Facebook’s Sandberg: Counter Hate Speech With Positivity | Re/code

2016/01/23 Leave a comment

Not sure how realistic and effective a strategy this can be. While better always to be respectful in person and on-line, not sure the degree to which this can be effective with some of the more extreme language and views being expressed.

Presumably, given all the information Facebook collects, there must be some data, rather than anecdotes, on the effectiveness of this approach.

But it is telling that Facebook is not willing to make changes to its NewsFeed algorithm, effectively outsourcing the issue.

My way of handling the few comments on my blog that border on hate speech is either to ignore them or throw back a few questions to the writer, aimed to provoke reflection. Sometimes people engage, sometimes not:

How should you fight back against people spewing hate speech in your Facebook News Feed? Kill ’em with kindness, of course!

That’s according to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who spoke on a panel Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Sandberg talked about how Facebook tries to combat hate speech on its platform, and part of the strategy is encouraging counter-speech, the usually uplifting messages that provide the opposite viewpoints to degrading or negative language online.

Sandberg told a specific story about users in Germany who “Liked” a neo-Nazi Facebook page and then flooded it with positive messages. She called the effort a “Like attack.”

“The best antidote to bad speech is good speech. The best antidote to hate is tolerance,” she said. “Amplifying … counter-speech to the speech that’s perpetrating hate is, we think, by far the best answer.”

The strategy feels pretty “Kumbaya,” but that’s how Facebook has approached the issue of hate speech on its service, specifically when it comes to religious extremism and terrorism. Facebook will take down hate speech when it is flagged by a user, but it doesn’t go looking for it. That means the company is leaning on its user base to create positive content to fight against extremist material.

It’s making some effort to prod users in the right direction. Facebook is partnering with the U.S. government to encourage college students to launch anti-terrorism campaigns, for example. It is also partnering with the German government to better locate and remove hateful content. In both cases, Facebook is making financial contributions to the cause.

But the company is not using what is perhaps its most valuable asset in this matter: Its News Feed algorithm. Facebook claims that it doesn’t elevate this counter-speech in News Feed; it is instead offering a neutral playing field and hoping that positive speech wins out.

Facebook’s role in all of this has been top of mind for U.S. government officials, especially since a mass shooting took place in San Bernardino, Calif., back in December. Sandberg was part of a meeting between top government officials and Silicon Valley bigwigs earlier this month to discuss this very issue. Sandberg hasn’t spoken publicly about those meetings, so Wednesday’s panel was the first we’ve heard from her on this issue.

If you want to watch the entire panel you can do so here. Sandberg’s comments on counter-speech start right around the 18:00 minute mark.

Source: Facebook’s Sandberg: Counter Hate Speech With Positivity | Re/code

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Wise counsel for first-time refugee sponsors: Goar

2016/01/23 Leave a comment

Carol Goar on the messages coming from a meeting on “Faith Groups and Syrian Refugees” hosted by the Intercultural Dialogue Institute, in partnership with the Canadian Association of Jews and Muslims:

Most of them [attendees] were first-time refugee sponsors. They looked to Mary Jo Leddy, who has been welcoming asylum-seekers at Romero House for 25 years, for guidance, tips and suggestions.

But she surprised them. Instead of providing an inventory of “dos” and “don’ts,” pre-arrival preparations and cultural pointers, she told them not to plan so hard; worry so much; or focus so intently on what lies down the road. “As you take the first step, the second step will become clearer.”

She urged them to celebrate the “remarkable moment we’re living through” and rejoice in the rare willingness of Canadians to make time in their harried lives to care for desperate strangers. “I’ve never experienced anything like this. We’re drowning in a sea of kindness at Romero House.”

She congratulated them on leading by example. “As members of faith communities you can encourage others to act even though they don’t think they’re ready. These refugees are summoning us to act together for the sake of others.”

And she told them not to be cowed by presumed experts. “For many refugees therapy is useless. What they need to heal is an opportunity to contribute, get involved in a parents’ group or play in a band. One day the universe will turn upside down and they’ll say: I could really like it here.”

