Distinguished Visitor Program

Freedom with Responsibility

Dr Andre Oboler
CEO, Online Hate Prevention Institute
Online Hate Prevention Institute, 2014

Short bio

CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Institute

An Australian charity that combats all forms of online hate e.g. Racism,
Homophobia, Cyberbullying etc
We run http://fightagainsthate.com an online reporting tool for cyber-hate

Senior Member of the IEEE

Chair, Student Awards Committee, IEEE Computer Society
Region 10 Coordinator, IEEE Computer Society
MDC Victorian Section

PhD in Computer Science, Lancaster University (UK)

LLM(Juris Doctor), Monash University (Australia)

More: www.oboler.com | www.ohpi.org.au

F.C. Kohli, The Information Society

Systems must operate in many environments Technical, economic, social and political, as they
interact with culture, history, heritage and traditions.
A systems success depends on how it integrates and
harmonises new systems and techniques with the
environment.
Thus, to successfully implement the systems
approach, it is critical to look at the system, its parts,
problems and growth holistically, without isolating it
from its environment and with out simplifying
complexities.

Lawrence Lessig: Code Is Law - On Liberty in Cyberspace1

Every age has its potential regulator, its threat to liberty.

Ours is the age of cyberspace. It, too, has a regulator. This regulator, too,
threatens liberty. But so obsessed are we with the idea that liberty means
"freedom from government" that we dont even see the regulation in this
new space. We therefore dont see the threat to liberty that this
regulation presents.

This regulator is codethe software and hardware that make cyberspace

as it is. This code, or architecture, sets the terms on which life in
cyberspace is experienced. It determines how easy it is to protect privacy,
or how easy it is to censor speech.

unless we understand how cyberspace can embed, or displace, values

from our constitutional tradition, we will lose control over those values.
The law in cyberspacecodewill displace them.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2000/01/code-is-law-html)

Lawrence Lessig: Code Is Law - On Liberty in Cyberspace1

In some contexts, for some, this unregulability is a virtue. This feature of

the Net, for example, protects free speech. It codes a First Amendment
into the architecture of cyberspace, because it makes it relatively hard for
governments, or powerful institutions, to control who says what when.

But in other contexts, in the view of others, this unregulability is not a

virtuetake the German government confronted by Nazi speech, for
example, or the U.S. government faced with child pornography. In these
contexts, the architecture disables regulation as well. But in these
contexts, unregulability is viewed as a vice.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2000/01/code-is-law-html)

LETS LOOK AT SOME ISSUES...

Online hate speech

Hate speech is speech or expression which is capable of instilling
or inciting hatred of, or prejudice towards, a person or group of
people on a specified ground including race, nationality, ethnicity,
country of origin, ethno-religious identity, religion, sexuality,
gender identity or gender - Gelber and Stone (2008)

Online Hate Speech is simply hate speech that is

communicated via the internet. Some forms of it (but
not others) are unlawful in different legal jurisdictions.

Racial Vilification (S18C RDA)

Laws affecting content regulation and Filtering

Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) S18C:

(1) It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if:
(a) the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or
intimidate another person or a group of people; and
(b) the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the
other person or of some or all of the people in the group.

Racial / Religious Vilification

Laws affecting content regulation and Filtering

Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2011 (Vic):

S7/(S8): A person must not, on the ground of the race (religious belief or activity) of
another person or class of persons, engage in conduct that incites hatred against,
serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of, that other person or class of
persons.

Racist Griefing

William John Bligh was a 9 year old Aboriginal child from Queensland who died in tragic
Circumstances in February 2013.

Impact of hate speech on Society

Legal scholar Jeremy Waldron (2012) argues that
hate speech:
undermines the public good of inclusiveness in society
becomes embedded in the permanent visible fabric of
society and victims assurance that there will be no need
to face hostility, violence, discrimination, or exclusion by
others in going about their daily life vanishes

Hate speech undermines democracy and prevents

participation in society

Impact of hate speech on individuals

Exposure to a higher level of racism is correlated with

Greater emotional harm

Higher infant mortality
Lower life expectancy
Greater levels of substance abuse
Greater levels of truancy from school

Research shows that racism can cause physiological stress i.e.

