#operating definition in this moment is 'empathy is the thing that makes you reluctant to say sick jokes about the corpse you're retrieving'

[mumblingsage]

My friend and I were talking about something the other day and that factoid came up where surgeons are measurably less empathic than other specialties. Which could be for a number of reasons but one that makes sense to me is, yeah, it's beneficial that the person cutting through my tissues with a scalpel is emotionally divorced from the process! I don't want someone to have overwhelming feelings about my situation when they are doing delicate, complicated work to save my life!

(An similar example I didn't bring up to my friend is how people in search and rescue and recovery make extremely sick jokes, again as a technique to keep from being emotionally involved. Because they have a job to do and getting overwhelmed with feelings serves no one.)

This is a parable, probably.

[lokgifsandmusings]

Definitive Ranking of Book 4 Episodes, #4/13

4. 4x05 Enemy at the Gates

Spirit weapon experiment. Kuvira marches an entire army to Zaofu’s gates and yet somehow manages to convince Korra that Suyin’s the one who needs to be reasoned with. Asami looks for a good Pai Sho partner. “Hard truths, Bolin.” Zhu Li becomes an inside man.

OH MY GOD these remaining episodes are all so good, guys.

What’s funny is that almost all the driving tension in “Enemy at the Gates” are the plotlines that fell on their face. Heck, even the logistics of the battle that this setup earned criticism from me. The Beifong Family Drama starring Kuvira was certainly the central focus, and I’ve already talked about how that was a plotline that fizzled. Kuvira and Suyin faced off against one another in “Operation Beifong,” she had that moment of blowing up Baatar in “Kuvira’s Gambit,” and then she was just scripted as an antagonist for Korra, with her abandonment from her biological parents being her driving motivation, rather than the obvious personal beef with Su.

So then why do I love an episode that was all about these two women facing off against each other? Because the tension is damn-near perfect.

I want to back up and say that similar to “The Coronation”, this is one of those episodes that has an unbelievable amount of stuff crammed into it. Let’s review:

Kuvira/Baatar strategize and invite Bolin into her inner circle

Varrick introduces the Manhattan Project properly, full experiment, explosion, Kuvira comes in and threatens him

Meeting with Kuvira and the Beifongs

Kuvira threatens Bolin

Meeting with Korra and the Beifongs

Korra and Suyin talk and we get flashbacks

Meeting with Korra and Kuvira

Bolin and Varrick team up, grab mecha suits to escape, have a full fight, Zhu Li “betrays” Varrick

Meeting with Korra and Baatar Sr.

Everything with Hiroshi/Asami

This is a TWENTY MINUTE episode. Fine, 23ish. But still, you get my point.

Perhaps this is why it’s so favorable to me, since we really don’t have the time to deeply ruminate on any of it. But it’s also heavily based around family drama, even if it ends up being secondary to the plot in favor of Korra’s spiritual journey (which is the most important thing, of course, but it does seem odd that these personal stakes for Suyin and Kuvira were put in such sharp focus only to totally fizzle. This is old ground for me though).

So, let’s talk about Korra’s spiritual journey and how this fits in. We see it more in “Battle of Zaofu,” but this sets up how Korra is trying to push against her old tendencies, with her literally saying “Fighting is something the old me would do. That always made things worse.”

We are seeing an unconfident Korra here, and given the trauma she went through, of course she’s damn shaken. “That always made things worse.” Did it Korra, did it? Because I’m fairly certain fighting your uncle saved the entire world. And it’s not as if she was going over-and-beyond with the Red Lotus. She had spent the season fairly restrained, even willingly turning herself in, and only fought back when they’d approach her.

Yeah Korra, the “old you” sucked so badly.

But that’s the point. She’s out of balance (the season really bashes you over the head with this; frankly the series does). Her extreme reticence is maybe uh...better(?) than like, crashing the Water Tribe judge’s car and sticking his head in Naga’s mouth, but from what we see here, it comes at a cost as well. Kuvira is easily able to manipulate Korra, both with her reluctance to snap into action and with her guilt for having “disappeared”:

Korra: I can't let you take Zaofu.

Kuvira: Look, I was tasked with bringing stability to the Earth Kingdom. Zaofu is the last holdout. Why should I treat it differently than any other state?

Korra: What you're doing isn't right!

Kuvira: I understand you're just trying to do Su a favor, but you can't come to me as I am on the verge of reuniting my nation and tell me to stop. The world was descending into chaos while you were gone. In order to fix it, I had to make some tough decisions.

Kuvira is clearly overstepping (she brought her dang army), and there seems to be some sort of right to self-determination for the stats, or else they wouldn’t have to voluntarily sign-on. Korra’s also definitely not “doing Su a favor”; she’s trying to prevent the very literal army from attacking. She could easily be like, “well wait, if they don’t want to join you, you can’t force them.” Or also point out the whole “hey remember that time you flipped off the world leaders and declared yourself Emperor? Because I’m pretty sure what you were ‘tasked with’ doesn’t really apply anymore since they want you to step down.”

But it’s so perfectly reasonable why Korra doesn’t do this. I could see why this episode seems frustrating, as if she’s just easily influenced by whoever she talks to last, but she does push against Suyin’s more extreme tactics even after hearing the tragic backstory, and her motivation seems more to be avoiding a confrontation (probably because she doesn’t trust herself in that situation) than anything else. She doesn’t find that balance until her mindful meditation session with Zaheer, and we know the results from there, with her decidedly springing into action when the situation calls for it.

So, even though we all hate to see Korra “off her game,” it’s contextualized in this larger healing arc, and one with truly fantastic take-aways. This episode brilliantly bridged her solitude and hiding with what was to come, showing both her guilt for disappearing, her determination to be “back”, and her fear to actually embrace that role.

