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Google and ProPublica Team Up To Build a National Hate Crime Database (techcrunch.com)
In partnership with ProPublica, Google News Lab is launching a new tool to track hate crimes across America. The "Documenting Hate News Index" is being powered by machine learning to track reported hate crimes across all 50 states, collecting data from February 2017 onward. TechCrunch reports: Data visualization studio Pitch Interactive helped craft the index, which collects Google News results and filters them through Google's natural language analysis to extract geographic and contextual information. Because they are not catalogued in any kind of formal national database, a fact that inspired the creation of the index to begin with, Google calls the project a "starting point" for the documentation and study of hate crimes. While the FBI is legally required to document hate crimes at the federal level, state and local authorities often fail to report their own incidents, making the data incomplete at best.
The initiative is a data-rich new arm of the Documenting Hate project which collects and verifies hate incidents reported by both individual contributors and by news organizations. The Hate News Index will keep an eye out for false positives (casual uses of the word "hate" for example), striking a responsible balance between machine learning and human curation on a very sensitive subject. Hate events will be mapped onto a calendar in the user interface, though users can also use a keyword search or browse through algorithmic suggestions. For anyone who'd like to take the data in a new direction, Google will open sourced its data set, making it available through GitHub.
The initiative is a data-rich new arm of the Documenting Hate project which collects and verifies hate incidents reported by both individual contributors and by news organizations. The Hate News Index will keep an eye out for false positives (casual uses of the word "hate" for example), striking a responsible balance between machine learning and human curation on a very sensitive subject. Hate events will be mapped onto a calendar in the user interface, though users can also use a keyword search or browse through algorithmic suggestions. For anyone who'd like to take the data in a new direction, Google will open sourced its data set, making it available through GitHub.
Wonder how they train this pseudo-AI to recognize what hate crime is. Humans can't really reliably do it, it's always a judgment call very much biased by the individual person's view, especially political views.
And when this AI then can reliably reproduce the views of the one paying for it, Google, then it's awesome to filter pretty much the whole internet the way they want.
The future is a brave new world and I'm very happy to be a part of it!
We already HAVE crime statistics reported by the police and the FBI as they document crime.
This is just a VOLUNTARY database (which I'm sure won't be abused) to build up a list of crimes, many of which aren't even legally defined as a crime and charges that were never investigated or go to trial but people's names will be tracked in the database anyway.
We've moving to the next stage of thought crimes where you will be ostracized and penalized because you said she instead of xhe (which is now a punishable crime in California) or because you state anything that's not in step with the gestapo of politically correct thought.
This is not a good thing, these are not enlightened times. We have abandoned objective truth and free speech for a political, nearly religious ideology.
Dark times for the world.
This is a dangerous idea. Some group, not answerable to anyone, gets to put people into a database of "wrongthink". TFS and TFA talk about "hate crimes" - one would like that to imply that they would only collect law enforcement data, ideally restricted to actual convictions. That might be ok, but that's not what they're doing.
In fact, the "hate crime" collection apparently involves becoming a central repository for any sort of article, blog post, or whatever that talks about supposed incidents of "hate". That would be bad enough, since the criteria are entirely subjective.
But it's worse than that. If you go to the actual project page, they want to document hate crimes and "bias incidents". For the latter, they are happy to accept individual stories. Who gets to define what constitutes a "bias" incident?
At best, this is just another SJW right-think project, giving the long list of corporate sponsors a wonderful opportunity to virtue signal. At worst, if individual people are named in the individual stories they intend to collect, it will become a form of arbitrary, non-judicial punishment with no recourse to the people named.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Google has spoken and answer to your question is yes. We are going down this path. As before there were voices for reason and moderation and they were either ignored or people daring have contrary opinions were charged with the same thought crime as the others. In fact communist societies of the not so distant past offer quite nice historical accord as to how that works. There is usually no need for ministry of love at least not as much as Orwell showed in his book. The people do it all by themselves after initial push. There are then gatherings of apartment block committees during which the 'guilty' are found and shamed. At some point it is easier to stand up and point finger to oneself as the punishment may be less harsh if one denounce oneself. The minor abuse of the process for own purposes by some individuals was accepted by authorities of course. This in fact was also the process from which the word terror actually comes from - French Revolution. Denounce and behead - the most efficient policy ever. It has a chance to cover all evil people by removing the term 'false positive' from circulation. Nb the major parties in Germany (general elections in 6 weeks there) all agreed that they will not discuss any contentious subjects not to give 'haters' ammunition. So it works in some places already at the state level.
I have this sick feeling in my guts because of this. Not because I hate people so much (I have a list of individuals and ideologies of course as apparently everybody else). but because that is exactly what I was running away from when I chose to leave my communist society behind. The good thing is the shops are full of goods today. So there are differences. The political taboos have been reintroduced tho. I only hope that this goes away as any mass hysteria eventually does. The problem is - they tend to last shorter only if they are very brutal. Let us see however.
A side thought - if somebody needed to have an argument against google's almost monopoly then this one is best so far.
The problem I have with the data sources that may then be used by organizations like Google is that they inherently become subjective as all hell.
For example, if we were to use the definition of a "hate crime" as one where a group or organization engages in violent actions in order to create social change, you not only scoop up White Separatists, but you also scoop up many in the Civil Rights movement, who used violence to get change. You also scoop up the labor rights activists of the early 1900's who engaged in violence in order to promote social change.
So inherently the definition of a "hate crime" becomes inherently tied up in who is doing the hating and what is being hated.
A Westboro Church member punches a homosexual because of who he is, and of course it's a "hate crime." But a homosexual punches a Westboro Church member because of who he is--well, the fact pattern is exactly the same: A punches B because of who B is. But should that be classified as a hate crime?
It's why I'd like to see us do away with the whole concept of "hate crimes" and prosecute the underlying crime instead. And if you want social change badly enough you are willing to sacrifice your life (and become a prisoner for your actions) then so be it. The public can then judge if you're a martyr or a murderer based on the social currents rather than by overt definition.