[Marmite]

I did a search first and came up empty.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft agree to remove hate speech across the EU (TechCrunch.com)

Quote:

Facebook, Twitter, Google’s YouTube, Microsoft as well as the European Commission unveiled a new code of conduct to remove hate speech according to community guidelines in less than 24 hours across these social media platforms. The EU has ramped up efforts leading to this code of conduct following the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris.

ISIS has been successfully using social media to recruit fighters over the past few years. In addition to that, the European economic recession has fostered far-right parties, leading to more online antisemitism and xenophobia.

Tech companies probably don’t want to be held responsible for hate speech and are now taking a strong stance against hate speech. This is surprising as many social networks have promoted free expression and have refused to delete content or accounts in the past (except when it comes to copyrighted material).

But it’s been a slow and steady change. Twitter has already suspended 125,000 accounts related to ISIS since mid-2015. Facebook already agreed to work with the German government against hateful speech back in September 2015. Google and Twitter later joined Facebook and the German government in December 2015. Now, four tech companies are making a formal pledge at the European level against hate speech.

“The recent terror attacks have reminded us of the urgent need to address illegal online hate speech,” Vĕra Jourová, EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, wrote in the European Commission press release. “Social media is unfortunately one of the tools that terrorist groups use to radicalise young people and racist use to spread violence and hatred. This agreement is an important step forward to ensure that the internet remains a place of free and democratic expression, where European values and laws are respected.”

Tech companies will have to find the right balance between freedom of expression and hateful content. Based on the code of conduct, they’ll have dedicated teams reviewing flagged items (poor employees who will have to review awful things every day).

Tech companies will also educate their users and tell them that it’s forbidden to post hateful content. They’ll cooperate with each other to share best practice. They’ll encourage flagging of hateful content and they’ll promote counter speech against hateful rhetoric.

It’s good to see that this issue got escalated and the European Commission was able to come up with a code of conduct quite quickly. Instead of making tech companies deal with every single European country, they can agree on rules for the EU as a whole.

Similarly, it’s encouraging to see tech companies working together on a sensitive issue like this one. While it’s a good starting point, there will be new social platforms in the future, and I hope other tech companies will join this code of conduct in the future.

European Commission Press Releases:

European Commission and IT Companies announce Code of Conduct on illegal online hate speech

Code of Conduct PDF

European Commission and IT Companies announce Code of Conduct on illegal online hate speech

[Dusty]

   

[Luvianka]

Zionist shutdown of the media.

[redpillage]

Quote:

Tech companies will also educate their users and tell them that it’s forbidden to post hateful content. They’ll cooperate with each other to share best practice. They’ll encourage flagging of hateful content and they’ll promote counter speech against hateful rhetoric.

Tech companies have now effectively been promoted to act as free speech arbiters. Another nail in the coffin of democracy and personal liberties such as freedom of expression. The only recourse for us is to turn away from these companies in masse and to seek out new alternative gateways. Hit them where it hurts.

If Russia was on the ball it would establish free speech sanctuaries effectively competing with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. They have the means and the technical know how to pull this off. I think there is a huge opportunity in exploiting the hubris of large Western tech companies, all of which have now accepted liberal ideologies as the de facto standard across the Western hemisphere. One could expand this concept into building a Russian 'Silicon Valley' somewhere in the South (where it's warm).

There needs to be immediate and fervent push back on this front or free speech as we know it is officially dead.

[Caravaggio]

my guess is that the platforms will render themselves obsolete if they continue to take the road of censorship. like redpillage said, it is probably a good time to offer alternatives to silicon-valley crap.

people won't take this ship any longer. I mean zuckerbergs hypocrisy is unbearable:

http://www.breitbart.com/2nd-amendment/2...-security/

Quote:

Facebook has spent $16 million on armed security for billionaire progressive Mark Zuckerberg.
This means that even as Facebook was incrementally barring law-abiding citizens–including licensed gun dealers–from advertising firearm sales for self-defense, they were spending millions to keep Zuckerberg surrounded by hired guys carrying guns.