However, for all Korra’s arc was the focus of the season, there’s not even a question that in this episode it takes a backseat to Kuvira/Suyin. Heck, even Korra’s conversations with everyone was more about the game of ping-pong between those two women than Korra herself.

What’s amazing to me is how...transparent Kuvira lets herself be. If anyone’s read A Song of Ice and Fire, she more or less flies off the handle when met with the slightest resistance as quickly as Cersei Lannister (GoT not applicable here). That’s saying something. For instance, take Cersei trying to persuade Ned not to turn her and her children in for the twincest:

“Must?” She put her hand on his good leg, just above the knee. “A true man does what he will, not what he must.” Her fingers brushed lightly against his thigh, the gentlest of promises. “The realm needs a strong Hand. Joff will not come of age for years. No one wants war again, least of all me.” Her hand touched his face, his hair. “If friends can turn to enemies, enemies can become friends. Your wife is a thousand leagues away, and my brother has fled. Be kind to me, Ned. I swear to you, you shall never regret it.”

“Did you make the same offer to Jon Arryn?”

She slapped him. “I shall wear that as a badge of honor,” Ned said dryly.

“Honor, “ she spat. “How dare you play the noble lord with me! What do you take me for? You’ve a bastard of your own, I’ve seen him. Who was the mother, I wonder? Some Dornish peasant you raped while her holdfast burned? A whore? Or was it the grieving sister, the Lady Ashara? She threw herself into the sea, I’m told. Why was that? For the brother you slew, or the child you stole?

The seduction element is much less important than how QUICKLY she goes from zero to nuclear. Now compare it to Kuvira:

Bolin: So, uh ... what does happen to all those towns and villages after we leave? I just realized I'd never really ... gone back and ... checked on them.

Kuvira: Those people are my loyal subjects, and they contribute to the Empire however I see fit. Now that you're in the inner circle, you're going to have to accept some hard truths.

Bolin: Maybe ... I'm not really an "inner circle" kind of guy. Or--or maybe, we don't take over Zaofu! Maybe we can just--let them be on their own, and then, "Yay! The Empire's united! Congratulations to us!"

Kuvira: I didn't know your personal feelings for Opal were stronger than your loyalty to me. Zaofu will join us. The only thing I'm second-guessing is my decision to bring you along. Maybe you need to spend some time in a reeducation camp.

Like good god, woman! And the thing is, this type of “reasonable/nice approach>hesitation by other person>SNAP” happens three times in this episode. Three. There’s the scene with Varrick when he doesn’t want to work on the Manhattan Project anymore, there’s the scene above, and there’s the fact that she has one brief conversation with Suyin and gives them a 24-hour ultimatum before invading with her entire army. What cracks me up about that one in particular is that this is less than 10 on-screen minutes after she was telling Baatar how they “have to do this right” because “the eyes of the world are on them.”

She unravels so quickly. And frankly, so does Suyin. Kuvira was designed as a foil to Korra, sure, but it was more about her superficial qualities and place in life. She helped Korra (ultimately) be able to wrap her arms around her own inner struggles, and externalize them through empathy in the Spirit World. But if we want to talk about the characters with remarkable similarities, it’s Kuvira and Suyin. They are the foiliest foils that ever foiled, and the very personal and deeply-felt nature of their conflict that makes it fly off the screen.

Those similarities are more or less the star of the episode. We see both Kuvira and Su being utterly unreasonable, while accusing the other party of being to blame. Su hurls charges at Kuvira of “brainwashing” Baatar (no he’s a grown-ass man who also happens to be the worst), while advocating that Korra fucking murder her (that was the implication, right?). Kuvira, meanwhile, is just hellbent on getting Zaofu to be “hers” so that she can stick it to Su once at for all, and fulfill the “When I choose to return, it'll be on my own terms” piece of her past argument with her. Even better is that they both put up this facade of being super reasonable and just and open-minded, while they’re really filling their own self-serving aims. Kuvira’s just “spreading the resources” guys! This totally justifies her takeover and refusal to step-down. Suyin, meanwhile, couldn’t bear to impose her ideas on her nation, while she basically ran Zaofu as a police state, and anyone who wants to leave is met with horrible animosity. That whole “my kids are free to follow their own paths, as long as it’s the paths I want!” thing is really the core of her existence.

The “rift” between them was because Kuvira was feeling stifled and realized that Suyin’s goals were too narrow and insular? But then we see how quickly it became Kuvira wanting people to be bowing to her, because maybe she and Su are cut from the same cloth.

You see now why the whole “this was all about my birth parents ditching me!” thing is super out of place in the context of the storyline we were given for Kuvira? Almost everything she did seemed to be in response to Su.

Kuvira: We're doing what you don't have the guts to do: We're going to Ba Sing Se to help bring order back to the Earth Kingdom.

Suyin: No! You will stay here!

Kuvira: And who's going to stop me? Your security force was more than happy to join my cause. They're some of the best fighters in the world, and they are tired of being treated like exotic birds in your cage.

Um. Can I address a slight elephant in the room?

It feels like Kuvira and Suyin are former lovers. I don’t know if it’s me going nuts with shipping goggles or what, but it just. It feels like it. Maybe it’s the fact that they take everything so damn personally, and instantly jump to blaming the other? I know this wasn’t the intent. I’m just saying this was the result, at least for me, and I’m not complaining. But there’s really nothing remotely maternal in the way Suyin talks to her (or even about her, despite what she claims), and Kuvira doesn’t exactly act like a daughter. Baatar? He totally is Percy Weasleying everywhere, and you can just see him dripping with his “I’m a big boy now” attitude.

Baatar: Son, you belong here.

Baatar Jr.: Why? So that I could go on living in your shadow?

I guess in terms of the words said, it’s not that different than Kuvira’s “exotic birds” remark, but there’s just something in the delivery and the way it’s tossed out there that feels different. I think. It’s different. Yeah.

