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Hate Speech Is Not ["Speech You Disagree With"] - Pushing Back On Bad Faith
AngelHedgie
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, we got reporting today on Alex Jones' conspiracy theory network potentially bringing about the Second Adpocolypse on YouTube, I posted this piece on the SE++ YouTube thread, but there was one part of the response from YouTube that struck me as more than a little disingenuous:
(Emphasis mine.)
This is an argument that I've been seeing crop up more and more, and it strikes me as being horribly in bad faith - the argument that everything can be boiled down to a bloodless "difference of opinion", and in doing so, a justification can be made for both sides. In this case, YouTube is using this to argue for why they have allowed Jones to continue pushing lies and hatred on his YouTube channels, without any real pushback from them until recently. I've also seen it used as a means to justify "tolerance" of bigotry, by saying that it's the bigot's opinion, and as such, they have a right to hold it. What makes the argument seem to have some merit on first glance is that at the most superficial level, it is true - there is a difference of opinion and people are opposed to "views they don't agree with". The problem is that the argument tries to stop things there, saying that the actual reason for the disagreement isn't important. But in many cases, it is in fact crucially important, as it turns out that there is in fact a solid justification for that difference, and that one side may in fact have no real merit. In many cases, it strikes me as being a call for others to be tolerant of the intolerance of others, as well as an attempt to justify inaction on someone's part out of an appeal to free speech, not considering the chilling effect bigotry has on discourse.
Edit: Some clarification on what this thread is about:
While YouTube did not explain how ads appeared over conspiracy theorist content despite advertiser filters, it did emphasize the company's commitment to being a platform of free speech. "We uphold free expression according to our Community Guidelines, even when there are views we don't agree with," a YouTube spokesperson told CNN. "When videos are flagged to us that violate our guidelines, we immediately remove them. We do not allow ads to run on videos that deal with sensitive and tragic events."
(Emphasis mine.)
This is an argument that I've been seeing crop up more and more, and it strikes me as being horribly in bad faith - the argument that everything can be boiled down to a bloodless "difference of opinion", and in doing so, a justification can be made for both sides. In this case, YouTube is using this to argue for why they have allowed Jones to continue pushing lies and hatred on his YouTube channels, without any real pushback from them until recently. I've also seen it used as a means to justify "tolerance" of bigotry, by saying that it's the bigot's opinion, and as such, they have a right to hold it. What makes the argument seem to have some merit on first glance is that at the most superficial level, it is true - there is a difference of opinion and people are opposed to "views they don't agree with". The problem is that the argument tries to stop things there, saying that the actual reason for the disagreement isn't important. But in many cases, it is in fact crucially important, as it turns out that there is in fact a solid justification for that difference, and that one side may in fact have no real merit. In many cases, it strikes me as being a call for others to be tolerant of the intolerance of others, as well as an attempt to justify inaction on someone's part out of an appeal to free speech, not considering the chilling effect bigotry has on discourse.
Edit: Some clarification on what this thread is about:
It's not about YouTube, but the argument that they use to avert their eyes from responsibility for allowing hate, conspiracy theories, other deception - that in order to protect "free expression", they have to allow views they "disagree" with. It's use of euphemism and an appeal to an ideal to dodge responsibility for allowing toxic environments to develop. And it's not just YouTube (or the tech industry) that makes this argument - it's something that's become cultural at this point.
And at this point, we need to start recognizing this as a bad faith argument. If people say that hate speech should be pushed back on and there's a counter that tries to sanitize the argument by calling hate speech "speech you disagree with", that should be treated as arguing in bad faith.
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AngelHedgie on
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The Youtube quote reads to me like 'We don't want to moderate our platform'
Even though not moderating is tacit approval of bad behaviour, I don't think there's a direct deliberate attempt to frame everyone's opinion as the same here.
Rather, it's just What we're doing is enough.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, nobody is entitled to their facts.
Attacking victims is not an opinion.
Alex Jones has been doing this shit consequence free for years, but this time he picked an internet fight with teenagers.
So you'll get coverage of the benefits of vaccines, but then also spend time talking to people who think vaccines cause autism.
Yep, that's part of the problem as well. This is why you get people arguing that noted bigot Charles Murray should be given a platform to speak, not grasping that doing so legitimizes his bigotry.
I like to remind them that people who do research based articles and investigation don't deserve to be equivalent to Alex Jones or The Drudge Report. It's like reasoning with a horse though, I feel like bad faith arguments are gaining traction. Critical thinking is hard, especially with information propagation on a scale humans can't process without using abstract euphemisms.
Edit: Wikipedia is sort of a decently moderated information dump and it's still really unreliable depending on the subject.
On the other hand, I think one of the things that is propelling the Florida teen movement for gun control is the students' collective dismissal and contempt for professional politicians and pundits, online trolls, and movement conservatives. It took a couple generations, but I think we are seeing the rise of a generation that has developed a collective resistance via lifelong exposure to online assholery and bullshit.
I sometimes want to try to shift the window on the "both sides" thing with regards to vaccines. So that it's not "vaccines are good and everyone should get them" vs "vaccines are bad and cause autism," but rather "vaccines are good and everyone should get them" vs "people who don't get vaccines should be confined to camps, sequestered away from the rest of the general population." Basically, fight crazy with crazy.
But yes, I realize that that approach is stupid. Usually.
Surprisingly accurate for today's environment
One of the great things you see with these kids all over is they so clearly know the rules of talking-on-the-internet and give zero shits about applying those rules to politics.
