes), although sexual orientation as a protected class is fairly new

Indeed, the federal law that sets up protected classes, the Civil Rights Act, does not define sexual orientation. In Colorado, the state law sets up sexual orientation as a protected class but does not distinguish 'religion' like the federal law for public accommodations. When the CCRD ruled that the christian couple had not been discriminated it said the reason was "derogatory language and imagery" but again it was bible quotes.

If the basis of your religion is defined by the state as 'derogatory language' or 'offensive hate speech' where are you protected from discrimination based on your religion that is not spun as 'offensive hate speech'? The real difference between #2 and #3 is that the christian baker (2) did not use language the court found satisfactory in justifying discrimination i.e. "offensive hate speech" compared to "my religious belief is".

The courts justification is that because the bible, the foundation of many religions, has offensive things. Therefore it is okay for public accommodations to discriminate against people with those beliefs. To the christian baker, homosexuality and gay marriage are offensive because of religious belief but that isn't good enough for the courts for protection because that belief is 'derogatory' and 'offensive hate speech' . Or "While we all agree that religious freedom is important, no one’s religious beliefs make it acceptable to break the law". The law being the state law that does not protect religious discrimination for public accommodations. Where do the religious get the same protections as sexual orientation for public accommodations?

If you can just say 'your beliefs are offensive hate speech' and be able to discriminate a religious person. What does a religious person have to do to prove it was discrimination based on his religion? Would it be any different than if the christian baker had denied the gay couple because "they were liberal", how would the couple prove they were denied service because of their sexual orientation if that was the language used instead of 'my religious belief'?

Perceptual or cryptographic hash?

[GameboyRMH]

Only 1 bit has to flip to create a mismatch on a cryptographic hash check, and if this system is widespread, doing so will become standard practice.

Re:Perceptual or cryptographic hash?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only 1 bit has to flip to create a mismatch on a cryptographic hash check

Not if they are using PhotoDNA.

Re:Perceptual or cryptographic hash?

[GameboyRMH]

That's a perceptual hash.

Re:Perceptual or cryptographic hash?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I understand your original point was to limit it to cryptographic hashes, why do you think FB, MS, twitter will do so?

Re:Perceptual or cryptographic hash?

[GameboyRMH]

I'm wondering which they will use. A perceptual hash greatly increases the chance of a false positive but greatly decreases the chance of a false negative. A cryptographic hash virtually eliminates any chance of a false positive but allows media files to be trivially altered to get a false negative.

One is a real solution and the other is somewhere between a basic effort and a symbolic effort.

Re: Perceptual or cryptographic hash?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's simple. When in doubt, factor in capitalism.

Which one is cheaper?

Re:Perceptual or cryptographic hash?

[AmiMoJo]

Check out Google's reverse image search. It can handle lossy recompression, scaling, contrast/colour changes etc. Their web search can cope with slight changes to text.

Of course it's not perfect, but they say they will have a human review every post and image, so at least the false positive rate should be fairly low.

Re:Perceptual or cryptographic hash?

[jafiwam]

They will SAY it's a proprietary learning algorithm.

What it will BE is a string of four sweatshop warehouses in the Philippines full of people at desks sitting on folding chairs looking at each image, video and post who get a few extra points toward a 3 cent raise for every thousand instances they do correctly.

Re:Perceptual or cryptographic hash?

[Dare nMc]

> cope with slight changes to text.

That is interesting, for a short enough article, a single comma or letter can switch a article from true to false. Similar with a photo, it will likely match a photo edited to turn a fist into a flip off, or a mirror to make the left hand salute vs right hand, added a nip slip...

Get your edit close enough to be a match, and you'll ride the positive Karma from the original, or bring the original down with your falsified one.Then again it isn't all that difficult with any single hash, to make a collision as well.

Definitely not as easy as it seams at first glance. I guess that is why this article is about a test phase, and not a new feature.

Re:Perceptual or cryptographic hash?

[Gilgaron]

I read an article about those guys... sounds like some of them develop some serious problems from seeing all sorts of horrible things.

Re:Perceptual or cryptographic hash?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wondering which they will use. A perceptual hash greatly increases the chance of a false positive but greatly decreases the chance of a false negative. A cryptographic hash virtually eliminates any chance of a false positive but allows media files to be trivially altered to get a false negative.

Which method is faster/cheaper? Thats the one they're going to use.

Re:Perceptual or cryptographic hash?

[david_thornley]

What it might do is cut down the crap enough so that actual people can deal with the remainder.

So

[110010001000]

So, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft are now the arbiters of what is "extremist" or not. People are stupid. If I worked in the anti-terrorism field I WANT to see these terrorists pictures and videos and find out who posted or accessed them. All that data would go into my database and I would send stormtroopers out regularly to round them up into camps.

Re:So

[admin7087]

People are stupid [...] I would send stormtroopers out regularly to round them [terrorists] up into camps.

Speaking of which...

Re:So

[invid]

Let the free market do it's job. If social media platforms try to filter out propaganda, create social media platforms that don't filter out propaganda. See which ones the people prefer.

Re:So

[peragrin]

The issue is people will choose to go with whomever filters content they don't like and promotes content they do like even if it is wrong.

Just look at fox entertainment news.

To be fair MSNBC does the same damn thing.

Re:So

[invid]

The issue is people will choose to go with whomever filters content they don't like and promotes content they do like even if it is wrong.

Just look at fox entertainment news.

To be fair MSNBC does the same damn thing.

Exactly. And the info bubbles will become info force fields. So you'll have two populations, one that is skewed slightly left of reality, and the other that is skewed to an alternate dimension where Donald Trump is competent enough to be President of the United States. Oh wait, we already have that.

Re:So

[Oswald McWeany]

I wouldn't want said companies convicting me in a court of law, but controlling the content on their own websites I think they have the right.

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

See what happens when you are so concentrated on volume? Quality suffers. Post less and think about what you are saying so you don't sound like such a twat-waffle.

Hugs and kisses,

Juan Epstein

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

I have noticed the DNC starts the bad tactics, then the GOP masters them an election or 2 later.

Social media got Obama twice, now it got Trump. What should REALLY scare you is what Clinton did this election, campaign finance laws do not cover what she did and I'm positive the GOP will repeat since it is "legal". You thought it was bad before, just wait.

Clinton sets up "foundation" and pulls a "salary". Foreign government "donate" unlimited money to said foundation, she pulls as salary and "self funds" her campaign. She basically had unlimited amounts of money from any individual, even foreign governments in her campaign, and I'm not sure what law was actually broken by that. I'm also not the only one who noticed.

I suspect "fake news" will be the least of your worries in 4 years when China/Russia dumps over $1 billion in US elections next time.

Re:So

[110010001000]

Of course. Everyone has the right. Until they have no rights at all.

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the free market do it's job. If social media platforms try to filter out propaganda, create social media platforms that don't filter out propaganda. See which ones the people prefer.

You would be amazed at the machiavellian realm you are describing. The game has been afoot for some time now.

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

Clinton and Soros used about 2 billion us dollars for presidential campaign.
Trump used about 300 million us dollars?
Talk about the difference ...

Show of hands

[nehumanuscrede]

of everyone who thinks this system will ever only be used to flag and filter " extremist " content.

While I realize this will be a global system, I'm curious how this will butt heads with the First Amendment in the United States as this will inevitably be a system that will censor information that is embarrassing or uncomfortable to the chosen few who will decide what is " extremist".

Re:Show of hands

[Anonymous Coward]

That was my first thought. It won't be long before "extremism" is redefined to include refusal to submit to spying and data collection. There are many roads to oppression, and you can bet your house they will all be tried.

Re:Show of hands

[coinreturn]

of everyone who thinks this system will ever only be used to flag and filter " extremist " content.

While I realize this will be a global system, I'm curious how this will butt heads with the First Amendment in the United States as this will inevitably be a system that will censor information that is embarrassing or uncomfortable to the chosen few who will decide what is " extremist".

So tired of everyone not understanding what the First Amendment is. Go read it. It's short and sweet. I'll even give you a hint: "Congress shall make no law..."

Re:Show of hands

[dnaumov]

I'm curious how this will butt heads with the First Amendment in the United States as this will inevitably be a system that will censor information that is embarrassing or uncomfortable to the chosen few who will decide what is "extremist".

This won't butt heads with the First Amendment in the slightest, because the limitations it applies only applies to government entities, not private ones. You have no right to free speech on somebody else's private platform. They decide the rules and you are free to not use their service.

Re:Show of hands

[Charcharodon]

It's the governments that are pushing for this.

