Everyone knows that social media is full of hate.  There’s something about the safety of a screen that gives people enough sense of isolation that they feel completely comfortable being total jerks to complete strangers.

This has caused researchers at the University of California-Berkeley to attempt to create an “Online Hate Index,” to get rid of “hate speech” from social media platforms. They hope that their so-called “hate index” — fueled by artificial intelligence — will be used by entities such as Twitter and Facebook and be used as a tool to identify and remove objectionable content from their platforms.   They hope to create a “scalable detection” system that combines natural language processing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, as well as actual human beings to sift through millions of posts.

Campus Reform has more details:

Words that the article states are associated with hate speech” are “white,” “black,” “women,” “hate,” “Jew,” and even words such as “old,” “problem,” “country,” and more. Claudia von Vacano, executive director of the D-Lab, reiterated that it is important to distinguish between “hate speech” (speech directed at people of specific classes) and speech that is just offensive (speech directed at individuals without regard to any specific class), according to the article.

“We are developing tools to identify hate speech on online platforms, and are not legal experts who are advocating for its removal,” von Vacano said. “We are merely trying to help identify the problem and let the public make more informed choices when using social media.”

What could go wrong?

Well, let’s start with this.  If Berkeley were really concerned about free speech (as they used to be, historically speaking), they would not have allowed the domestic terrorist organization Antifa to wreak havoc during the horrible riots in 2017. You may recall that when Milo Yiannopoulos came to campus to speak, all hell broke loose.  Though Berkeley claims to be the birthplace of the free speech movement, this is when they decisively turned its back on its heritage.  The University of California Police Department just let the angry mob of violent anarchists rule its campus and streets.  Thirteen people were arrested, for a variety of charges including “battery, vandalism, assault with a deadly weapon and felony assault.”

So, let’s be clear here.  The same college that allowed Antifa to attempt to intimidate conservatives is now saying they want to help police social media.

Please.  As constitutional attorney David French wrote at the time, the violence is threatening our way of life, “It allowed mob rule and then justified abdicating its responsibility to protect the liberty and safety of Berkeley’s citizens by claiming that it wanted ‘people to freely assemble.’ This is a sad joke. It gave control to Antifa. It empowered the heckler’s veto.”

It’s not politically correct to say this, but hate speech is constitutionally protected speech.  You see, in America — yes, even in Berkeley — we have this little thing called the First Amendment.  And giving anyone (or worse, any robot) the ability to censor us is not going to end well.

Hat tip: Campus Reform

Image Credit: Pexels

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.

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