> 共匪 is seen as an insult by a group, but others do not
This is where the legal concept of protected classes may be helpful. They're sets of attributes society has deemed one cannot discriminate against. That tends to line up well with said society's line between insulting and hateful.
As a legal definition, these class definitions tend to be precise. That makes them convenient for exporting.
Notably, political affiliation is not a protected class under U.S. law.
I disagree that protected classes line up with the dinstinction between insulting and hateful at all, and it scares me that this US-centric line of thinking will probably conquer Europe as well.
You can absolutely mock people (even groups of people) in a hateful way for their looks, body weight, or success in the sexual marketplace. The obvious solution is to add more protected classes! And I'm afraid that is what will happen, simply because it creates administrative work and a nice distraction from everything else (just like adding new emoji every year). And then people will find new ways to hate someone.
I much prefer HN's moderation stance. Either a comment adds value to the discussion, or it tries to derail it. And even though I hate the CCP, I don't think 共匪 is useful, except maybe in a self-ironic kind of way.
Yes but that is a difficult thing even in our society in the US. Then to project that to the world is harder. In the USA we have values that tend to see political censorship as evil, but in some other countries they see political criticism as insulting and a hindrance to government. I too thought for a long time that any place that censored or punished political dissidents probably was a place that had people yearning to be free. It is not necessarily true as we see in China. I don't agree with it from my values but then again I don't know what is good for the entire Earth.
> that is a difficult thing even in our society in the US
Difficult. Yet commonly done. (With respect to protected classes, I mean.)
> Then to project that to the world is harder
This is not a requirement. My beef is with Google exporting China's censorship regime to New Yorkers like me. I'm not thrilled with China censoring what its people see. But that's a different category of problem.
> political affiliation is a protected class in other countries where YouTube operates
At which point Google should decide on what countries they operate in. If they operate in a country where political affiliation is a protected class, go ahead and hide those comments to users in that country. But don't export that country's values to mine.
Unfortunately, the Internet allows a user to connect to to a server in any country on the planet, so your solution is really a non-solution because it's trivially bypassed.
> your solution is really a non-solution because it's trivially bypassed
One, governments who don't like this have ways of fixing it. Two, this true for other media--I can ship my friend a book banned in their country. And three, tough. Nobody has global jurisdiction.
> --I can ship my friend a book banned in their country.
And depending on the country your friend might end up in jail, not very friendly but you never know how undemocratic countries/institutions will overreact.
I like this idea, but it is hard to apply such a criteria across borders. In California, for instance, political affiliation is considered a protected class. The omission of political affiliation from the nationally protected classes in the US is a direct consequence of the persecution of communists during the Cold War. This is actually not a great idea when you consider that it essentially legalizes political persecution of the sort that you find in various dictatorships (a little ironic in this context).
> it is hard to apply such a criteria across borders. In California, for instance, political affiliation is considered a protected class.
This is hard. But it's a different category of hard from the problem Google has chosen for itself.
Let's assume California has a protected class that New York doesn't. China has protected classes the U.K. doesn't. That could mean a comment visible in New York isn't in California. Or it could mean something else.
This isn't an easy problem. One needs to map comments to various protected classes and then measure "hatefulness" according to local constructs. One needs to decide what to do with content so flagged. But that's objectively easier than doing all of that plus coming up with the definitions for protected classes.
Viewed through this framework, deleting a comment, as Google is doing here, is almost always wrong.
> it essentially legalizes political persecution
The First Amendment is supposed to protect against this. Protected classes govern private actors.
This is where the legal concept of protected classes may be helpful. They're sets of attributes society has deemed one cannot discriminate against. That tends to line up well with said society's line between insulting and hateful.
As a legal definition, these class definitions tend to be precise. That makes them convenient for exporting.
Notably, political affiliation is not a protected class under U.S. law.