Facebook claims people showing art, electronics, wheelchair mods is hate speech

https://blog.adafruit.com/2023/05/13/facebook-claiming-people-showing-art-electronics-wheelchair-modifications-is-hate-speech-our-video-show-and-tell-removed-from-facebook/

by ptorrone • 3 years ago

111 94 3 years ago

blog.adafruit.com

supriyo-biswas• 3 years ago

This is why the centralization of all social interaction on a few big platforms is a cause for concern. Some of the blame lies with people too; ideally, companies such as Adafruit would simply run a Discourse instance (or another forum software), and have users communicate there and receive web push notifications, and so on, instead of just using a large social platform.

As for Facebook, there are no disincentives for over-moderation. After all, it is better to over-censor and avoid attracting negative news coverage, the attention of legislators, and negative sentiments among people.

scrame2• 3 years ago

a discord instance is just shifting to another central platform, albeit more permissive for now.

haunter• 3 years ago

They wrote Discourse not Discord, two different and unrelated things

https://www.discourse.org/

https://github.com/discourse/discourse

mbork_pl6• 3 years ago

Last time I checked, you can self-host Discourse.

echelon2• 3 years ago

Until we have protocols over platforms, we need to compel lawmakers to treat platforms over some threshold (perhaps 250M MAUs?) as "common carriers".

While platforms should be able to deboost or delete hate speech and harassment, there need to be robust escape hatches for when content is falsely flagged or when users return to normal community behavior. Nobody should be able to be de-platformed (or de-personed) indefinitely.

I routinely see folks on Reddit that complain of being blocked in some subreddit they enjoy because they merely posted in another subreddit once. Perhaps even in disagreement with the content of that subreddit. There's no appeal process or restitution, and Reddit's ban evasion policies state that trying to get around these bans can get you completely perma banned.

Imagine permanently not being able to participate in the biggest community for your {hobby, city, career}. And being told you must comply. That's messed up.

Even if regulation-compliant moderation winds up costing an order of magnitude more than it does today, it will be well worth it to preserve our freedoms.

Those that are pro-censorship and pro-user removal should realize that they could just as easily find themselves on the other side of the debate. A decade ago the dynamics favored the other side, and those now in power would be the ones finding themselves erased. The pendulum swings. It's best to make rules that protect everyone, especially the minority.

Censorship and permabanning are 1984, regardless of what the opinions or who the users are.

vxNsr2• 3 years ago

It’s fascinating to me that you’re being downvoted for giving such a level headed opinion.

api• 3 years ago

Protocols over platforms hasn’t happened because who is going to pay for the apps and polishing their user experience?

Software is really weird. For a car the engine and drive train and frame cost a lot more than the dashboard and the trim. For software this is backwards. The engine and drive train are often cheap or even free, but controls that people can use or trim to make it look nice is very difficult and expensive. It’s easy to make (most) software work but soul crushingly hard to make it usable.

EGreg4• 3 years ago

Here's the solution, if you'd like to use it: https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/15/open-source-communities/

ShroudedNight3• 3 years ago

Based on your own copy, Dreamwidth checks the boxes at least as effectively as your own offerings. "The" is bearing so much load here, we might as well be making jokes about jet fuel combustion and steel beams.

usernew• 3 years ago

There is no centralization. There are many different websites to use to socialize, and not to long ago we didn't have any social websites and we still had plenty of social interaction - I'd say even more than now depending on if you count random garbage from anonymous strangers "social interaction." I do not, nor have I ever even been on facebook or twitter.

The reason she might have gotten flagged is because of stuff like this - where either her or a person of the same name says things facebook might not like to host. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/03/20/n...

"But in Negohot, a settlement of religious nationalists, no one is buying the government line. Virtually everyone here dislikes the peace process and deeply distrusts the Palestinians. "At the end of all this, the Jewish people will live in a high tower and the Palestinians will have all the land and big private houses," said Limor Fried .. "These two people are fighting for the same land and the same places, so there's no chance for peace."

If that's not the same person as the Adafruit lady, and they just share a name - well not a problem. There's a way to dispute the facebook autoban - it tells you right in the original message.

There's no issue here. Let's not create one. No one needs facebook, no one cares, don't make up problems just to get angry and have something to solve.

