86 Organizations Demand Zuckerberg To Improve Takedown Appeals (vice.com) 81
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: An open letter to Mark Zuckerberg signed by 86 organizations and published on Tuesday implores Facebook to provide a clear, fast mechanism that allows users to appeal instances of content takedowns and account deactivations. The letter which was spearheaded by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Article 19, Ranking Digital Rights, and the Center for Democratic Technology (CDT) -- expanded upon the Santa Clara Principles published earlier this year, which called for all social media platforms to improve its transparency and responsiveness to flagged posts and appeals for removed content.
In April of this year, Facebook launched appeals for posts that are removed on grounds nudity, hate speech, or graphic violence. The press release claims that one of Facebook's human content reviewers will review all appeals within 24 hours, and notify users if their appeal has been approved or denied. The open letter to Mark Zuckerberg also requests that all content takedown and deactivation appeals are reviewed by a human moderator, which Facebook claims that it already does. EFF Director of International Freedom of Expression, Jillian York, believes the undercurrent of content moderation on social media is the censorship or restriction of speech towards marginalized groups.
"There are accounts, [and] there is content that is taken down frequently from social media, and we don't hear those stories as much because they're often overshadowed by the pushes for hate speech to come down," York said. "I respect the people doing that work, I think it's really important. But really, the thing about appeals is they work in every case. So if someone breaks the rules for hate speech and they appeal, they're not gonna get their account restored. But if someone who should not have had their account taken down in the first place, appeals are the right solution to that."
In April of this year, Facebook launched appeals for posts that are removed on grounds nudity, hate speech, or graphic violence. The press release claims that one of Facebook's human content reviewers will review all appeals within 24 hours, and notify users if their appeal has been approved or denied. The open letter to Mark Zuckerberg also requests that all content takedown and deactivation appeals are reviewed by a human moderator, which Facebook claims that it already does. EFF Director of International Freedom of Expression, Jillian York, believes the undercurrent of content moderation on social media is the censorship or restriction of speech towards marginalized groups.
"There are accounts, [and] there is content that is taken down frequently from social media, and we don't hear those stories as much because they're often overshadowed by the pushes for hate speech to come down," York said. "I respect the people doing that work, I think it's really important. But really, the thing about appeals is they work in every case. So if someone breaks the rules for hate speech and they appeal, they're not gonna get their account restored. But if someone who should not have had their account taken down in the first place, appeals are the right solution to that."
Re:Hate speech = I don't agree with you, so shut u (Score:4, Insightful)
Hate speech is a legal term with two functions, depending on jurisdiction.
First is to make the punishment fit the crime. The law regards motivation as a factor in determining severity, and being motivated by racism or misandry etc merits harsher punishment. Thus the is a need to define the kind of speech that would convince a sentencing judge of that motivation.
Second is to recognise that some speech can do people real harm. The law seeks to address harm but must first recognise it.
It's a highly imperfect tool but if you want to get rid of it then it helps to understand why it exists.
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First is to make the punishment fit the crime. ...
No, it's not. The crime is the crime and the punishment should be proportionate. Cutting off someone's hand for theft, killing someone who insulted you, or wiping out an entire family line because they killed a member of your clan are examples if disproportionate punishment.
Adding extra punishment for what the person was thinking when he did it is punishing thought, not the crime. Up until now it's gone all one way but cultures can swing abruptly - do you really want to live in a culture that legitimizes
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For example, the difference between manslaughter and murder is intent and planning. The thoughts the person had are a factor in determining which crime was committed, and evidence such as acquiring a weapon in advance is used to infer them.
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Theft, fraud, speeding, manslaughter, negligence... Most crimes either are unrelated to or can be motivated by things other than hate.
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Greed springs from hate?
Hatecrime is defined as hatred of protected classes.
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Hatecrime is defined as hatred of protected classes.
Wouldn't putting some people in protected classes actually be hate against those left out or protected classes? You're literally telling them they have less value as humans...
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Everyone is part of a at least one protected class - gender. As for the others, don't be ridiculous.
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Wouldn't putting some people in protected classes actually be hate against those left out or protected classes? You're literally telling them they have less value as humans...
