It’s not censorship to stop hateful online content, insists UN rights chief

It actually is. It's making the online space feel sterile and unnatural IMO. It's purposefully hiding the complexities of human experience/perception and expression. You don't have to agree with something or think it's good - but you should be allowed to be aware of it. You should be able to "feel how people breathe" online and if there is censorship and sterilization - you can't. You don't get the full picture.

Some might argue that calling what happens in Gaza a genocide might be hate speach against Israel, and it should be censored. So who decides what is "hate" and what is not?

I think the difference is between protecting wealth and power vs protecting basic human rights.

It's censorship one way or the other. The paradox of tolerance comes into play. We can't ignore hate, it needs to be visible so people can be on guard, but we also can't let it take over by letting it run roughshod and unchecked. Those in charge of media and social media are in the first camp - protecting wealth and power, letting hate run rampant. It drives profits and engagement, the extremes of politics they support give them control.

It IS censorship and they should stop saying it isn't, but they should clearly say "we will censor X because Y" and be transparent about it. Censorship where the majority of population agrees with it is still censorship, but approved and accepted for the greater good.

Now, the question is what does "hateful" mean? And where does "hateful" start and begin? Is saying "I hate my neighbour" and "I hate Nazis" the same? Is "I hate gay people" and "I hate Manchester United" the same? Why not focus on violence instead of hate. We should have the freedom to hate (hear me out...) but in the end it is a feeling and a preference and no censorship will change that. What should be prevented at all costs however, is violent content. People can love or hate whoever, but they shouldn't be allowed to call upon any type of violence towards them.

Someone hating someone doesn't change a thing, but someone calling for attacks against someone - this is a whole new dimension and deserves total censorship.

Suddenly they care. One dead CEao and a bunch of whiny scared Billionaires is enough to stop 10 years of hateful content. Interesting lesson right there. Censorship is only good if it protects the rich.

I mean it is censorship. But not all censorship is bad.

Who decides when the content is "hateful"? The perpetrators of genocide characterize themselves as marginalized and their victims as a force seeking to eradicate them. That is the problem with censorship. Those are the people who end up with the control of speech. You end up with an Orwellian inversion of concepts like hateful speech for the exact reason that they can be weaponized for profit and power.

You show me which fascist government is going to censor the fascists living under it. It's a paradox. They will not. They will censor the resistance.

Advertising is hateful content. Ban the entire marketing industry now please.

If in a work of fiction I have a villain call my hero the n-word to demonstrate that the villain is an unapologetic racist, and I am told that I can't have that because the word is bad in and of itself and that racist behavior cannot be tolerated even in fiction..

That is censorship, even if your goals are noble they are also ignorant, as showing disgusting things in fiction is often done in order to condemn similar behavior in real life.

If you call a black person the n-word in real life, and he stomps your ass.

This isn't censorship, this is comedy.

If one goes onto an online community and calls its members radical insults in an unfriendly clearly non-joking hostile manner. Then the guilty party should be removed from that community,

And we say we are living in a democracy. Mark my word, there is not a SINGLE democracy in the world. It sounds good on paper but the technicalities are far from theory.

Censorship or not, tolerance is a social contract, and those who want to undo this system must be stopped by any means possible. Content moderation is actually the compromise.

Here on Lemmy, people who claim to advocate for freedom of speech and information, demanding for social networks to be shutdown and people to be censored based on unknown and ambiguous criteria, without even understanding the implications of it.

Details at six

Well it depends on the definition of censor.

If you define censor as, "to suppress or delete as objectionable" (Webster) then it fits just fine.

I feel like it is still censorship, but a degree of censorship required for public safety is tolerable...

Unless he's saying that social media sites policing content on their platform isn't censorship, because it's not. It's only censorship if it's a government doing it, you have the right to control what is said on a platform you own

Nobody has a problem censoring hateful and harmful content, so long as they're the ones that get to decide what that means.

Yes, but just deleting without comment, as if it never existed, isn't the solution either.

a belief held by most reasonable people and only opposed by Nazis

He just wants more censorship. They will ban “hateful” content, and then reclassify anything they don’t like as hateful. We’re already seeing a number of platforms and institutions labeling criticism of Israel as hate speech.

It's all about control

Some might call it a.. what's that word? Responsibility?

Like that whole neighbor and community upstanding injustice and leveraging their privilege for the have nots thing that has defined modern human society up until Cambridge Analytica?

These are platforms. It isn't censorship because they are private for-profit entities. They can host or deny any speech they want. And we can post on them or not and take our content elsewhere.

Also, propaganda is not speech.

Lemmy was created because Desaulines(sp?) got "censored" on reddit. Now he famously over-censors his darling instance lemmy.ml.

My point is just that nobody really thinks it should be a free for all. Everyone is human and doesn't want to hear anything that they consider egregious, or in the case of lemmy.ml "against rule 2".

Meta's anti-LGBT rules are closely knit to their ending the fact-checking: It is science denialism and linked to racism and vaccine skepticism.

Homosexuality and gender identity are not considered mental illnesses, Sex is not a binary, and Race is not connected to intelligence.

Bigots never liked science on these three, and now they use political power to impose their narrative.

Meta never moderated such discourse. Nor reddit nor twitter nor youtube. There was no censorship to end here. What this is, it is a free pass to punch down trans and gay people. It is incitement to violence, and Zuckerberg and Musk must go to the gallows for it.

Don't get me started on the toxic harassment these platforms have allowed against African and Carribean reparation activists, how they have destroyed the lives of feminists, and how they have named all Palestinians terrorists.

At this point race realists and gender essentialists have ensured political and technological control of the narrative.

There is no room for debating sealioning trolls on this one. If they don't understand the social dynamics against gender/sex/minorities at this moment, they are no better than brownshirts.

It is permabans and hooks and jabs all the way, for every single weird freak that backs this deranged hateful shit.

Why is this not as simple as adding a setting button for moderation of hateful content? The user can decide to filter it out.

Are we redefining words now?

Whole censoring content should get flipped otherway round. Meaning instead doing it from up to down like it is done now, it should be done down to up. Instead coverments, companies, platforms doing censoring, there should be tools to do it by end user.

If I say "X is shit", then that is my opinion. But if some other user do not like that i said "X is shit". Then that person should have way to filter out "X is shit" content.

So end user is person who decides what is shown, not some higer entity.

It's literally censorship, but I argue it's acceptable - even desirable and laudable - censorship