Heitspich: Who and why struggling with hate on the Internet
"White people are racists. Proceed from this, otherwise you will lose in advance", - such a post was written by Black Lives Matter activist Didi Delgado this year, referring to the need to remember that racism can be aroused at any moment. Soon, the Facebook administration deleted the message, defining it in the category "hejtspich". The times when large platforms only monitored child pornography are long gone, and now Facebook, Twitter, instagram and other players have already moderated stereotypes, radical political statements and in a certain sense of opinion.
freedom of speech
Since 2015, Europe has experienced a migration crisis, Donald Trump has come to big politics, Brexit happened, the ultra-right have succeeded in the German parliament, Charlottesville broke out, that is, everything that is called the "right turn" has happened. There was plenty of hate on the Internet even before alt-Wright - at least cyberbullying, however, he had little to do with politics and tried to regulate him, for example, by the law banning pornomics. But today, Western society more often operates with the concept of "hejtspich" - this is a verbal manifestation of hatred (due to nationality, gender, religion), which is much more politically colored. Racist
or homophobic views existed long before the advent of the Internet, but the success of right-wing movements and the collapse of political correctness standards are attributed to “horizontal connections”, lack of censorship and a high degree of cooperation between social network users.
In 2016, giants like Microsoft and Google agreed to adopt EU rules obliging companies to remove posts and comments calling for hostility, terrorism and discrimination. According to the German authorities, Twitter removes only 1% of the illegal content for the country, Facebook copes with 39%, but YouTube destroys all 90%.
The success of the right-wing movements and the collapse of the standards of political correctness are attributed to the lack of censorship and cooperation between users of social networks.
This data seemed modest to the country's leadership, and this year Germany introduced really heavy fines (from 5 to 57 million euros) for social networks that will not deal with the heitspich in a timely manner, that is, delete illegal content in 24 hours. The law has caused many complaints, but some EU countries are ready to go the same way. For example, Great Britain, which faced the rise of racism before Brexit, and France, in which the National Front did not come to power by a miracle last year.
Is it possible to consider an attack on heitspich as a restriction of freedom of speech? Of course, yes: for example, discussions about the fairness of punishment for denying the Holocaust in the world are still not abating. Supporters of the restrictions consider them necessary protection from moral relativism, opponents - the costs of the era of political correctness. And if in Germany to deny the Holocaust is unthinkable and from a legal point of view, in the United States it is not punishable. Anyway, to perceive the Internet as a sovereign island of freedom is now at least old-fashioned. The logic of regulators is simple: if the “white” Internet market obeys state laws, then why should Facebook posts be the exception?
Too hard
The requirements of ethical content regulation in theory can enable conditional Facebook to filter posts at its own discretion - and such processes can hardly be considered democratic. In reality, companies are not so much abusing their power when forming a political agenda, but they do not have time to react to it in time. For example, it was only after the collisions in Charlottesville that Google Play removed Gab (the social network for alt-Wright) from its range, and the Daily Stormer website was blocked by the main providers - no one had paid attention to them before. Large corporations are not just forced
give up lucrative contracts with ultra-right politicians who are ready to offer good money for banners, but also to spend money on development to combat heightspacm.
Of course, free-market proponents and left-wing corporations calling for ethical behavior regard ethical requirements differently. Lawyer and lawyer of the Roskomsvoboda organization Sarkis Darbinyan believes that the Internet is a supranational structure with a great potential for self-regulation, it is reached by consensus between large market players and memorandums of international organizations. "For example, Telegram of its own accord removes channels related to terrorism," the expert cites the example.
Supporters of the restrictions consider them necessary protection against ethical relativism, opponents - the cost of the era of political correctness
Sometimes, however, social networks have to apologize for the imperfect work of their neural networks and live administrators. This year, the non-profit organization ProPublica published instructions for Facebook moderators: in one of the tutorials, it was explained that of the three groups - "female drivers", "black children" and "white men" - the last one should be considered the most sensitive, since we are talking about and about race, and about gender at the same time. After the adoption of the German law on the regulation of social networks, Facebook decided to hire another 3,500 moderators to improve the KPI to combat heitspich.
Social networks do not always have time to deal with the context. For example, LGBT activists were banned because they ironically called themselves the derogatory words "fagot", "dyke" and "transy". Moderators considered offensive and the hashtag #blackqueermagic - during the action in the semi-amusing aesthetics of the toggle switch. The same facebook is often blamed for the fact that it does not affect the real heitspich. For example, Syrian refugee Anas Modamani was photographed with Angela Merkel in 2015, and in 2016, after the terrorist attacks in Berlin and Brussels, his photo was scattered on social networks with the message that he was responsible for the bombings. The victim asked Facebook to remove all the images through the court, but lost. The judge ruled that the social network in this case is neither a criminal nor an accomplice.
New laws governing the work of social networks, although perceived by many as pressure, do not lead to particular repression. The social networking manuals on how to combat heightspitch, for example, remain a matter of corporations, that is, they are not made public: users do not know their content, so they cannot participate in the discussion about this or write an angry letter to technical support, citing specific instructions. At the same time, the ideology of many social networks is that not only administrators, but also users themselves can filter content. In addition, when working with heitspich it is important to feel the nuances - to distinguish the real neo-Nazi appeal from the notorious meme with the image of Hitler.
Russian spirit
“Our most terrible nightmare turned out to be a reality. The German law on heutspich on social networks has become a model for non-democratic states that restrict freedom of speech on the Internet,” said Christian Mehr, head of the German Reporters Without Borders. While Western liberals were worried that administrators erased offensive comments on social networks not too hard, the German bill was copied in Russia at incredibly quick terms, changing only the amount of fines (for legal entities they would be between 30 and 50 million rubles) and the list of prohibited content. In addition to heitspich, social networks may have to remove "unreliable or discrediting honor" information.
Russia has a rather rich set of anti-extremist laws, which also applies to statements on the Internet - they have existed since 2002: it suffices to recall Article 282 of the Criminal Code on inciting hatred and discord, calls for extremist activity (Article 280 of the Criminal Code) and separatism (280 of the Criminal Code), justifying terrorism (Article 205 of the Criminal Code) or insulting the religious feelings of believers (Part 1 of Article 148 of the Criminal Code). Their range only grows.
State Duma Deputy Sergei Boyarsky, who made a draft on moderation of social networks in the Duma last summer, proudly refers to the experience of democratic Germany and believes that thanks to his law, “black PR and attacks on individuals and legal entities will be less.” Sarksis Darbinyan recalls that in Germany, heitspich refers to the justification of Nazism, the Holocaust and the issues of discrimination, that is, it has a rather narrow and transparent enforcement. “In Russia, heytspich will be viewed as a criticism of the authorities. The“ social groups ”who are discriminated against will be attributed to the siloviki or even the president. We have already had such cases,” says Darbinyan.
Enforcement in Russia is completely unpredictable: the decision to block or delete information is taken not by a specially authorized body, but by the courts and prosecutors, who often do not have the necessary competence. “In Germany, the control of social networks should be dealt with by a special body, to whose work both public experts and industry representatives will most likely be involved. The Russian Roskomnadzor is the executive body that is fully subordinate to the FSB, the Investigation Committee and the prosecutor’s office,” adds Darbinyan.
