Threats Against Politicians Tripled After Meta Changed Its Speech Rules (wired.com) 84
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Last year, Meta radically overhauled the rules around what content it would allow on its platforms. The company claimed that its own efforts policing speech had gone too far and that it would relax the rules around what speech was allowed. "We have been over-enforcing our rules, limiting legitimate political debate and censoring too much trivial content and subjecting too many people to frustrating enforcement actions," Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, wrote in a blog post at the time. Over a year later, new research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) shows the immediate impact of these changes.
The researchers analyzed about 8 million Facebook comments and found that abusive and racist comments targeting both Republican and Democrat lawmakers tripled in the six months after the new rules were put in place. Some categories of abusive comments documented by the researchers saw even sharper rises, with violent threats and hate speech quadrupling during the same period. The report cites specific examples of gendered and racist abuse directed at lawmakers like US representatives Jasmine Crockette of Texas and Byron Daniels of Florida. These comments were not taken down by Meta.
The CCDH researchers also found that threats against President Trump more than doubled in the six months after Meta overhauled its rules. Many of the comments, which included direct threats to his life, could have been classified as felony offenses, the researchers say. [...] Comments that violated Meta's policies around violent threats quadrupled, from 1,800 in the six months before the changes to 7,600 in the six months after. Hate speech comments also quadrupled, from 6,900 to 30,000. Comments that broke Meta's rules on bullying and harassment doubled, from 15,700 to 39,900.
The researchers analyzed about 8 million Facebook comments and found that abusive and racist comments targeting both Republican and Democrat lawmakers tripled in the six months after the new rules were put in place. Some categories of abusive comments documented by the researchers saw even sharper rises, with violent threats and hate speech quadrupling during the same period. The report cites specific examples of gendered and racist abuse directed at lawmakers like US representatives Jasmine Crockette of Texas and Byron Daniels of Florida. These comments were not taken down by Meta.
The CCDH researchers also found that threats against President Trump more than doubled in the six months after Meta overhauled its rules. Many of the comments, which included direct threats to his life, could have been classified as felony offenses, the researchers say. [...] Comments that violated Meta's policies around violent threats quadrupled, from 1,800 in the six months before the changes to 7,600 in the six months after. Hate speech comments also quadrupled, from 6,900 to 30,000. Comments that broke Meta's rules on bullying and harassment doubled, from 15,700 to 39,900.
Zuck loves Trump. Fuck Zuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Billionaires bought the last election and it was so easy and cheap, it's difficult to imagine a world where they won't buy the winner. Zuck made Tons of money from Trump. Y'all are smart enough to know that moderated content = structured data, not entropic horseshit. If I wanted to drink from the toilet, I'd join X/Twitter.
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So why does the right think Zuck tanked trump in 2020 with the cutting off the NY Post, remember bogus laptop, just before the election?
Could it be programmers racing to fulfill the whims the DOJ, UN, FBI, USAID, the media, the Defense Complex, The Pharma Complex, and the actual customer Ad buyers in the Online part of the Marketing company's for every industry under the sun.
So Zuck floats in the wind between 2016-2024... that is not his reported personality, he seems to be the Billi
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This has nothing to do with Trump and Zuck. Allowing free speech is amazing for a wide variety of reason and this increase in threats just means more criminals will be caught making violent threats.
We've seen this movie before, when they say "violent threats" they mean calls to impeach Trump, with fucking seashells.
Calls for free speech from a large part of our society mean _nothing_ because we've seen what they do with power.
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If that was happening, you might have a case (not a good one, but a case). But you notice what is missing from the article? Reporting that the amount of arrests for threats also went up. The only time they care about threats are when it is by someone they don't like and then they don't care if they are legit or not (see the James Comey prosecution for the "threat" of "86 47"). This is just normalizing threats and hate, not some secret plan to arrest threat makers.
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There is free speech and Free Speech. Journalists are explicitly protected in the first amendment in ways that ordinary individuals are not. But the problem is that Meta is acting like it's a news organization - curating (and even calling them) newsfeeds, and they're doing it with the section 230 get out of jail free card that goes way beyond the protections accorded to journalists. It's an unworkable mess that needs to be fixed, but won't be until bribing politicians becomes illegal again.
