What once was a mandate to provide equal opportunity to athletics programs on campus has grown into a potent weapon against free speech even about the nature of Title IX.
Jun 082015
Nov 122014
It is shocking how many supposed scholars are coming out in opposition to free speech. Not hate speech – scholarly and reasoned discussion that touches on topics on which some are hypersensitive. Opponents to certain ideas, lacking success in countering them on their merits, now silence the very mention of those ideas.
Nov 052014
Previously we noted the concerns over federal funding for study of social networking and internet memes. The concern expressed at that time was simple. Quoting the article:
The Truthy team says this research could be used to “mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate.”
Federal creation of tools for tracking so-called hate speech or propaganda is the necessary first step to the control of speech and propaganda, and some feel that the government simply should not be playing in that space (though it isn’t like there aren’t many private studies actively moving forward in this area.)
That message obviously struck a nerve, as a collection of top computer science and industry groups quickly rallied to defend the funding of the Truthy project, run by a principle investigator who, in his off-campus personae, comfortably pattern matches as a left wing extremist who is concerned about finding ways to clamp down on hate speech, which by his definition includes conservative commentary.
Nov 022014
Efforts to bar ‘hurtful’ speech mask efforts of some to control ideas which aren’t compatible with views of the orthodoxy. Like on campuses, for example, where speech which challenges views of self-appointed gatekeepers of ideas can get branded ‘hurtful’ and, increasingly, banned.
Oct 192014
Recent commentary by Ajit Pai, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, puts Project Truthy in the spotlight anew. At top level, some of the research topics identified by Truthy are valid and useful in our field – understanding the propagation of ideas and messages via social media. We could see, for example, asking whether some members of a community are inadvertently disenfranchised because of some previously unknown property of technology.
That isn’t Truthy’s goal. Now quoting Pai’s cautionary article,
The Truthy team says this research could be used to “mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate.”
The Indiana University professor, Filippo Menczer, who is principle investigator on this project identifies social media hashtags “#foxnews”, “#constitution” and “#abortion” as ways to recognize “far right” speech to be flagged. In August the Washington Free Beacon (also as linked by Fox at the time) points out
[T]he project’s lead investigator Filippo Menczer proclaims his support for numerous progressive advocacy groups, including President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and True Majority.
Echoing the commentators mentioned above, this is Orwellian indeed. By funding this, either the National Science Foundation dropped the ball (supporting development of a chilling technology that takes it completely outside of its traditional non-partisan role) or it has decisively come out of the closet as a play-for-pay operation.
Sep 042014
May 052014
Sound convenient? It is. Sound scary? It is.
Next month, a pilot program of the “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace” will begin in government agencies in two US states, to test out whether the pros of a federally verified cyber ID outweigh the cons.
May 022014
I do not condole Sterling’s remarks, but I agree with Randazza that we should condemn Stiviano’s behavior as much as we condemn Sterling’s racist comments. Unlike Romney’s “47%” speech that was addressed to a group of contributors and recorded by a bartender, Sterling’s remarks were addressed to a “friend”, meant to be private, and should not have been recorded by that “friend”. We should not have a future where our friends spy on us.
Mar 202014
Feb 282014