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Facebook's Secret Censorship Rules Protect White Men From Hate Speech But Not Black Children (propublica.org)
Sidney Fussell from Gizmodo summarizes a report from ProPublica, which brings to light dozens of training documents used by Facebook to train moderators on hate speech: As the trove of slides and quizzes reveals, Facebook uses a warped, one-sided reasoning to balance policing hate speech against users' freedom of expression on the platform. This is perhaps best summarized by the above image from one of its training slideshows, wherein Facebook instructs moderators to protect "White Men," but not "Female Drivers" or "Black Children." Facebook only blocks inflammatory remarks if they're used against members of a "protected class." But Facebook itself decides who makes up a protected class, with lots of clear opportunities for moderation to be applied arbitrarily at best and against minoritized people critiquing those in power (particularly white men) at worst --
as Facebook has been routinely accused of. According to the leaked documents, here are the group identifiers Facebook protects: Sex, Religious affiliation, National origin, Gender identity, Race, Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation, Serious disability or disease. And here are those Facebook won't protect: Social class, continental origin, appearance, age, occupation, political ideology, religions, countries. Subsets of groups -- female drivers, Jewish professors, gay liberals -- aren't protected either, as ProPublica explains: White men are considered a group because both traits are protected, while female drivers and black children, like radicalized Muslims, are subsets, because one of their characteristics is not protected.
Try to police speech and expression and you fuck it up every time.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The reason for the headline is that "children" is not a protected category, while skin color and gender both are.
It's entirely about the words.
"white men" are protected exactly as much as "black men" or "white women" or "black women", because both the noun and the adjective refer to protected categories.
"black children" are protected, likewise, just as much as "white children" or "white adults" or "black adults"-- the second word in the phrase is not a protected category.
The author goes off the deep end when her ideology comes out somewhere halfway through the summary. To wit, the bit where she decries the disallowing of hate speech against white men in particular, because it's of course not possible to hate-speak against whitey for ~reasons~.
The usual stereotype about female drivers is that most female drivers are bad. In other words, that females en masse are bad as drivers. I fail to see how it's not about a protected class, unless some other stereotype is meant here.
It must be very complicated trying to live as a SJW. I prefer just being nice to people.
Now that this is public knowledge, people can post any hate speech they want. "White men who aren't me suck!", for example. Or "women older than 1 are terrible people!"
First of all, the article makes it seem like whites are protected while blacks aren't. That isn't the case, everyone in a group gets equal rights to censorship.
However this is a clear example of Simpson's Paradox, if you split up your sample set enough, you get contradictory results.
This is a direct result of SJW demands for censorship with a healthy dose of discrimination, you get a patchwork of rules that is neither based on word of law or common sense and can be cut and paste to fit pretty much every model.
You can boil down and extend every SJW argument using the same logic and see that what they are asking for is not protection but discrimination.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Seriously, this is taking the example way out of context. It's a perfect example of training material giving examples that on the surface seem legitimate and the having the less obvious example be the right answer. The example is done to prove a point and make people pay attention to detail. When talking about "protected" in today's world, everyone thinks of anything but white men. That's the point here. The right answer of an entire race is hiding with subsets of a gender and race.
Had they shown a picture of black people, one of a white woman store clerk and one of white kids, people would have just chosen the picture of black people and not ever thought of why they did. To teach, you need to provoke thought, not just make it easy to select the right answer without knowing why.
There unfortunately has to be some moderation or everything turns into 4chan/b/.
Also your 'blocking' will break any number of websites completely, because they've gotten the clue that they need to host some of their actual content on the same domains that host their ads, so if you block their ads, their site doesn't work at all. Putting it in the HOSTS file takes away any flexibility of choice in the matter.
Didi Delgado, whose post stating that “white people are racist” was deleted, has been banned from Facebook so often that she has set up an account on another service called Patreon, where she posts the content that Facebook suppressed. In May, she deplored the increasingly common Facebook censorship of black activists in an article for Medium titled “Mark Zuckerberg Hates Black People.”
You don't have to be white to be a racist.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
who is stupid enough to believe science is unbiased ?
Biased toward facts and truth.
Seriously, consider the source.
