Facebook 'Hate Speech' Rules Protect Races And Sexes -- So, Yes, White Men Are Going To Be 'Protected'
from the sticking-up-for-whitey dept
ProPublica recently obtained some internal documents related to Facebook's hate speech moderation. Hate speech -- as applied to Facebook -- isn't a statutory term. Much of what Facebook removes is still protected speech. But Facebook is a private company and is able to remove whatever it wants without acting as a censorial arm of the government.
That being said, there's a large number of government officials around the planet who feel Facebook should be doing more to remove hate speech -- all of it based on very subjective views as to what that term should encompass.
It's impossible to make everyone happy. So, Facebook has decided to apply a set of rules to its moderation that appear to lead to completely wrong conclusions about what posts should be removed. A single image included in the ProPublica article went viral. But the explanation behind it did not. The rules Facebook uses for moderation lead directly to increased protections for a historically well-protected group.
[If you can't read/see the image, the slide says "Which of the below subsets do we protect?" with the choices being "female drivers," "black children," and "white men." The answer -- to the great internet consternation of many -- is: "white men."]
Given Facebook's general inability to moderate other forms of "offensiveness" (mainly female breasts) without screwing it all up, the answer to this quiz question seems like more Facebook moderation ineptitude. But there's more to it than this one question. The rest of the quiz is published at ProPublica and it shows the "white men" answer is, at least, internally consistent with Facebook's self-imposed rules.
Facebook must define "hate speech" before it can attempt to moderate it, since there are no statutes (at least in the United States) that strictly apply to this content. Here's how Facebook defines it:
Protected category + attack = hate speech
These are the protected categories:
- Sex
- Race
- Religious affiliation
- Ethnicity
- National origin
- Sexual orientation
- Gender identity
- Serious disability/disease
Here's what's not considered "protected" by Facebook:
- Social class
- Occupation
- Continental origin
- Political ideology
- Appearance
- Religions
- Age
- Countries
"White men" have both race and sex going for them. Any "attack" on white men can be deleted by Facebook. "Black children" only have race. Age is not a protected category. An attack on black men would be deleted but black children are, apparently, fair game. The same goes for white children. In the category "female drivers," only the "female" part is considered protected.
The quiz goes on to explain other facets of hate speech moderation. Calling for acts of physical violence against protected categories is hate speech. If any component of the group targeted is "unprotected," the call for violence will be allowed to stay online. The rules also cover "degrading generalization," "dismissive" speech, cursing, and slurs. If any of these target a protected class (or quasi-protected class, i.e., migrants whose nationality may be in flux), moderators can take down the posts. The QPCs have only slightly more protection than entirely unprotected classes, so they can receive more posted abuse before hate speech protections kick in.
These rules lead to all sorts of things that seem unfair, if not completely wrong:
In the wake of a terrorist attack in London earlier this month, a U.S. congressman wrote a Facebook post in which he called for the slaughter of “radicalized” Muslims. “Hunt them, identify them, and kill them,” declared U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican. “Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.”
Higgins’ plea for violent revenge went untouched by Facebook workers who scour the social network deleting offensive speech.
But a May posting on Facebook by Boston poet and Black Lives Matter activist Didi Delgado drew a different response.
“All white people are racist. Start from this reference point, or you’ve already failed,” Delgado wrote. The post was removed and her Facebook account was disabled for seven days.
Religions are unprotected. Races are. That's why this happens. At best, it would seem like both should be taken down, or the less violent of the two remain intact. But that's not the way the rules work. People who criticize Facebook's moderation efforts are asking for something worse than is already in place. To right the perceived wrongs of everything listed above, the rules would have to be replaced by subjectivity -- setting up every moderator, all over the world, with their own micro-fiefdom to run as they see fit. If people don't like it now, just wait until thousands of additional biases are injected into the mix.
That's the other issue: Facebook is a worldwide social platform. Protecting white men may seem pointless here in the US, but the United States isn't the only country with access to Facebook.
“The policies do not always lead to perfect outcomes,” said Monika Bickert, head of global policy management at Facebook. “That is the reality of having policies that apply to a global community where people around the world are going to have very different ideas about what is OK to share.”
This is the unfortunate byproduct of a job that's impossible to do to everyone's satisfaction. Blanket rules may seem dumb on a case-by-case basis, but the alternative would be even worse. If a company is going to proactively protect sexes and races, it's inevitably going to have to stand up for white men, even if the general feeling is white men are in no need of extra protection.
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Filed Under: filters, free speech, hate speech, moderation, rules, social media, white men
Companies: facebook
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As for others, shame them, mock them for their hate speech, for their racism, make them feel very ashamed and out of place but heck leave the platforms alone.
We need some really decentralized platform that nobody can moderate. Sure there will be hideous stuff in there but we need to learn how to live with such things and GO AFTER THE ONES PRODUCING IT either via what the law says or by flooding them with positive speech.
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for they have already abandoned conscience, calling it a weakness.
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It will never get them to change for one. They'll just dig in deeper whether they're wrong or not. The goal should be to help them see your point of view of what they said. Breeding hatred is only going to make the problem worse on both sides.
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These people need to see consequences to get it through their skulls. I'm not talking legal consequences, but ones where society tells them where to stick their backwards views.
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If you're going to have any "social justice", you have to protect everyone, not just create another disastrous pyramid of power where one group stomps on the head of another.
Religion is an idea. Ideas should evolve on their merits. People cannot change their genetics, but they can change their minds.