Congress shall make no law......instead make a bunch of regulations that make corporations liable or put financial pressure on them for the expressions of free speech of others and get what they want by proxy.

Old movie quote "I didn't lie when said I wouldn't kill you." turns to one of his henchmen "Kill him for me".

Re:Show of hands

[invid]

I'm curious how this will butt heads with the First Amendment in the United States

This will not butt heads with the First Amendment of the Constitution at all. These are private companies, they are not obligated to post anyone's fake news.

Re: Show of hands

[Entrope]

Have you ever read the US (or foreign) antitrust laws? This kind of converted action by dominant market participants -- especially if (as seems likely) they get caught putting anything except terrorist media in the database -- is extremely easy to prosecute as illegal collusion.

Re:Show of hands

[coinreturn]

It's the governments that are pushing for this.

Congress shall make no law......instead make a bunch of regulations that make corporations liable or put financial pressure on them for the expressions of free speech of others and get what they want by proxy.

I don't see any regulations, financial pressures, or threats regarding this. Isn't it just possible they think this will just make them look good and have decided to do it on their own?

Re: Show of hands

[coinreturn]

Have you ever read the US (or foreign) antitrust laws? This kind of converted action by dominant market participants -- especially if (as seems likely) they get caught putting anything except terrorist media in the database -- is extremely easy to prosecute as illegal collusion.

Yet, as was my point, this has nothing to do with the First Amendment.

Re:Show of hands

[Oswald McWeany]

I'm curious how this will butt heads with the First Amendment in the United States

First Amendment doesn't apply in the same way a graffiti artist can't claim a first amendment right to spray paint his thoughts on a privately owned wall.

The people having content removed are free to set up their own web sites and host whatever content they want. They are not granted the same rights to post whatever they want on someone else's private property.

Re:Show of hands

[jbmartin6]

Would you say that a presidential order restricting speech could act in ways that a Congressional law could not? That would technically avoid violating the 1st, since Congress has made no law. Your general point is correct, that private entities aren't subject to the first amendment directly. But it's important to note that the US constitution is more than just the written document, it is also all the court precedents which surround it. The UK has *no* written constitution the way the US has, it is all precedent and tradition. My point is you don't need to be quite so tired.

Re: Show of hands

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point was that they should break other laws, just start clear of the First Amendment?

Re:Show of hands

[Mashiki]

This will not butt heads with the First Amendment of the Constitution at all. These are private companies, they are not obligated to post anyone's fake news.

When a company controls so much of the screen real estate, this actually moves beyond what they're allowed to censor. Otherwise they can create their own views, tell you what's acceptable, and of course how to vote.

Re:Show of hands

[invid]

When a company controls so much of the screen real estate, this actually moves beyond what they're allowed to censor. Otherwise they can create their own views, tell you what's acceptable, and of course how to vote.

Is your solution to have governments punish companies for not posting everyone's posts? Do you really want the government to have that much power over media companies? Think of the oversight necessary to enforce this law. You would have thousands, perhaps millions of people complaining to the government that these companies aren't posting their content, and if the media companies deny that this content was ever posted on their platforms, the government would have to have permanent access to the servers to monitor if the posts are in fact ever made. Who is to determine how big a media company is before the government takes control of it?

Re:Show of hands

[JackieBrown]

I'm curious how this will butt heads with the First Amendment in the United States

This will not butt heads with the First Amendment of the Constitution at all. These are private companies, they are not obligated to post anyone's fake news.

Or real news.

I agree that this is their right. It is still ripe for abuse. This is clearly coming as a result of people pissed that Trump was able to use social media to get around the mainstream news organizations constant barrage of hate and distortion of everything he said.

This is just a play to move the power back to CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc.

Honestly, for a world wide platform, how are they really expecting this to work? You have countries- including the US - that can devote huge resources to flagging anything critical to their regime as fake

Re:Show of hands

[invid]

I find it ironic, and kind of funny, that someone modded this down. If everyone had a right to have everything posted on social media we couldn't have a mod system to restrict viewing of their posts.

Re:Show of hands

[coinreturn]

Would you say that a presidential order restricting speech could act in ways that a Congressional law could not? That would technically avoid violating the 1st, since Congress has made no law. Your general point is correct, that private entities aren't subject to the first amendment directly. But it's important to note that the US constitution is more than just the written document, it is also all the court precedents which surround it. The UK has *no* written constitution the way the US has, it is all precedent and tradition. My point is you don't need to be quite so tired.

A presidential order restricting speech would have absolutely no force of law (regardless of what Trump may think). I agree whole-heartedly that the US Constitution is more than the words, and includes all the court precedents which surround it. Still, this is not a First Amendment issue and I wish people would get that whenever ZOMG censorship happens.

Re:Show of hands

[MDMurphy]

"Hidden" in the linked article it refers to gov't pressure to remove content.
"Tech companies have long resisted outside intervention in how their sites should be policed, but have come under increasing pressure from Western governments to do more to remove extremist content following a wave of militant attacks."

Comments here specifically refer to the U.S. First Amendment, so if the "Western governments" refers to countries exclusive of the U.S., then those comments would still apply, but the gist is that the tech companies are doing this in response to some sort of gov't instigation.

*If* the U.S. were involved, how does that fit with "Congress shall make no law"? Not too hard actually, how many things are being done now that are not directly linked to a new federal law? An executive order, or even a letter from some agency can do much, without any direct link to a new law. Hell, all it would take in most instances is a group of politicians blaming YouTube, Twitter and Facebook for various terrorist attacks to get them to do it, no forced of law required.

Re:Show of hands

[Errol backfiring]

I think you misunderstand. Nowadays, laws are for people, international agreements (TTIP, CETA, etc.) are for companies. Companies do not abide any law, nor do they have to. It's all in the agreements.

Re: Show of hands

[Anonymous Coward]

All the people claiming it's a private company and they should be allowed to do what they want... Where are you when companies get sued for not providing services to people they deem as innapropriate?

It's amazing how when it is something you like it's fine but when it works for something you don't like all the sudden it's not okay anymore.

Re:Show of hands

[penandpaper]

They operate on the infrastructure that is managed by AT&T and the likes that is subsidized by tax payers. A baker is a steward of protected classes for wedding cakes. AT&T are stewards for access to infrastructure. Why are enablers of speech not protecting free speech if we value freedom of speech as a society?

If Facebook is a soapbox in a town-square, why should they have the right to restrict what is said on that box if it cannot exist without the town-square when we don't even hold the same for the town-square itself?

Re:Show of hands

[penandpaper]

The people having content removed are free to set up their own web sites and host whatever content they want. They are not granted the same rights to post whatever they want on someone else's private property.

I guess in the same vein that if AT&T restricted access on political ideological grounds, you are free to set up your own lines? Facebook and others can't exist without the infrastructure that is subsidized by tax payers. Why are enablers of speech not stewards of speech like a baker is a steward to protected classes for wedding cakes? Last I checked, wedding cakes don't have the same impact on our elections as these enablers of speech do if Obama and the media are to be believed with their 'fake news' narrative.

Re:Show of hands

[Oswald McWeany]

Rights of the private owner. Facebook owns Facebook's servers.

There is a company called Lamar around here that runs a bunch of billboards. Should I be allowed to paint over their billboards with a message of my choice?

The answer is no, not without their permission.. Even though government pays for the roads that one uses to access those billboards.

Facebook's servers are their property it's their billboards. You and I do not have a right to post whatever we want there. It's private property.

Re:Show of hands

[penandpaper]

Is your solution to have governments punish companies for not connecting everyone's call? Do you really want the government to have that much power over telecommunication companies? Think of the oversight necessary to enforce this law. You would have thousands, perhaps millions of people complaining to the government that these companies aren't connecting their call, and if the telecommunication companies deny that this call was ever connected on their platforms, the government would have to have permanent access to the phone lines to monitor if the connections are in fact ever made. Who is to determine how big a telecommunications company is before the government takes control of it?

FTFY. We force a baker to be stewards of protected classes for a wedding cake. We force telecommunication companies to be stewards of access to infrastructure. Social media influenced the election and if Obama is to be believed about 'fake news', shouldn't enablers of speech be held to the same standard as the baker or AT&T with the ideals we deem important as society? Social media wouldn't exist without the infrastructure yet you would be upset if a phone company shut off your access because of your political ideology. If discourse is mostly happening on social media, are you okay with those companies able to influence the election as if a phone company could restrict ideology?