Have gnu, will travel.
But it's definitely biased.
only that bias is anti-white, anti-straight, anti-male, and anti-conservative..
http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006
And the obligatory theme song https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
maybe that's the new Apps Apps appity apps
what if you're offended by people trying to not offend anyone.
The protected category of race includes black children and white men.
...is to speak honestly. Now I don't have to debate or wonder whether the OP is insane. They cut straight to the end. See, our culture is getting more efficient every year!
Thank you.
so you think we should be protecting racists?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Clearly the solution is to stop policing speech and let every commercial web service turn into a swirling maelstrom of racial slurs.
No, the solution is to make it easy for people to choose not to listen. In real life when some hate filled bigot is rambling on most of us are usually blissfully unaware of it since we choose not to go to whatever event s/he is speaking at.
What these social media sites need is an "ignore" button that essentially blocks that person from any contact with the user who chooses to ignore them. This would have to be coupled with some mechanism to prevent users from creating multiple accounts as a means to get around the ignore. However a scheme like this lets everyone have their freedoms: the bigots have their freedom of speech to say what they want and the rest of us have our freedom to not hear it just like we do in real life.
As TFA states these are arbitrary policies that change all the time. People started complaining about the open discrimination and hatred for white males, and Facebook could not say "nuh uh" with the prevalence of posts doing exactly that. So for a while (read: until the coast is clear) they will address those issues.
Pretty much how all authoritarian systems work, and history is chalk full of examples. Some are quite famous, but of course "it couldn't happen to me..".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
On Ars Technica, the headline is: Facebook’s secret rules mean that it’s ok to be anti-Islam, but not anti-gay
Impetuous! Homeric!
They A/B test protected classes, then measure the outrage.
We all know the real list.
Ok to make fun of:
-white males and asian males
-fat people
-rednecks, creationists and pro-life
Mostly ok to make fun of:
-blonde girls
-gays, especially if they're rich and work in Silicon Valley
-mexicans
-midgets
-transgenders
Not ok to make fun of:
-women, but only womyn-born, excluding natural blondes
-african-americans
-muslims
-handicapped
Interestingly, that list is also sorted according to what people truly wished they were.
lucm, indeed.
We have this thing called "sarcasm".
You should look into it.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,
Sounds like Oblivion to me. The Bible never refers to Hell as being a place where souls continue to exist in endless torment. Hell is always described as a fire or a lake of fire or a blazing furnace or everlasting destruction. These all describe destruction of the soul.
Given the amount of conservatives being attacked, this doesn't look like to be the practice.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Honestly, FB is in a no-win situation and should go hardcore for the First Amendment (which exists specifically to protect unpopular and/or offensive speech) and just be hands off with user content unless there are threats of violence or encouragements of harming one'self or another or violating the laws in the US... The race card in general and hate speech specifically is subjective and the term is already abused routinely by the fascist progressives on a daily basis.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
It seems to me the choice of examples is intended to show Facebook is racist. But in my opinion it fails to do so. Their rules may be stupid, but if applied consistently they are not racist. Example: White men is protected, but Black Children is not. Ok. Question. Is Black men protected? I assume so, if I understand the Facebook rules correctly. Is White children protected? Again, if I understand the Facebook rules correctly, then the answer is no. So what do we have: white children. Not protected. black children, not protected. white men: protected. black men: protected. Then the sex discrimination that is implied: apparently female drivers is not protected, while white men is. Fine. But the question is: Is 'white females' protected? If I understand the rules correctly, yes it is. Is mMale drivers protected? If I understand the rules correctly, it isn't. So what do we have: white males protected, as is white females (and consequently, also black females). female drivers not protected, male drivers not protected. So based in the information I see, you cannot conclude that Facebook's rules are either racist or sexist. They are stupid as fuck, but not racist or sexist.
Dare one suspect that extracting a single slide out of a presentation might possibly be presenting the issue outside of its original context?
The obvious solution is to keep adding protected classes. Of course the end result of that will be that everybody falls into a protected class, effectively making hate speech towards anybody off-limits. That means we'd all have to be nice to each other, or stop using FaceBook. Either way works for me.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Hey....why not give us white guys this one, eh?
