Thursday, August 17, 2017

Silicon Valley escalates its war on white supremacy despite free speech concerns - The Washington Post

Also see Facebook, Airbnb Go on Offense Against Neo-Nazis After Violence (Bloomberg), Spotify removes ‘hate bands’ from its streaming library (Engadget), and The A.C.L.U. Needs to Rethink Free Speech (NYT; check the comments as well)
"Silicon Valley significantly escalated its war on white supremacy this week, choking off the ability of hate groups to raise money online, removing them from Internet search engines, and preventing some sites from registering at all.

The new moves go beyond censoring individual stories or posts. Tech companies such as Google, GoDaddy and PayPal are now reversing their hands-off approach about content supported by their services and making it much more difficult for alt-right organizations to reach mass audiences.

But the actions are also heightening concerns over how tech companies are becoming the arbiters of free speech in America. And in response, right-wing technologists are building parallel digital services that cater to their own movement."
A counterpoint at the end of the article:
"Lee Rowland, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberty Union’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, cautioned consumers against being so quick to condemn companies that host even the “most vile white supremacist speech we have seen on display this week. 
“We rely on the Internet to hear each other,” Rowland said. “We should all be very thoughtful before we demand that platforms for hateful speech disappear because it does impoverish our conversation and harm our ability to point to evidence for white supremacy and to counter it.”"
Silicon Valley escalates its war on white supremacy despite free speech concerns - The Washington Post

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