Source: Wise counsel for first-time refugee sponsors: Goar | Toronto Star

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At Davos and beyond, let’s remind the world why it needs more Canada

2016/01/23 Leave a comment

Tawfik Hammoud, Boston Consulting Group and Michael Sabia, CEO of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec on the Canadian advantage of inclusiveness:

Canada remains an open society. Most leaders we meet view us as a gold standard in building a post-globalization society with a multiplicity of identities and a rejection of fear and “otherness.” Our capacity to foster co-existence is rare and increasingly important given both the migrations that are under way and the proximity of once-distant cultures.

We are also world leaders when it comes to opening our doors to qualified immigration candidates – and we do so without exaggerating security concerns. Canadian opinion polls show a majority in public support for the world’s highest immigration levels. No political party advocates cutting immigration. We should be proud that seven million of our 35 million citizens were born outside Canada, that the federal cabinet has as many women as men and that a few cabinet members arrived here not so long ago as virtual refugees.

None of this is to say that Canada is the promised land. There is work to do…

Source: At Davos and beyond, let’s remind the world why it needs more Canada – The Globe and Mail

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Europe’s New Normal – The New York Times

2016/01/23 Leave a comment

Sylvie Kauffmann, the editorial director and a former editor in chief of Le Monde, on the challenges in Europe:

Soul-searching is not the order of the day; liberal intellectuals have been incensed by recent remarks by Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who equals “explaining” jihadism with “wanting to find ways to excuse it.”

The Germans are equally torn. Since the ghastly New Year’s Eve in Cologne, the celebrated Wilkommenskultur toward refugees has given way to serious doubts about how to integrate mass male migration, and to serious accusations against the police and the media. The cultural gap between a liberal, wealthy, secular Europe and a patriarchal, conservative, Muslim society has widened to an ocean. How long will it take to bridge it? How do you ensure that hard-won women’s rights and freedom are not endangered? How do you teach cultural norms?

These are difficult questions — and they are being asked all over Europe. There are no easy answers, only a few predictions: Jihadism will not be defeated in 2016, and war and misery in the Middle East and Africa will send ever more people across the Mediterranean — around 2,000 still arrive in Europe by sea every day.

So we’d better work together, set up common policies to secure our borders, fight terrorism, relocate refugees, and promote daring ideas for integration that will avoid ghettoization. The only response has to be a joint one: working separately would be foolish. If a 28-member European Union can’t do it, then let’s set up smaller groups. There is no more time to waste.

Source: Europe’s New Normal – The New York Times

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Millionaire immigrant investor program lures only 7 instead of 60

2016/01/23 Leave a comment

No surprise. Immigrant investor programs always have a ‘cash for citizenship’ aspect to them, with investors making rate-of-return calculations. And while the previous government may have talked up the ‘value’ of citizenship, clearly investors found the cost far greater than the benefits.

Lesson from the pilot – cancel the program:

The Immigrant Investor Venture Capital program, a revamped version of a program critics once denounced as “cash for citizenship,” was launched under the former Conservative government.

It was meant to attract rich immigrants willing to make a non-guaranteed investment of $2 million up front, which would be held for 15 years in a fund managed principally by BDC Capital, the investment arm of the Business Development Bank of Canada, in return for permanent residency. They also had to prove they had even more money in the bank.

But a year after it was launched, the pilot program has yielded just seven applications from potential international investors and no permanent resident visas.

“The demand for this pilot program has been low,” said Nancy Caron a spokeswoman with the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in an email to CBC News this week.

High-hopes dashed

The previous Conservative government thought it would result in hundreds of applications from rich immigrant investors.

“The program will be open for applications from Jan. 28 to Feb. 11, 2015, or until a maximum of 500 applications are received,” the previous government announced around this time last year.

A year later, Canada is still waiting to welcome it’s first new millionaire immigrant investor.

“A total of seven applications are in process,” said the departmental spokeswoman this week, adding that as of Dec. 30, 2015, four applications had passed a first-stage review and three had passed a second-stage review and were “in process.”

Only when an application reaches the second-stage is it then given a “pass or fail,” Caron explained.

With all seven applications still in process, “No permanent resident visas have yet been issued under this program,” she said.

‘A blank cheque’

The previous Conservative government tightened up the rules under the new pilot after acknowledging that immigrant investors under the old program were not likely to stay in Canada over the long term and contributed “relatively little” to the Canadian economy.