While we're at it, let's stop having news articles and news on TV about random crap someone anonymously tweeted from the toilet on their phone.

vxNsr2• 3 years ago

You’re pulling a story (about a regional dispute) from 20+ years ago as proof that Facebook was correct to block this one video about art? How are you making this connection?

Facebook has no problem with Israel’s existence, I’m not sure what your problem with Jews existing is, but this is a very odd place to make a political argument.

sledgehammers• 3 years ago

What the hell are you talking about? There is massive centralization.

extra88• 3 years ago

Adafruit does run its own forum but this is about live-streamed video that is also stored for on-demand viewing.

And as the post mentions, the video in question is not gone, they do the stream on multiple platforms simultaneously, for instance it's still on YouTube. They do this not only because of the expense of operating your own video hosting infrastructure but also to be where their audience is, which is in multiple places.

indy• 3 years ago

The entire concept of "hate speech" should be thrown away.

nme01• 3 years ago

There was always some concept like this to shut people’s mouth (both for good and bad reasons). Throughout the ages it was called many names: taboo, blasphemy etc.

detrites• 3 years ago

That's an interesting insight.

Indeed, the proponents of what may be modern-day equivalents, seem also to have superstition or religious-like beliefs when it comes to these topics. Also can be as hard to reason with.

unpopular42• 3 years ago

Wait, if we did that, how would we silence people we disagree with?

NoMoreNicksLeft• 3 years ago

It goes deeper even than that. I don't know if my childhood was typical, but for me the concept of hatred itself is narrow. Isn't it supposed to be an emotion that's especially visceral? If a person feels hatred, if they hate someone or something, shouldn't we see their jaws clench, shouldn't their blood pressure go up? Won't it be difficult for them to form coherent sentences, and so on?

But today, "hate" is any time you say something someone dislikes or the politics of which they disagree with. It's nearly a meaningless word now.

The entire concept of "hate" might be worth discarding.

mbork_pl6• 3 years ago

Hate (like love) is not an emotion, but an act of will.

Dalewyn• 3 years ago

"Hate", like many other words similarly abused, has steadily lost meaning due to deliberate overuse and overambiguity.

"Hate speech" doesn't factually exist anyway, all the sincerely objectional speech it claims to pertain to are already described since long before "hate speech" came into the lexicon:

You speak lies and/or falsehoods about someone? That's libel[1] and/or slander[2] and you can be sued for it.

You provoke someone into violence? Them's fightin' words and are not protected under the 1st Amendment.[3]

You change your behaviour towards someone based on their race, nationality, sex, or creed? That is discrimination and illegal regardless the context or undertones.[4]

---------------

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/libel

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/slander

[3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fighting_words

[4] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/discrimination

benatkin• 3 years ago

Nope. You don't have to go very far to look for a legitimate example of hate speech. Facebook itself. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59558090

The concept is abused more than half the time, but if it were dropped another one would pop up. So getting rid of the term would only have a negative impact.

mantas• 3 years ago

We should get rid of „hate speech“ and clamp down on violence inducing speech. With a massive caveat for people participating in ongoing war.

Fuck FB for banning people over using slurs or even legit historic terms towards muscovite soldiers.

mullingitover• 3 years ago

That seems pretty anti free speech. I agree that hate speech should end up in the trash, but people should be free to say what is on their mind (just as we’re free to put labels on it).

ClassyJacket• 3 years ago

Agreed, especially in this age where biological facts are considered 'hate speech'.

AlecSchueler7• 3 years ago

I suspect you may have been giving more than "biological facts" or bringing them up in a way that was intended to shut down someone else's expression.

Basic facts are very unlikely to be considered hateful if shared respectfully and with good reason.

Zen1th• 3 years ago

Hate speech is the difference between "I disagree with your opinion" and "You should be killed for saying this". The latter is hate speech for which its explicit goal is to exclude the victim from the debate by inciting hate on them. When done by multiple individuals, you get harassment and the very important risk of harming the victim (directly or indirectly, morally or physically).

Let's say there's a group called "We Will Kill Them All", you might say that this is just words, but people live by words (politics is literally just that) and hate speech directly and explicitly encourages people to take an act on the victim and harm them. You might say that any individual could do that, but do not underestimate the power of a group binding people in hate, because this is one of the strongest bonds you can make (We v.s. Them) and peer pressure makes people ready to do much more horrible things than they'd do by themselves. One such example is the NSDAP party, many of their members wouldn't have been against the Jews if they had never interacted with this party. So do not underestimate the power of hate speech.