Re:Show of hands

[penandpaper]

It's private just like a baker restricting their service on religious grounds until the government steps in and then the baker becomes a steward of rights for protected classes. Would you be okay with restrictions on access to phone lines on ideological grounds from AT&T? If enabling conversation on ideological neutral infrastructure is important, how is that different on the AT&T fiber lines vs Facebook servers? Why is AT&T forced to adopt civic responsibility but Facebook does not when Facebook can influence our elections?

Facebook could not exist without the infrastructure subsidized by taxes.

Re:Show of hands

[DogDude]

When a company controls so much of the screen real estate, this actually moves beyond what they're allowed to censor.

That makes no sense.

Re:Show of hands

[Anonymous Coward]

"Congress shall make no law..."

Unfortunately it is too vague, since we know the Executive branch does make laws, and so does the Judiciary, with Jurisprudence.

Re:Show of hands

[Oswald McWeany]

I think you're a little confused. Facebook is not able to refuse service based on Race, Religion, National Origin, or Sex anymore than a baker can.

A baker has every right not to make a cake with hate speech written on it though.

You bring up AT&T: are you talking about landlines or mobile? AT&T mobile probably could block hate speech from being sent across their private network in the form of texts. They would probably lose some customers to Verizon if they did, but they have that right.

Landlines are a little different. You can't block hate speech being spoken across a land-line there are technical difficulties. The closest example would be if someone repeatedly harassed another person by ringing them up and making hate speech directly too them. Yes, there are laws against that.

Theoretically speaking of course, you have every right to call some Klansmen up and talk about burning crosses, nothing AT&T or anyone else can do about that. It is your right. You can use the internet to do that too, 4chan would welcome it I'm sure. Noone is suggesting a blanket ban on that would be acceptable under the 1st amendment.

Facebook and the other companies mentioned don't want it on their network though. Specific providers, be it Facebook, or AT&T mobile, have the right to remove that content and you have the right to use Google+ or Verizon instead if that angers you.

Re:Show of hands

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

The problem with "extremist" is that it's a subjective term.

When war is in the minds of the Western populace, people supporting the other side (or neutral to a sufficient level of vociferousness) are "extreme." When war is not on their minds, people supporting counter-culture are "extreme."

Would a frank discussion of life as a homosexual or a trans-person have been "extreme" in the 1980s? Would an academic discussion of religion have been "extreme" in the 1970s? Would an objective exposé of the Vietnam War have been "extreme" in the 1960s?

The slope doesn't need to be slippery for this to be a dangerous idea. A simple view of what life is like on the receiving end of Western "democratization" might be objectionable enough to be extreme today. However, as the companies involved are private, what we can do is complain to them, support their competitors, and shout hellaciously at any government functionary who might imply that participation in this nonsense becomes mandatory./p>

Re:Show of hands

[Anonymous Coward]

How stoned are you right now?

Re:Show of hands

[penandpaper]

You bring up AT&T: are you talking about landlines or mobile? AT&T mobile probably could block hate speech from being sent across their private network in the form of texts. They would probably lose some customers to Verizon if they did, but they have that right. Landlines are a little different. You can't block hate speech being spoken across a land-line there are technical difficulties. The closest example would be if someone repeatedly harassed another person by ringing them up and making hate speech directly too them.

In this instance I am talking about landlines. I understand that the law isn't uniform across all mediums because the law hasn't kept up with technology. Excluding illegal activity such as harassment. No one is arguing that harassment should be allowed. I think much of the point of this conversation has been had before with landlines but that has fallen by the wayside because of new technology and a complicit government.

Facebook is not able to refuse service based on Race, Religion, National Origin, or Sex anymore than a baker can.

Actually, a baker can refuse service based on someones religious belief. but a baker cannot use their religion to influence their policy. The baker is unable to control their policy of use. Telecommunication companies cannot choose their policy of use, why should Facebook and Twitter be exempt from the same civic responsibility? Landlines were seen as critical in a modern society for citizens to participate. If social media companies are of the same criticality then they should have the same responsibility. If Obama and the Media are correct in 'Fake news' influencing the last election, doesn't that thrust those companies into the same stewardship position as landlines and bakers?

Sure, Facebook isn't denying you access to their service because you are Male or Christian, but they can deny you based on conservatism or liberalism because those are not protected classes. I guess, that means that the baker should have denied service because the gay couple in question were liberal instead of gay. Social media companies can overcome the technical difficulties you mention, does that mean that they are get to be arbiters of truth and politically acceptable speech when increasing number of citizens use their service? Is there any other service of such importance that we don't forfeit their civic responsibility? (important in that it can affect our elections like Obama has said)

You say I can go to Google+ but then why didn't the couple use a different bakery? If all of the social media companies have the same 'hate speech' policies that can ban ideology and much of the national dialogue occurs in those networks, on top of subsidized infrastructure, what will that do to our elections and society that wouldn't happen if telecommunications did the same thing to landlines? There are only so many options and not everyone can Zuckerberg their way a new Facebook.

Re:Show of hands

[AHuxley]

The really fun people will move back to US networks that offer freedom of speech and freedom after speech.
The international sites that have groups of SJW and hero's looking for blasphemy to ban will attract very boring govs, theocracies, Communist govs, celebrity staff, political staff.
Sites packed with SJW will be boring, a place to read about your local gov, monarchy, theocracy, some celebrity branding their latest product or project.
A brand offering their services or support.
Everything anyone could get on any safe space portal or web site in their own censored nation,
The only thing that set US brands apart was freedom of speech, jokes, fun and pleasure.
The freedom to comment and not be banned, reported or see account details passed to any gov/mil for any reason.

Re:Show of hands

[david_thornley]

The US doesn't have the only Western government, and few governments have such an extreme position on free speech. I'd suspect Western European governments.

Re:Show of hands

[david_thornley]

Public businesses must abide by some rules. It turns out to be expensive to run Internet harassment campaigns against would-be customers. Telecommunication companies are generally regulated monopolies, because they're natural monopolies. You can slap together a new social medium today if you like, and it will cost very little until you get acceptance.

Re:Show of hands

[david_thornley]

This is a result of people in Europe complaining about social media being used to radicalize Muslims and other terrorists. This has nothing to do with conditions in the US, or the willingness of Trump fans to irrationally believe the worst about people who don't like Trump. The social media are doing this precisely because they're world-wide platforms, and want to be able to continue to operate in some Western European countries.

It isn't always about you, or about the US.

Re:Show of hands

[david_thornley]

Land lines are a natural monopoly, like every last-mile service. You can spin up a social media site today at low cost. There's nothing monopolistic about them.

Your cite says nothing about bakers refusing service based on anyone's religious belief. It says that a baker can refuse to put what he considers hate speech on a cake. Freedom of religion doesn't mean you get to impose your religion on others. The baker could indeed have refused to sell to them based on politics, or refused to put two women on top. As for going to another bakery, that's what they did, didn't they? They were very upset when they left the bakery, suggesting that they didn't get a polite refusal, and the bakers then started an internet harassment campaign against them, so I'm not at all sympathetic to the bakers.

There have been services, like newspapers, which provided information services of high importance, and they ran what they thought important and were perfectly able to not print what would interfere with their agenda. I've seen it happen.

Finally, if you don't like the social media available, make your own. It's cheap and easy. Don't just whine because a successful business owner doesn't do what you like.

Re:Show of hands

[penandpaper]

Any business has to abide by some rules. We force companies to uphold various ideals and principles we hold as a nation and society. Landlines were seen as critical in a modern society for citizens to participate and telecommunication companies cannot deny service on political ideology. If social media companies are of the same criticality then they should have the same responsibility. If Obama and the Media are correct in 'Fake news' influencing the last election, doesn't that thrust those companies into the same critical stewardship position as telecommunications and bakers?

You can slap together a new social medium today if you like, and it will cost very little until you get acceptance.

Why didn't the couple use a different bakery? If all of the social media companies have the same 'hate speech' policies that can ban ideology and much of the national dialogue occurs in those networks, on top of subsidized infrastructure, what will that do to our elections and society that wouldn't happen if telecommunications did the same thing to landlines? There are only so many options and not everyone can Zuckerberg their way a new Facebook.

Re:Show of hands

[penandpaper]

It says that a baker can refuse to put what he considers hate speech on a cake

Isn't this kind of the point? Who defines hate speech and those that get to make that definition hold a disproportionate amount of influence on our elections if they control the space by which national dialogue occurs. Hate speech is not quoting a few bible versus with two X'ed out groomsmen.

FTFA:

The dispute began March 13, 2014 when Jack went to the bakery at 1886 S. Broadway and requested two cakes shaped like bibles. He asked that one cake have the image of two groomsmen holding hands in front of a cross with a red "X" over them. He asked that the cake be decorated with the biblical verses, "God hates sin. Psalm 45:7" and "Homosexuality is a detestable sin. Leviticus 18:22", according to the Civil Rights Divisions' decision.