Really, the only negative that can be said about this subplot is once again, the muddied politics surrounding Kuvira. She has no mandate anymore, since she basically told the world leaders to fuck off in 4x03. She is a conqueror to an unwilling state, and really there was no need to even “do this right,” since we learn in “Reunion” that the leaders do fuck nothing about it. Just an Emperor being and Emperor, and one who is surprisingly thin-skinned and impatient. I have to appreciate that Zhu Li played her like a fiddle, though.

And yeah, Zhu Li. Varrick. The WMD.

Let’s tackle their relationship first. I’ve held off on writing fully about Zhurrick, because I still don’t know, dudes. I promise it will be a piece in the pipeline, something like “to ship or not to ship?” Here, we’re seeing the uncomfortable dynamic, though it’s at least recognized as problematic within the episode. Zhu Li calls out Varrick on being weak, but other than that it’s him taking her for granted, their one “tender” moment being ended when he demands she clean up his shit. Then in the mecha suit fight she does all the heavy lifting yet again, showing mild annoyance with him, while he blames her. Frankly, that her “betrayal” was fake is actually a wonder. But it sets Zhu Li on the path to assert more of her agency, while also placing her on the side of the good guys in a very decisive way. I’m glad that they set this up to be addressed, though I certainly question the success of the follow-through.

Am I alone in thinking that they’ve been fucking this whole time too? God, why does this keep happening to me.

The Manhattan Project itself was brilliant. There’s just something so pleasing to my stupid engineering heart in that beginning where Varrick is documenting his procedure and measuring things in Zhu Lis. The tone was funny, while the seriousness of the subject matter was never glossed over. I did think Varrick’s conveniently acquired conscious was a bit out of the blue, but a near-death experience can sometimes push people in that direction. His full “redemption” takes place over the season, and it mostly involves Bolin screaming at him, so it’s good that this wasn’t a dropped thread either.

Oh and Bolin, poor Bolin. Opal is telling him to his face what she has seen, and he’s just stuck in that “we’re helping people” mindset, to the point where it’s a little weird.

Opal: They might have been happy when you first arrived, but I've seen what happens after you leave. Citizens are forced to work as slave labor, dissenters are sent off to who-knows-where!

Bolin: You're wrong, Opal! Now, I don't know what you think you've seen, but I am giving you the one-hundred-percent Bolin guarantee that we're making the Earth Empire a better place to live!

Like, he asks Kuvira about this later, so why would he just argue with Opal to her face instead of asking there? I know sometimes he needs to sit with ideas for a bit, but it did feel just a little like a contrivance to get Bolin to defect with Varrick, rather than showing hesitation there. I do have to be so appreciative that Suyin was completely unconvinced by anything Bolin was saying though, to the point where she just yelled at Kuvira for putting him in that position. No one really takes him that seriously, and the way he’s so dismissive of Opal is incredibly off-putting. No wonder he was in the polar bear dog house.

The last thing Zaofu did was firmly establish the prison camp system that Kuvira had set-up and demonstrate just how completely over-the-line her actions were. “Hard truths, Bolin.” Charming.

But this wouldn’t be a proper Kylie-meta if I didn’t talk about our favorite engineer who decided to firmly tell her father to fuck-off, only to feel bad and want to try and get over her anger towards him because her life is filled with nothing but loss and deep down she loves him and hates that she loves him and...

I can keep going. You’ve seen me keep going. And now Griffin and I are teaming up to bring you the complete saga of Asami’s life, with her relationship to Hiroshi serving as the focal point.

The thing is, there’s a lot about their on-screen relationship that’s weird as hell. I talked in my “Colossus” write-up about how Asami kind of has this background narrative, and obviously it’s one that I think is engaging to fill in. But if we just sit back and think about these scenes...the guy tried to fucking kill her. That’s not hyperbole; her father tried to murder her.

It’s not that it wasn’t effective. It takes minimal thinking to get why Asami would want to end the relationship on her terms, and why what Hiroshi said in response was overwhelming. We then get a shot of her processing everything, which I can’t believe they gave us, to be honest. However, I do HATE that it’s framed like, “oh look a happy father/daughter. There were some good times.” The trouble with Asami is that she is utterly ill-suited for a visual medium, because she’s a character that’s in her head so much. It’s why even in the hands of good adapters, Sansa Stark was going to be a difficult character to get right on-screen, but why she’s so damn amazing on-page.

And like, yes, I’m probably a little out-of-balance given how I write Asami. Here’s a brief part of her internal monologue after receiving his first letter:

Why now? Could he have heard about the plan for the wilds? It had been over a month since the initial press conference that immediately followed the Business Council meeting where the plan was unveiled, and almost three full weeks since the follow-up conference, where Tenzin attended to confirm the role of the airbenders. A picture of her and the airbending master had been on the front page of the paper the following day. Just wait until I finish the wingsuits, Dad. Even still, Asami knew it wouldn’t have taken her father that long to send the letter if it was only in reaction to the press.

The longer she stared at the envelope, the more upset she became. What right does he have to contact me after everything? Yet as much as she was angry with her father, she was even angrier with herself for caring. Asami opened the smallest drawer of her desk and removed the few sheets of paper from within. In their place, she threw Hiroshi’s letter and slammed the drawer shut. I should buy a lock for it. She pushed herself out of her chair and walked over to the door leading down to her workshop.

After descending the flight of stairs, Asami instinctively walked over to the table where she had left the steering gear she was in the middle of examining. She sat down and picked up her pencil, determined to finish her sketches. Unbidden, her mind wandered back to the letter. There is nothing he can say to me. The hurt was too deep for an apology to heal her wounds. Not that Asami was sure it even was an apology. For all she knew, it was a letter chastising her for the error of her ways.

