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

and tomorrow

[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

[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

[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

[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]

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

[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.

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.

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: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?

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.