To go back to the Facebook case here, the problem isn't the concept of "hate speech", the problem is Facebook's bad enforcement of it cuz legally there's just nothing against this.

skellington• 3 years ago

Then, should Kathy Griffin have been deplatformed when she showed a picture of her holding the severed head of a likeness of Trump? How is that not hate speech? Can I show a picture of a severed head of something looking like Nancy Pelosi?

When certain political groups say "we have to get in their faces" is that an incitement to violence or at least harassment?

Can I say, "in my opinion, politician X should be executed for crimes against America?" Is that incitement or just a protected statement of opinion?

When Hillary called 1/2 of Trump supporters "deplorables" isn't that hate speech? I heard plenty of people say that anti-vax people should be executed or at least left to starve to death (Chomsky said something like this). Is that hate or an opinion?

Hate speech is hopelessly vaguely defined and will be abused by whichever side is in power.

hayst4ck3• 3 years ago

I agree-ish with you, but I think it would help if you made it clear why: "We should kill all the Russians in Ukraine" is different than "we should kill the russians who don't think we are a country." (When does context matter?)

I also think it would help if you made it clear if there is a distinction between "We should kill all the Jews" and "we should kill all the people who want/are planning to kill all the Jews." (When does precedence matter?)

I would assert that your definiton should probably be changed to speech used to oppress. Violence inciting speech against the oppressed seems like hate speech, but I don't think I'm on board with violence inciting speech against opressors being classified as hate speech.

Of course the opressors always see themselves as the oppressed so that muddies things even more.

What is your test for whether something is hate speech or not?

TheSpiceIsLife2• 3 years ago

Text recognition that first frame and you'd likely get "TO HELL".

ddtaylor• 3 years ago

A very stupid dystopia

prvc• 3 years ago

The revolution eats its children.

lfconsult2• 3 years ago

Just leave thoose platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc...). Really... If no users, no ads, no money then the platform disappear... And voilà! If a trusted and trustfull post from Adafruit is not allowed to be public, imagine what can be "censored" too.

josephcsible3• 3 years ago

Saying "just leave" leads to a problem similar to the prisoner's dilemma: if everyone left Facebook, everyone would be better off for it, but if just you leave Facebook and everyone else stays on, you're way worse off.

lfconsult2• 3 years ago

Really interesting toughts, thanks for sharing. You're right, around me anybody has left Facebook except me. Do I feel worse about that, not at all.

gorgoiler• 3 years ago

Any content where it looks like you are holding a gun to your head can be flagged. Power drills and hairdryers are close enough to do it and that kind of makes sense — both those objects can really hurt you if you push them up against your temples.

What seems to be missing though is the basic Bayesian statistics to go from finding a few instances of things that might look like self harm, to determining the whole video is about self harm.

It feels like the equivalent of millions of dollars of speech recognition being able to pick out individual voices, accents, and languages, only to then make final decision by string matching a list of known obscenities to the transcript thereby banning all videos about Scunthorpe.

josephcsible3• 3 years ago

I'd rather have 100 videos where it actually looks like people are pointing guns at their heads go unflagged than 1 video of someone using a hair dryer being wrongly flagged.

omgmajk• 3 years ago

I often get stunned over how wrong facebook's algorithms constantly are. I get that they try out things a lot and it results in some weird stuff happening but facebook is overall the worst from my point of view.

Georgelemental2• 3 years ago

It appears that they may be reaping what they have sown: https://facebook.com/adafruitindustries/photos/pb.6783679257...

When you give megacorporations unnacountable power to censor speech, that power will be abused.

incomingpain• 3 years ago

Facebook isn't who censored adafruit. Obviously you realize 'hate speech' isn't true at all, yet here we are.

34 minutes long, so near impossible to figure out what exactly is the objectionable material but you clearly hit a US government list. They for some reason don't want you to publish this video.

What some people do is cut down this video into 11 videos and then post them 1 at a time and see which one the US government doesn't want you to publish.

Facebook claims people showing art, electronics, wheelchair mods is hate speech

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