August 15,2017
In this essay, Susan Benesch points out that content ‘takedown’ by Internet companies is not the only solution to harmful speech online. She highlights projects organized by civil society – not governments or platforms – to diminish harmful speech and support its targets. It was published by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society in a collection of essays on harmful speech online.
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August 14,2017
The extremist violence in Charlottesville didn’t come out of the blue: it has been brewing, openly, for a long time. Donald Trump should have been prepared to denounce it. He wasn’t, and that only legitimizes the hate-fueled movement.
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August 02,2017
Kenya, which has seen all too much Dangerous Speech before elections, and violence after them, has been relatively free of both in period leading to its next presidential vote on August 8. This has just changed. The tortured corpse of Chris Msando, the Kenyan elections official in charge of electronic voting machines, was found in a forest outside Nairobi on Saturday.
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June 23,2017
Social norms can be powerful bulwarks against Dangerous Speech, but new evidence indicates social norms can change suddenly during elections.
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June 07,2017
Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins called for “radicalised Islamic suspects” to be hunted down and killed in a Facebook post. He repeatedly used the phrase “kill them all.” This is Dangerous Speech, and it is unacceptable.
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May 23,2017
In light of recent reports of Chechen authorities capturing and torturing gay men, this blog post examines how government actions, policies, and laws can emerge from and reinforce violent social norms.
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May 09,2017
This blog post provides an update on some of our major projects including our work to collect new examples of Dangerous Speech from around the world and our study of effective responses to harmful speech.
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April 28,2017
In France’s first round of presidential elections, more than seven million voters chose Marine Le Pen, who promises to suspend all immigration and ban Muslim headscarves. Skillful appeals to a fear of foreigners and a loathing of elites are widespread across Europe, with fierce anti-Islam sentiment as a common denominator for the continent’s far-right parties.
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April 18,2017
When Sweden suffered a terrorist attack, Prime Minister Lofven responded by affirming civic values. Other world leaders should do the same.
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March 03,2017
Dangerous Speech, like hate speech or pornography, is difficult to define in a precise or objective way – which makes it difficult to train a machine to classify it reliably. A new Google-related research effort has made interesting progress by asking people to classify millions of online comments.
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