“Men Are Scum”: Inside Facebook's War on Hate Speech

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-facebook-war-on-hate-speech

by circuithunter • 7 years ago

13 2 7 years ago

No private corporation should have this much power. It just seems bonkers to me that some people in a board meeting in Menlo Park or whatever are trying to determine whether a post by some gal on the internet saying "men are scum" should be considered hate speech or not.

This is NOT the "world wide" web I signed up for.

#DeleteFacebook

seatdrummer• 7 years ago

That means statements like “black people are monkeys” and “Koreans are the scum of the earth” are subject to removal. But then, so is “men are trash.”
See the problem? If you remove dehumanizing attacks against gender, you may block speech designed to draw attention to a social movement like #MeToo. If you allow dehumanizing attacks against gender, well, you’re allowing dehumanizing attacks against gender. And if you do that, how do you defend other “protected” groups from similar attacks?

I'm not sure if the author is taking a pretty objective approach to the problem and therefore considering all possibilities, or if they really unironically believe what's stated in the second paragraph, but in any case, especially the latter, I am shocked about this line of thinking.

The dissonance between how you would like to treat men, and how you would like to treat women and how you believe all genders should be treated the same versus the second paragraph should be the end of the argument.

The fact that a conversation like this even takes place is absurd. It's lawyering a way apply restrictions on one group while making another group exempt from the rule. The motivations are clear, how can a company even entertain these ideas, let alone implement them.

“Men Are Scum”: Inside Facebook's War on Hate Speech

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