That doesn't m
"Speech Rules" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Speech Rules" (Score:5, Interesting)
What is this? The Soviet Union?
We'll have to wait to see if Kristen Welker "accidentally" falls out a window after asking Trump simple questions, like where's the evidence of election fraud in 2020 or the CA primary, and who's the leader of Iran, that he clearly couldn't answer, and asking about his repeated promises of no new wars, that he denied saying, before (almost literally) waddling off in a huff.
Google: Trump interview Kristen Welker [google.com]
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I'm curious, will the footage air, or will the news media hide their own interview?
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I'm curious, will the footage air, or will the news media hide their own interview?
Her falling out a window or the interview? 'Cause clips of the latter have already been show on numerous evening news shows - though, probably not on Fox "News"... :-)
Re: "Speech Rules" (Score:2)
I think it depends on how you define "airing". It's an interview by NBC and the whole thing is on NBC's official YouTube channel.
The other thing is, you can show this interview to as many Trump supporters as you want, they will still believe his lies and do mental gymnastics to rationalise his contradictions. And to be fair I think it's not just Trump voters; as a species, we're not as great at rational thinking as we think we are.
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I would count "airing" as it being distributed through the same channels it would have been if it portrayed him in a positive light. That would be their main broadcast TV channel, typically.
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Een Soviet Roosha windows throw 1-in-10 peepols out, to land on a bunch of boolits 9 stories below.
While having a haart attack-ack-ack-ack.
And drinking a delightful cup of polonium tea.
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No, this is America, where you're free to lob death threats. It's why we have such reasoned, thoughtful debate in the public square.
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I've always been pro free speech, but social media has left me wondering... if a business model can be shown to inherently fracture societies, destabilize democracies, and fuel genocide, should it be allowed to exist? Maybe there's a different way to share cat photos with your grandma that doesn't require entrusting our civic discourse to algorithms that maximize for fear and outrage.
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Maybe there's a different way to share cat photos with your grandma that doesn't require entrusting our civic discourse to algorithms that maximize for fear and outrage.
If only there was something like "mail," or even an electronic equivalent. Oh well, we can dream.
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"I've always been pro free speech, but"
You can always just stop posting after the 'but' because it means that you are not in fact pro-free speech.
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... parliament? ... classroom? ... church? ... work? ... broadcast tv or radio?
The same shitty people that cry about declining civility and culture complain about decorum or being held to any kind of a standard. Because they have none of those things. Hard fucking truth.
Did they really increase? (Score:5, Insightful)
If anyone can define hate speech, as an objective absolute standard, what is it? The difference between hate speech, and freedom of expression / freedom of speech, is very narrow, and that really calls into question how hate speech is objectively tested. Is denying the holocaust hate speech? It's stupid speech, sure, but hate speech? If you deny it, and blame the Jews for committing a cover-up, well, also calling survivors as liers, and do so with conviction, that might rise to the level of hate speech, but it's still subjective.
When I point out our provincial NDP leader is an idiot, who constantly confuses basic concept, that's not hate speech, that's truthful. She's still mad that Ford is privatizing Health Care, but, he's not because he can't, you can't privatize a private system. In Ontario, we have a public insurance plan, the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP). Ford is expanding who and what OHIP will subsidize. That's a very different statement then he's privatizing health care, yet, she'll claim attacks from the "far right", when she's corrected.
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What is hate speech?
In the USA, from google:
"Rather than using "hate speech" as a legal category, U.S. courts evaluate specific actions using established First Amendment exceptions. Speech can only be restricted or penalized if it falls into one of these narrow, well-defined categories:
True Threats: Statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group.
Incitement to Violence: Speech directed at inciting or producing "immin
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Can I find it ironic that your original complaint was basically about needing to being politically correct, but that we need to put "hate speech" on the euphemism rollercoaster of political correctness?
I mean come on, even if we exclude any content on the edges. Do you really think that there haven't been more truly hateful things said on that platform with relaxed rules?
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The problem with labelling everything as hate speech, is that people will look
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that particular amendment was voted down, bozo - the system works, no hand wringing required
doesn't mean hate speech doesn't exist
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If you can't argue it, argue the semantics of it.