On the second bible-shaped cake, Jack also requested the image of the two groomsmen with the red "X". He wanted it decorated with the words "God loves sinners" and "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:8."

It might be offensive but it was offensive to the christian bakers belief to be complicit with a gay wedding.

Being a monopoly doesn't detract from precedent of the law that turns companies that have public convenience and necessity into impartial entities of public interest. Either the government should not get involved and allow for companies ability to discriminate because private or the government should get involved when it becomes necessary for the public that those entities be impartial. Freedom of speech is the foundation upon which our society was built on. If social media can influence our elections, 'fake news' is an issue, and much of the national dialogue occurs in social media then it becomes necessary for those companies to be impartial for the public good. That is a much better course of action than any Ministry of Truth.

Re:Show of hands

[RockDoctor]

When a company controls so much of the screen real estate,

These companies only control your screen real estate if you choose to use their services. If you don't, then they have no influence on your screen. Don't you get this? Are you a slave to social media and the opinions of other people?

Re:Show of hands

[david_thornley]

Who defines hate speech and those that get to make that definition hold a disproportionate amount of influence on our elections if they control the space by which national dialogue occurs.

You're saying this like it was something new, like newspapers, radio, and TV didn't control the space of national dialog for, probably, centuries. Why should I assume that the current control of national dialog is something to get all excited about?

Hate speech is not quoting a few bible versus with two X'ed out groomsmen.

Says you. It's up to the individual baker. Since there's plenty of bakers with varying opinions, this isn't much of a problem. There's no reason a baker would be required to produce a wedding cake with two bride figures, either. A public business is required not to discriminate based on certain specific features.

As a taxpayer, I'm complicit in all sorts of things. I helped make the 2003 Iraq war possible. I've financed CIA-supported torture lessons. Deputies from my county went to the pipeline standoff in the Dakotas, and were on what I consider the wrong side. I could keep going, but I really don't have that much sympathy to people legally forced to be complicit in things they find offensive, as long as the laws are reasonable. In this case, the law said the bakers could not turn away customers based on their sexual orientation. It also said they could not turn a customer away for being black or atheist, and I suspect people have had religious objections to both.

or the government should get involved when it becomes necessary for the public that those entities be impartial

And here's where the monopoly status comes in. If the telephone company objects to my political views, and has the ability to enforce it, my set of cordless phones are useless for political discussion. If Facebook objects to my political views, and has the ability to enforce it, I can find another forum. I don't need another computer or browser.

then it becomes necessary for those companies to be impartial for the public good. That is a much better course of action than any Ministry of Truth.

So, who defines "impartial" here? I've found Politifact and Snopes.com to be even-handed and mostly impartial, but lots of people on Slashdot disagree with me. I'm sure that many people have news sources they consider impartial that I'd consider heavily biased. If you allow anyone to say anything on a forum, that forum becomes pretty much useless, because the trolls will take over. Any useful internet forum has to have some mechanism to deal with trolls. Therefore, the only way we could establish impartiality is, indeed, Minitrue. I don't like that solution.

Re:Show of hands

[david_thornley]

Why didn't the couple use a different bakery?

AIUI, the couple went to that bakery because they thought they made good cakes. They likely didn't know not to go into that bakery.

I know some things that happened later from the court documents (last I looked, linked from the Snopes article), although some of it is inference. The bakery people apparently didn't simply come out with a polite refusal, but were very offensive about it. Later on, they orchestrated an internet harassment campaign. This is the part those who call themselves Christians tend not to talk about.

I think, although I'm not sure, that they did use another bakery for the wedding cake.

Re:Show of hands

[penandpaper]

Is the baker charged for the actions after the denial of service, for the denial of service, or was the denial of service used to inform the extent of minimum sentencing the judge must issue because of anti-discrimination laws?

Abuses

[Anonymous Coward]

I "can't wait" to see how this will be used and applied in the most invasive, privacy-destroying, rights-curbstomping ways imaginable... while still allowing extremist content on there 90% of the time so as to act as the excuse for why the net's not tight enough just yet around our throats.

Anyone else as hyped as I?

Re: Abuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh Ive mostly stopped using the internet. And it is glorious

InfoHash vs Hash

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I create a database that store InfoHashes of copyrighted content and make that database searchable, that would be legal?
Is this not what TPB and all other torrents sites do?

To Big To Fail?

This is so profoundly dangerous!

[phamNewan]

My guess is that pretty soon they will create a Social Credit Score like China is putting in place. Then anyone who disagrees can instantly be silenced online. http://www.wsj.com/articles/ch...

Re:This is so profoundly dangerous!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is facebook. They even keep information on people that have never had an account. What makes you think they don't already have a field for that deep in one of their databases?

Re:This is so profoundly dangerous!

[DogDude]

anyone who disagrees can instantly be silenced online

You can be stopped from using their services, yes, but there's no indication that somehow you won't be able to access the Internet. That sounds like stupid paranoid bullshit that you just made up.

No different from China

[davide marney]

Tell me how this is any different than what China does, then. You might as well have a Ministry of Truth.

Re:No different from China

[coinreturn]

Tell me how this is any different than what China does, then. You might as well have a Ministry of Truth.

I'll be glad to tell you the difference. In China, the censorship is from the government; this article is referring to private businesses. Clear enough?

Re:No different from China

[spire3661]

AT&T is a private company too, we still dictated free speech terms to it by force. Once you reach a certain threshold of users, common carrier rules should apply.

Re:No different from China

[ThatsMyNick]

No, we didnt. It was symbiotic relationship that AT&T entered willingly. Forcing common carrier rules, would actually infringe on the ISP's free speech. They are free to carry whatever they wish.

Re:No different from China

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of corporatism? That's when government and big business collude. "You bring the money, and I'll bring the power."

Re:No different from China

[KiloByte]

In China, the censorship is from the government; this article is referring to private businesses. Clear enough?

As the Jakov Smirnoff joke goes, "In Soviet Union, the government controls the corporations".

Re:No different from China

[slack_justyb]

Once you reach a certain threshold of users, common carrier rules should apply.

That sounds like an issue of having clear rules. By all means might I redirect you to the US Congress website? I'm pretty sure that if the people who said they're tired of rules with the clarity of mud actually did something about that issue we might start getting lawmakers that actually thought out legislation rather than the typical knee jerk. But both the issue of people doing something about it and intelligent lawmakers are just wishful thinking.

Re: No different from China

[Anonymous Coward]

No, saying it's a 'private business' is NOT good enough in a country where corporations and government are indistinguishable. The US has a history of taking everything the fascists we defeated in the 1940s did and that the Chinese do now as an instruction manual.

Re:No different from China

[Cajun Hell]

Tell me how this is any different than what China does, then. You might as well have a Ministry of Truth.

That's kind of an easy assignment, don't you think?

The Chinese government censors. If you don't use their filters, they view that as circumvention and reserve the right to force you to use the filter.

The listed companies, on the other hand, would use a word like "competition" instead of "circumvention." They totally and completely lack the ability to censor, and in fact don't even have the mindset and attitude for it. They aren't even going to try to censor; they're just announcing a project to make it easier to moderate the content on their own websites.

Just to give you an example, imagine if you posted a comment here on Slashdot that some VP at Twitter didn't like. What would they do about it? Add your name to a list of people whose tweets are shadow-banned? That doesn't help them with your Slashdot comment even a little bit.

Re:No different from China

[Anonymous Coward]

In China, the censorship is from the government; this article is referring to private businesses. Clear enough?

clear, but incorrect. Censorship in China works exactly the way this system does. The government requires that they do it, like EU requires censorship of "hate speech," but the government doesn't do the censorship, just sets the goals of it, approximately the same as here---the censorship goals match the political goals, not of the government, but of the _Party_, which is exactly the same as here. And employees enthusiastically rush to complete the goals so they can have a harmonious Confucian society and the personal benefits of high social status, same as here.

Re:No different from China

[dmt0]

Tell me how this is any different than what China does, then. You might as well have a Ministry of Truth.

I'll be glad to tell you the difference. In China, the censorship is from the government; this article is referring to private businesses. Clear enough?

In China government is from government, here government is done by private business.

Fixed that for ya.

Re:No different from China

[tdpaperst]

Tell me how this is any different than what China does, then. You might as well have a Ministry of Truth.

I'll be glad to tell you the difference. In China, the censorship is from the government; this article is referring to private businesses. Clear enough?