Nope. [wikipedia.org]
Usually, this is where I point out that you are either criminally stupid, mentally ill OR so desperate to try to defend hate speech that you seem to have a pathological need to goosestep around with a torch in one hand, while doing a "Look at me I'm a stupid who'll end up being called out on this FOREVER" salute with the other and at the same time crying like a little girl that you are being oppressed by minorities, women, small dogs etc. as you're marching your way out of the gene pool.
Usually.
Thankf
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Hate speech is a legal term with two functions, depending on jurisdiction.
Just to be clear, there is no "hate speech" under the 1st amendment. In before: Blah blah, "private companies", blah blah, "Europe".
Second is to recognise that some speech can do people real harm.
Sticking with the 1st amendment, speech is not recognized as harmful unless imminent lawless action [wikipedia.org] is involved.
"Hate speech", as used by censorious authoritarians, makes it difficult to criticize particular groups of people, regardless of how well-founded those criticisms may be.
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The constitution doesn't define "lawless action", the law does.
I'm not an expert on US law but the standard is "clear and present danger" according to Wikipedia (thanks for the link). So then the argument becomes what represents a clear and present danger, and the argument is that speech which does not direct immediate crimes but which does cause people to be justifiably fearful qualifies.
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the argument is that speech which does not direct immediate crimes but which does cause people to be justifiably fearful qualifies
By that standard, all political speech is hate speech.
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The law disagrees.
Rather than make silly arguments like that, why not look up some cases (Wikipedia is a good place to start) and see how it is applied, and then make an argument against one that you disagree with. There will be a detailed explanation of the decision in the judgement.
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Rather than make silly arguments like that, why not look up some cases (Wikipedia is a good place to start) and see how it is applied, and then make an argument against one that you disagree with.
Rather than just hand wave, why don't you look up cases and make an argument. I've already stated actual law and linked to Wikipedia. There is no recognized "hate speech" in the United States per the 1st Amendment.
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Yes, but as I pointed out, the law in the US does define hate speech.
Next time you get a speeding ticket try arguing that speeding isn't mentioned in the constitution.
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Yes, but as I pointed out, the law in the US does define hate speech.
No, you haven't. Section and code. I'll wait.
Next time you get a speeding ticket try arguing that speeding isn't mentioned in the constitution.
I'll refer to the constitution if anybody tries to give me a ticket for "hate speech", as the 1st amendment explicitly guarantees the right to free speech, and it's been upheld by the courts.
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Wikipedia has a good article with all the relevant laws and statistics for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
As you can see, hate crimes are legally defined, and speech can be a component or used as evidence of motivation.
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As you can see, hate crimes are legally defined, and speech can be a component or used as evidence of motivation.
That's not the same as "hate speech".
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Earlier I included speech that is used as evidence of hatred as motivation in the definition. If you have a different definition that's fine.
Re: Makes me laugh (Score:1)
I'm offended how you think it's funny that people are offended by offense.
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Offensitivity. [reddit.com]
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No, it's not. Incitements to violence are illegal, slander is illegal, and hate speech may be admitted as evidence that an associated crime is a hate crime, but "hate speech" itself is not a crime. 1st Amendment, y'know.
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Ah yes. The problem with rights is that all those awful people get them too. So we need to take them away so the awful people won't have them any more. That seems like a good start...
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The only people that hate Nazi speeches are Communists who act like Nazis to attack those Nazis.
They are both the same, using the same brownshirt tactics and demands to ideological purity. It's just that Nazis talked about racial purity, but Communists talk about ideological purity. Both are the same type of oppressive Fascists.
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Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Hate speech is not something you just hate to hear.
Unless it is a call to violence or an attempt to incite a riot, people are allowed to express their opinions, no matter how YOU hate it.
Opinions are like assholes, everyone has
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Yeah you are possibly right, it just seems like colleges today that used to be the bastions of the civil rights and free speech seem to be the center of the protect me from opinions I don't want to hear movement. Not all of the 'younger' generation are that way just a great many, and I should not generalize too much it makes me as bad as those I'm criticizing...
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Unless it is a call to violence or an attempt to incite a riot, people are allowed to express their opinions, no matter how YOU hate it.