(Yikes I need to re-write this stupid fic)

My point is, no character would just get over almost being murdered by a parent because pai sho times were really fun. It works as a scene to give us a window into where her headspace might be, but the take-away is a little odd. Asami could have looked up and seen anything else there (like a Satomobile), or nothing, and still come to that conclusion. The wistful smile...idk. I’m aware this is a nitpick, yes.

“Awww, maybe he’ll try to fucking murder her in 12 years”

However, I think they mostly stuck the landing in the final scene. Asking to play pai sho like the olden times was a good starting point, and I could see that reasonably being the only thing someone in Asami’s position would think they could emotionally handle. But what’s more is this line:

Asami: But when I saw you, it wasn't anger I felt. It was sadness. You tainted our past and destroyed our future together.

It’s just so...laid out there beautifully, and delivered where you can feel her pain. I never have a word against Seychelle Gabriel.

I will complain that Hiroshi’s own prejudices were never addressed. He was sad he harmed the “Sato” reputation, and wanted Asami specifically to be in his life, but we don’t know if he actually came around on the “I hate benders” thing. We can assume, sure. We can also blame Daniel Dae Kim’s schedule, or the money to get him in a booth, or something. It’s just never not gonna frustrate me that so many things in Book 4 were put in the foreground over more central characters (where the fuck is Tenzin ever?) and plots.

God, I was such a Jin fangirl. Well once he stopped being terrible.

Ya know, maybe that’s the best way to think of this episode, too. It was truly Varrick, Kuvira, and Suyin who were the stars of it. It’s not that what we saw was bad in any way (quite the contrary), but it was a bit of a cannibalization of our screen-time for tensions that ultimately fizzled or mattered less in the scope of things. Two more episodes worth of time and this might have been the perfect season. Yet how the hell am I supposed to complain about “Enemy at the Gates” where the stakes were both personal and engaging, and the action kept it moving? It won’t get a top spot, but it’s quite worthy of this high of a ranking.

#13: 4x08 “Remembrances”

#12: 4x11 “Kuvira’s Gambit”

#11: 4x09 “Beyond the Wilds”

#10: 4x07 “Reunion”

#9: 4x06 The “Battle of Zaofu”

#8. 4x12 “Day of Colossus”

#7 4x01 “After All These Years”

#6 4x03 “The Coronation”

#5 4x04 “The Calling”

Book 2 ranking/essays found here

[digitalmark18-blog]

How Can Social Media Firms Tackle Hate Speech?

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/how-can-social-media-firms-tackle-hate-speech/

How Can Social Media Firms Tackle Hate Speech?

For years, social media companies have done relatively little to keep hate speech off of their platforms, often accepting racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic screeds and comments as the cost of doing business. More recently, though, social media has exploded onto the front lines in the battle over hate speech, free speech and the sociopolitical war gripping the U.S.

One big recent spark was provided by Alex Jones. The conspiracy theorist has long floated patently false claims that child-sex rings run by prominent public figures (Robert Mueller, Hillary Clinton) are operating right under our noses, and that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax staged by gun-control activists. In early August, social media companies decided they had had enough: YouTube took down Jones’s channel — with 2.4 million subscribers — saying it violated the firm’s policy on hate speech, and Apple dropped some of Jones’s InfoWars podcasts from its app for the same reason. Facebook removed some of his pages, saying they were “glorifying violence” and using “dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants.”

Twitter hesitated, but eventually “permanently suspended” Jones and InfoWars for what it called repeated violations of its policy against abusive behavior.

Jones cried censorship. Now, social media companies are caught among multiple rocks and hard places. They want to create a pleasant environment for users (“safe,” in industry parlance), and yet they would like to be seen as upholding the American value of free speech. They enjoy the primacy once held by traditional media in this country, but they don’t want regulation and the responsibilities of mediating the truth that that industry exercised for decades.

Above all, perhaps, they want to keep growing users so they can keep growing profits.

“This issue is definitely a threat, because currently [social media firms] are on a roll, they make a lot of money and they are only growing in power,” says Gad Allon, director of Wharton’s Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology and professor of operations, information and decisions. “And so if the public is going to go against them, if the political class is going to go against them, they will find themselves in a very different kind of situation.”

Calls for blocking certain kinds of speech on social media have grown in recent months, in the U.S. and elsewhere. Former United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, accused Myanmar military officials of using social media to incite genocide, and he called on Facebook to remove content, which it did. The Sri Lankan government shut down Facebook, WhatsApp and other platforms in the country earlier this year after violence against Muslims. It was only after Facebook officials visited the country with a pledge to curtail hate speech and misuse that the ban was lifted.

Social media has been called to account for itself in numerous Congressional hearings. Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, asked during testimony this past April to define hate speech, said: “Senator, I think this is a really hard question, and I think it’s one of the reasons why we struggle with it.” Zuckerberg has resisted calls to have Facebook take down pages of Holocaust deniers.

“I feel empathy for the leaders of these organizations, because I believe they are conscientious and want to do the right thing, but it is hard to know what the right thing to do is.”–Christopher Yoo

Some see social media companies as exercising too much editorial control, as well as feeding back to people what they already believe. “The worry is that social media is creating an echo chamber effect that reinforces polarization in our society, and the solution to that is to radically limit social media’s control over what information gets passed on or what doesn’t,” says Christopher S. Yoo, director of the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition and professor of law, communication and computer and information science.

“On the other hand, in the aftermath of the 2017 elections, there is enormous concern that false or misleading information is being conveyed by social media, and the solution there is for them to exercise more editorial control. Add this to Cambridge Analytica and Trump’s calls to regulate search results over what comes up when he Googles his name, and social media doesn’t know where to jump,” says Yoo. “I feel empathy for the leaders of these organizations, because I believe they are conscientious and want to do the right thing, but it is hard to know what the right thing to do is.”

But what if, through hate speech and becoming a frightening and depressing atmosphere, the Facebook news feed becomes a place that the public begins to avoid?