I mean, in EVERY other forum, it is perfectly normal and acceptable to ridicule and rant against white guys....it is never discrimination if it's against a white guy.
Maybe the non-white guys are using the wrong text editor?
Real lawyers write in C++
The Bible never refers to Hell as being a place where souls continue to exist in endless torment.
While there are many individual passages which are ambiguous on this point, the Bible as a whole is clear that Hell is a place (* actually two places, but that's not important here) of conscious torment for the wicked:
"And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, 'If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.'" Revelation 14:9-11
"There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.'
But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.'
Then he said, 'I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.'
Abraham saith unto him, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.'
And he said, 'Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.'
And he said unto him, 'If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.'" Luke 16:19-31
"And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. " Mark 9:42-48
The above passages each speak directly and literally about Hell as a place of conscious torment. Many of Jesus' parables also say the same thing, indirectly:
"And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew 25:30
"And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So
If given the choice, I would choose to be obliterated.
Why? What is so awful about the life which God freely offers to you through His Son Jesus Christ? Is there nothing which you enjoy - or once enjoyed - about life?
Life in this world can be very awful indeed, but that is entirely due to the effects of sin (not only yours, but also that of everyone else). Pain, disease, death, despair, hard labour, oppression, addiction, unsatisfied desire - all of these are present in our world only because of people (humans and angels) rebelling against God: they were not part of His original Creation, and will not be part of the New Creation that is soon to come, outside of Hell itself.
God is willing and able to breathe true life into even the most wretched person, and set you free from your slavery to your natural, insatiable desires. He can give your life joy, purpose, and eternal peace if only you will accept His gracious terms of surrender through Jesus Christ.
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30
Dishonest and angled as fuck.
Black men would be protected.
White teens wouldn't.
Angled dishonest confusing SJW propaganda.
"Hate speech" shouldn't be a concept banned and censored.
Because of hate speech laws we lack and actual debate and public support for our own genocide and invasion by unwanted people. We never got a chance to talk about and affect it. Where will that leave things? Why would we have to support and respect what we never agreed to and which was enforced upon us by the non-democratic rulers?
When civil-war and terror are the only options to affect things because you are silenced and ignored?
Biggest treason, genocide and catastrophe of Europe ever.
Science is a tool. Tools cannot be biased
I present to you the ratchet screwdriver.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
So all women want to be men, and everyone wants to be fat, but want to be male just a little more than fat?
I think your sorting is poor. #3 is rednecks, creationists and pro-life, and I don't know anyone not already one of those who wants to be any of the others in that group.
Learn to love Alaska
A non-believer will not live forever in hell. Revelations indicates that in the end times, they will be cast into the lake of fire, for a final death. That would seem to be oblivion. Or is the Bible wrong when someone remembers a part you find inconvenient?
Learn to love Alaska
Or it just may be, that it is not so simple to formulate rules for automated censoring. If all "muslims" are in a "protected group" without restrictions, then it becomes impossible to criticize "radical muslims". Same goes for "racist white men" or "racist whites". Also if "black women" should be included in the censoring scheme, then "white men" must be too. All this "politically correct" censoring is a questionable approach at best.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
You have confused science with scientific method. The former has quite a few biases.
While there's certainly valid criticism to be leveled at Facebook's censorship policies, can we all take a moment to realize that the slides from the supposed Facebook training slides published by ProPublica offer precisely zero evidence as originating from Facebook?
The article offers no evidence to suggest what appears to be one-sided protection is actually a systemic policy within the organization. While this could very well be the case, cherrypicking examples of Facebook's censorship isn't necessarily evidence of the claim. In fact, the ProPublica article claims a "trove of internal documents sheds light on the algorithms that Facebook’s censors use to differentiate between hate speech and legitimate political expression" but doesn't offer a single one of those documents up for public consumption.
ProPublica prides itself on investigative journalism. This article is not that. I expect better.
Nobody's a minority on FB, and nobody's a majority on FB. Why? Because, if you're a latin immigrant, you got your whole country on FB as well, if you're a Syrian refugee, same - got all your community on FB with you (and they do use cell phones just as anyone). So basically everyone is inside his own community on FB. Who's a minority when you're with all your people? Who's a majority when there are so many countries and societies there?