It has physical effects impacting health as well as the mental
harm it causes
The American Journal of Public Health had a special issues on
the heath impacts of racism in May 2012

The value add from the internet

A Canadian court in 2006 said the Internet changed the slow,
insidious effect of a relatively isolated bigoted commentary... [in]to
a form of communication having a widespread circulation
Racism can be posted anonymously, which may make responding
impossible, there is a power imbalance between an indentified
responder and an anonymous instigator

Individuals can be targeted by a virtual mob, the volume making

any meaningful response impossible (death by a 1,000 cuts)
The hate can flow across borders creating difficulties for law
enforcement who may lack authority to gather the evidence they
need

The Online Environment

In a famous US court case in 1996 it was said that:
[c]ommunications over the Internet do not invade an individual's
home or appear on one's computer screen unbidden - American Civil
Liberties Union v Reno, 929 F. Supp. 824, 844 (E.D. Pa. 1996)

The Internet has changed and today search engines and social
media can cause hate speech to appear unbidden

It is more comparable to Waldrons concern re: hate speech

being embedded in society, and a person being unable to
engage in society without a level of anxiety.
Online the embedding of hate occurs quite literally with
websites, Facebook pages, etc becoming part of the internet

The Chain of Accountability

What responsibility should rest with those providing
the tools that are abused to spread hate?
A social media platform, like Facebook or YouTube, which
hosts content or communities spreading hate?
The internet connectivity provider (ISP) connecting the
user to the internet?
The internet service provider who providing hosting?
A company whose network is used to spread hate?

What can they do to mitigate their risk and limit their

liability?

TERRORISM & EXTREMISM

Leigh Rigby
Lee Rigby was a British soldier who was hacked to
death in London on May22nd 2013.
Last month it was revealed that a social media
company had data on one of the killers, and if
authorities had this data, the murder could have
been prevented
There were also trolls who used his death to cause
public outrage, over 100 people called the British
police about one Facebook page

Mehdi Masroor Biswas (@samiwitness)

In the early hours of Saturday morning Police traced
the owner of the @samiwitness twitter account and
arrested him
The account had over 17,000 followers and posted
beheading videos, and interviews with people going
to fight for ISIS (before they left and after)
It was run out of India by an Engineering graduate,
and focused on promoting ISIS to the UK and EU

Background on @samiwitness
"I haven't waged war against anybody. I just said stuff,
people followed me, then I followed them back and then
we talked".
Charged under Section 125 of the Indian Penal Code, the
provision prohibits the waging of war, attempted waging
of war, or abetting the waging of war with any Asiatic
power in alliance or at peace with the Government of
India.
Biswass role in spreading propaganda for ISIS via Twitter
is very clearly a modern form of support for the waging
of war.

ISIS Attack in Australia 15/12/14

Gunmen took people, including children, hostage in a
Lindt chocolate shop in Sydney on Monday morning
The hostages were made to hold a black ISIS flag
A Facebook page was created almost immediately in
support of the terrorists

A free software problem

The image hosting site focused on Freedom...

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF
PROFESSIONALS

Professional ethics
Social media platforms, and their systems for internally handling hate
speech, are all built by Computer Professionals. Management may also
be Computing Professionals.

