Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/389297/tech-companies-and-17-govts-sign-up-to-christchurch-call

by _mgr • 7 years ago

122 233 7 years ago

rnz.co.nz

kken• 7 years ago

More internet censorship?

mr_spothawk• 7 years ago

I guess they're not going to ban content that glorifies war, though? That would be a bridge too far.

cf4984• 7 years ago

Dont be mad, the military is paying quite a bit for advertisement.

basetop4• 7 years ago

Of course not. They are going to promote it. They are going to give the pro-war "authoritative sources" preferential treatment.

It's funny how so many of the pro-censorship comments here reference ISIS. These same people would defend the pro-war news companies which has spread false propaganda leading to illegal wars that killed millions of innocents in the past few decades.

If these companies are going to censor "extremism", then they should start with the "authoritative sources".

cprayingmantis• 7 years ago

salawat• 7 years ago

The Aristocrats!

jamsch• 7 years ago

[removed]

seany2• 7 years ago

This is horrifying

happytoexplain• 7 years ago

Why? I'm honestly surprised by the brevity of your comment and by how strong your opinion apparently is in one direction.

cf4984• 7 years ago

It is organized censorship across a large part of media people use to communicate today. As a cooperation between governments and those companies.

It really doesnt need more then OPs comment, this is abhorrent. Its quite a big step towards an authoritarian society and the transformation into dictatorships.

In hindsight the generation of the anti-authoritarian left growing up after the fall of the USSR got rather careless with authoritarian tendencies on the left. Lessons learned my ass, here we go again.

seany2• 7 years ago

Imagine the rules that are codified because of this being used by people to ideologically disagree with. Generally laws are very _very_ hard to get rid of.

ploika5• 7 years ago

Live streaming murder is horrifying.

fwn• 7 years ago

I thought that (as an example) the pioneering video recording of the Vietnam war was essentially in shaping the US American public opinion on the war matter. I could be wrong, but it wasn't seen as something horrifying back then.

It's of course the actual murder which is horrifying.

The problem isn't the documentation, but how we as a global society chooses to work with those documents.

I'm not particularly deep into the issue, but I feel there must be something between glorifying it in some engagement-metric heavy filter bubble and making it an agenda to purge whole vaguely defined categories of content from the internet.

acct17712• 7 years ago

Being completely disconnected from the killings you sponsor with your taxes is horrifying.

ausbah2• 7 years ago

Everyone decried censorship, but always fails to provide an alternative to try and stop extremism online.

Kalium3• 7 years ago

What kind of alternative would you like to see? How do you propose to evaluate if it's preferable to censorship?

ausbah2• 7 years ago

That's the thing, I can't recommend an alternative other than censorship. All I know is that violent extremist groups or identities like ISIS, white nationalism, and others can be linked in part to a good chunk of the mass shootings and other acts of mass violence that many parts of the world have experienced over the past 10-15 years.

devmunchies2• 7 years ago

I don't know that you can prevent hostility after combining large groups of people from different cultures. Maybe throttle the stream of immigrants from different cultures so people can assimilate?

Better than censorship.

BonesJustice2• 7 years ago

What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness.

solotronics• 7 years ago

Extremism seemt to match up closely with an opinion that is opposite those in power.

sonnyblarney2• 7 years ago

Well, broadcasting your massacre of 20 people online would be one kind of 'extremism'.

So there's that.

Surely it can get tricky (and it will) but we have to do something. This is not new, we always have. Every nation has some kind of hate law, applied one way or another.

anigbrowl5• 7 years ago

Is it, though? https://www.amazon.com/Extremism-MIT-Press-Essential-Knowled...

fzeroracer• 7 years ago

I'm going to take a swing at your argument from a different angle, so follow along for a second. How do you define an immigrant?

The reason why I bring this up is because I've often seen people embracing laws or actions targeting immigrants, but isn't this in effect the same slippery slope as attempting to define extremism when we talk about free speech? Especially as immigration law is often expanded over time, encroaching on the rights of 'citizen' (a term which is also eroded over time) as we define a secondary class of people of which your typical rights do not apply to.

If we want to play the definition game, the exact definition of the word 'immigrant' depends entirely on the ruling class, ergo makes laws affecting immigrants equally as likely to cause the slippery slope effect as laws that affect extremists.

basetop4• 7 years ago

I rather live with the remote threat of extremism rather than live in a censored world.

Would you rather live in North Korea with no extremism?

You have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than dying from extremism and yet you'd give up your right to free speech for some remote threat?

That kind of thinking is the cause of north korea and nazi germany. Authoritarians always use remote threats to justify taking your rights away.

adbge• 7 years ago

It's also produced Singapore.

ploika5• 7 years ago

That's a pretty silly example. North Korea is North Korea precisely because of the extremism.

bilbo0s2• 7 years ago

You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than dying from extremism...

I know this is pedantic, but you got me curious so I went to check the numbers.

Odds of death in mass shooting (US only): 1 in 11,125

Odds of death by lightning strike (US only): 1 in 161,831

So it seems that it's actually a lot more likely for an American to die in a mass shooting than it is for us to die in lightning strikes.

Edit:

Sorry. The source was the National Safety Council, National Center for Health Statistics, and the Cato Institute.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mass-shooting-gun-statistics...

snarf21• 7 years ago

Okay, I'll bite. Here is an alternative. Make it illegal for any "news" agency to publicly name the group or individual that commits any "terrorist" act. Make it a multi-million dollar fine per instance. We need to stop giving these people their 15 minutes of fame or infamy. All coverage must be about the victims only.

We also need to collectively care about stopping extremism with other approaches. One thing that is that most people who commit these heinous acts have reached a point where their lives have to perceived value. They are then easily radicalized. (See blue collar America blaming all their jobs lost to automation on Mexicans) People who have money for their family and are generally happy don't go around killing for some cause. Addressing wealth inequality can help.