Facebook’s ban on the advertisement of gun sales has even led to the deletion of accounts on which the word “firearms” is included.

According to Quartz, Zuckerberg “famously takes $1 annual salary” from Facebook. However, Facebook “revealed that it spent more than $16 million over the past five years on private air travel and other aspects of Zuckerberg’s ‘overall security program.'”

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/05/27...-fortress/

Quote:

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reported to be building a panic bunker next to his home in Palo Alto, California after a series of recent security upgrades.
Zuckerberg bought four surrounding houses to his $7 million mansion and has started the process of tearing one down in order to make way for security additions detailed in a recently submitted plan to the Palo Alto planning department.

According to the plans, Zuckerberg’s panic bunker is described as having “white brick walls, dark steel doors and windows, dark gray siding and louvers where they occur above the roof line, and a dark gray standing seam metal roof,” giving the impression of a steel fortress for the Facebook CEO to hide in if necessary.

Zuckerberg’s compound already has a perimeter of black panel walls in an attempt to stop both trespassers and snoopers. The Facebook CEO was slammed on social media after criticizing Donald Trump’s Mexican border wall plans and then returning to his fortressed mansion.

In April it was revealed that Zuckerberg had also spent $16 million on armed security guards at his mansion, while banning private gun sales on Facebook for the general public.

[Ghost Tiger]

The resistance, however, is ferociously underway!



https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/737742156442505216



https://twitter.com/The_Ghost_Tiger/stat...9113148417



https://twitter.com/The_Ghost_Tiger/stat...8873695236



https://twitter.com/JGalt09/status/737839334779293696



https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/737851296103948288

[RexImperator]

Quote:

In an example from Germany, Udo Ulfkotte’s Facebook page was shut down a few days after his new book on the migration crisis, Boundlessly Criminal, was published. JLH has translated an article about what happened, and includes this introductory note:

A combination political and commercial message. What is striking is the parallel with censorship moves in this country in Facebook, Google, Twitter and even YouTube, and the history of Facebook in caving in to Chinese government demands, then Merkel’s. There is no public deal in the US, but let’s face it, everybody has the hymnal and is singing from the same page. Or, as someone with Dymphna’s gimlet eye on them might comment, “Algorithm, my posterior!”

In other words, the Internet that seemed to be an instrument to set us free from the media monopoly on fact and opinion has been swallowed up to a large extent by the so-called “social media,” whose elite seem to have breathed too deeply of the fumes given off by academe and Washington.

...
Udo Ulfkotte:

“It is hinted to citizens that there is democracy, freedom of expression and freedom of the press. But oh my, if someone wishes to exercise these alleged rights critically, then the truncheon is pulled out. It is about protecting the elites and maintaining their power. And they have noticed that more and more citizens are waking up and are no longer willing to believe unconditionally in the fairy tale content of the unity-minded MSM. So censorship is no longer covert, but quite openly exercised. Critical voices are simply cut off — and I happen to be one of those rather uncomfortable voices.”

http://gatesofvienna.net/2016/07/faceboo...more-40255

[Liberty Sea]

I think #HateSpeechIsFreeSpeech would be a better tagline, for persuasion reason. #IStandWithHateSpeech can be more misleading and turn more people off.

[Mercenary]

Raid on homes and arrests.


http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36804363

Quote:

German police target hate crime in co-ordinated raids

15 July 2016


German police have carried out a series of raids, targeting people suspected of posting hate content on social media.The co-ordinated raids on 60 addresses were the first time the authorities had acted on this issue in such a way.The aim is to tackle what police called "a substantial rise in verbal radicalism". Typical crimes included "glorification of Nazism [and] xenophobic, anti-Semitic and other right-wing extremism", they said. Holger Munch, president of Germany's federal criminal police authority, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) said: "Today's action makes it clear that police authorities of the federal and state governments act firmly against hate and incitement on the internet." He said politically motivated hate crime on the internet had increased significantly in the wake of the European refugee crisis. Last year, Germany took in up to one million migrants and refugees. "Attacks on refugee shelters are often the result of radicalisation which begins in social networks," Mr Munch said.