“That’s the biggest fear for Facebook,” says Allon. “That people will view it as a fearful place — if I want to feel bad that’s where I will go. That’s why they never want to show you opposing views, because it may anger you. The moment you think about Facebook the same way as smoking, that’s the death of Facebook.”

The Right to Say Anything

Social media companies may or may not decide to do something about hate speech. But right now, legally speaking, they are not compelled to do anything.

“Strictly as a matter of First Amendment law, they can do whatever they want. They could say, ‘We’re only going to publish people who are members of the Republican party,’ and there is nothing to prevent Facebook from doing what Trump is accusing them of doing,” says Nadine Strossen, law professor at New York Law School, immediate past president of the American Civil Liberties Union and author of HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship. Discrimination laws might prevent them from discriminating on the basis of race and other factors, “but certainly not political ideology.”

The First Amendment concerns only government control of free speech, noted John Carroll, professor of mass communication at Boston University, in a recent conversation on the Knowledge@Wharton show on SiriusXM. (Listen to the full podcast at the top of this page.) Social media companies “have been really reluctant to remove content from Alex Jones in terms of … [it being] fraudulent content,” he said. “What they have done is said, ‘This is hate speech, and we have the right to remove it under our terms of service’ — and as a private business, they absolutely have that right.”

In fact, many Americans perceive social media as playing an active role in censorship. When asked whether they think it likely that social media platforms actively censor political views that those companies find objectionable, 72% of respondents to a June Pew Research Center survey said yes. Republicans were especially inclined to think so: 85% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said it was likely that social media sites intentionally censor political viewpoints, with 54% saying it was very likely, found the Pew survey of 4,594 U.S. adults.

Social media companies routinely deny that they are actively censoring political views, and the tendency away from censorship was built into the structure of social media long before the term social media came into use. Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 established protection from liability for a provider or user of an “interactive computer service” — as opposed to publishers — for carrying third-party content. In other words, it firmly established what would become social media as a largely unmediated bulletin board.

“The moment you think about Facebook the same way as smoking, that’s the death of Facebook.”–Gad Allon

“This is why social media companies, when they first came on the public scene, said, ‘We are not media companies; we are tech companies,’” said Strossen. “They knew they had the right and power to act as traditional media companies and serve an editorial function in choosing what to publish and what not to publish, but deliberately said, ‘We are choosing to not engage in that kind of content discrimination, and will let all voices have equal access to our platforms.’”

In avoiding the gatekeeper role, social media established itself as being no more liable for messages conveyed than telephone companies were liable for conversations traveling over their phone lines.

Section 230 created “a safe harbor for Good Samaritan blocking of obscene, filthy, harassing or objectionable material,” says Yoo, “to give companies as conveyors of information latitude to exercise some editorial discretion without liability, to balance these concerns.”

The courts, however, haven’t provided great clarity on the question of how much control they should exercise. “If we take the statute seriously, social media companies’ control is limited to things that are obscene or harassing,” Yoo notes. “There have been court decisions interpreting this liability as extending to categories very broadly, which would give social media companies the latitude to control their newsfeeds. And then there are courts that have interpreted it narrowly, in which case companies would face a great deal of liability, so there is fair amount of legal uncertainty.”

The problem with the phone-line analogy is that no one picks up their phone to find him or herself eavesdropping on thousands of white supremacists and Holocaust deniers. Facebook’s community standards statement says the platform does not allow hate speech “because it creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion and in some cases may promote real-world violence. We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability. We also provide some protections for immigration status. We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation.”

Questions of Interpretation

What ensues are some thorny questions around who gets to interpret; the biases and life experiences the individual interpreter brings to the task; and larger questions of context that algorithms are unable to consider.

Facebook, for instance, recently flagged the Declaration of Independence, removing paragraphs 27-31 when a community newspaper in Texas published it in the days leading up to the Fourth of July. It wasn’t clear whether snipping out part of our national guiding principle was purely algorithmic or involved a layer of human review, but the trigger appears to have been a reference to “merciless Indian Savages,” according to Slate.

On the slippery slope of regulating speech, what is considered free and legitimate speech by one group might be considered inciteful by another, and user agreements are of limited help, says Ron Berman, a Wharton marketing professor. “Many of these agreements use the grey line between an illegitimate behavior on the platform, and illegitimate consequence, which is very problematic. For example, a call for Catalonian independence from Spain on Facebook may be considered free legitimate speech by a large group [of Catalonians], but if it later causes a violent protest, it may become [seen as] illegitimate.”

“From a public-relations perspective, I think the issue is less about investors and regulators, and more about advertisers who may decide to stop using Facebook as an advertising platform because it will be seen as allowing hate speech.”–Ron Berman

Pressure is building on social media firms to do something about hate speech, and “no doubt, that threat of regulation will have an impact on the culture of these companies,” says Strossen. But regulating speech would be a grave mistake, she says. Even if Alex Jones did violate social media community standards by engaging in disparaging, dehumanizing, degrading and demeaning ideas, “one person’s view of what that concept is is antithetical to another’s,” she says. “Some say Black Lives Matter is demeaning to others. Some say All Lives Matter is racist because it is insensitive to those whose lives are in jeopardy. These are all subjective matters, so the only solution is not suppressing free speech. There is more harm in empowering government officials or private-sector actors with making these discretionary decisions.”

But social-media sites do have a legitimate business argument for stamping out hate speech as much as possible. One risk with two-sided platforms like Facebook is that they can quickly have a “phase” shift from a positive state to a negative state, says Berman. “For example, if it turns out that the Facebook ad-targeting algorithm allows advertisers to discriminate based on race, gender or any other factor, or that the targeting algorithm would make it possible to promote hate speech, other advertisers … would not want to appear as condoning this advertising platform,” he says. “From a public-relations perspective, I think the issue is less about investors and regulators, and more about advertisers who may decide to stop using Facebook as an advertising platform because it will be seen as allowing hate speech.”