The challenge of supporting this kind of "good censorship" is always who will watch the watchers? What passes for terrorism in the US is different than in a country like Russia or North Korea or .... A lot of people (even in the US) are very careful about what they post on socials. What happens if people who attack a certain viewpoint or organization are suddenly declared "evil" and the cause of all our ills? Is someone on a bowling team with a closet Nazi or KKK member also guilty? You only need to look back at McCarthyism to see how easily "good" people can be weaponized into something terrible.

pnw_hazor• 7 years ago

Great plan. All it takes is a government to designate a group as terrorists and any mention of them results in mega-fines.

nit- Among others, neither the 9/11 gang nor the Christchurch shooter were poor.

tathougies7• 7 years ago

That is unconstitutional in most countries, because you have a right to a public trial. In the United States, it's especially illegal, since the press has a right to free reporting, including public trial.

The danger here is the government starting to weaponize this 'freedom', by designating mundane crimes as 'terrorism' and then holding secret trials. Given that this is precedented, and leads to significantly worse outcomes (including full-on genocide), it seems that it's probably better to just accept that there will be mass shootings. After all, even adding up all the mass shootings in the world, you will still not come close to the slaughter's perpetrated by governments holding secret trials of dissidents

uabstraction• 7 years ago

Moderating discussion forums is not censorship.

commandlinefan• 7 years ago

It is, by definition, censorship. It's not _government_ censorship, but it's still censorship.

incompatible3• 7 years ago

Ironically, I've rarely seen a thread with so much downvoting as this one. Is trying to grey-out a post the same as wanting to censor it? I just went through and upvoted most of the posts that were grey.

75dvtwin• 7 years ago

I was thinking about it. Making up filters to filter other people expression, using rules that are not explicitly enumerated in Governing laws -- is selective censorship.

Making up speech/expression filters that are explicitly enumerated by governing laws, is censorship too -- but this one is not 'selective', instead it is mandated.

So the opposition that people have on these topics, is towards 'selective censorship', not the 'mandated' one.

The next argument for 'selective sensorship' -- is that a private business can make up their own rules.

My view is, yes, private business can -- but then, the content where selective-censorship was applied, cannot be available publicly without a fee.

So, if Facebook wants to do selective-censorship, then ok --

however, that filtered content should be available only to people who selected to participate in explicit business relationship with Facebook.

odiroot• 7 years ago

The bigger problem is how selective is stopping the extremism in many venues. This is really worrying.

Here in Germany it's very popular to talk about, chastise and silence "Nazis" (be it real or assumed), which sort of makes sense knowing Germany's history. From my perspective -- of a Slav whose people were exterminated en masse by real Nazis.

At the same time various, frequently militant, extremists (e.g. anarchists, AntiFas, Islamists) are allowed to speak their mind, openly recruit and even spread calls to violence against their political opponents.

Mind you, Wahhabist groups were literally spreading their message just a few years ago (still in 2017) in front of shopping malls here in Berlin.

qball3• 7 years ago

Here in Germany it's very popular to talk about, chastise and silence "Nazis" (be it real or assumed), which sort of makes sense knowing Germany's history.

And yet it doesn't even prevent the core of the problem, which is that the supreme law of the land is easily abusable as a weapon once the Nazis get in power (and if the German economy tanks to the point where people can no longer buy bread for a day's work, which was true in the Weimar Republic, they will).

Anti-speech laws have never been about stopping Nazis. It's all about the feeling that they stop Nazis, which (especially in majoritarian-biased politics) is all that really matters.

atoav5• 7 years ago

Mind you, Wahhabist groups were literally spreading their message just a few years ago (still in 2017) in front of shopping malls here in Berlin.

So do Neo-Nazis quite regularily. But the problem runs deeper. I find it acceptable for a society to say, that it doesn't want certain types of messages to be brought forward. E.g. if your political message is to basically disallow any other political message other than your own, why should society tolerate your message? Or if you are going in all inflamatory and start to divide people and spell out goals of genozide – why would any society that wants to remain civilized not in some form penalize that kind of behaviour?

As much as I am for free speech, censorship in any form (be it your collegues who stop interacting with you because of your shitty ideas) fulfilled certain societal functions and a lot of the change we saw in the recent years has also to do with the fact, that this censorship is not only gone, but the polar oposite: 30 years ago extreme opinions would have drowned out in the sea of mainstream opinions.

Today we have digital systems that penalize mainstream opinions and reward extreme opinions on the fringes. This leads to entirely different discourses and also ultimately to the need of more censorship to retain social stability.

The crucial question is how this censorship looks like once it comes (and it will).

cf4984• 7 years ago

The "Lies" group giving out Qurans got banned a few years ago and groups on the left are still regularly hit with §129 trials and cant be employed in the public sector. The AFD is far from being silenced or even prosecuted. They are a far right party and that is pointed out. I dont think there is a miss characterization. And not even Pegida marches are prosecuted or banned. People on the right being prosecuted are the same old nazis as before. Groups and parties like the NPD, the Unsterbliche group or the DritteWeg who run around in uniforms with illegal torchlight marches shouting for a return of national socialism.

sixplusone• 7 years ago

So "we must do something, this is something, we must do it"?

My lack of an alternative doesn't make your idea good.

atoav5• 7 years ago

If your bad idea is better than doing nothing and nobody can come up with something better, you could do it.

The problem is youtubes recommendation algorithm, which rides users ever deeper into weirder and more outrageous videos, if they are susceptible to it. It's a bit like balancing on a knifes edge, and that very system feeds directly into those generating revenue from it. It is a system that rewards cheap outrageous lies over intelligent and balanced truths.

