17 August 2017: The Weekly Takedown
by Jillian C. York | Aug 17 2017
CENSORED: Film of the U.S. army destroying the Nuremberg swastika was taken down by YouTube, on the grounds that it violates the company’s policy on hate speech.
SPEECH: “It’s easy to justify cutting off service when it comes to Nazis. It’s harder to know where tech companies should draw the line in other, more ambiguous cases, as many tech leaders are fully aware,” wrote @mekosoff this week for Vanity Fair.
LONG READ: In a piece for Wired, @redhotsburlyq and @lilmisshotmess demonstrate how Facebook’s hate speech policies affect marginalized users and what the company can do about it.
USER NOT FOUND: The recent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville is “re-shaping the fight against online hate,” argued @russellbrandom.
Additional reading:
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The Berkman Klein center is exploring the role of algorithms in online harmful speech
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Facebook ‘unpublishes’ street artist’s page for using hate speech
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YouTube AI deletes war crime videos as ‘extremist material’
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Facebook has anonymously launched a social media app in China
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Vietnam complained of "toxic" anti-government Facebook content, now says Facebook has committed to help censor
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jillian C. York
Jillian C. York is a writer and activist whose work lies at the intersection of technology and policy. Based in Berlin, she serves of the Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she works on issues of free expression, privacy, and digital security.
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