Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 8
Posts 1 - 8

Germany Tells Sites to Delete Hate or Pay Up

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 30.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, law, threat
Summary | Germany has the strictest policies when it comes to illegalizing slanderous, threatening, and extremist language from public spaces. Germany has just passed a law that allows them to fine Facebook as much as 57 million dollars if they do not remove offensive content quickly enough from the platform. While some may say this is censorship , German lawmakers claim that respectful online encounters are a necessity for free speech to thrive. Facebook is now working on improving the flagging process for offensive material and are also using artificial intelligence to remove fake news.
Image Description | Blurry man looking at a smartphone with the Facebook logo in the background.
Image Tags | Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone

The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak, the Anonymous Messaging App

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | childhood, cyberbullying, law, privacy, social media, threat, youth
Summary | The anonymous messaging app Yik Yak became very popular in colleges and schools because it lets people broadcast anonymously to other users near them. The activity on the app has however started to become thretening with college students and children bullying each other and people making bomb threats that have led to multiple evacuations. A feminist group from University of Mary Washington have filed complaint to the University to block Yik Yak on campus because it has been used to harrass and threaten members.
Image Description | An illustration with a face and a smartphone and an image of the creators of Yik Yak.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone

Germany springs to action over hate speech against migrants

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 6.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, law, politics, social media
Summary | Facebook has recently decided to comply with German law rather than their own corporate policies when it comes to hate language on their platform contributed by users from Germany. Germany is very strict about prohibiting hate language against minorities. Critics say this is a step in the wrong direction towards censorship.
Image Description | Protest crowd holding a canvas.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), text

'Stop trolling Travellers' says police chief who vows to track down anyone posting 'hate crime material' online

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Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 4.4.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, law, social media, threat
Summary | A regional police officer is prosecuting internet trolls that are hateful towards the traveller community online. Travellers are being more accepted and visible in communities and granted to stop but people are still very hateful towards them on the internet and on social media. This is especially harmful to children in the traveller community because it keeps them from taking pride in their heritage.
Image Description | A portrait of the police officer, of the chair of the National Alliance of Gypsy Traveller and Roma Women, and images of Traveller camps.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

2016: the year Facebook became the bad guy

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 12.12.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, law, threat
Summary | 2016 has been a bad year for Facebook. Many scandals surrounded the company. It became clear that Facebook is now longer just an advertizing machine with access to almost 2 billion people world-wide but that it also curates what news media most of these people perceive - whether Facebook wants to accept this or not. They no longer just have to deal with sensoring nudity and human rights violations content but also fake news. While Zuckerberg denies that the fake news bubbles have influenced the presidential elections, his company at the same time makes tons of money selling exactly this persuasive power to advertisers.
Image Description | The Facebook reaction emojis and dislike (thumb-down) emojis, glasses in front of like buttons, and a man holding a smartphone with the Facebook logo in the background.
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone

Tackling abuse on social media is a monumental task - but billion dollar companies should be up to it

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 15.3.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, cyberbullying, law, social media, threat
Summary | Social media have a huge problem with trolling, cyberbullying, and sharing of criminal content. It is however extremely difficult for providers to find such content before it is reported or seen by many. Especially in verbal abuse, the line between joking and slander is blurred and human language is too messy to be able to flag down such instances with algorhythms.
Image Description | Getty image of the Facebook logo on a hand-held smartphone and a laptop and a photograph of a screen showing the Twitter logo.
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), logo, Twitter

Revenge Porn Must Be Criminalized

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Newspaper | Huffington Post
Date | 6.4.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, law, sexting, threat
Summary | There have been more and more cases of people posting intimate photographs of their ex-lovers on the internet. The practice is called revenge porn and it is horrible for the victims: their most intimate images are shared with the whole world without their consent and they cannot really erase the images from the internet afterards. New York CIty is now working on criminalizing the distribution of revenge porn - something that should already have happened long ago.
Image Description | Getty image of hands typing on a laptop.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, hand(s)

Why Kids Sext

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Newspaper | The Atlantic
Date | 14.10.2014
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Instagram, law, school, sexting, threat, youth
Summary | One Virginia county saw a huge Instagram sexting scandal break. Nude selfie of local high school and middle school girls were pooled by the local boys and uploaded to an Instagram account. Because many teenagers were involved, this case developed into a huge police investigation trying to figure out the extent to which this constitutes organized crime or child pornography. This case shows how commonplace sexting is among teenagers and how confused the police are in dealing with such cases.
Image Description | Portraits of people mentioned in the article, pictures of school and outdoor sporting facility environments with students.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), school

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