It's still chilling and pervasive censorship!? You can call the oppressors what you will, they are still oppressors of human freedom. Who has more real power in the world: companies, governments... people? Will you actually be allowed to see this message? Think for yourself

Re:No different from China

[strikethree]

I'll be glad to tell you the difference. In China, the censorship is from the government; this article is referring to private businesses. Clear enough?

Yeah, the government has nothing to do with this: https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

Keep on keeping on. Critical thought is not required in order to live.

What was the difference again? Oh right. One government person can not arbitrarily decide something can be censored, like in China. It has to be a group of government people. All the difference in the world.

Re:No different from China

[coinreturn]

Tell me how this is any different than what China does, then. You might as well have a Ministry of Truth.

I'll be glad to tell you the difference. In China, the censorship is from the government; this article is referring to private businesses. Clear enough?

It's still chilling and pervasive censorship!? You can call the oppressors what you will, they are still oppressors of human freedom. Who has more real power in the world: companies, governments... people? Will you actually be allowed to see this message? Think for yourself

It's quite a difference when the censorship is done by the people with the guns as opposed to the people selling shiny stuff.

Re:No different from China

[coinreturn]

I'll be glad to tell you the difference. In China, the censorship is from the government; this article is referring to private businesses. Clear enough?

Yeah, the government has nothing to do with this: https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

Keep on keeping on. Critical thought is not required in order to live.

What was the difference again? Oh right. One government person can not arbitrarily decide something can be censored, like in China. It has to be a group of government people. All the difference in the world.

It's quite a difference when the censorship is done by the people with the guns as opposed to the people selling shiny stuff.

Re:No different from China

[Anonymous Coward]

oh so this makes it perfectly fine

What is your problem?

[Qbertino]

they'll censor whatever the fuck they want to.

Dude, WTF? Wake up. ... It's freakin' FACEBOOK! They can and could always do whatever the f*ck they want! With your content, with your data, ... they could eben change their TOS to allow them to superimpose everyones portrait on animal porn images and there'd be nothing for you to do about it other than delete your account and and all your data and hope that no one downloaded those images to their computer or other parts of the intarweb.

I'd say FB and Twitter curbing hate-propaganda is actually the lesser evil. People who are dumb enough to post such stuff on FB are probably best kept from doing serious harm. To others *and* themselves.

Re:What is your problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

they'll censor whatever the fuck they want to.

Dude, WTF? Wake up. ... It's freakin' FACEBOOK! They can and could always do whatever the f*ck they want! With your content, with your data, ... they could eben change their TOS to allow them to superimpose everyones portrait on animal porn images and there'd be nothing for you to do about it other than delete your account and and all your data and hope that no one downloaded those images to their computer or other parts of the intarweb.

I'd say FB and Twitter curbing hate-propaganda is actually the lesser evil. People who are dumb enough to post such stuff on FB are probably best kept from doing serious harm. To others *and* themselves.

Just because they're allowed to do that, doesn't mean it's not censorship.

Who was it that said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."?

Our schools unfortunately no longer teach critical thinking, instead they go for coddling precious snowflakes. So much so that those precious snowflakes can't handle the truth, much less find it for themselves.

And who controls the school system in the US?

Re:What is your problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Okay everyone, today we're going to learn about pronouns outside of He and She in order to accomodate LGBT students better".

Deaf kid people yell loudly at "WTF?"
Autistic kid who has been assaulted for being weird "WTF?"
Jewish kid who gets mocked for not having Christmas "WTF?"
ADHD kid who gets abused by his teachers for having difficulties "WTF?"
Kid who suffers from genuine PTSD "WTF?"
Wheelchair-bound kid who hates people pushing him around "WTF?"
Adopted kid from China with a white name people question the legitimacy of "WTF?"
Protestant kid who gets harassed in a mostly-Catholic school "WTF?"
Dyslexic kid who gets bullied because he has trouble reading "WTF?"

Re:What is your problem?

[Ol Olsoc]

Just because they're allowed to do that, doesn't mean it's not censorship.

Yeah, its censorship. There is a difference between censorship of fake news or calls to arms to fight (insert target here) or censoring kiddie porn, with suppressing an otherwise legal POV. And its probably not a good idea to pull ye olde slippery slope argument.

Who was it that said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."?

SpongeBob SquarePants if I recall correctly. Too bad Evelyn B. Hall wasn't allowed to prove her boast. Are you of similar mind? Would you commit suicide or kill someone to allow me to say "I have a lovely bunch of coconuts" if someone tried to stop me?

This whole subject gets bandied about like a litmus test, with a digital free speech versus the vile censors, where if you dare to say that there are any cases where a person is not allowed to say whatever they want to say, we've just fallen down the slope to 1984. Stop that - just stop it.

There is a world of difference between suppressing news to a country and forcing NASA to provide a safe space for Moon landing deniers.

Our schools unfortunately no longer teach critical thinking, instead they go for coddling precious snowflakes. So much so that those precious snowflakes can't handle the truth, much less find it for themselves.

Wow, best non-sequitur ever. So what you are saying is that propaganda or censorshipp never existed until the rise of the self esteem movement? There has been a terrible outcome to that bit of silliness, but no, the problems of censorship are kind of hard to pin on the snowflakes and their well intentioned but stupid teachers and the stupid idea that self esteem could be instilled rather than achieved.

And who controls the school system in the US?

Whoever wants to control it. If a politically inclined group, say, the social conservatives wanted to control the education system, their best bet is to have as many social conservatives become teachers and administrators.

Re:What is your problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I have a pizza shop then I can put a sign up that says whites only? How about restricting MY restroom to Asians only? It's mine after all.

Re:What is your problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about supressing news to the world? If I provide news via Facebook and they block it, they have denied the news to the world.

Re:What is your problem?

[Ol Olsoc]

What about supressing news to the world? If I provide news via Facebook and they block it, they have denied the news to the world.

You can always get your own website.

Multiple use technology

[sjbe]

I'm sure many of you have had the same thought but there is no way in hell this would be used merely for "extremist" content.

First off good luck consistently defining extremist. Sometimes it's obvious but sometimes it's a matter of perspective. There is no bright line test.

Second, sometime "extreme" viewpoints are merely sane ones being suppressed by another group. Fifty years ago people arguing peacefully for civil rights for minorities were considered "extremist" by our own government.

Third, you know for a fact that what this will actually be used for is cross site protection of copyrighted material that has nothing to do with any extreme viewpoints because the technology has more than one use. But it's easy to develop it to ostensibly combat "extremism" and then quietly use it for other purposes.

Re:Multiple use technology

[Oswald McWeany]

I'm sure many of you have had the same thought but there is no way in hell this would be used merely for "extremist" content.

If said companies overstep their bounds customers are free to form rival websites that are not run by over zealous individuals.

Re:Multiple use technology

[Anonymous Coward]

You third point is bunk and you should know it. For several YEARS there has been a very similar hash database for child porn. Has it become a way to protect copyrighted material? No, it hasn't.

Re:Multiple use technology

[Anonymous Coward]

You third point is bunk and you should know it. For several YEARS there has been a very similar hash database for child porn. Has it become a way to protect copyrighted material? No, it hasn't.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the only AC on Slashdot unfamiliar with YouTube's ContentID.

Re:Multiple use technology

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I think it's possible that, between them, these companies might have thought of your objections.

Why don't you read what they have to say on the subject?

Re:Multiple use technology

[AHuxley]

If a nation, cult or faith has a good share of a US brand, blasphemy would be a nice new issue for trusted SJW to look out for.
A mil gov, Communist party, theocracy or monarchy buying into a US brand might have other lists of banned ideas and history too.
Its kind of their "US" brand too now and they have a say.
Add in the EU govs that want IP's and reports on people commenting on wider EU policy.

da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709

[TheRealHocusLocus]

Hashes...? Darwin In Action. Your human evolutionary selection will faver bad speling from now on. No! We mean URLs! +#hastTagWarz ?Add=aField&Remove=uniqueIDpowerfjonrfoijnqrf&Remove=ArticleSelector free speech collateral damage resulting in, "An unexpected censorship error has occurred. No one is available to figure out why Life Sucks, but the suckage sure eats a lot of money an effort. Just like cell phones... swallow.

Re:da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709

[jbmartin6]

I think more likely, Twitter et al will simply be driving away users if they use this ability too much, and they will then start to go the way of the New York Times.

and in 2019...

[Anonymous Coward]

and in 2019, this would be handed over to 2019, for the benefit of citizens.

The debate is over.

[rmdingler]

They're already doing it:

Twitter suspended 235,000 accounts between February and August this year and has expanded the teams reviewing reports of extremist content.

