01/06/2020 / By Ethan Huff
Just in time for the 2020 presidential election, a pair of college professors from the United Kingdom has unveiled a new technology for blocking “hate speech” online that involves algorithmically flagging politically incorrect language in the same way that anti-virus software identifies “malware.”
According to researcher Stephanie Ullmann and professor Marcus Tomalin, both from the University of Cambridge, this newfangled “Hate O’Meter,” as they’re calling it, will flag all potentially “controversial” content – at least as they personally define it as such – and place it into a “quarantine.” Users will then have the option to view the content with a simple click, or leave it in the digital “trash,” never to be seen again.
Published in the journal Ethics and Information Technology, a paper this duo wrote about the technology explains that social media corporations like Facebook and Twitter will soon have the option to implement the Hate O’Meter on their platforms at some point in 2020, but definitely before the upcoming election.
According to Ullmann and Tomalin, “hate speech” as they choose to define it “is [as] serious as other sub-types [of harm] (e.g., physical, financial).” And while censoring content as the social media giants have been doing eliminates speech that people like Ullmann and Tomalin find offensive, it “does not undo the harm that such material has already caused when posted online.”
“[I]t would be far better to intercept potentially offensive posts at an earlier stage of the process, ideally before the intended recipient has read them,” they contend, hence the need for their Hate O’Meter.
“If a given post is automatically classified as being harmful in a reliable manner, then it can be temporarily quarantined, and the direct recipients can receive an alert, which protects them from the harmful content in the first instance,” they further explain.
“The quarantining framework is an example of more ethical online safety technology that can be extended to the handling of Hate Speech. Crucially, it provides flexible options for obtaining a more justifiable balance between freedom of expression and appropriate censorship.”
For more related news about leftist efforts to silence all online speech that they find “offensive,” be sure to check out Censorship.news.
What’s interesting about the language used by Ullmann and Tomalin to describe “hate speech” – things like “virus” and “malware” – is that it conjures up imagery of an infectious scourge that must be eradicated before other people “catch” it.
Whether they realize it or not, Ullmann and Tomalin are admitting with their choice of verbiage that they’re concerned about how certain ideas and concepts might catch on with people if these ideas and concepts aren’t “quarantined” and eliminated before they have the chance to spread.
Their definition of “hate speech” is also highly suspicious, pulling from a 2018 survey that describes it as:
“… language that attacks or diminishes, that incites violence or hate against groups, based on specific characteristics such as physical appearance, religion, descent, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or other, and it can occur with different linguistic styles, even in subtle forms or when humor is used.”
We highly doubt that actual hate speech coming from the likes of anti-white racists Erin Biba and Sarah Jeong will be detected by the Hate O’Meter. Instead, this censorship tool will presumably be used to target only conservatives and white people who reject the white-hating narratives being shoved down their throats.
So, in essence, what we have here it yet another example of the fascist left aiming to silence its opposition by first dubbing everything they don’t like as “hate speech,” and subsequently scrubbing it all from the internet.
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Tagged Under: bias, Big Tech, Censored, Censorship, criticism, dissent, Facebook, Google, hate crime, Hate O'Meter, Hate speech, malicious code, malware, speech police, tech giants, thought police, transgenderism, Twisted, Twitter, Tyranny, University of Cambridge
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