In today's age where every truth will be declared to be just an opinion while every opinion will be presented as the truth, we don't need such a social experiment.

stcredzero6• 7 years ago

Everyone decried censorship, but always fails to provide an alternative to try and stop extremism online.

The same as always. Criticize it. Maintain our freedoms. Continue to live as free people. It's only when we sacrifice our freedoms for security that the terrorists win. Unfortunately, we have been doing exactly the wrong thing by dribs and drabs for going on 2/3rds of a century now.

xfitm3• 7 years ago

You can’t stop it.

sadris3• 7 years ago

Saudi Arabia considers athiesm to be extremist. Many people consider child mutilation ("gender surgery") to be extremism. Some people consider Zionism to be extremism. Some people consider border security to be extremism. Some people consider abortion restrictions to be extremism.

So now, what is extremism?

mortenjorck• 7 years ago

This is a very hard problem that YouTube and Facebook made for themselves by becoming the world’s largest advertising platforms. They depend on engagement for ad revenue, they designed world-class algorithms to promote this engagement, and it turned out that extremist content happens to be very engaging.

And so the problem is, building an algorithm that blindly promotes whatever keeps users on the site, for all its complexity, is a far more tractable problem compared to building a system that can avoid promoting content that promotes violence. In the meantime, they throw armies of people at the problem, to moderate content and respond to user reports, but it’s a losing battle.

They had the technology to create a monster, but don’t have the technology to stop it.

rcoveson• 7 years ago

They had the technology to create a monster, but don’t have the technology to stop it.

At first I was going to argue that they could stop it and that they did have the "technology" to do so, but the more I thought about it the more I concluded that in the system we have built, they really cannot. Profitable ideas are unstoppable until they are proved less profitable than some other idea, or regulated out of existence. Fiduciary duty enshrines this into law. Sufficient competition ensures that it is the only winning strategy.

Obligatory SSC: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

astrange• 7 years ago

Facebook doesn't have fiduciary duties to anyone, unless they're registered financial advisors.

deogeo2• 7 years ago

Fiduciary duty enshrines this into law.

A common misconception: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

kragen6• 7 years ago

Suppose you have two video-sharing platforms which use basically the same recommendation algorithms (etc.) to keep people engaged and clicking on videos, and they're equally effective — except that one of them censors recommendations based on some political criteria, for example, being "extremist", such as whoever the modern equivalent of Martin Luther King is. Let's call the censored platform "JedgarTube" and the other one "MLKTube", for lack of better terms. There are a couple of possibilities:

1. Those recommendations were actually less effective at keeping people engaged than whatever recommendations replace them on JedgarTube. In that case, MLKTube needs to copy the decision in order not to lose users gradually to JedgarTube. In fact, whichever platform blocks those recommendations first will experience improved user growth and engagement. Essentially the recommendations were just a bug of a primitive recommendation algorithm.

2. Those recommendations were actually more effective at keeping people engaged than whatever recommendations replace them on JedgarTube. In that case, JedgarTube will gradually lose users to MLKTube, again, assuming the platforms are otherwise equal.

Of course, the truth is that any particular censorship decision could fall into either #1 or #2. The #1 censorship decisions will be copied by MLKTube, if they aren't too incompetent or principled, while the #2 decisions will gradually accumulate into a competitive disadvantage for eyeballs at JedgarTube.

That's why the media platforms and government censors are trying to set up a global censorship system — whichever platform steps up first to be JedgarTube will lose viewers to whoever's censorship implementation is a step or two behind.

Note that none of this logic depends on normative judgments such as "extremist content is bad", "extremist content is good", "people should have freedom of speech", "people shouldn't have freedom of speech", "platforms shouldn't manipulate people with algorithmic recommendations", "algorithmic recommendations are good for people", or anything like that. It's purely reasoning about objective causes and effects about people's behavior, although I've chosen my terms to weaken the evident bias against "extremism" in this discussion so readers can reason about these causes and effects instead of being thrown around by their emotional biases.

stcredzero6• 7 years ago

The market isn't going to do what we want, so we're going to implement it using centralized power instead.

I didn't elect these big companies to censor the public discourse, and it's highly disturbing that they're working hand in hand with the government to do this.

Note that none of this logic depends on normative judgments

The "logic" depends on the normative judgement that what would result from a free market would be bad. There have been too few big players doing too much meddling and manipulation of the markets contained within their walled gardens to know whether that would be the case or not.

bsder• 7 years ago

They had the technology to create a monster, but don’t have the technology to stop it.

They don't have the incentive to stop it.

All you have to do is make posting have an actual price, no matter how nominal, and most of this goes away.

Unfortunately for their profits, it will wipe out 90+% of their user base. And it will kill virality cold (you won't forward something to your whole address book if it costs you a dollar).

ocdtrekkie• 7 years ago

The other incentive option is to charge the platform for the violation. Aka, remove Section 230. If the platform was to be charged for posting dangerous content, the platform would magically be able to largely prevent it overnight.

skybrian2• 7 years ago

Except that advertisers are not interested in sponsoring extremist content, so you could argue the incentives go in the other direction.

kragen6• 7 years ago

YouTube permits a lot of demonetized videos they don't dare to sell advertising on, or (previously) that YouTubers wouldn't give permission to sell advertising on, because the alternative of erasing the videos would send the YouTubers and their viewers to DailyMotion or Vimeo. As long as the demonetized viewers occasionally watch a non-demonetized video, or the sometimes-demonetized YouTubers occasionally make non-demonetized videos, YouTube makes more money that way.

ehmish• 7 years ago

The approach seems fairly reasonable, it sounds like it's limited to explicitly violent extremist content, and it's being done using pension funds of various governments in a activist investment manner to try to bring about changes

basetop4• 7 years ago

Historically, a combined effort by corporate and government interests to take away your rights was called fascism. But I guess if it is the far left doing it, it's okay.

ploika5• 7 years ago

Not a single one of those signatories is far left. The overwhelming majority are centre right.

