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Comment by MaximumYComb | Hacker News Reader

They are asking for "experts", who will likely come from the extremely left leaning Social Science departments. If they attempted to fill those slots with centrists then they'd be decryed for not using the "real experts" or something similar.

On most platforms racism is only defined using the systematic defintion and not the traditional definition [1]. Calling a white person a Karen seems to have definite racist qualities but it's perfectly acceptable for some reason. Calling someone a N* means people applaud when you get beat up.

I'll trust the "experts" when racism is applied in both directions.

[1] - prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group

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>... Karen ...

>... N* ...

Your comment was being parodied[1] years before you wrote it. It is not a centrist position to think Karen is anywhere close to the N word on the spectrum of hate speech.

Once again, Facebook is not being asked to redefine hate speech. Instead the boycotters are asking that the people moderating hate speech are knowledgeable about hate speech. That seems reasonable to me. Do you think those moderator positions should be staffed by non-experts?

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg0UWxhJkfk&t=31

I'm not trying to say Karen has the same history as N. I see Karen as a word used to target white female and to shame them into acting exactly how the far left expects a white woman to act. You might have seen the recent video of a guy confronting a woman who cut him off in traffic [1]. Widely shared, she's clearly in emotional trauma because she knows the social consequences of being taped and shared online. Oh and she's also scared because he followed her home, recorded her plate and home address to share online. Turns out he's got a history of making claims against people and restraining orders against him for harassing women.

It's a word that is being used to harm some people and to control others. Is there a line on the hate speech spectrum where some hate speech is ok but others needs to be banned? If so, exactly what is on each side of that line?

The man in this video keeps uttering it constantly to her. He's clearly in a positon of power and he's taking a lot of enjoyment out of causing her pain. I say if we're getting rid of racist speech it needs to cut both ways.

[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckYouKaren/comments/hf5t61/hyster...

I'll be the first to admit I don't have the answers to all your potential questions on hate speech. If only there were experts on the subject that Facebook could add their moderation team to help answer these difficult questions.

I'm also going to admit something, I didn't actually grasp that the far right was a real political view in the US. I see the people waving Confederate flags in the news and I always assumed they were just racist looneys. I've had some discussions here tonight that have made me realise America has a significant minority that actually holds those beliefs.

Where it affects my arguments is that I always believed the far left existed but never really believed the far right existed. I think it's warped my view of US politics to middle Right vs far left, which isn't a far comparison.

These so-called-experts are more similar to a cult than actual expertise. A self-perpetuating cabal kicking out dissenters and recruiting yes-men. Their beliefs are arbitrary and divorced from the real world.

Recently a woman was promoted to tenured professor for tweeting that "white lives don't matter". That's how your experts are selected.

Why is the systematic definition worse than the traditional one? The only advantage I see to the traditional definition is that it is semantically nicer. The traditional definition 'does what it says on the tin'. So sure, maybe we should use another word than racism.

However, if this were a problem, I think the solution would be to change the wording of the policy to match the interpretation. Not change the policy to match the wording.

When we say 'racism is a big problem to be solved' that big problem (in the west) is discrimination against non-white people. At least as seen by most people. This is why calling someone the N-word is a lot worse than calling a white person anything relating to their race. Because white people suffer a lot less from racism.

That is not to say that racism against white people is totally okay, but the badness of it is on a totally different level than racism against e.g. black people. And to say that one form should be treated just like the other is ignoring a whole lot of context, just for the sake of semantics.

> They are asking for "experts", who will likely come from the extremely left leaning Social Science departments.

It's peak anti-intellectualism to question someone's credentials and an entire grouping of fields of study just because their educated opinions don't coincide with your own.

> On most platforms racism is only defined using the systematic defintion and not the traditional definition [1].

Why are these two definitions at conflict in your mind? Furthermore why is that the definition? Why not Wikipedia's?

"Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to physical appearance and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another."

Your definition would seem more in-line with prejudice at large, not racism which carries a very specific historical context.

> Calling a white person a Karen seems to have definite racist qualities but it's perfectly acceptable for some reason. Calling someone a N* means people applaud when you get beat up.

Calling someone a Karen doesn't carry even remotely the amount of history or hatred as the other. No one's been called a Karen as they were being lynched, as their hat was being knocked of their head for not removing it as a white person walked by, for being relegated to the back of the bus, or to being bought and sold as slaves.

It's frankly perverse you'd compare the two.

Why do you think their opinions don't coincide with mine? I support the extreme left party in my nation and I vote. I'm also open minded enough to follow news from the left and the right so I can attempt to understand all viewpoints as I feel democracy relies on having many different views to bring balance. When I look at the right wing news I actually see some of the pain that racial slurs like Karen have on real people.

When you watch the both sides of the news you realise that there is racist, horrible behaviour occuring on both sides. I do see a huge imbalance in social power though. I believe that stacking committees with extreme left views will end up harmful due to few checks and balances.

I know about racial history in my country. Some of my black ancestors were taken from their families as babies to be raised proper by whites, google "Australian Stolen Generation" if you want to read more. That's the power language like N* had. What I don't want is for my children to be attacked because of their white skin due to the power of words in the modern world.

Have a look at the post I made 20 minutes ago if you want to see a link that shows the power of Karen and the pain it can cause people.

> Why do you think their opinions don't coincide with mine?

You used scare quotes, my dude.

Furthermore, you suggested that:

> If they attempted to fill those slots with centrists then they'd be decryed for not using the "real experts" or something similar.

You're suggesting conspiracy.

> What I don't want is for my children to be attacked because of their white skin due to the power of words in the modern world.

They're not attacking Karens because they're white. They're attacking Karens because a lot of people have worked dogshit retail jobs where they've been accosted by people aggrieved over the most inconsequential things imaginable. If that's what you associate with having white skin, then you're harboring racist beliefs.

Truth of the matter is if you hire from soc-sciences experts on racial whatever, you might as well just ban everything right of Mao from the platform.

You can like or not like or hate trump but a very large portion of the citizens of the republic voted for him.

Those requests will basically lead to FB loosing control to a bunch of sjw crusaders(more then they already have). It will all be weaponized, current climate in US allows for nothing else.

> Truth of the matter is if you hire from soc-sciences experts on racial whatever, you might as well just ban everything right of Mao from the platform.

No wonder you people feel so terrified all the time if you actually believe this.

> You can like or not like or hate trump but a very large portion of the citizens of the republic voted for him.

Why are you bringing this up? It's irrelevant.

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