While the Conservatives were hoping to have better luck with this program than they did under the former Immigrant Investor Program, Richard Kurland, an immigration lawyer and policy analyst based in Vancouver, said the pilot was “broken” from the get-go.

“Canada was asking prospective immigrants to write a blank cheque and hope that 15 years down the road they would see any return on that investment,” Kurland said in a phone interview with CBC News.

“It’s no surprise to see that the wealthy immigrant investor crowd would look at other immigration possibilities to come to this country in order to grow our economy, create jobs and find a secure place for their own families.”

Source: Millionaire immigrant investor program lures only 7 instead of 60 – Politics – CBC News

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The angry, radical right: Martin Patriquin

2016/01/22 Leave a comment

Just as many pundits noted “Harper derangement syndrome” on the left, we now have “Trudeau (the younger) derangement syndrome” on the right following the election.

Ironic, given that the Conservative Party, now in opposition, has been running away from some of the policies and practices it implemented (e.g., cancellation of the Census, refusal to have an enquiry on murdered aboriginal women, the sale of LAVs to Saudi Arabia).

There will always be fringes on both sides of the political spectrum and the question is whether this will remain on the fringes or be picked up in some form by mainstream political parties (as arguably happened with the Conservatives’ use of identity politics with respect to Canadian Muslims during the election):

The RCMP, meanwhile, has seen an uptick in threats against Trudeau, according to police sources. “It’s somewhat expected, because Trudeau is anathema to right-wing extremists, and right-wing extremists tend to be the most explicit and reckless of those who make these kinds of threats,” says a former member of the RCMP’s threat-assessment group, a national security unit that safeguards domestic and visiting political leaders, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he remains a member of the RCMP.

Much of the rhetoric comes from a range of online groups whose ideologies vary as much as their popularity. Pegida Canada and Canadian Defence League, for example, are offshoots of European anti-Islamic groups. Others, including Separation of Alberta from the Liberal East, have specific Canadian political goals. Others still are Zionist in nature, including the Jewish Defence League and Christians United For Israel. With its 25,000 followers, Never Again Canada looms large.

The Never Again Canada Facebook page first appeared in mid-2014. The group, such as it is, bills itself as an “organization dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, propaganda, terror and Jew hatred in Canada . . . Hatred is like cancer, the more you don’t treat it and ignore it, the worse it gets.” Its page, often updated several times an hour, is almost uniquely dedicated to criticism of Justin Trudeau—sometimes referred to as “Justine”—and Islam. (“Never Again” is an apparent reference to the slogan of the Jewish Defence League, the U.S.-based militant Zionist organization, which has a chapter in Canada.)

The commentators on Never Again are a hodgepodge of Zionists, former and current military, Christian militants, the occasional white nationalist—an irony, given that the white nationalist movement isn’t typically very charitable toward Jews—and many anti-Muslim types like Witko and Larry Langenauer. A 67-year-old small business owner, Langenauer says he began posting on Never Again’s Facebook page four months ago.

On Dec. 10 Langenauer wrote that “the most convincing non-confidence statement” against Trudeau would be to shoot him. He has made similar threats about the Saudi-born Liberal MP Omar Alghabra, who was recently appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs. (In Canada, uttering threats is an offence punishable by up to five years in jail. Committing hate speech is punishable by up to two years in jail.)

“I guess anyone that feels that way is probably thinking that [Trudeau] is the man who almost single-handedly, with the people in office with him, has enabled violent immigrants,” Langenauer said in a recent telephone interview from his Montreal home. “It’s their responsibility. Why would Canada be exempt from this type of behaviour by the radical Islamic immigrants? They say they’re refugees, they’re not really refugees. People are going to resent it, and eventually they will act upon it toward the people whom they feel are responsible.”

Source: The angry, radical right – Macleans.ca

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German Jews ‘no longer safe’ due to anti-Semitism and ‘deteriorating security’ – The Independent

2016/01/22 Leave a comment

Worrisome:

Jewish people no longer feel safe living in Germany, it has been claimed.

The leader of Hamberg’s Jewish community, Daniel Killy, told the Jerusalem Post: “We no longer feel safe here.”