I was listening to this teenage girl out in Utah who is organizing a march or something on gun control issues. She had written a piece for Vox and was talking about gun control on a podcast. The interviewer is telling her about a reply she got on that piece that is basically "You are a teenager. Yesterday you were eating tide pods and today you wanna act like you are an expert on the 2nd amendment and mental illness?". And then the interviewer is like "Do you think people don't take you seriously because of your age?".
And her reply is just ... so perfect. She's just like (super paraphrased cause she was way more articulate then I care to reproduce) "
And that's what it is. It's not pivoting like a normal politician would do. It's not "steer myself back to my talking points". She just straight up recognizes the comment as bullshit trolling and dismisses it and moves on. It's so fucking refreshing to see. It's someone who clearly knows, one way or the other, about how people argue on the internet and knows how to deal with it.
And that's what we need to push back on. It's tiresome to keep hearing arguments for tolerating bigotry and hate out of some notion of free speech, along with all of the euphemisms. If you use distasteful, disgusting, unpopular, etc. to describe hate speech, I will consider you to be arguing in bad faith.
Well we got that president. Shockingly though he was born in the 1940's.
The way these kids have handled themselves so far though, well it's the first time in a while where I'm not worried for the future.
I don't think we need a thread to just yell about Youtube.
It's not about YouTube, but the argument that they use to avert their eyes from responsibility for allowing hate, conspiracy theories, other deception - that in order to protect "free expression", they have to allow views they "disagree" with. It's use of euphemism and an appeal to an ideal to dodge responsibility for allowing toxic environments to develop. And it's not just YouTube (or the tech industry) that makes this argument - it's something that's become cultural at this point.
And at this point, we need to start recognizing this as a bad faith argument. If people say that hate speech should be pushed back on and there's a counter that tries to sanitize the argument by calling hate speech "speech you disagree with", that should be treated as arguing in bad faith.
It took me a moment but I think I agree with you. Sugar coating their vile tactics, but even just "both sides" nonsense needs to stop being tolerated.
If you scream into a room of people that you think minorities suck, and everyone decides to ban you from the room and prevent you from speaking, your free speech rights have not been violated.
This isn’t about this new set of voices in politics being special. It’s about our old set of voices in politics being broken. And if these kids grow up to become journalists or pundits or politicians or Youtube executives, they’ll change their tune.
I bet most people who complain about Alex Jones never even watched his YouTube channel in the first place. So what’s this really about? I am tired of troublemakers looking for the next bit of outrage porn they can feed to the general public in order to accomplish some goal (usually taking someone down or silencing them). There’s tons of bad shit posted out there, shit like you wouldn’t believe. What is the ultimate goal, to moderate the entire internet?
"we shouldn't try to make anything better if we can't make everything perfect"
I don't think moderation is the only topic of this thread, though that is one aspect of the problem.
YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media companies have algorithms that present content to different types of people. They are already curating and moderating their feeds, they're just doing it in a greedy fashion to get people to engage with their website and click on advertisements.
I would argue that the YouTubes and the Facebooks of the world have some responsibility here, they can't just host and present hate speech and conspiracy theories to people without some consequences.
Or you could vote with your votes and get YouTube fined by the FCC until they do something about all the hate speach on their platform.
And hey, here's an example of the sort of bad faith argument I've been talking about. We have an assertion of false motives on the part of the people speaking up, use of euphemisms to dismiss the problem presented (hate speech and intentional deception is reframed as "bad stuff"), and an appeal to free speech intended to serve as a dismissal.
Fined for what, exactly?
Governmental fines based on content seems like a pretty clear cut 1st Amendment problem to me. Convince YouTube to censor things on their own is legitimate, albeit something I don't endorse. Saying censor this or the government will fine you is pretty clearly using the authority of the government to regulate (limit) speech.
Distributing hate speach. The only reason I wouldn't want to just classify YouTube as a broadcast medium is that the existing rules for broadcast are dumb.
Hate speech/speech designed to incite (fire in a crowded theater) isn’t protected by the 1st amendment. And the FCC regulates content all the time (7 words you can’t say ring a bell?) it just requires the FCC having a spine where it matters
NBC can run neo Nazi programming all they want and it's legal. So..no. Case law in the US takes the rather bizzare presumption that hate speech is legal despite porn not being so.
A lot of the problem comes from older, more credulous people taking things as written. Studies show that the people who are most effectively affected by fake news are older people, because they don't have so much of a concept of a piece from a shady looking website obviously being total shite.
I don’t know what to say to that except: that’s not how our government works.
I find it curious you give no solution for dealing with the people making the actual hate speech in the first place, instead choosing to target YouTube.
Alex Jones isn't going to quit his bullshit for Amy reason and he *will* get people killed if he keeps it up. So there's good reason to pressure other not off the wall people to stop dealing with him.
Given Youtube’s giving them the platform, YouTube is responsible for moderating them, whether they believe they should or not. If Youtube refuses to moderate their incredibly pervasive platform, the government can and should be able to step in and regulate Youtube for promoting inciteful speech. It’s been long overdue, we’re just at the point where enough people are getting fed up for it to be a thing.
"Fire in a crowded theater" shouldn't be brought up. The decision that line is from was overturned decades ago and even its author abandoned the position (the decision itself is from the 1800s sometime).
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Obscenity. That's what isn't protected. And the seven words were: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Obviously a relic of America's sex-o-phobic phase (still ongoing!), but bugger all to do with hate speech.
While the specific example may not be in judicial discourse, I feel the principle should still stand. If you use your free speech to knowingly incite people to panic or violence, whether voluntary or not, you speech should not be protected, nor should those who gave you the platform to use your speech in such a manner be absolved of responsibility.