And historically, efforts to curb uncritical airtime for violent and dangerous people have been fairly common (albeit not entirely uncontroversial). Neither Ireland nor the UK were ever far left or fascist but RTÉ and the BBC both heavily restricted interviews with loyalist and republican paramilitaries during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Joakal• 7 years ago

What's the difference between left and right?

The old definition was about republic vs monarchy. Now everyone keeps using those labels. Conservative? Right wing. Socially conservative? Right wing. Economically conservative. Left wing. Weird!

Authoritative government that's socially conservative; Venezuela. Wait what? Thought they were labelled far left?

Left and right labels are pointless, refer to the parties for what they represent; social conservatives; authoritarian; etc

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left–right_political_spectru...

EdwardDiego5• 7 years ago

Who is far left in this? Jacinda Ardern represents a centre-left coalition government.

not_a_moth• 7 years ago

Preventing viral spreading of the videos I think is unquestionably ideal, but there's also a section in this "Call" stating another goal, to "Counter the drivers of terrorism ... to resist ideology and narratives... through education and building media literacy..." [some words removed so the message is less hidden]. It's hard not to suspect political motivation, given that Internet platforms are turf wars for politics these days.

JudgeWapner2• 7 years ago

Imagine the next "favorite" presidential candidate that has $1.4 billion in corporate funding. But late in the game it seems like the people may actually vote for her opponent. What is this corporate money to do? Why, implicate her opponent's followers in some kind of "terrorist" act and get their forum taken down due to the "call" and "lessons learned from the tragedy"

m0zg2• 7 years ago

Yeah, this is not a slippery slope at all, no sir. And the real extremists will just use Tor.

cf4984• 7 years ago

The police in Germany already proposed to ban Tor as its "really not needed in western democracies".

m0zg2• 7 years ago

Laying down the groundwork for the Fourth Reich, I see. 30 years down the road someone gets elected who really doesn't want to go when the term is up. If things are well bolted down by then, they could stay indefinitely by simply sending people to jail for "extremism". It's as if history doesn't teach people anything at all, even recent history of less than 100 years ago.

deogeo2• 7 years ago

"Never let a good crisis go to waste"

mooseburger2• 7 years ago

Utterly nonsensical. You don't need the internet to be radicalized, people have been willing to kill in the name of their convictions for as long as humans have existed. I predict even if somehow every white supremacist were booted off the internet, no lives at all would be saved, as they just don't need the internet to kill people, or to learn to hate.

This is purely giving up rights for the sake of security theatre.

standardUser• 7 years ago

You don't accept that the internet has enabled people with obscure and extreme views to better find each other, legitimize each other, spread their views and recruit others to their causes?

stcredzero6• 7 years ago

better find each other, legitimize each other, spread their views and recruit others to their causes?

It's allowed everyone to do that. That's why we have more acrimony today. Allow a level playing field, and the violent stupid losers will lose. Start taking away people's rights, and you've only given those toxic people a pretext. (Which is exactly what the Christchurch shooter was trying to do.)

mooseburger2• 7 years ago

No, I don't. Neo-nazis have always existed, have always killed people, and have always been very few. Same for any other group you care to name. Violence overall is on a down trend.

prolepunk2• 7 years ago

Please provide evidence of your assumptions to back up your very strongly stated assertion.

ploika5• 7 years ago

Why should the web be treated any different to radio or TV?

A cable news channel doesn't get carte blanche to broadcast uncensored beheading or mass shooting videos at any hour of the day so why should a website not be obliged to take steps to curb the exact same thing?

shiado• 7 years ago

Considering that religious speech and the guiding religious books are often completely intolerant of all other views of the world and can thus be considered extremist, it would appear that such an agreement could ironically cause the censorship of the very religion that was brutally targeted in these attacks. Or perhaps they have specific censorship goals in mind? Think of the result in Alabama just yesterday, it is abundantly clear that Christianity as an ideology causes real tangible harm to women and ought to be completely scrubbed from social media.

beachy• 7 years ago

I would be interested to know what the technical difficulties are in scrubbing a banned video, and all derivatives, from a Facebook.

Are there practical AI/video analysis techniques to detect that a video contains a fragment of another video? Surely.

aeternus• 7 years ago

There are, YouTube has a fairly effective algorithm that is used primarily to remove copyright-infringing content:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_ID_(algorithm)

elken2• 7 years ago

The Christchurch shooter amassed a cache of weapons, and also posted a copy of his manifesto and a link to his real Facebook account to 4chan.

The censorship/Facebook algorithms amplifying abhorrent content debate is one thing but I'm surprised by the lack of scrutiny of the security services over this. Especially for a member of the 5 Eyes. I can't help but feel this could have been prevented without any of the changes being proposed.

LilBytes2• 7 years ago

4Chan and LiveLeak have both been blocked (via DNS) in Australia and New Zealand. So, the scrutiny albeit region specific has occurred.

elken2• 7 years ago

I don't think you understood my point. Blocking websites is not scrutiny of the intelligence services.

I'm saying an individual with weapons doxed himself and telegraphed his intentions on a public forum and the security services completely missed it.

That could all have been be picked up without any new laws or intervention from Facebook. We need to analyse how it was missed and learn from it.