This is merely a mechanism to share what one mega-company has found "extreme" with another.

If we're really lucky, this will cause some folks to (shudder) lose a bit of respect for these places people spend their lives.

Re:The debate is over.

[AHuxley]

All the fun users will move to great new brands and then attract people who enjoy fun and freedom.
A SJW ban does not remove freedom from the net. Sites that support freedom of speech and freedom after speech just get all the fun users.

Boy, am I going to be busy!

[MinistryOfTruthiness]

So any network gets to censor something, and they automatically censor it across other networks! I love it! ...As long as I get to drive.

Re:Boy, am I going to be busy!

[Oswald McWeany]

According to the summary it doesn't automatically remove content on other networks, so no.

It flags content for the owners of the other networks to review to see if they agree it should be removed.

Re:Boy, am I going to be busy!

[MinistryOfTruthiness]

So are you saying that Zuckerberg is going to pay minions to vet all of this content? Because I'm betting they just automate it.

Re:Boy, am I going to be busy!

[Oswald McWeany]

I'm not saying he will. I'm saying the summary suggests he will.

It would probably be in his best interest to not automate it. You know how many scandals they've had about censoring certain photos. They don't want to import other people's scandals if the wrong thing gets censored. (especially since as they are the bigger more socially visible of the platforms they would take the most heat).

Nope, no, not a chance in hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Goodbye Facebook. I already said goodbye to Microsoft long ago and haven't regretted that decision once. Never joined Twitter - that company is so obviously against free speech that I can't stand them. I am very sorry that Google is going down this route. This is going to be a hard break up.

Dissent will be fake news

[deecemobile]

Say goodbye to free speech on the internet. This all started because democrats lost the Presidency and painted "fake" news as the scapegoat. Who will decide what constitutes "fake" news? Google, Facebook, etc - giant left-leaning entities that have massive control over people's internet experience and the information they access. I can see dissenting view points increasingly characterized as "fake" and effaced.

Re:Dissent will be fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

And it will work, because the majority of human beings are followers by nature, ready and willing to submit to authority. Hell, that's why government is the most successful and longest-running business in human history.

Re:Dissent will be fake news

[DogDude]

These companies have nothing to do with free speech. You can say all you want on the Internet. Whether anybody else will give a shit or hear you is another question, altogether.

Re:Dissent will be fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

As one who honestly believes in privacy, self-ownership, personal responsibility, and individual soverignty, I almost feel like I'm from a different species, and that the world just doesn't want me here. For those who are "ok" with this worldwide spying and "prove your innocence" movement, be sure to give yourselves a big pat on the back, because you're winning. Big time. Just try to remember me during the next political or financial crisis -- I'll be the one smiling as you and your masters go down.

Re:Dissent will be fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

This all started because democrats lost the Presidency and painted "fake" news as the scapegoat. Who will decide what constitutes "fake" news?

"Fake News" is actually a late development. I don't know when this started, but this is as far back as #Gamergate has traced it:

1. The NSA wanted to snoop on everything to track terrorists after 9/11, and the tech companies said "fuck you, get a warrant"
2. Israel wanted the tech companies to ban Palestinian calls for violence online, and the tech companies said "fuck you, it's free speech"
3. The Muslim states wanted to ban blasphemy online, and the entirety of Silicon Valley said "fuck you backwards camelfuckers and your insane stone age religion"
4. The tech companies hire communists to run their legal work against the NSA
5. Israel starts pressuring free speech supporters out of their jobs, considering it a national security matter
6. The Muslim states buy off the entire international activist movement, which turns out to be a for-profit business run by a few of the world's wealthiest men to pressure their competitors and make money investing against the chaos they cause. Every activist with enough influence to get into the media is paid to have the opinion they have. Most of them don't hide it, they list their job as "marketing" on LinkedIn. Here is your fake news.
7. The international activist movement introduces codes of conduct involving new taboos that were invented in a boardroom somewhere within the past few years. The tech companies impose these rules on everyone from the top down and say that anyone who disagrees with any of them must be a racist. Among these new rules is a taboo on criticizing Islam and an insistence that Islam must be respected. Also you are supposed to hate the US Constitution, the rule of law, Israel, and all white people as if you're Louis Farrakhan. Anyone who disagrees loses their job and is blacklisted.
8. In 2015-2016 the US and EU governments stated their intent to enforce the new taboos as laws after Gamergate showed that there would be no public resistance. No law was ever passed, they just started doing it. The US sent letters informing schools that funding would be revoked if they did not enforce the rules themselves. The EU arrests journalists for "hate speech" for truthful reports about Islamist extremist groups, the refugee crisis, and demographic changes in Europe. The US may have dodged a bullet by electing Trump given how Clinton was an outspoken supporter of what the Muslim states were doing.
9. The United Nations endorses what the Muslim states are doing and lets them run a UN project that involves controlling speech on the internet and creating a list of approved journalists. Twitter is a partner in this project.
10. The Muslim states have also taken over the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, Community Security Trust, and Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and they are using these groups as fronts to push out their agenda. The first people who see anything fucky going on will notice all of the Jewish names and be discredited in the public eye as anti-semites.

What has the EFF been doing during all of this? Helping dox everyone who opposes it.

Re:Dissent will be fake news

[david_thornley]

This all started because some Western European countries observed ISIS propaganda on social media sites to have some apparent effect in radicalizing Muslims. This has nothing to do with fake news or Trump. Things are not always just about Trump.

Re:Dissent will be fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

I COMPLETELY agree with what you had to say but one thing.

giant left-leaning entities

The giant entities you are talking about are not "left" leaning. If you are talking about backing Hildog then please remember Hildog is as far away from the left as a hawk from the moon. BOTH parties are to the right maybe one more than the other but both far to the right. We really don't have a left side anymore sorry.

Simple to get around

[Anonymous Coward]

post files of different lengths, starts, and ends, encodings. Oh shit, gave THEM ideas. US is gonna come git me now. Lordy! Lordy!

Please don't censor this

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our benevolent censoring overlords.

So now we are China

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for sanitizing our content, western web/tech overlords!

Welcome to the age of American Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one seeing this is the US version of China's firewall?

Alright!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shadowrun here we come!

A step towards irrelevance...

[rholtzjr]

Good, this is the step that will make them (Google, FB, Twitter, MS) irrelevant as a fact based system and people will stop using them. It is about time that somebody did something about biased opinions of the MSM. I just didn't expect them to do it to themselves.

I am sure that someone will take up the true ideology of freedom of speech that will still provide unbiased information which is what is needed.

Re:A step towards irrelevance...

[DogDude]

The retards might quit using it. They'll head over to places like Breitbart and Infowars. So what? Nothing of value is lost. These people certainly aren't advertisers. They're not even great to advertise *to* unless you're selling some kind of scam. Let 'em go. If anything, it'll make more money for FB/Google/MS/Twitter et all.

Re:A step towards irrelevance...

[Gilgaron]

Can you make meaningful amounts of ad money on your webpage if you've been blacklisted out of Google, FB, and MS's networks?

Re:A step towards irrelevance...

[DogDude]

Sure, I can. Why not? Newspapers and magazines have been doing it for hundreds of years.

Besides, what do advertising networks have to do with anything?

Re:A step towards irrelevance...

[rholtzjr]

WOW, now that is childish. Calling people retards because they are losing faith about the integrity of a product.

Re:A step towards irrelevance...

[DogDude]

losing faith about the integrity of a product

There's nothing in this article about advertisers "losing faith in the integrity of a product". On the contrary, I think that more advertisers that can pay for more than dick pill ads will spend more money with these platforms. The "retards" that I was referring to are the shitty part of the product that these companies are planning on ejecting. Sure, they can make money selling dick pills and insurance scams to these people, but they're more trouble than they're worth. It's long past time to get out of that market, and leave it to somebody else. It's bringing the value of their brand down, at the very least.

Re:A step towards irrelevance...

[rholtzjr]

How did this turn into "about advertisers"? This is about major internet media companies sharing information about removed content they do not want on their site and perpetuating across other social media platforms. Quit getting sidetracked.

I know that shouln't be even asked...

[Z80a]

But will it work with Isis videos?

Liberty To Censor

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is Liberty is more important than censorship. If you have to choose, always side with Liberty.

The point is that each newspaper has always censored its own contents just as these private companies have been and will continue to do. Now if you want to try and treat them as 'too big to fail' monopolies propped up by corrupt governing and try to go antitrust on them- Good Luck.

Re:Liberty To Censor

[spire3661]

A newspaper is a one-to-many relationship, its a broadcast. Social networks are TWO-WAY. Its a VERY different thing, which is why different rules should apply. We are well on our way to passive, machine-driven, default internet censorship and its ugly.