Seems pretty clear to me.
Really grasping at straws here. All the biblical emphasis is on destruction by fire. Which is the most complete form of destruction that ancient peoples would have understood.
Let's be honest, if you are going to have any sort of systematic moderation of content, you are going to have to have some sort of standards for what is and isn't allowable. Facebook isn't in this to create a platform for the free expression of ideas - they are there to sell advertising, and it's bad for business to have vitriolic hate speech all over people's news feeds.
So if you are going to draw up some standards to unambiguously draw lines for your paid moderation staff, how are you going to do it? Basing it primarily on classes that are legally protected isn't a bad start, at least in the sense that the law is intended to democratically codify our society's shared morality.
What's more, you have to figure out how intersections between sets is going to work - it becomes a problem of set theory and attribute inheritance between sets. The way they are doing it, where the intersection of a Protected set and Non-protected set becomes Non-protected, errs on the side of free speech, but I'd argue it's the only reasonable way to do it. So if you insult black people as a whole, you're over the line, but if you insult black children, you aren't. That seems odd, but think about the alternative - if any set intersecting with a protected class was itself protected, it would mean that you couldn't talk about the protected class in any context at all. I couldn't say anything bad about Christian terrorists or female serial killers or white supremacists or North Korean dictators... because they would each inherit the protection of religion, gender, race, or nationality, respectively.
What am I supposed to be outraged about now? A casual glance at the words seem to imply that white men are allowed to be racist while black children are allowed to be discriminated against; however, due to the weasel wording, you have to fully "get with" whatever agenda is being pushed before you can participate in any discussion about it.
TL;DR, What kind of fucked up summary is this? I only clicked on this article so I could ask that question.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
This system is fairly sensible and only appears racist to some because of the way it's spinned.
Sex+Race is protected, but not Race+Age. That's because Age is explicitly not protected.
Screw Facebook.
there's no such thing as a soul
"I think, therefore I am." I know that I have a soul - that is, an immaterial, self-aware mind, emotions, and will - because I am actually consciously experiencing this conversation.
The "sack of chemicals" theory of human nature does not justify, explain, or even describe my consciousness; it only posits a simulation of my body's activities. Assuming that you actually know what the word "soul" means, you are basically asserting that I (the real me) don't exist. That's not an argument you're going to win. :-)
You also have consciously experienced this conversation, and therefore already know that you have a soul. You don't just react to pain - you feel it. Your fingers don't just spasm out words, you think about what you want to say. You were created in the image of God, who (in his original, most essential nature) is pure spirit: self-aware mind, emotions, and will, not dependant upon any physical body for existence.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." John 1:1-5
"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God." John 3:19-21
You simply assume (wrongly) that death equates to oblivion. The Bible speaks about "life" and "death" quite a lot, in various contexts; why don't we let the book explain itself?
The most important use of these words in the Bible is spiritual, not physical or existential. God calls the person who is in right relationship with Himself, "alive", but the person who is in rebellion against Him is called, "dead":
Jesus said, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." John 17:3
Likewise, Paul writes to the true believer: "And you hath he quickened (made alive), who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened (made alive) us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." Ephesians 2:1-10
This is not just a metaphor; it's a fundamental definition of "life" and "death", as far as God is concerned. The first mention of death anywhere in the whole Bible is using this definition: "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Genesis 2:16-17
Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the very next chapter, and yet they did not cease to exist on that day, neither did they die physically. But, something immense and tragic did happen: their fellowship with God was broken, guilt and shame came upon them, and they fell from moral perfection into the same corrupt state that has plagued everyone (except one...) born since. This is truly death, according to God's definition.
The Bible also speaks often of ordinary physical death, the death of the body. (This is the "first death" which precedes the "second death" of which Revelation speaks.) But, does the body cease to exist at death? Certainly not!
The body decays and falls apart - "dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" Genesis 3:19 - but this condition is temporary. One of the central teachings of the Bible, is that God will (eventually) raise every person who ever lived back to life, bodily:
"For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me." Job 19:25-27
"And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Daniel 12:2-4
"Marvel not at thi