The US Supreme court couldn't define obscene. So that's why my email signature is goatse, because no one can tell me it's obscene.
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I'll be honest, you won't be able to convince me that hate speech isn't a thing. I was on a jury and had to hear two children sobbing as they retold the story about how they were told that their racial group should die and were called unrepeatable slurs. As I watched the perpetrator stare murderous darts at them. That they were found guilty of an offense with a hate crime modifier was undoubtedly deserved.
Sure, there's some politically incorrect statements, off color, or generally assholery that obviously s
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Since hate spe
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Yeah, this is a load of shit meant to justify hate speech. You can't claim hate speech is OK based on the context. If I say "all white people should die" that is hate speech. It doesn't matter if my family was killed by a white person, it is still hate speech. You example in BC (which I assume is about Barry Neufeld) leaves out a huge amount of the same context you want to talk about. For example, you leave out him associating queer people with child abuse, claiming it was only because he didn't use the pro
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"If I say "all white people should die"
That is 100% protected speech, full stop, and is absolutely your right to express in a free and open society.
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What is hate speech?
You did notice that the article we're discussing talked about actual threats, right?
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Some categories of abusive comments documented by the researchers saw even sharper rises, with violent threats and hate speech quadrupling during the same period. The report cites specific examples of gendered and racist abuse directed at lawmakers like US representatives Jasmine Crockette of Texas and Byron Daniels of Florida. These comments were not taken down by Meta.
If you can't define hate speech, should we trust you've defined racist abuse correctly? What they probably meant was xenophobic comments were made. I don't take issue with the concept of a violent threat being made, those constantly happen, but they're rarely racist, or, true hate speech, so at best some threats got thrown around, that weren't serious or actionable. If they want to call out question content, that's fine, but you have to be more accurate.
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As far as the term, I believe they should just use "Gender Liberty" (GL), meaning the old mores are out the door and gov't stops forcing gender categories on people.
Re: Did they really increase? (Score:2)
We can try to define, shall we? Here's my attempt. Two inclusive conditions:
1) inciting violence
2) judging someone for who they are rather than based on the evidence of their actions
Of course I'm just pulling this out of my arse, there certainly are better definitions. And of course a definition is just the beginning, then there's the question of agreeing on whether certain behaviours match the definition or not. But we shouldn't give up just because it's hard. Or are you claiming that it is generally impos
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It's like saying white men have a wife beating problem, an alcoholism problem, and an obesity problem.
I'm stating facts. But ... why? What's my intent? What else am I laying at the feet of this whole class of people, and why. Oh I'm sorry you're not allowed to ask that by your reasoning, because those are facts. Or opinions. Or stupid. But not hateful, you're not allowed to analyze it that way. For some fucking reason.
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Caring Meter (Score:2)
I can imagine that the Center for Countering Digital Hate has a big meter on the wall, similar to the Caring Meter from the Care Bears Movie. It's part of their quarterly KPIs to show if they're doing a good job or not.
What happens when the Caring Meter drops to zero?
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Re:And yet... (Score:5, Informative)
For all of the threats to public servants, no one has actually been killed, right?
Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but yes people have died or had assassination attempts made on them. To think that the political discourse doesn't have real world effects is naive.
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Also the plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer. An informant brought it to the FBI's attention before the attempt was made, but it seems to have been a relatively serious conspiracy.
This stuff is not just talk.
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Or Gabby Giffords, the White House Correspondents Dinner, the 16 mailed pipe bombs in 2018, Boulder Colorado molotov incident...
Yeah, I definitely didn't make a comprehensive list, was just a few off the top of my head.
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Charlie Kirk was not a public servant.
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Trump's can't be verified, and don't count. For all we know, they were self-staged.
I'm not saying we should threaten people; I'm saying it most often comes to naught. Again, for all the threats people make, nothing ever really happens.
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Hey cultists: Where's the medical reports of when Trump was allegedly shot? How come he never talks about the people who tried to kill him when he cries constantly about people being mean to him? You fucking absolute clown fucks.