0xADEADBEE• 7 years ago

Just to expand on this a little bit, it is contingent on ISP and as far as I know, the following websites:

- voat.co

- 4chan.org

- 8ch.net

- liveleak.com

- archive.is

- bitchute.com

- zerohedge.com

- kiwifarms.net

I think I'm right in saying that Telstra, Optus and Vodafone are the 'Big Three', and they have blocked the above.

Here in NZ, It's Vodafone, Spark and 2 Degrees, all of whom, I understand, blocked access, though I've been unable to verify this first-hand.

There are also hefty prison sentences [0] (up to 14 years) and fines for people who read/distributed the manifesto and watched/shared the original footage.

Edit: More comprehensive block-list can be found here: [1]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/world/asia/new-zealand-at...

[1] https://www.citizensagainstidiocracy.com/93/internet-censors...

mr_toad• 7 years ago

And according to my kids ‘everyone’ at school uses VPNs.

The only people who don’t have access to these sites are the people who don’t want to see it.

EdwardDiego5• 7 years ago

The Royal Commission of Inquiry is just beginning and will specifically focus on what the relevant agencies did, or failed to do.

pryce3• 7 years ago

One of the questions the public is asking them is why White Supremacy is not mentioned in 10 years of NZ SIS and GCSB reports. For readers unfamiliar with the agencies involved, the NZ SIS is NZ's domestic intelligence agency, whereas the GCSB is ostensibly focused on foreign intelligence.

roca9• 7 years ago

AFAIK (and according to Wikipedia) the manifesto was only posted "minutes before the attacks began".

There wasn't any system for gun tracking that would let any agency detect he was amassing a cache. That is likely to change.

scottlocklin2• 7 years ago

It's almost like they give more of a shit about people posting things on the internet than some looney slaughtering 51 people.

EdwardDiego5• 7 years ago

That looney was radicalised on the Internet, by a subset of Internet culture.

hyperdunc• 7 years ago

According to his manifesto the largest factor was a visit to France, not online activity.

sadris3• 7 years ago

He explicitly said visiting Paris and Turkey radicalized him.

dredds3• 7 years ago

- he posted on sites which were considered targets. - he posted a manifesto online (it's been censored in NZ) - he livestreamed the act (also censored) - his attack has been referenced by subsequent attacks (this was his goal) - he wants to use the courts as a platform (our media has voluntarily agreed to censor proceedings) - he said his rights are being infringed by not having phone and other communication (his "rights" need to be weighed against all the dead and injured) - other groups want to politicize and publicize his agenda (should they be censored?)

His efforts to use the web as a platform for inciting hate and further violence led to our government's response. If the US President incites hate and violence via Twitter we would be having the same discussion no?

55555• 7 years ago

The idea of censoring his manifesto is strange to me. You'd think people would just want to argue the points brought up in his manifesto on their merits and win mindshare that way.

rgbrenner2• 7 years ago

If the US President incites hate and violence via Twitter we would be having the same discussion no?

No. We might be having a conversation about the inappropriateness of such comments, but we have no laws against hate speech. In fact, a sitting president can call for imminent violence against a person or group (which is illegal) and the only recourse would be impeachment or waiting until the next election (he can be prosecuted after his removal though). So there wouldn't be much we could do if the US President did call for violence.

alfiedotwtf2• 7 years ago

Why should the likes of Fox News be exempt

Barrin92• 7 years ago

I don't think they are. Fox News as slanted as it is, doesn't endorse terrorism or anything along these lines the way some internet communities or message boards do.

There's really no comparison between even the worst tabloid newspaper and some of the stuff that festers on the internet.

alfiedotwtf2• 7 years ago

doesn't endorse terrorism

The use propaganda to make people support the war effort against the Middle East. Ask people in the Middle East who the terrorists are.

CodiePetersen8• 7 years ago

This just sounds like a giant can of worms that is going to blow up in people's faces. Remove for a moment any potential future government alignments, just so we aren't talking about hypothetical fictitious governments. Let's just examine the governments currently signed to it.

Indonesia has harsh religious laws, crack downs on illegal reporting, and literally raids on LGBTQ gatherings. The Senegal government arbitrarily arrests dissidents, the LGTBQ community has to hide because it's illegal, and protests are outlawed. India already overuses counter terrorism laws to charge dissidents and activists and there are religious minorities that suffer heavily from discrimination.

This type of call to action will only further entrench government strangles over freedom of speech. Now people have given them moral authority to curb an already very broad and ambiguous category of terrorists and now extremists. Sure I get it, there is a bunch of vile on the internet and the world would be a better place without it. But my "better place without it" is different from somebody else's and so is the "it". This won't end up like what is in your head.

The hate isn't "spreading through social media" the hate and the fear were already there. These people grew up with it. Social, cultural, religious, sexual, moral borders, you name it, every border we have is being rewritten and when you rewrite those borders, especially this quickly, people are gonna get scared, they're gonna lash out, and because of it more people are getting scared and want to control one of the most powerful tools to freedom.

endorphone2• 7 years ago

"Let's just examine the governments currently signed to it."

You picked three. How about Australia, Canada, European Commission, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom. Are you going to examine those? Most of those are the most free, most protective countries.

"The hate isn't "spreading through social media" the hate and the fear were already there."

There has always been hate. There have always been incredibly ignorant beliefs like flat Earth, anti-vaccine, etc. Usually it is isolated and the community -- the village -- keeps it in check and provides a pressure valve. Social media, however, allows us to surround ourselves with a bubble that makes us think that it's normal if not somehow heroic, our graph of similarly extreme believing people cementing our resolve. That guy who became curious and got some bad information isn't being reasoned with by rational people, he's being indoctrinated by a distributed group that only reinforced their own beliefs.

It absolutely has made the problem worse in otherwise reasonable societies.

CodiePetersen8• 7 years ago

"Are you going to examine those? Most of those are the most free, most protective countries."