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Violence
Why does a call for violence against someone also have to include a protected class for it to be forbidden? Violence is an action and behavior, not speech. Wouldn't it be logical and rational to have a ban on that no matter who is target?
Apparently Facebook is saying it's okay to gin people to murder one person but not another based on the color of their skin?
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Re: Violence
>Apparently Facebook is saying it's okay to gin people to murder one person but not another based on the color of their skin?
Seems to be even stupider than that: don't go after the people for any of their "protected" features and you're OK. Even though the example provided should clearly be protected by their rules.
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Re: Re: Violence
That's not what the slides say. They say if you don't go after someone entirely for their "protected" features you're OK.
Easy workaround to make anything not count as hate speech: append a statement excluding infants from the group you're targeting. Then you've got one non-protected feature, so everything is fine.
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Re: Violence
Violence doesn't occur on Facebook, so how could they ban it? They can only ban, or not, speech about/advocating violence.
Only under the "hate speech" policy. A specific and credible threat would likely be removed by virtue of it being illegal, even if not classified as hate speech.
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Re: Violence
I mean, I myself am a pacifist, but even I would be kind of offended if someone was banned from somewhere for suggesting that maybe military action against ISIS would be a good thing to do, no matter my own stance on the issue.
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So basically, think of the children? In a less disingenuous way than say, politicians, usually go for it, but still... There's not enough "protecting" to go around, though? I'm pretty sure enough people, within and without Facebook will come to the defence of children anyway. Removing hate speech against white men shouldn't harm the children and they can still be protected just as well from hate speech against their ethnicity, nationality, race, etc and any combination of those.
What?! Maybe I have my terminology wrong, but isn't Muslim a "Religion Affiliation", which would be protected, to the unprotected "Religion" of Islam? (Protected and Unprotected, here, in the terms put forth in the article, of course) To my eyes it seems both statements in the example given should have been moderated by the existing rules.
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Detecting hate speech
The detection of "hate speech" with mostly automated machine learning or AI techniques (the only practical, scalable way to do this) , requires the problem to be learnable. If a group of reasonable human evaluators cannot substantially agree on what constitutes hate speech, then predictive models cannot be built to do so.
The author inadvertently provided a perfect example at the end of the article:
I do not believe for a moment our author intended this statement to be racist or sexist, but I'm certain many intelligent people would disagree.
If intelligent, well-meaning people cannot agree, how is a machine learning model going to sort it out?
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Re: Detecting hate speech
If nobody can agree on the definition of hate speech, let alone when and how it's harmful...?
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That's now among the most racist things I've ever read or heard.
Racism is self-perpetuating. If we stop inciting people to racism then it will eventually die out. Mostly. Posts like the above do nothing to help that, quite the opposite in fact. Consider this: If racism is frequently on your mind you are more than likely the bigger racist. Not everything bad that happens to you is due to racism no matter what color your skin is. Thinking that it is means you are the racist.
The problem starts at home. If you want change then BE the change, don't feed into the problem.
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Even Tim Cushing's article seeks to victimize white men. Notice the obvious click bait article title. I don't fault Facebook for this. It's time that we stop victimizing everybody, not just a small segment of our society.
If you ask me, we should be turning that hatred to those very people, groups or organizations who are on such an obvious "let's turn our hatred toward ALL white men".
Why don't we prosecute, to the fullest extent of the law, celebrities who threaten the life of the president of this country instead of giving them a slap on the wrist. Prosecute Kathy Griffith and Madonna. Any normal person would be arrested, tossed in jail, prosecuted and locked up in a federal prison. If these groups are so intent on acting hateful toward white men, then maybe it's time to show them what being a victim is about.
You know.
Lock them in a room with Chanty Binx, the self proclaimed Queen Bitch of Nazi Feminism (or is that fascism).
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"Race and sex"
And age: children wouldn't normally be included in this group. So, by the Facebook rules, "white men" wouldn't actually be protected because an unprotected category is present.
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Yet somehow we managed to make it work, even in the most divisive and emotionally charged discussion groups.
There is one major difference in Usenet's vs. Facebook's approaches. In Usenet, each one of us basically self-censored the content that reached our newsreaders so we would not have to see the things we didn't want to see. In Facebook, Big Brother Zuckerberg decides what content is fit for our eyes to see.
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Sticks and stones
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Re: Sticks and stones
Stalking laws are exactly this, and amazingly, even "attempted stalking" is a commonly charged "thought" "crime" -- which is basically all about making a person feel like she is being stalked (and thus fearful of being assaulted or murdered, even if those fears are unfounded) but without there being the presence of actions that fit the legal definition of stalking.
Co-worker sexual harassment is another common (and generally expensive) "feelings" violation. The list these days is endless.
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How does that make you feel?
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Triggered
I have already taken advantage of the assorted account settings to unfriend, unfollow, and block bigoted people from my social circle; I also set my visibility to prevent these unsavory types from directly reaching or looking in on me. Please do not censor anyone because not only would I prefer to determine whether or not I wish to keep someone in my social circle by seeing the supposed "hate-speech" and the context it was used, but I do not want to unknowingly associate with someone whose vulgar posts have been scrubbed away like they never happened. Facebook may be forced to do this in other nations, but the US prefers self-defense.
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On the other hand
And those smug people who want to rub their happiness in my face, announcing engagements, pregnancies, or worst of all- sharing pics of their tropical vacations with them shamelessly posing in a swimsuit- I will go postal if I have to look at one more "happy" announcement. So purge that stuff from my view because it offends me and forces me to binge on oreos, ben & jerrys, and cheap wine.
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The algorithm is not just producing outrageous results, it's downright stupid.
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