Re:Liberty To Censor

[DogDude]

Social networks are TWO-WAY. Its a VERY different thing, which is why different rules should apply.

You want to start applying rules to private companies telling them what they can and cannot publish? THAT'S totalitarian.

Re:Liberty To Censor

[penandpaper]

A better way to say it is: a newspaper says something. Facebook allows others to say something. A baker becomes a steward of protected classes. AT&T becomes a steward of infrastructure. Why are enablers of speech not stewards of speech?

Re:Liberty To Censor

[Curunir_wolf]

Social networks are TWO-WAY. Its a VERY different thing, which is why different rules should apply. You want to start applying rules to private companies telling them what they can and cannot publish? THAT'S totalitarian.

These companies already take advantage of rules that were provided to protect them, so if they are doing that, it's certainly within our purview to provide some restrictions on them in exchange for that. Providers of Internet services are protected under the DMCA and other laws from being held liable for user-provided content. Well, if they're going to start censoring that content, shouldn't they lose their protection from liability?

Re:Liberty To Censor

[david_thornley]

The DMCA is there to protect websites from copyright liability when users post infringing content. It's impractical to make sites liable for such content, since there's no general way to tell what's infringing. As it happens, the Digital Millennium COPYRIGHT Act covers only copyrights and liability for infringement. Other content can have problems for various reasons, including destroying the forum as a revenue source.

Facebook, Google LEFT leaning? Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously?
Listen, you could say that these are heavily pro-donkey. But even Democrats are right leaning in the global perspective. Specially when you consider that they lost the election primarily because of their collusion with Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
US is already screw, haven't had *effective* free speech for a while. But this is very bad news for the rest of the world indeed. Otoh, the filter bubble is already achieving a good deal of this

Censorship it's purest form/motives

[evolutionary]

So basically, we are starting to implement China's form of censorship. Want to protest? Top visiting sites that censor this way. Facebook, for example, is hardly a necessity. Part of free speech is figuring out phoney from fact. Besides, what's to say that what they label as "true" isn't approved propaganda? It's always easy to invent justifications for censorship. In the USA, there is one against it the NSA continues to ignore: The Constitution.

Good luck with that

[sjbe]

If said companies overstep their bounds customers are free to form rival websites that are not run by over zealous individuals.

Ok go ahead and start a company that will supplant Google. Good luck with that. Back here in the real world we understand that market forces do not solve every problem and in fact it market forces are the source of many of them. You are being very glib with a non-solution to a very real problem.

Re:Good luck with that

[Oswald McWeany]

There is not currently a good business case to try and "supplant Google". If google were to sufficiently anger the masses, people would be actively looking for an alternative and a business case would exist.

In this case, absolutely, market forces solve the problem. Just like the famous case of Ford only selling black cars. "Who will replace the behemoth Ford and sell colourful cars?"

As it turned out, lots of people, it sold and Ford had to follow suit. If Google were to become a pariah not delivering what the customers wanted, there would be lots of companies willing to step up and chip away at their various business interests.

Re:Dissent will be labelled fake news

[davecb]

These three companies primarily want
- to continue to make money from us, by showing they're paying attention, and
- to not get thrown in jail.

I expect, like Lauren Weinstein (http://factsquad.com, https://lauren.vortex.com/2016...), that labelling fake news will be the most likely approach. That avoids the jail problem (:-))

To ensure they look "fair", I suspect that crowd-sourcing is the way theywill get leads, but not how the initial decision to label will be made. I expect them to do a sort --unique and feed the results to a human, handle a level or so of appeals internally, and eventually take objections to mediation, with appeals to the courts.

That's how a lot of similar problems, like consumer packaging rules, are handled in Canada. It may be the same in the 'States, but I wouldn't know.

That's why alternatives are paramount

[ZeroConcept]

This is why I've migrated to gab.ai and infogalactic.com. These hashes are the start for censoring anything they deem inappropriate, including political dissident discourse. Twitter has already banned thousands of users for posting anti-islamic content even though it's fact based.

We need open platforms if we expect to have freedom of expression. Hate speech can be re-defined until it covers anything they want.

Leave big social media, don't produce content for them. Embrace new open platforms.

finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally no more Trump and Clinton videos and news!

Sheesh! All this crying about censorship

[fustakrakich]

Count the votes. It's what people want.

We just need to make it technologically difficult, if not impossible, to overcome that. Working the social angle will get us nowhere.

Great stupid idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Censorship by the moronic, uneducated uninformed majority!!! Regardless, we the People should sue! Have you heard of the 1st Amendment of the US Contitution or you want to censor that too?

Quick and nice? idea

[ruir]

Lets bring censorship to facebook, linked.in and Youtube, because in the Internet age, they are the only way of sending extremist videos.

Just treating the symptoms

[jenningsthecat]

I get that people want terrorist content to be censored. There are obvious moral, ethical, and political problems with such censorship, and they are being thoroughly debated in other threads here. But I think we need to ask some deeper questions. Why are citizens of ostensibly free nations, (such as America), so drawn to becoming fundamentalist terrorists that we have to try to 'cover their eyes' with censorship? And why are fundamentalists in Muslim countries SO angry with the 'infidels' that they are willing to take the lives of others, and kill themselves, just to make their point?

Deep and wide-spread currents of dissatisfaction run at the root of terrorism's growth. We need to acknowledge the tremendous psychological pressures that lead to terrorism, and we need to begin healing the social, political, and spiritual disenfranchisement that our societies create. A good place to start would be in our schools, with promoting the principles of individualism, autonomy, open-mindedness, compassion, and the Golden Rule. A generation raised on these values just might stop pissing off other nations so much that they fly airplanes into our skyscrapers. Sadly, the public schools are in fact religious schools, and the high priests of corporatism will never let this happen. They have too much invested in the powerlessness of the citizenry - their Ponzi scheme of an economic structure relies on it.

Re:Just treating the symptoms

[DogDude]

Deep and wide-spread currents of dissatisfaction run at the root of terrorism's growth. We need to acknowledge the tremendous psychological pressures that lead to terrorism, and we need to begin healing the social, political, and spiritual disenfranchisement that our societies create. A good place to start would be in our schools, with promoting the principles of individualism, autonomy, open-mindedness, compassion, and the Golden Rule. A generation raised on these values just might stop pissing off other nations so much that they fly airplanes into our skyscrapers. Sadly, the public schools are in fact religious schools, and the high priests of corporatism will never let this happen. They have too much invested in the powerlessness of the citizenry - their Ponzi scheme of an economic structure relies on it.

That's not it at all. We have an uneducated populace that keeps voting to gut our schools. That's how we got to Trump, and that's where things will continue to go unless something else dramatically changes.

Re:Just treating the symptoms

[iggymanz]

Putting control of schools under the states where it belongs is not "gutting".

Who decides?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who decides the criteria?

What motivates them?

How do the users really ever know their true motivations?

Political terrorism

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we get fake news integrated into the system? That seems to have effectively become a form of political terrorism, only unlike most of the stuff they're looking to flag it has widespread and long term damages on society.

I CAN'T WAIT

[Anonymous Coward]

I CAN'T WAIT TO BE LABELLED A TERRORIST!

Will it be because I eat meat?
Will it be because I use adblock?
Will it be because I have free will?
Will it be because I support Trump?
Will it be because I'm anti-radical-feminist?
Will it be because I don't care about others' feelings?
Will it be because I'm an "Islamophobe" (the irony would be palpable)?
Will it be because I believe ALL lives matter (what an evil thing to think)?
Will it be because I support equality of opportunity instead of opportunity of outcome?
Will it be because I play video games (even/especially the ones with hot female characters)?
Will it be because I disagree with people who are not cisgendered or heterosexual or white or male?
Will it be because I don't eat up whatever "definitely not fake news" the main stream media spews at me?
Will it be because I don't have a facebooktwitterlinkedinsnapchatinstagramtumblrrewshgdfhlkrjhnldfkjhnfgh?
Will it be because I think every LGBTQSDKAJNHZYXVMIOFPRCWUE++GOOD should keep it in the bedroom?

Whooooo knows...

Thank you corporate overlords, for giving me this opportunity!

Re:I CAN'T WAIT

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed a few

Will it be because I think I have the right to free speech?
Will it be because I don't think Trump is going to be/is a good president?
Will it be because I question the policies of our glorious leaders?
Will it be because I believe in equality for all races/religions/gender?
Will it be because I don't think the government has any business in my house/bedroom?
Will it be because I believe global warming is real?
Will it be because I see through the propaganda (IE fake news "stories")?
Will it be because I released documents proving government officials were lying to the nation?
Will it be because I don't belong to the Republican party?
Will it be because I don't burn 100 tons of fossil fuels per year?

