Google accused of ‘double standard’ for punishing publishers for user comments
This post is a poorly disguised argument that racist speech does not create hostile environments for non-racists, and misapplies one aspect of Section 230 while ignoring another that counters their own argument.<p>Section 230 explicit grants Google, and publishers, the authority to restrict speech when it is offensive:<p>&gt; <i>(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected</i><p>Racism is offensive content under these terms. If the publishers do not exercise their Section 230 rights to deny service to racist content and the racists that post it, Google will exercise their Section 230 rights to deny service — to restrict their &#x27;banner ad&#x27; dialect^ of speech — to racist content and the sites that contain it.<p>To cut off the usual replies that try to invoke &#x27;free speech&#x27; and &#x27;but what about an unrelated example that doesn&#x27;t include hate speech&#x27;:<p>Racism is hate speech, and hate speech is not a form of protected speech. The only slippery slope to be considered here is &#x27;what is considered hate speech?&#x27;. Racism is, unquestionably, hate speech. There is no slippery slope for racist speech. It&#x27;s already at the bottom of the pit.<p>If this article were about content <i>other</i> than hate speech, it would be interesting. As it stands, it&#x27;s just &#x27;we shouldn&#x27;t demonize racism&#x27; in the usual &#x27;first amendment&#x27; style of overcoat.<p>Dissecting the article in specific, I find:<p>&gt; <i>Google threatened to demonetize The Federalist news outlet on the grounds that readers were leaving “racist” comments that advertisers didn’t want to be associated with.</i><p>Google threatened to withdraw service from a news outlet over racist user comments.<p>&gt; <i>The Federalist was targeted only because of its readers’ comments</i><p>Google was reacting only to the racist comments and not to the content published by the site operators themselves.<p>&gt; <i>the alternatives were to either ban comments altogether, moderate&#x2F;censor them, or make them more difficult to access</i><p>Google identifies several technical solutions, but then we have here this most interesting appendix from &quot;The Sociable&quot; itself:<p>&gt; <i>— all of which discourage real engagement</i><p>This phrase suffix attempts to frame &quot;take action against racist comments&quot; as &quot;unrestricted speech is the only &#x27;real&#x27; form of engagement&quot;. This is false. Racist comments discourages real engagement. Discouraging racist comments discourages racist engagement. Racist engagement is <i>not</i> &quot;real&quot; engagement. It&#x27;s just racist engagement.<p>&gt; <i>This means that publishers have to make their sites Google-friendly</i><p>&quot;The Sociable&quot; would like to remind you that the issue here is that Google is hostile to &quot;racist comments&quot; — yet, somehow, it&#x27;s <i>not</i> interesting to them that a major news outlet, The Federalist, was found to have such a degree of racism in their user comments that Google bothered to react at all.<p>^ Hieroglyphics and GIFs both prove that images are a form of speech. So, then, are banner advertisements.