Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Hate Speech and Corporations
Your mention of corporate entities caught my eye because I have been having discussions about Google's rules against "hate speech." Someone just now made the point that in their understanding one may only be guilty of "hate speech" against an individual but not against a corporation and I suspect they are mistaken in this notion. I pointed out that in certain countries, say, France, there are actually laws against such things as "holocaust deniers" and in the case of France that law pertains to denials of the Armenian holocaust. Furthermore since social networks have membership around the world various issues of international law may arise. I understand it has become popular to pursue libel cases in Great Britain since their laws are more favorable to the plaintiff. I have been on the Internet every day since 1998 and I notice how easy it is for discussions to deteriorate into ad hominem and name calling. I am just curious if others have given consideration to how difficult it is to define much less enforce policies regarding hate speech. Facebook has 500 million members and of necessity photos and posts are monitored by BOTS which make programmatic decisions about conduct.