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Threat of death or bodily harm against another is illegal. I can no longer recall if it's a felony if done against POTUS or other federal official/gov't official, but I assume it could get to that felony level, depending upon viability of a threat. Best example I have: producing a firearm, chambering it, and stating you are going to kill X person in a video.
Terroristic threatening of that nature is taken seriously. Means, and intent are seen. Opportunity is, by your own statement, all you require to wil
Broken windows theory applies (Score:4, Interesting)
This is an example of the broken windows theory from sociology (not to be confused with the broken window fallacy from economics), which states that if visible signs of low-level disorder (e.g. broken windows in unused buildings) are tolerated, then more serious forms of social disorder will occur as well.
This definitely holds in online fora. As the level of abuse you allow rises linearly, the abuse that occurs grows exponentially. Up to a point, I guess. Once you're 4chan there's just nowhere worse to go unless people start using your forum to explicitly plan and conduct crimes. But if you try to draw the line at "anything that isn't illegal is perfectly fine", your forum is going to get nasty. Slashdot addresses this with community moderation, but that only works as long as the community isn't too permissive. If Slashdot were to someday get its own Eternal September (not likely; /. is fading, not growing), it could become a cesspit in short order.
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In layman's terms, if the streets smell like piss, people will piss in the streets
You know it's funny (Score:3)
And yeah the people who did mild criticism without glorifying violence and immediately got fired, and there were a couple dozen of them, did win their lawsuits, at least among them that had the money to do a lawsuit.
It's almost as if right wing extremists are weaponizing free speech and exactly the same way right wing extremists have always weaponized Free speech going all the way back to the Nazis.
I'm not saying we burn the Constitution or anything but I am saying with that we need to be aware of the tactics being used to end democracy. Fascists will use Democratic institutions to kill democracy. Which is something an eighth grader should be able to tell you.
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Lately it seems every time we get more free speech it's just more racism
Define "racism". I've been called "racist" by a racist liberal because I have a problem with illegal immigration, under the pretext of the fact that you don't reward bad behavior. He doesn't understand that concept. He fails to understand the fact that he is in fact the racist. He's assuming my problem is based on Hispanics and not illegal immigrants in general. He knows nothing of my past including trying to date a Brazilian and trying to date a DACA recipient. The latter is interested, but going through a
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The truth: we allow almost 1 million people into the US legally every year. Imagine if illegal immigration had been controlled since 1987 when Reagan granted amnesty. There'd be none of this burden on our fellow countrymen and women.
What burden are you talking about? The difference between a legal immigrant and an illegal immigrant and a citizen is a piece of paper. Explain what you mean by bad behavior. An illegal immigrant is a person that lives here without legal status, that is all. You're leaving us to fill in the blanks and wonder what exactly you think is bad. Speaking a different language? Cultural displays you're unfamiliar with? Accents? Everything points to some form of bigotry and it's telling that you're attacking someone
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Here, I'll lay out the negative affects of ALL immigration. The more people that come here, legally or not, the more competition for resources I have as a native citizen. That's more competition for housing, jobs, access to medical and government services. Even more competition for parking at the beach on a busy summer weekend.
If we only had legal immigration, it would be around 1 million a year. Instead, we have both legal and illegal and who knows how many people are showing up.
I don't care where they are
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Explain what you mean by bad behavior.
Wow. Do I really have to explain this? Rewarding somebody who has broken the law in order to attempt to gain permanent entry into our country? That's bad behavior. I guess you are the type that would give a kid an ice cream cone when he is disobedient. We already have the 2nd easiest path to legally immigrate, second only to New Zealand. Yeah, Canada and Australia are harder to get into and you don't see lines of people trying to get into countries other than the US or possibly some countries in the EU. Bei
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I mean, if you are actually racist, why would you demean yourself with someone you thought of as "less than"? If someone is dating outside of their race, I would say that does lend credibility to them not being racist.
By the way, you can be non-racist and still be anti-immigrant. I don't need more Europeans in USA anymore then I need more Asians or Hispanics. It's all additional competition for resources and I have plenty of competition already.