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are hiring thousands of new moderators, or “News Feed integrity data specialists,” as Facebook calls them, to filter out content it considers to be in violation of its standards. But moderators are inconsistent, and that inconsistency puts minority users of social media at a disadvantage, according to a report last year by the Center for Investigative Reporting. The report cited Facebook users whose posts on racial matters were deleted by Facebook, but whose white friends, when asked to post the same content, found their posts were not deleted.

Don’t hold your breath for justice consistently applied. “The standards are irreducibly subjective, so the standard will be enforced with the subjective values of the enforcer,” says Strossen.

In the Silicon Valley mindset, however, there is a belief that everything can be solved algorithmically — “that there is a technical solution to every societal problem,” says Allon. “They believe they have the solution but just have not found it yet.”

The Wisdom of the Free Market

The other way of looking at the situation is that social media, as an industry, is still green. “To some extent, I think social media companies are going through a high-tech rite of passage,” says Yoo. “Many technologies are born and enjoy an initial period of benign neglect, and don’t spend much time thinking about the broader social impact of their products and the possibility they might be regulated.”

Strossen says what is needed to help combat hate speech is better media skills. “If I had to choose, I’d rather have more [guidance for people in sorting] the truth from that which is false, helping them to navigate to find messages that are supportive of how to facilitate their own effective counter-speech against hate speech, and to reach out to hate mongers to help them change their views.”

“Just as you get more hate speech through these new technologies, you also have much more effective response to hate speech.”–Nadine Strossen

What’s important to remember, she says, is that while a lot of negativity has been let loose in the world as a result of social media, a lot good causes have also traveled far and wide. “Just as you get more hate speech through these new technologies, you also have much more effective response to hate speech. The other speech going on is incredibly inspiring. You could not have had the social-justice movement, from Black Lives Matter to #MeToo and the anti-gun movement. They really flourished thanks to social media.”

Allon says social media companies need to be more transparent about how they decide what is hate speech, and what they choose to do about it: “How do these algorithms work? How do they decide what I see and what I don’t see?”

One obvious solution for encountering less hate speech and providing safe zones would be to have a variety of social media platforms available to suit different tastes — one place that truly is about sharing vacation photos and getting in touch with high school friends, and others more political and controversial. Why isn’t this kind of sorting — through free-market dynamics — happening?

“I do think, actually, it is,” says Yoo. “If you want to see the future trends, look at what people just entering the market are doing, and that is what young people are doing. They are on multiple social media platforms simultaneously, and for them different platforms serve different purposes. So I think you are starting to see diversification among social media, and I think that is a good healthy development.”

But it’s also important to note that Facebook, Twitter and Google combined “basically monopolize” the digital information environment, said David Karpf, associate director of George Washington University’s School of Media & Public Affairs, who joined B.U.’s Carroll on the Knowledge@Wharton show. “If those three shut you down, then it becomes tremendously hard to reach a massive audience.”

Facebook had 2.23 billion monthly active users as of June 30. Considered alongside the current total number of social media users globally, 3.3 billion, that raises the question: Is Facebook simply too big today to be considered a social media platform and business in the usual sense? Is it really more like a public utility because of its scale and ubiquity?

“I don’t think so,” says Yoo. “People forget, when they are concerned about the dominance of Facebook, that 10 years ago it didn’t really exist. What we see in the broad scale is that new players have come up or older players have reinvented themselves in dramatic ways, which indicates the market is incredibly dynamic. We forget that if we were having this discussion a decade ago we might be talking about MySpace — or two decades ago, AOL. The AOL-Time Warner merger was treated like the end of history, and as it turns out, [it was only] the end of $200 billion worth of shareholder value…. Google is a company [that is] only 20 years old. Apple, until it reinvented itself, was in the doldrums. These are incredibly dramatic changes that are the sign of an industry that is constantly buffeted by the gales of creative destruction in a very positive way.”

Source: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/can-social-media-firms-tackle-hate-speech/