I could I suppose go over more of them. The point though, that I was making when I mentioned in exempting fictitious future governments, is that it can be used NOW by real governments. Sure there will be nations that don't abuse it indefinitely, but you can't ensure a governments intent 5 years from now let alone 50. There are plenty of cases I could see in some of those nations where it could be used against the people that may be less black and white, like organization efforts for the yellow vest protests being censored and removed or any peaceful protest that could get out of hand for that matter. Or maybe even Google and Facebook making anti-tech protests less visible because black bloc may show up.

"There have always been incredibly ignorant beliefs like flat Earth, anti-vaccine, etc. Usually it is isolated and the community -- the village -- keeps it in check and provides a pressure valve."

Well for one the idea of a "non geocentric universe" literally had a man burned at the stake for blasphemy, people were burned as witches, religious wars were all over the planet, so the problem isn't technology, it's humans. And I'd argue the only thing that has made us more tolerant is the freedom of information, the freedom of speech, and the exposure to ideas. Debate changes minds, telling them to stay hermits doesn't. Not only does it not change minds though, as others have pointed out, in this age, the intolerant will spread their message somehow some way.

I would also argue, that the bubble you are talking about doesn't have much to do with the ability to connect and instead has more to do with the way social media has designed their platforms. They are just like casinos. Just look at twitter. There is no down thumb, only likes and views. So you don't get the "oh you lose" social cue, you only get the flashy bling of increasing likes and views. In normal society you get a disgusted look or ridiculing laughs to tell you if you are saying something unacceptable in public. But that's not how "social" media works. And I think that specific point is what needs to be worked on. So I think we might have a common agreement in that at least. But I still think censoring is the wrong way to go. Just let the world see the true social acceptance score and I think you will see a lot of that isolation of bad ideas.

rudedogg• 7 years ago

It absolutely has made the problem worse in otherwise reasonable societies.

I'm genuinely curious, has it really? I wonder if it's just more widely reported?

I tried looking up terrorism statistics and found this: https://ourworldindata.org/terrorism

For most countries, it doesn't look like much has changed from 1970-2017.

I glanced at hate crime stats on the FBI website (just looking at 2008 and 2017), with 7,783 and 7,175 crimes reported for each year). So not much change there either.

Obviously this is a half-assed attempt, but I just wanted to counter the idea that the world is falling apart. Hopefully someone who has more interest in these things can provide some studies with more comprehensive statistics.

incompatible3• 7 years ago

Are you suggesting that certain countries would describe LGBTQ activities as "terrorist and violent extremist content"? I don't think they would need to, they have special anti-LGBTQ laws already.

CodiePetersen8• 7 years ago

Correct and now they have the moral authority and excuse to continue doing it. That sort of support, especially when you can say from a podium "The world is behind us in this effort" is a powerful tool for governments to use. Imagine being gay or lesbian and hearing you might as well give up because the whole world is against you.

int_19h4• 7 years ago

Given that Saudi Arabia considers atheism to be a form of terrorism already, I don't see it as particularly far fetched. The reason to do so is because it allows making misleading claims for propaganda purposes.

Grue3• 7 years ago

Well, at least Russia routinely bans LGBTQ-related websites for extremist content.

qball3• 7 years ago

Let's just examine the governments currently signed to it.

The interesting thing is that this really doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things.

Consider weapons treaties, like the UN ones banning the use of land mines and cluster munitions. The only countries that have signed them either don't have any reason to use them, or are allied with a nation that hasn't signed that treaty.

This is much the same story. The US hasn't signed this, and never will (because it explicitly contravenes a cornerstone of its supreme law), and at that point what the other countries do is pointless unless they outright block US services from their networks- in which case there will be riots in the streets. Governments don't survive for long when they alienate the vast majority of their population, and the majority of the population uses US services.

Combine that with the simple fact that 100% effective moderation of an online service is unscalable to the point of being impossible without prohibiting any meaningful content/conversation means that countries that do sign this and implement it in their law will never be able to develop a competitive Facebook alternative, and all you've accomplished (as a signatory nation) is political posturing and shooting yourself in the foot.

You can't outcompete a free nation. That's kind of its main advantage.

CodiePetersen8• 7 years ago

That's true. I never thought of it that way. I mean I hope the effort would evolve into something more sensible but you don't know with the willingness of brilliant people signing on to bad ideas.

giancarlostoro• 7 years ago

Combine that with the simple fact that 100% effective moderation of an online service is unscalable to the point of being impossible without prohibiting any meaningful content/conversation means that countries that do sign this and implement it in their law will never be able to develop a competitive Facebook alternative, and all you've accomplished (as a signatory nation) is political posturing and shooting yourself in the foot.

Hell 4chan trolls moderation with really bad content for sport from time to time. I hate to go there but I think its sometimes necessary to see it happen to prove that laws dont stop people already violating laws from gasp violating laws. You cant moderate them IRL what makes you think you can stop them online?

sorokod• 7 years ago

"You can't outcompete a free nation."

This may or may not be true, but a free nation can collapse on itself. The Weimar republic and modern day Hungary and Turkey are just a few examples.

ionised2• 7 years ago

unless they outright block US services from their networks- in which case there will be riots in the streets.

People aren't going to be rioting in the streets because they lose access to Google and Facebook, come on.

People in western democracies put up with a hell of a lot worse than that from their governments without rioting.

You can't outcompete a free nation. That's kind of its main advantage.

I'd like to believe that was true, but I think China will prove us wrong in the coming decades.