That is not the standard, and you are emboldening shitlords by lying about it. The standard is whether you are attempting to incite violence. It doesn't have to be a riot.
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So I guess a call to violence isn't attempting to incite violence ? I wonder whether your ignorance is on purpose or you're trolling ? My 'lying; about it, I guess we are back to 'hate' speech as things YOU hate to hear...
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As much as I don't like it, Nazi speech is not only **legal** in the US, it's **constitutionally protected**. There must be something in it for them, hence a quid-pro-quo somewhere.
Who is playing ball with them?
The left reflexively opposes anything that Big Corporations do, including most recently the ones in Silicon Valley, except when such companies silence conservative speech. This is the one time you will see them (unless your social media account has already been banned) use the argument that free speech is only protected from censorship by governments.
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This is the one time you will see them (unless your social media account has already been banned) use the argument that free speech is only protected from censorship by governments.
Huh? That's all free speech is and can be. Any more protected and you're infringing on the equally important right people have to not listen.
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There are a lot of people who advocate free healthcare and free tuition without putting on black hoods and beating up people in peaceful political marches. Why does Antifa continue to get account and page space on Facebook while other people get banned just for objecting to this?
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Third-party Facebook censorship (Score:3)
In the past 2 years, I've had my account deactivated for a month THREE FUCKING TIMES just because a local colonialist newspaper did not like me calling off it’s condescending colonialist bullshit.
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This has always puzzled me. There's email, phones, texting, physical mail (which, granted, is much slower). There's loads of way to keep in touch with people in remote locations. Why does it have to be Facebook?
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This has always puzzled me. There's email, phones, texting, physical mail (which, granted, is much slower). There's loads of way to keep in touch with people in remote locations. Why does it have to be Facebook?
The demographic of older people who live overseas is more easily reachable for free on Facebook than by phone and even by email. This is true no matter where you live.
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Facebook is decidedly not free. It just doesn't cost money, and more insidiously, you never get any accounting of what it is costing you.
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Facebook is decidedly not free. It just doesn't cost money, and more insidiously, you never get any accounting of what it is costing you.
Old people on fixed incomes don't give a crap about the advertising side of the data privacy issue. It doesn't affect them in any case, because the first question on all those surveys we get bombarded with is "What is your age range?" As soon as you pull down 65+ from the combo list, it goes to the survey rejection screen. Advertisers have no interest in that demographic.
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Well based upon that, should not the organisations in question, simply stop using Facebook and if they feel the need, force their government at all levels from using Facebook in any way and at all levels force the public recommendation to not use Facebook and consider economic advertising actions against those using Facebook as an advertising platform. Now the question is, is Facebook as a corporation bad enough in terms of negative socio-economic impact, to justify it in court.
So the question has Facebook
Re: Third-party Facebook censorship (Score:2)
colonialist
There's actually an adjective for that; perhaps you should've paid more attention to the colonists' grammar lessons.
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Oh come on now. Just look at all those progressives rallying on Twitter saying that using your real name will cut down on abuse! See it's already working in your case, you're being abusive(sorry problematic) towards them and "suddenly" your account no longer works. Just look at all those sites that want you to comment/login/etc with using FB as a front end. I'm sure this will all work out well, they'll just make sure you're silenced and cheer about it like little authoritarian thugs that they really ar
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Colonialist? Wait, what?
COuld you reproduce your comments here so we could all read them? I've got a sneaking suspicion you're a weird political extremist.
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They deactivate mine for using fake datas years ago. They wanted proofs that it was me with my IDs. No thanks. Did you have to show them yours?
Bad grammer in headline (Score:2)
The word 'to' should not be there.
World vs the Web (Score:1)
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I think you have things backwards here. The EFF and the others are asking to make it easier to appeal if your content does get taken down. In other words, they want to make it easier to reverse or cancel a takedown.
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Shouldn't have posted before waking up. Totally missed the appeals part. I read it entirely also. Wow. Ok, sounds way more like EFF heh. Glad I donate.
Good to see they haven't lost their principles to social "justice" like the ACLU.
Claim for existing stuff (Score:2)