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Build Your Credibility

Each of us becomes up in the morning and needs to wait to help do an item good, handy, and productive. Have anyone used persons who genuinely wish to do hurt, damage, and etc day soon after day? If there are like persons, they should be few and a good the beginning of the main day a brand new positive plus filled utilizing frontward hunting thinkings. In which is the way in which it will have to become, normally most people probably would not become making the level of progress we could experiencing all around issue is definitely one of persistence. Consider often the cycle about occurrences. All of us get psyched by some sort of idea, a strong idea, or perhaps an act. We quietly resolve to move it further. Normally, such views come to united states whenever we usually are chaotic engaging in another thing. Habitually, want many of us have done doing regardless of what it was initially that individuals were engaging in, the idea as well as concept goes away, and many of us are stuck damaging our own heads curious about actually was basically that is consequently thrilling. Stuff send more difficult when you show each of our reasons utilizing other people. Statements for instance ‘I are going to help generate a arrange next year, ‘I will grant my aged apparel for you to the Salvation Army happen to be heard simply by others and even filed out. Sooner or maybe later, when those who noticed your proclamations realize that anyone didn’t followup on all of them, these people cope you having a lesser amount of respect. Your personal believability has long been ruined. Trustworthiness implies always keeping your particular expression. It again is only a function of how believable you happen to be. It can be a way of measuring a person’s should an individual accomplish developing believability? Below are some ideas: Indicate reputable peopleThink to a man or women (at home, job, club) who else a person have shown admiration for for his reliability. Exactly why do a person want the dog? So how exactly does he / she have the ability to retain their statement? Notice that man or woman very closely, sit back and watch the way he / she runs in relation to rewarding her obligations. Shadow your husband. Head out and even discussion to your ex. Most, maybe all, trustworthy people will probably be willing so that you can take a moment in addition to talk with you. They might in no way all be able to explicitly inform you of their volume responses so that you can credible located, but they will definitely end up being able in order to provide you valuable remarks within have an affect on check out their valuable duties, and how that they go regarding fulfilling these folks. It is usually a wonderful tutorial that will consistentConsistency will be the trait of honesty. The individuals one offer with have to feel of which you don’t need modification colorings like the chameleon from 1 circumstance to help another, or display distinct behavior before different men and women. Reliability requires valor. Now there will be numerous functions debt collectors daring as well as truthfulness will be proven. These are typically the actual moments inside when the exact decent are generally distinguishable coming from the superb. The superb take those task exactly, exhibit daring, along with keep to the appropriate point. People who include the fine level of quality with uniformity tend to be unchanged by simply those people who beseige committedCredible consumers are inspired by simply challenging determination to anything they complete, in that cya they can be warriors never mercenaries with living. All their daring hails from all their dedication in order to their reason thus they’re able to always choose the courage to handle the prospects. Daring comes from investment. If one are certainly committed towards an underlying cause, everyone will look for the braveness to experience chances. Take on Nelson Mandela. Having been fully commited, hence they uncovered the very will so that you can remain rational and relax in revenge of twenty-seven years associated with appeared to be often presented personal positive aspects by way of the white government officials to allow up his or her crusade. He refused everytime. That appeared to be empatheticCredibility develops up simply when people are certainly concerned related to other individuals. Empathy means setting on your own around the various other person’s position, and visualizing the issues of a specified action. Because everyone in business is people, we all quite much currently have similar preferences at any specific levels. Most people get a want for really like, caring, friendly relationship, esteem, and hope. Affinity comes through acknowledge that I just am tough from throughout , nor own to harmed others to let them discover. True toughness is derived from exhibiting genuine attention and aspect for some others, specially when you actually have an advantage.. One terrific sort of this specific level of quality is actually Nelson Mandela. After currently being addressed consequently monstrously intended for as long, your dog showed some degree with compassion couple humans have been completely able for you to undertake. He / she merely forgave those who perpetrated death, violence of any kind, and even injustice next to the whole country on the actual unreasonable point of view of skin area real beauty of Mandela’s wonder surfaced when he came over associated with jail, started to be Belonging to the belonging to the Republic with Southern Africa, and even from this towering seat with potential, decided to display zero rancor towards the men and women who have caused very much personal hurting for your ex. He simply forgave them. That was legitimate responsiveness. His expertise for you to undergo no matter if his particular ex-wife was initially arraigned for unethical dealings. This sort of will be the mesmerism of accord. Sadly, countless of people oversight affinity intended for not think of yourself as just what exactly you usually are notWe commonly try and project personally since some other person. This particular are unable to operate, simply because people will get found out. People can not mislead almost all the consumers all the main time. Moreover, God has turned each just one of you quite exclusively. Just check out yourself. Who share a similar physical options that you actually have? Simply by the exact same token, few-people share the identical intrinsic abilities you possess. And there is ample space for this earth for a couple more for example you! Which means that quit for you to be actually not. Rather, start centering on what everyone are, what your strengths are, and what you can use through them. Your company discovery could amaze anyone. It can give anyone the inner generate towards work just what exactly together with who seem to everyone really are actually. Your authority will head out in place by advances, considering that you are usually projecting anything you genuinely tend to be. Share your own fearsWe quite often choose towards hold all of our concerns towards alone. Anytime this develops, the main doubts tend to improve in the minds. The very imagination works tricks with our value, and all of us in many cases are paralyzed. Do not this specific should one. It will be regular meant for humankind feeling scared. Once you truly feel reluctant about some thing, discuss them along with 1 to 2 near allies. This particular is never a signal with as well as. The actual trick lies in knowing two or more people do you know integrity and even genuine consternation for a person can certainly help all of them make one feel a great deal better upon having embraced your current fearfulness utilizing are usually some questions to ask any time building your credibility: Might it worry all of us if the actions were created public? Easily were to notice this specific with regards to one other person who else I hold respect, how would I’m about the pup or maybe your ex? Very best worst finish result feasible if I was to maintain my word? The truth is of which humanity is unable to enjoy virtually any real development unless there can be enough legitimate people in this particular earth. All things considered, the environment functions about faith along with faith. Understand what exactly prepared around the foreign money bills around your pocket book – perhaps that can be almost nothing with out believability and even believe in. If that confidence is definitely shaken, there’s a manage on the actual currency! At last, remember situation of typically the young man who cried bad guy. At the time your company’s standing can be in query, you currently have a Himalayan task upgrading it. Your credibility is like any China’s plants vase. It again is superb, and shown admiration for by many. Drop them, and this is almost impossible to reconstruct it. Build your own trustworthiness, together with then secure it the life depended upon the item, because it all truly does. Go through more: .