TheTrueTDF• 7 years ago

That's a strawman, plus nazis/white nationalists are groups that actually spread anti-LGBTQ propaganda

captainredbeard• 7 years ago

Sorry, that’s not what a straw man fallacy is. You may not agree that the danger of censorship misuse is high but it’s not fallacious.

tathougies7• 7 years ago

Really? A lot of the alt-right seems pro-LGBTQ to me.

monksy• 7 years ago

That being said, India blocked reddit a few days after the Pakistan attack earlier this year.

pryce3• 7 years ago

The hate isn't "spreading through social media" the hate and the fear were already there.

This is an idea worth examining more closely. In one view, social media acts as simply a passive reflection of an existing culture; in another, social media reproduces that culture which later becomes (in part) a reflection of social media etc. The causality goes both ways.

Organised white supremacists have decided that social media can also be used to help steer society, and it can be -and is- used as a recruitment vector, two things that wouldn't be possible if the 'passive reflection' model was accurate.

For what it's worth, I'm undecided as to whether this particular proposed response is workable or harmful or effective or whether it risks liberties collaterally. But I view that as a separate question from whether social media plays a significant role in white nationalist recruitment.

CodiePetersen8• 7 years ago

I definitely agree. I totally understand that they use it. And hell with the amount of demographic information advertisers give, I'd wager you could target down to the individual for your message. I just don't think censorship is the way. If anything you just run them into more private circles where potential recruits won't readily see the other side of the argument.

DarkWiiPlayer3• 7 years ago

I believe it's something in between both views: Society is just shifting its operations to social media. This does bring a few changes, but ultimately nothing new is happening, it's just happening somewhere else and becomes easier to identify.

wpietri2• 7 years ago

This is definitely incorrect:

The hate isn't "spreading through social media" the hate and the fear were already there.

If extremism couldn't be effectively spread, extremists wouldn't bother trying. But they put quite a lot of effort into recruiting and propaganda.

For those interested, I strongly recommend Neiwart's "Alt-America": https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MT2KCB2/

He's a journalist who in the 80s and 90s was covering extremists (e.g. violent white supremacists, "patriot" militias). He makes a very good case that the Internet has been an enormous boon, enabling significant growth and normalization.

CodiePetersen8• 7 years ago

Extremism was spreading long before the internet. We literally had a cold war to try to stop the spread of communism not to mention there are countless examples in history where the populace was swayed by extremism. The nazis didn't have internet but they were perfectly capable of getting people lined up for war. It's definitely not the technology, they will find any method they need to spread their message.

avip• 7 years ago

The hate isn't "spreading through social media" the hate and the fear were already there.

Well, hate and fear maybe we all share. But the idea to express them in terms of killing innocent people is factually "spreading through social media".

fit2rule• 7 years ago

This type of call to action will only further entrench government strangles over freedom of speech.

There is a certain fringe of society which believes that the real reason for the censorship of the Christchurch attack is not because it motivates and inspires further killing, but that it shows he was not a lone wolf and had handlers helping him step through the scene - and the video clearly shows evidence of this.

IF this were true - and I'm not saying it is - then yes, we have reason to be concerned about being lied to in this fashion. If the general public is never able to tell the truth about these kinds of incidents because they are wrapped up in even more dire secrecy, then the incidents themselves become even more dangerous to society as a whole.

Whether we like it or not, there are very powerful actors and groups out there would seek to profit at every turn from terrorising the general public - they're not all jihadi's or right-wing nutcases, but certainly know how to present themselves - and/or their Manchurian candidate co-criminals - as such.

This sort of duplicity is only going to get worse in a culture of utter secrecy - the only thing that can save the general public from the nefarious deeds of those who would use terror to control our minds, is the light of truth.

This means having the courage to let videos of these events be accessible to the general public. This means, not living in a protective bubble provided to us by higher powers, but rather living the kind of life that will be unhindered by such evidence, when it is presented.

This is a very difficult subject, precisely because people are overly sensitive about the kinds of things they wish to be exposed to. In the same sense that the American public are virulently anti-war when presented with real evidence of the effects of War - e.g. Vietnam - they are violently pro-war when they only see one side of the mighty military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex's pitch deck.

If we want to be ruled by terror, we must merely allow the locks of secrecy to be closed around our eyes. If we want to live in a world where different cultures and different religions, and people with vastly different points of view to our own nevertheless get along, we must never hide from the truth, no matter how traumatising it can be.

This move by the coalition governments is a cynical, duplicitous attempt to make it harder for whistle-blowers and evidence seekers to know the truth about these kinds of attacks, and puts us all in the position of being liable for the lies told to us by those who have the means to pull off such operations - i.e. the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex.

sonnyblarney2• 7 years ago

I find it problematic that there have been oodles of very classical kinds of 'terrorism' and 'extremism' on Social Media since the start.

ISIS has been recruiting with absolutely brutal kind of stuff on Twitter, etc..

But now we have this nutbar thing in New Zealand and it's a 'global action'?

Aside from the complications mentioned in some other comments ...

... the Jacinda / Trudeau / Macron triumvirate I think were looking in the wrong places.

So it's probably good that we're taking action, and just beyond repulsive that that some massacre was broadcast live on Facebook, but I hope we accomplish do this without too many existential issues.

anigbrowl5• 7 years ago

It'd be great if people who want to explore this as a free speech issue would engage with the question of what happens to the free speech (and other) rights of people who are killed by extremists, and whether they are more or less important than the rights of people who advocate such killings.

BigJono• 7 years ago

The comparison isn't between 40 people's right to live vs every terrorist's right to free speech. It's between some probabalistic chance that 40 people's right to live isn't violated in the future due to these actions, versus some probabalistic chance of millions of innocent people being silenced and having their privacy violated in various ways due to the collateral damage from this kind of policy making for the foreseeable future. This shit never gets revoked once it's in place.