Members will improve the understanding of technology; its

appropriate application, and potential consequences;
IEEE code of ethics

Members will avoid harm to others and Improve public

understanding of computing and its consequences
ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct

Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest and
Software engineers shall act in a manner that is in the best interests
of their client and employer, consistent with the public interest
Joint IEEE Computer Society / ACM Code of Ethics for Software Engineers

The Ethics vs Law Challenge

Hate Speech Unlawful (outside the USA)
UN Treaties
ICCPR Art 20(2). Any advocacy of
national, racial or religious hatred that
constitutes incitement to
discrimination, hostility or violence shall
be prohibited by law.
ICERD Art 4 obliges states to criminalise
hate speech

National laws against racism

E.g. Laws implementing the above
treaties

Hate Speech is Protected Speech (USA)

Racism is not an exception to the 1st
amendment
The speakers freedom of speech is
considered more important than the
listeners freedom from abuse or from
vilification
There is a concern (distrust) about
giving the Government power to limit
speech.
This only applies to speech, action
(e.g. Discrimination in employment)
is unlawful.

Additional Protocol to the

Convention on Cyber Crime

But online activity is pure speech, and US companies hold the data...
In the case of online hate speech, this difference of opinion over hate speech has a real impact

...Impact on Policy
US Companies cannot be sued in the US (where their
assets are) over breaches of other countries laws
Most companies today only have a minority of users in
the USA (18% in North America for Facebook)
US Companies CAN ban hate speech. The First
Amendment only prevents the government FORCING
them to do so, it doesnt stop them doing so
So they ban hate speech voluntarily, which allows
them to say they comply with laws outside the US

The Scale Problem

Even if there were better monitoring solutions, they need
to operate at immense scale
YouTube
2,056,320 videos are uploaded each day

Facebook
350,000,000 images are uploaded each day

Even if only a small percent of them are hate... Thats still

going to be a huge volume of content each day

The Human Computer Interaction Challenge

We know the design of an interface can make it more
(or less) likely that a person will use a certain product
of feature
On Amazon you can purchase with a single click
On Facebook:
The reporting system has between 5 and 7 steps
Certain types of reporting options are buried behind terms
like other (you wont find them without help)
A step late in the reporting process requires you to choose
to report the item, without this (which is optional) no
report happens

TACKLING THE PROBLEM

New problems & solutions to content problems

Experts need to be able to identify the hard cases
A hard case is anything the platforms arent responding
to correctly...
...so we need to monitor how they respond
Were back to the scale problem, but now we can solve it
with:
Cloud computing
Crowd sourcing
but we nneed to overcome crowds lack of technical knowledge

The aim is only to identify the outliers for the experts to process
The volume of outliers can be manage by serving them to an
expert crowd for expert processing

The Fight Against Hate software solution

A Crowd Sourcing solution
Overcomes difficulties around recognition
Creates problems of bias, ignorance and game playing

An artificial artificial intelligence (AAI) solution

Such solutions have been used for other problems by the
likes of Amazon (e.g. Amazon Mechanical Turk), and since
the 18th Century [6]
Effectively using humans as agents, as we
would do with software agents

The process

Users report the URL of online hate

They classify it
They review items reported by others
In both review and classification they express an opinion
over the nature of the content, and their confidence in
their opinion
A points system favours strong opinion that are correct,
and weaker opinions that are wrong
Points are adjusted on verification of the content by the
system (based on the crowds opinion) or by an expert

BEHIND THE CURTAIN...

Examples of Statistics Available

Items reported over time
Increase in items by social media platform
Trends over time by hate type
Time taken to remove items
Average time to remove item by platform
Trends in reports by state/country
Responsiveness by platform

The need for engagement

Without computing expertise, the problem of online hate in
social media cant be properly addressed
Online hate causes real harm, and it is made possible by the
technology
There is an ethical obligation on those building such platforms
to address these problems
There is a need for independent computer scientists, not
subject to the vested interest of the companies, to:
research and report on how the problem is being addressed
Explain what is / is not technically possible by way of solutions

Laws reform, informed by technology expertise, is needed in

the area of evidence, privacy, and platform accountability
(perhaps like pollution laws)

AN UNFOLDING STORY...

THANK YOU, QUESTIONS?