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Your own Credibility

Every one of us makes up within a period of time as well as needs towards do an item good, important, and rewarding. Have anyone get hold of consumers who genuinely wish to do injury, damage, etc day after day? When there are such persons, that doctor needs to be small amount of and significantly the beginning of the very day is mainly positive in addition to filled having in advance looking views. The fact that is the best way it really should to end up being, often most people would not always be making the amount of progress i’m experiencing approximately issue is only one of regularity. Consider the main period about occasions. We get excited by any strategy, some sort of idea, as well as an take action. We quietly resolve to move it further. In most cases, such thinkings come that will you whenever we will be fast paced executing different things. Constantly, when people have done doing whatsoever it was basically that people ended up performing, often the idea or maybe concept diminishes, and we all are quit itching our own brain wondering actually was basically which had been and so exhilarating. Elements attract more challenging as soon as show your purposes using other folks. Statements similar to ‘I morning going to help make a publication the coming year, ‘I want to offer my classic attire towards the Salvation Army happen to be heard by others plus filed apart. Sooner or maybe later, while those exactly who heard your company’s proclamations recognize that you didn’t post disaster on these people, that they cope one through much less esteem. Your personal standing continues to be damaged. Trustworthiness indicates trying to keep an individual’s term. It again is simply a function of how believable you were. It can be a measure of a man’s may a single accomplish making trustworthiness? Below are a few proposals: Discern reputable peopleThink associated with a human being (at family home, deliver the results, club) who seem to one have esteemed for his or her reliability. Why do you respect your man? How exactly does he or she often retain the concept? Recognize that person strongly, sit back and watch exactly how he / she will go pertaining to fulfilling their promises. Of an this person. Move as well as speak to him or her. Most, maybe all, trustworthy people is going to be willing to take a moment and also chat with people. They may certainly not all be capable of explicitly tell you about their internal responses towards credible lifestyle, but people likely will possibly be able so that you can ensure that you get useful remarks in how they perspective all their assignments, a lot more these people go about fulfilling these. It will be a terrific session in order to consistentConsistency can be the property of sincerity. The individuals an individual work with need to feel this you do not alter colours enjoy the chameleon from an individual circumstance that will another, as well as display various behavior before different persons. Consistency needs will. At this time there will possibly be a lot of occasions once your bravery in addition to truthfulness will likely be tried. These are generally the very moments inside when the fine are usually distinguishable by the fantastic. The great do the problem at once, prove braveness, in addition to continue with the suitable issue. Individuals who possess the fine top quality associated with reliability are usually unaltered by simply the ones who encircle committedCredible people are inspired by means of challenging commitment to every little thing they carry out, on this respect these are players not mercenaries for existence. Their own valor originates from their own determination that will their result in thus they could always choose the courage to handle the prospects. Will comes along from determination. If you are really committed towards an underlying cause, everyone will discover the valor to facial area the odds. Acquire Nelson Mandela. Having been fully commited, hence he observed often the will for you to remain sane and quiet in revenge of twenty-seven years regarding was initially commonly presented individual rewards by means of the white government authorities to present up his crusade. He or she refused when. That seemed to be empatheticCredibility plots up with ease when you actually are genuinely concerned pertaining to other folks. Empathy would mean putting all by yourself around the different person’s site, and dreaming the consequences of any particular steps. Given that many people are mankind, we all very much have similar wants at a new a number of quality. Most of us possess a have for really like, caring, friendship, esteem, and even hope. Agape comes by acknowledge that My spouse and i am powerful from within and do not have to damaged others to leave them realize. True sturdiness is extracted from exhibiting genuine treatment and problem for other individuals, specially when an individual have the upper hand. One great sort of the high quality is normally Nelson Mandela. Soon after simply being addressed hence monstrously intended for as long, he / she demonstrated any degree of compassion several humans have been able so that you can undertake. The guy simply just forgave people that perpetrated demise, physical violence, along with injustice from any whole region on typically the silly point of view of epidermis real great Mandela’s fullness surfaced when he came away with jail, started to be Lead designer with the Republic of To the Africa, along with from that towering seat of capability, thought we would indicate absolutely no rancor inside the folks who experienced caused a lot personal experiencing for your man. He only forgave these folks. That appeared to be accurate agape. His or her standing to be able to suffer from regardless if his ex-wife had been arraigned connected with questionable dealings. This kind of is definitely the mesmerism of accord. Sadly, lots of of people mistake accord to get ‘t think of yourself as00 just what you are notWe often make an effort to work themselves since another individual. The cannot give good results, since most of us will have found over. Many of us could not hoodwink almost all the individuals all the exact time. Moreover, God has turned each you of you and me quite uniquely. Just look at yourself. Who share the exact same physical benefits that everyone get? Simply by the exact token, few-people share the exact same intrinsic functionality you contain. And there is a sufficient amount of space on this subject earth for some more such as one! Thus quit that will be actually not. Alternatively, start centering on what anyone are, what your strengths are, and what exactly you can do by using them. Your own discovery can amaze you actually. It definitely will give you the inside get in order to challenge what together with who seem to anyone really tend to be. Your expertise will travel up by means of advances, for the reason that you are usually projecting whatever you genuinely are actually. Share your own personal fearsWe frequently choose to be able to continue to keep our dreads that will ourself. When ever this occurs, often the fears normally increase in our minds. Typically the imagination plays tricks with our value, and we all will often be paralyzed. Do not let the get lucky and people. Its usual pertaining to humans feeling afraid. Whenever you experience reluctant about a thing, share it all along with a couple shut down allies. This particular is certainly not an indicator associated with listlessness. The actual trick lies in knowing several people do you know integrity in addition to genuine aspect for people can help all of them make one feel significantly better in addition to shared your individual fears together with are some inquiries to ask when ever building your individual credibility: Can it worry my family if very own actions were created public? Residence were to help find out this particular with regards to yet another person who I maintain respect, exactly how would I think about them and also their? It is possible to most awful performance achievable plainly have been to retain my concept? The truth of the matter is of which humanity simply cannot enjoy just about any real growth unless one can find enough reputable people on this earth. In fact, the planet runs upon faith in addition to confidence. Examine what’s prepared for the currency exchange payments inside your family resources – perhaps that will be nothing at all without having authority and even have confidence in. When ever that believe in will be shaken, the good news is operate on often the currency! As a final point, remember the storyplot of often the guy exactly who cried hair. And once your trustworthiness is actually in thought, you own a Himalayan task restoring it. Your own personal credibility is like some sort of Chinese bloom floral vases. It is superb, and respected by almost all. Drop this, and it again is practically impossible to reconstruct it. Build your own personal expertise, together with then defend it the life relied upon the item, because the item really does. Understand more: .

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