History is wrought with examples of people's free speech being violated. How many examples do we really have of when someone's free speech was successfully violated to protect proportionally more important rights?

The entire western world is slowly giving up every single ounce of privacy and freedom, in exchange, and for what? ISIS is finished, the rate of Muslim terrorist attacks seems to be falling off pretty fast, and the swell of fascist sentiment will slowly wind down too once the factors that triggered it are no longer present. This isn't some new concept that's never happened before. And in 10 or 15 years are we going to be happy with the state of government control in countries like Australia, NZ, UK etc given what we've got out of it?

anigbrowl5• 7 years ago

There's a lot of counterfactuals here, both numerical and historical - for example, your suggestion that policies put in place to deal with a problem never being revoked which is simply not supported by fact. As your whole post is dedicated to invalidating the question I posed I hope you'll excuse me for not spending an hour on a point-by-point refutation of your numerous and very broad claims.

Rapzid4• 7 years ago

Free speech is just as much about those on the receiving end as on the producing. And, once the information passed into other hands your dealing with producing end again.

Your thesis is a non sequitur as well; people sharing and receiving the information are not necessarily advocating the killings. In fact, just like with War footage from the past, they could be using it to the opposite effect.

anigbrowl5• 7 years ago

You're refuting claims I'm not making, while avoiding the question I am asking. As an extremism researcher I'm well aware of such complexities, thanks.

tathougies7• 7 years ago

Those killed by extremists have a right more fundamental than free speech violated -- their liberty. However, free speech did not cause their lives to be ended -- another individual's choices did. We have a system to deal with this. It's called courts, the justice system, and prison. It's worked for thousands of years to produce reasonable societies.

anigbrowl5• 7 years ago

Sorry for not responding earlier. I largely agree, but I think we are at a point where we need to weigh the actual costs that are involved and assess how well our approach is working - in my view, increasingly poorly.

mattnewport• 7 years ago

Tech companies and governments sign up

Two wolves and a sheep vote on what's for dinner. What's for dinner being our most fundamental rights as citizens.

asdf213• 7 years ago

Only Americans have fundamental rights.

Everyone else has "hate speech," which depending on how that's interpreted, can mean anything from thinly veiled blasphemy laws, an inability to bluntly criticize Scientology or Islam, or charges for making Nazi jokes.

Rapzid4• 7 years ago

It's amazing to me how political this is and how oblivious to that fact a large portion of the NZ population is.

This horrible act happened on the current governments watch. I've seen more outrage and effort from the government on the spreading of the video and manifesto than introspection into how this slipped through in the first place. I suppose in a country where carrying a weapon for the purpose of self defense is considered a crime, something this terrible shattering the illusion of nanny government protecting you requires a whole lot of deflection and ultra maneuvers to secure the next election cycle.

New Zealand's knee has jerked so hard I'm feeling it in my groin 8k miles away.

roca9• 7 years ago

NZers have observed the USA's experiment with reducing violent crime by flooding the nation with guns, and there is very strong support across the political spectrum for trying something else: restricting access to the most dangerous guns, and deplatforming murder advocates. It is not some authoritarian ploy.

eadmund• 7 years ago

It is not some authoritarian ploy.

Regardless of whether you think it's a good idea or not, restricting access to guns and free speech is an authoritarian play: it's using the authority of the State to restrict certain liberties in the intent of doing good.

CompanionCuuube• 7 years ago

The "restricting access to the most dangerous guns" is a buzzword/phrase whose categorization expands the more you apply it.

Rapzid4• 7 years ago

Most of the conversation here is around free speech and censorship. I don't believe in government, in general, limiting the flow of information through censorship and 14 year prison sentences.

As to the USA.. Well, I think it's important to consider that the USA is about 68 times the population of NZ. 68 New Zealands, think about that. Some of those New Zealands are quite safe even relative to other countries, and others are not. Firearm homicide rates, along with other crime rates, fluctuate wildly by region. And yet all those regions have the 1st and 2nd amendment.

IMHO, as a NZ resident, NZ is definitely safer and nicer than the bad parts of the US. However, I do not believe it has too much to do with its loose free speech protections and firearm restrictions. New Zealand is probably sturdy enough to have stronger free speech and personal liberty protections while being as safe or safer as the safest regions in the USA..

sarcasmOrTears• 7 years ago

I hope one day we will be able to condemn these politicians, bureaucrats and big corps for their crimes against free speech, just like we did with the nazis when they tried to subvert Europe. We need serious laws with draconian punishments to protect our rights, what we have now is insufficient.

TheLuddite• 7 years ago

Make internet more expensive therefore limiting its impact among the stupidest members of society - the working class.

DarkWiiPlayer3• 7 years ago

Aren't they missing the point here? The problem isn't that this guy streamed what he was doing on facebook, it's the fact that he did it in the first place?

As these large hosts move more and more away from mere platforms to content curators it does make a lot of sense that they'd also be more responsible for what they curate, but at the same time, it seems like this responsibility will ultimately leak back into the parts of these services that are really just platforms and ultimately to those that don't curate content at all.

roca9• 7 years ago

A big contributing factor to him doing it in the first place was him marinating in online murder advocacy groups.

dredds3• 7 years ago

The problem isn't that this guy streamed what he was doing on facebook, it's the fact that he did it in the first place?

The Las Vegas shooter we're told had no motive, but there's a public sense that each massacre is trying to "out do" a previous kill count. With Facebook being the go to place when one occurs, it's instant fame and notoriety for the perpetrator. For this reason our government and media took the immediate response of "de-naming" the killer, but with instant global online platforms this is after the horse has bolted. This approach of involving platforms directly is to neuter the draw of instant notoriety. To remove fame (or widespread publicity if there is an agenda) from being another contributing factor.

Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

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