How can they get MORE permissive? (Score:2)
https://www.asc.upenn.edu/rese... [upenn.edu]
But, apparently, that's not permissive enough? Maybe they fired all their content moderators and it's now complete free-game?
Setting aside the moral considerations, this is bad business. X, 4chan and 8chan already occupy this space on the right, and bluesky is dominant on the far left. And most companies don't like their ads to be shown next to ne
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I think that "most companies don't like their ads..." thing is on its way out.
Xitter is seen as a "legitimate" service, deeply embedded within the government and society at large. Their promotion of Nazi content is seen as a legitimate or acceptable action to take. Don't confuse it to think that people like the propaganda - largely they don't - but there's an acceptance developing of it presence.
The fact that a normal person on a normal website is now bombarded with fascist propaganda, normalizes it for adv
Re: How can they get MORE permissive? (Score:2)
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Since I block most ads, could you give me an example of fascist propaganda via advertising, because I seriously can't recall ever seeing such a thing.
Do you mean to say that some fascist posted a comment and then the viewer got shown an targeted ad for product XYZ? That's literally just how the Internet works and no one associates shitposting with an ad from a third party targeted at the viewer (and not the poster).
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I usually use Adblock/Noscript as well, and I rarely use social media. Xitter is one I have never had an account on.
Typically on social media the propaganda isn't labeled as an "ad", it's made to appear organic. Although some of the stuff coming out of ICE is looking more and more like those posters from the 30s. That one with the hook-nosed Jew, very reminiscent of the manipulated photos ICE is releasing of those dirty Mexicans and blacks. Not sure if those have made it into paid ads yet, or it's just post
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But industry isn't fascist it's just industry. They'll lean into whoever is in charge to maximize profits. We saw that when all the large companies were pretending to care about Democrat social issues but quickly fell in line with Trump and the rolling back of DEI.
Typically on social media the propaganda isn't labeled as an "ad", it's made to appear organic. Although some of the stuff coming out of ICE is looking more and more like those posters from the 30s. That one with the hook-nosed Jew, very reminiscent of the manipulated photos ICE is releasing of those dirty Mexicans and blacks. Not sure if those have made it into paid ads yet, or it's just posts on their official Xitter account.
You call this fascist and I call it authoritarianism that's is properly up a fictitious enemy at the gate to keep people in line. Russia and China make great "enemies" that our government can point at and blame for it's own actions. I'm quite sure
They need to do more for glass artists (Score:2)
Glass artists work hard to make amazing glass art.
The best have evolved the artform in exciting new directions.
Some of the art is functional, meaning it can be used to smoke cannabis.
FB and IG ban these artists for "illegal drug paraphernalia"
They even ban artists who make marbles and pendants that use designs similar to those used in pipes.
This is unfair. They are highly talented and hard working and don't deserve to be treated like that.
As if Meta had any kind of real policy (Score:2)
A comment to me that was reported as abusive:
WELL USELESS PATHETIC STUPID DUMB FUCKING UNEDUCATED LYING BRAIN DEAD MENTALLY RETARDED IDIOT SCUMBAG CUMB DUNT NAZI DUMBFUCKBORAT WITH THE BRAINS OF A BOWEL MOVEMENT, SHOW ME YOUR FACTS, LIAR?????"
Meta's response:
"We didn't remove the comment
XXXX, thanks again for your report. This information helps us reduce unwanted content for you and others.
We use a combination of technology and human reviewers to process reports and identify content that goes against our Co
True Threats (Score:2)
True Threats have a legal standard and specificity of person, place, and time are elements.
Criminal Threatening usually has a state statute.
The summary sounds much more like "muh feels" and conclusory pleading so it's probably not true to the legal standard.
How many arrests were made?
Also getting arrested for a social media post is a special kind of stupid on all sides
Posts are almost always powerless and can just get you in trouble. Don't do it to blow off steam. Or for clout.
Not worth it, get ou
Let's just declare Criminals as a protected class (Score:1)
Let's just declare Criminals as a protected class and impose heavy penalties on offenders of this rule.
Oh dang, Britain has already done it
And the FBI? (Score:2)
When was the last time you read they were investigating death threats against politicians? Maybe under Biden? I mean, now the FBI is on the side of the death threats.