Much of the alleged hate speech took place in a secret Facebook group between July and November 2015, police said. The raids were carried out across 14 German provinces, involving 25 police departments. Incitement of racial hatred is a crime under German law and a person can be jailed for up to five years in a case of inciting "hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins". Facebook, Twitter and Google have all come under fire in Germany for failing to remove hate speech from their platforms promptly. Under pressure from the German authorities, the three tech firms agreed at the end of last year to delete such speech from their services within 24 hours. Facebook also agreed to a series of further measures including:

Partnering with a German group of multimedia service providers to solve the problem

Launching a task force to deal with hate speech on the internet

A campaign to promote "counter speech" in German, drawing in experts to develop ways to combat racism through discussions on social media.

[Samseau]

At the rate upon which Germans are getting jailed for hate speech, it looks like Merkel is going to rebuild Hitler's army within her prisons. These prisons are basically going to be a recruitment center, and if anyone ever frees these men they will have a big mafia at their disposal.

[HighSpeed_LowDrag]

Here's an example of one of those arrests: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/07/...-refugees/

Quote:

JUDGE: INSTANT JAIL TERM IF YOU CRITICISE REFUGEES AGAIN

A couple appeared before a court to answer to charges of incitement because the man had established a Facebook group that was “hostile to refugees”.

Peter M. founded a secret group called AFB (Anti Refugee Movement) about a year ago on Facebook. As a secret group, people who are not members of it would have been unable to see its content. He and his wife Melanie were administrators of the Facebook group, so both had to attend the court on charges of sedition.

The offending Facebook page’s founding statement was read out in the courtroom. Written by Peter M. it read: “The war and economic refugees are flooding our country. They bring terror, fear, sorrow. They rape our women and put our children at risk. Bring an end to it!”.

Judge Lukas Neubeck, presiding over the case, said the fact the group had a picture of a German flag on its Facebook page confirmed for him that AFB is a right wing group.

In the two months following its creation, 900 members had joined the group. Merkur disclosed that soon after, others had stumbled upon the group and reported it to Facebook administrators.

Facebook examined activity posted within the group and could find no problems with it. Unhappy with the fact that Facebook would take no further action, anonymous users turned to a police station in Lübeck. There, officers traced the internet activity to a computer in Vierkirchen in the Dachau district of Bavaria.

Raiding the couple’s flat, their computing items and digital storage were seized by the criminal investigation department in Furstenfeldbruck.

In court, Peter M. and Melanie’s 10-month-old son sat on his mother’s lap and the pair had no one legally defending them. The barrister had resigned before the trial.

Within the Dachau courtroom Peter M. said:

“You cannot even express a little bit of criticism about refugees without getting called a Nazi.

“I just wanted to create a discussion forum where people can speak their minds about the refugees.”

Peter M. added that he had repeatedly checked members of the group and, if any had made radical posts, Peter M. had ensured they were deleted.

Scolding the pair, Judge Neubeck said: “The description of the group is a series of generalisations with a clear right-wing background.”

The Judge sentenced Peter M. to serve a nine month suspended prison sentence, on probation. Melanie was ordered to pay a fine of €1,200.

“I hope you are clear on the seriousness of the situation. If you sit again in front of me on the dock, you will go to jail,” Judge Neubeck warned.

The trial came amid a nationwide crackdown on “verbal radicalisation” by the German Federal Police (BKA). This week police launched a nationwide raid on the homes of people suspected of posting xenophobic and anti-mass migration posts on the internet.

Explaining why “hate” posts are a priority for the police, BKA President Holger Münch said attacks on migrant shelters were the result of “radicalisation” on social media.