He went on to explain how a combination of extreme right-wing forces, deteriorating security, and Germany welcoming of refugees brought up in cultures “steeped in hatred” for Jews were resulting in anti-Semitism.

Hamburg has a 2,500-strong Jewish population, and there are around 118,000 in Germany overall. One million Muslim refugees arrived in Germany over the last year.

Mr Killy referenced a report published on tagesschau.de, authored by expert in extremist ideology Patrick Gensing.

In the report he said: “Anti-Semitic sentiments have diverse manifestations in Germany. [There are studies that point to] “historical defensive guilt [about the Holocaust], obsessive criticism of Israel, National Socialist racism, Muslim anti-Semitism [and] Christian anti-Semitism.”

An article published on dw.com included an interview with 22-year-old Jewish man, Elliot Reich, who took part in a pro-Israel demonstration in 2014.

Reich said he was surprised at the animosity against the marchers, claiming counter-protesters shouted things like: “’Hamas, Hamas! Jews into gas!’ Words like this have nothing to do with Israel – they are purely anti-Semitic.”

Source: German Jews ‘no longer safe’ due to anti-Semitism and ‘deteriorating security’ | Europe | News | The Independent

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Political-activity audits of charities being wound down by Liberal government

2016/01/22 Leave a comment

Expected and welcome:

The Liberal government is winding down the political-activity audits of charities that were begun by the Harper government — but there’s no amnesty being offered to the two dozen charities already caught in the program.

Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier announced the reversal today, saying results so far indicate that charities have largely been following the rules restricting political activities.

“The results of the political-activities audit program have shown that the charities audited have been substantially compliant with the rules regarding their involvement in political activities,” she said in a release.

“In light of these outcomes, the program will be concluded.”

The controversial program was launched with fanfare in the 2012 Conservative budget, with funding that grew to $13.4 million and was supposed to ensnare 60 charities over five years. The program was launched as two Conservative cabinet ministers, Joe Oliver and Peter Kent, vilified environmental charities for interfering in the government’s pipeline and energy policies.

The first wave of audits hit environmental groups but later waves expanded to include poverty, human-rights and international-development charities. Critics said the audits not only were costly for poorly funded groups to defend themselves, but created an “advocacy chill” as some charities self-censored to appease auditors.

Violations not generally political

Lebouthillier said only five of the charities caught by the program were notified they would lose their charitable status — but said their violations of charity rules generally didn’t result from their political activities but from other violations the auditors discovered.

The Canada Revenue Agency never released the names of all the targeted charities, though many came forward to identify their troubles in the news media.

The announcement Wednesday is good news for six unidentified charities who had been targeted for audits that had not yet begun. But the 24 charities still in the throes of unfinished political-activity audits will continue to be scrutinized until the auditors’ work is finished.

The minister said in making that decision she was respecting the arm’s-length relationship between her office and the Charity Directorate.

“The independence of the Charity Directorate’s oversight role for charities is a fundamental principle that must be protected,” she said in a release.

“The minister of national revenue does not and will not play a role in the selection of charity audits or in the decisions relating to the outcomes of those audits.”

Source: Political-activity audits of charities being wound down by Liberal government – Politics – CBC News

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How to Fix the Racist Oscars—and Hollywood – The Daily Beast

2016/01/22 Leave a comment

More on the #OscarsSoWhite controversy and detailing the extent of Hollywood’s problems:

It’s not just the Academy that’s lacking diversity, either. Researchers at the University of Southern California analyzed the 700 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2014 and came to some staggering conclusions. They determined that, of the top 100 highest-grossing films of 2014, only 17 of the top movies featured non-white leads or co-leads, and the overall breakdown of actors was: 73.1 percent White, 12.5 percent Black, 5.3 percent Asian, 4.9 percent Hispanic, and 4.2 percent Other.

“I know many members who wouldn’t even see [Straight Outta Compton] because it represented a culture that they detest or, more accurately, they assume they detest,” an Academy member said.