The Democrats have their problems to be sure, but they aren't the ones who have been ranting about locking up/deporting millions of people, revoking peoples citizenship, creating religious registries, building a multi-million dollar useless wall, murdering women/children, etc.

today

[DogDude]

They can do it today. It's their own networks. They can censor whatever they want. So what? Don't like it, don't use them. The Internet isn't going away.

Re:Dissent will be labelled fake news

[NetNed]

Yes, they are going to get "thrown in jail" for having a result of a website that someone deems "fake". So are they going to not have any of the major media outlets on their sites also? Because I see PLENTY of fake, native ad stories on the mainstream sources all the time. You can spot them when they are fluff pieces that mention specific brand names for no reason. By the way, this isn't Canada and comparing the two is no even reliant. Canada still kisses the ass of a monarchy thousands of miles across a sea.

BOYCOTT

[Anonymous Coward]

Boycott these companies. It really isn't that difficult. Hate Apple all you want, but here might be a good reason to buy a Mac. No Windows tax, and Apple has repeatedly been upstanding about walking the difficult line of helping legitimate authority solve crime and protecting user freedom. Hell, if you're realy crazy build a machine and put Trisquel on it. Fuck facebook and twitter.

MPAA sponsored?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure all of this was devised only to further the abusive copyright trolls

!news?

[LesserWeevil]

Non-news sites decide which news is not news. Video at 10:00..

The Shuttening: Social Media Companies Form Cartel

[Anonymous Coward]

to Censor “Extremism”
http://www.dailystormer.com/the-shuttening-social-media-companies-form-cartel-to-censor-extremism

They alredy CAN

[Anonymous Coward]

They are private entity and can censor whatever they want. The news here is not that they will censor stuff, the news is that they will share a database to do it.

Re:Dissent will be labelled fake news

[davecb]

Already approved by Congress, aimed at "forign propagandists". https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

Hardly anyone trust the media

[Jerry]

as a source of reliable news, and that probably applies to the socials as well, for obvious reasons, if you aren't a Leftist.

The so-called MNM was in the tank for Hillary during this election cycle: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-...
The media dropped all appearances of journalistic standards and went ballistic in their attacks against Republican candidates, predicting that the final winner, Trump, had no chance of being elected. They started believing their own propaganda and it got echoed back and forth among the various news outlets. Hillary had a tough time filling a high school gymnasium and photos of her rallies were always up front and closely cropped, deliberately. Here is an example of but one of many:
http://thefederalistpapers.org...

Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube combined forces to censor "hate" speech on their sites. What they deemed hate speech became patently clear as we approached November 8th. Any posts against Hillary were shadow-baned, and if that didn't force repentance the account was suspended. If the account holder didn't conform to Leftist norms then the account was canceled. Google and Twitter did the same. Google CEO was even on Hillary's campaign team.
Here is a screen captures of an experiment testing Twitter's bias:
http://www.informationliberati...
Guess who got banned.
Here is a similar experiment testing Facebook's bias:
https://www.breakingisraelnews...

Google was just as evil. When Google first set up YouTube they encouraged EVERYONE to create content and post it. They set up provisions for sharing ad revenue. Some YT posters became so successful they quit their jobs and became full time content creators for YouTube. Some of the content was political in nature. You guessed it. Videos which were not favorable to Hillary, or were favorable to Trump got demonetized, and sometimes the account was canceled, throwing the content creator out of a job. Those videos continued to make ad revenues but Google took it all. And they mock Trump's "You're Fired!", or his defunct "university". I suspect that Google has stolen more money from demonetized videos than Trump ever made from his short-lived university. Pure thievery.

During the debate Hillary was "horrified" that Trump would not say that he would accept the outcome of the election, so confident she was of her own election. She when on to describe his attitude as anti-democratic and UN-American. Then she lost the electoral count. Now, according to her own words, SHE is being anti-democratic and UN-American. She joined Jill Stein in the recount, but only in the states she had a narrow loss, not the states she narrowly won, probably fearing the truth of the Veritas video uncovering paid Democrat operatives bragging that they've been stuffing ballot boxes for "50 years" and they "won't **** stop now". Recounting a Chicago-style count would probably be hazardous to her popular vote totals. Here are Hillary's close counts:
Nevada by only 27K votes, Colorado by 75K, Minnesota by 44K and New Hampshire by only 3,000 votes.

So, despite the fact that both wings of the Democrat party ( the Far-Left Bernie and the Far-Left Hillary, they argued over who was more "progressive" and I call it a tie), the leadership of the Republican Party and many of its members and ALL of the Alt-Left Media, as listed in Podesta's email, were against Trump he still won by 37 electoral votes, a margin Hillary would have gladly accepted. The IRS's throttling of 501c applications, which doomed Conservative PACs in the last two elections wasn't effective in stopping Trump because he funded his campaign himself, and he spent a fraction of

Collusion by the NSA/CIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like NSA/CIA public assets youtube, facebook, twitter, and microsoft are getting scared again. They don't like "Fake news" aka, non rothschild propaganda networks controlling reality.

I suggest not using these CIA assets, and using other entities to do your internetting.

Extreme Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is Extreme content defined by (R)epublican? [Pay scientist to say their is no Global Climate change & it's not the fog causing breathing problems]
How is Extreme content defined by (D)emocrats? [Listening to Global Scientist with their independent studies about Global Climate Change]
Does this also mean that Microsoft will not allow Freedom of Speech if we have problems with their products. It's a great way for an engineer to cover their own Ass.

Question of motivess

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone here really believe these companies and the governments pressuring them are just trying to consolidate the power to control your every thought and perception under the auspices of protecting you from disturbing content? If you do, I think you should tuck away your juvenile, Orwellian views of these entities, and project a little humanity onto them instead. Maybe, just maybe, they're actually interested in protecting you from a bombing or shooting at your local shopping mall, university, club, public transit terminal, etc.

no, that would be

[Anonymous Coward]

xenophobia, racism, Islamophobia and therefore THOSE videos will be promoted, in the interest of globalism and mutual understanding and multiculturalism of course.... but your highly bigoted and evil question will get you flagged as an "extremist" and "white supremacist" and you'll be auto-banned from all social media and search engines.

Ministry of Truth creates Ministry of Love

[Anonymous Coward]

Film at 11.

Somehow this chick won't make it I bet

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6rsaRhNEA4

Youtube follows arbitrary censorship that fits a certain political agenda.

You have a choice, but most will simply accept it

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way there is going to be any resemblance of freedom moving forward is if people who believe in liberty and freedom join together to form an enclave, a last bastion of hope, a place where people who believe in freedom and liberty can dominate, a single region or state. I don't see anything resembling that other than the Free State Project and what it is trying to do. It's the only project that's actually demonstrating that we can do this. We can get together and form a free state. 20,000 people signed up (which was the initial goal) and 10% have already moved. You don't need a majority and you don't need to overturn the federal government (though independence would help with some issues). The state governments imprison the largest number of people and the federal government only has so much power locally. It's why the feds can outlaw pot and pot can be legalized at the state level. The states do retain some power. The states can refuse to implement federal laws- at the expense of losing federal dollars (stolen from its citizens of course). At the end of the day the feds only have the resources to go after the big fish (ie Silk Road, bigger drug dealers, etc).

Now lets not kid ourselves. It's not a first amendment violation and these companies should be free to do as they like. On that same these so should the rest of us. What they are doing is still censorship and we should call them out for it. The best thing to do is stop doing business with these companies. I do this for the sake of preserving a free society. What they are doing is dangerous. It's worse than any ugly word ever communicated. I'd rather hear from people talking about murdering people and mass genocide than risk the freedom and democracy which we have. Because that is exactly what this sort of thing leads to.

I already see groups being marginalized. I'm part of at least two different marginalized groups. Both are manipulated and censored in different ways. You just watch. This post will be down voted.

Extremist?

[Anonymous Coward]

By who's definition?

Yes, i fully realize they can restrict anything they like, but if people give them a pass, its a sad day in the world of freedom of speech.

Time to DUMP them

[gabrieltss]

Time to put THEM in database! Don't allow them to do business anywhere!

doublelusgood!

[matbury]

Yes, we need to block and/or watch these extremists very carefully. Some of them are very funny: http://www.markthomasinfo.co.u...

Re:Hardly anyone trust the media

[david_thornley]

Wherever you're getting your facts and editorials....distrust it.