These frustrating numbers inspired “Every Single Word,” an eye-opening Tumblr by Dylan Marron that highlights every single word spoken by a person of color in a mainstream film. Marron’s shocking findings show, among many examples, that in the entire Harry Potter film series, only five minutes and 40 seconds are spoken by characters of color (they total over 20 hours). In The Lord of the Ringstrilogy, it’s 46 seconds (if you count the Orcs). E.T.: nine seconds. Into the Woods: seven seconds. Moonrise Kingdom: 10 seconds. Last year’s Best Picture winner, Birdman: 53 seconds.

Hollywood is also a business, so some of the explanation for the lack of diversity is financial. A decade ago, the U.S. box office comprised 51.3 percent of worldwide gross. Today, it’s less than 40 percent, so over 60 percent of a movie’s overall take is international. But a big problem that the industry doesn’t know how to address is the tastes of international audiences, which are, quite frankly, far more narrow-minded than that of Americans. With the exception of the Fast and the Furiousfranchise, many films with mainly black casts don’t travel too well abroad. Look at Straight Outta Compton, which made just $39 million internationally out of $200 million total, or Creed, which took home $30 million of its $137 million total outside the U.S (the previous entry with a white lead, Rocky Balboa, made $70 million domestic and $85 million abroad). In the Sony hack, a controversial email surfaced from a producer to Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Michael Lynton decrying the tastes of international movie audiences.

“I believe that the international motion picture audience is racist—in general pictures with an African American lead don’t play well overseas,” the producer wrote in an email pegged to the Denzel Washington-starrer The Equalizer. “But Sony sometimes seems to disregard that a picture must work well internationally to both maximize returns and reduce risk, especially pics with decent size budgets.”

Source: How to Fix the Racist Oscars—and Hollywood – The Daily Beast

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Harvard academic Todd Rose on the fallacy of averages – Macleans.ca

2016/01/22 Leave a comment

Although I like manipulating and understanding large groups of people, using averages, medians and the like, useful note of caution on some of the limits.

However, analysis of overall trends and groups provides an overall understanding of how different groups are doing, and a frame to understand and address individual variances:

Q: It’s apparent in The End of Average that, while you applaud personalized medicine, what really interests you is education.

A: Education and the workforce: I think these two things go together in terms of human potential. Historically, education has been about batch processing: standardize everything against the average, rank kids, sort them to see who gets more and who really doesn’t deserve to be there. The problem, even if you’re just being selfish from an economic standpoint, is we’re not producing the talent we need: companies tell me that even in their best attempts to hire people, it’s a 50/50 proposition whether that person pans out a year later. We need to develop people rather than process them. But if you accept that, there are huge implications, including a whole different organizing set of principles. Right now, for instance, we resist giving people extra time on exams or for assignments, as though it’s unfair to the faster students. Well, is the purpose of the assessment to understand what they know or to rank them against the average? The whole idea of timing tests is a century old, from a scientist who thought speed and ability were tightly correlated, which they are not. We don’t have that obsession with, say, a driver’s licence: take the test as often as you need; when you pass we’ll allow you to operate a multi-tonne machine.

Q: Are you still working on ways to personalize education?

A: Our role so far has been to clarify for the public a way of seeing this. We use the Air Force analogy: there were expensive things they had to do to get a cockpit suitable for a lot of pilots, like wraparound windshields, but their initial solutions, when they realized average didn’t work, were adjustable seats. How in the world did they not already have adjustable seats in their planes? We’re looking for adjustable seats for education, for basic things that we can do. Solutions are out there in piecemeal that need to be brought to the centre of the system. Abandon fixed-time, grade-based classes; if something is valuable, have mastery focus, where we give a flexibility in time and it’s all about getting you to competency.

Q: If your children were in high school and grading, for lack of a better term, the way you did in high school, do you have solid options that were not available to your parents?

A: Yes, but right now they’re decidedly skewed to people with money. That rubs me wrong. I care deeply about opportunity and fairness, because I grew up really poor. What motivates me is that, for the first time, we can have the knowledge to scale these kind of solutions and make them available to all. But that requires making good choices right now about the way we’ll use our technology, and the purpose we have for education. That’s not going to happen magically. We can make really bad choices and double-down on the system we have, so we have to work at it.

Source: Harvard academic Todd Rose on the fallacy of averages – Macleans.ca

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