1. The Paradox of Tolerance for tech companies
How to support free speech but not white supremacy
CC BY-SA Frame Shift Consulting LLC

2. ~~~Disclaimer~~~
I am representing myself and Frame Shift Consulting only
Many tech companies in this talk are also my clients
Anything about those clients in this talk is based only on publicly available information about them
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice
I just want to get this disclaimer out of the way. In this talk, I will talk about several tech companies who are my clients. Everything in this talk about them is based on public information only, and does not include any confidential information they gave me. So journalists, if you think you're getting a scoop about internal company decisions, you've misinterpreted something. I am not a lawyer and you should not take anything in this talk as legal advice. I highly recommend talking to your lawyer if you are concerned about legal issues.

3. Online resources Slides, spreadsheets, supporting articles, etc. at:
Web:
Live-tweeting? Thank you! Please

4. Common U.S. approach to free speech
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
—Evelyn Beatrice Hall describing Voltaire's beliefs
Prior to the last couple of years, many people in the U.S. had a fairly simple understanding of the role of free speech, which is that we, as a society, should tolerate and even support speech we disagree with to the greatest extent possible. Here's a quote that sums it up, which some people take quite literally.
This view has some problems. What if the people whose speech you are defending want to kill you?

5. 2003: Joke newspaper article
Here's a story from the satirical newspaper The Onion that comes uncomfortably close to reality that shows the problem with this view: what if you are protecting the speech of people who want to kill you?

6. 2017: Actual reality
This, of course, is only slightly different from what actually happened in Charlottesville on the weekend of August 12th, when white supremacists held a march which the ACLU helped them defend in court, and the marchers carried out their premeditated plans to attack and kill counterprotestors.

7. In an almost perfect parallel to the Onion story, they carried torches and threatened to light protestors on fire, and as we all know, actually killed one woman in addition to injuring dozens of others.

8. This caps off a couple of years of slowly growing evidence that white supremacy is a clear and present danger in the United States today. We've elected a president who calls white supremacists marching with Nazi flags who deliberately murdered someone "very fine people", and 37% of people responding to this poll think that's an appropriate response!
Source:

9. Maybe... don't defend violent people?
"If a protest group insists, ‘No, we want to be able to carry loaded firearms,’ well, we don’t have to represent them. They can find someone else."
—Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU
For many people, including the ACLU, Charlottesville was the wake-up call saying that we need a more nuanced, complicated view of free speech. The ACLU drew the line at armed marches.
CC BY-SA Tomezine via Wikimedia Commons

10. CC BY-SA Blue Coat Photos https://flic.kr/p/puUjTZ
What does a more nuanced view of supporting free speech look like for tech workers? How can we make principled, ethical decisions about what content to host and what clients to serve while protecting free speech?

11. Outline What is the Paradox of Tolerance?
Proposed "Intolerable Speech Rule"
Examples of tech companies taking action based on Paradox of Tolerance
How to implement the Paradox of Tolerance at your tech company
In this talk, I'll explain how the Paradox of Tolerance can help us make these decisions. I'll propose a specific rule to decide what speech to support, give some examples of tech companies taking action against speech that doesn't meet this rule, and then show you how to advocate for adopting and implementing this rule at your company.

12. Who am I? Software engineer for 10+ years
Co-founder and ED for 5 years at Ada Initiative
Founder Frame Shift Consulting
Taught Ally Skills Workshop to people in 8 countries
Valerie Aurora
But first, why should you listen to what I have to say? I'm Valerie Aurora, and after working as a Linux kernel and file systems developer for over 10 years, I quit my job to work full-time on the Ada Initiative, a non-profit I co-founded to support women in open source software, Wikipedia, and similar areas. After 5 years of that, I shut down the Ada Initiative to start Frame Shift Consulting, a diversity and inclusion consulting firm for tech companies. Mostly I teach the Ally Skills Workshop, which teaches people with more privilege and power how to support people with less.

13. Breitbart News wrote about me in 2015
I must be doing something right, because way back in November 2015 when few people knew what it was, Breitbart wrote a hit piece on me, claiming that I was attempting to honeytrap Linus Torvalds by sending attractive women to pretend to hit on him at conferences

14. But seriously, I recognized sometime in mid-2016 that white supremacy in the U.S. had grown to the point that the old rules didn't apply, and started getting political in both my personal and professional life in a way I'd never done before. I started tweeting on my company account about Trump in August I added more explicitly political content to the Ally Skills Workshops. After the election, I co-organized the Never Again Tech pledge, taught people how to talk to their racist relatives, and created resources for tech workers to organize and influence their company's decisions. I also went to protests, donated thousands of dollars, and called my representatives weekly.

15. Studying fascism
Most importantly, starting in mid-2016, I read incessantly about the history of fascism and successful counter-fascist movements. And that's where I encountered the Paradox of Tolerance.

16. The Paradox of Tolerance
A tolerant society should be tolerant by default
With one exception: it should not tolerate intolerance itself
The Paradox of Tolerance sounds complicated and fancy, but it's really just a rule with one exception.

17. The Paradox of Tolerance was formulated in 1945 by the philosopher Karl Popper. It's no coincidence that this is just after the first time the Nazis got popular and killed tens of millions of people before we could stop.

18. Too much tolerance leads to self-destruction
The key insight Karl Popper had is that one of the weaknesses of an open and tolerant society is that it could be so open and tolerant that it permitted itself to be destroyed by intolerant societies - which is exactly what would have happened in WWII if the Allies had not violently opposed the less tolerant Axis powers.

19. A tolerant society has the right to self-defense
Another way to look at the Paradox of Tolerance is that an open society has a right to self-defense - it can be intolerant if it is necessary to keep tolerance from disappearing entirely from the earth.

20. The Paradox of Tolerance in practice
“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression [...] The exercise of these freedoms [...] may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society [...] for the protection of the reputation or rights of others [...]”
—Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights
That very local, very evident history of near annihilation of tolerant societies is probably why many examples of the Paradox of Tolerance come from European laws. Here's what the European Convention on Human Rights has to say about limits on free speech.

21. Laws against denying the Holocaust
Because the Holocaust was such a horrific crime against humanity that we need to avoid any risk of repeating it, 17 countries explicitly or implicitly make Holocaust denial illegal: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Switzerland. Note that all of these countries suffered terribly from the Holocaust or were created partly to prevent a future Holocaust.
CC BY-SA Dima st bk on Wikimedia Commons

22. Don't let racists use your software
And it's not a Valerie Aurora talk unless it includes a tweet from Jenn Schiffer
Used by permission
© Jenn Schiffer, used by permission

23. Tech companies and freedom of speech
Historically, a common position is to support all speech as long as it's not:
Illegal (child pornography, fraud)
Spam
Directly harming the service
(Some companies also ban harassment and abuse, but enforcement tends to be poor...)
Historically, tech companies have generally taken the approach that as long as something isn't outright illegal, spam, or harmful to the company, they'll tolerate it. Sometimes they will claim not to tolerate harassment, but then their definition of harassment heavily favors the powerful and privileged, as we saw when Facebook's internal harassment guidelines leaked. They also just won't prioritize ending harassment

24. Often suffer from "legal talisman" syndrome
"Legal talisman" coined by lawyer Kendra Albert
Legal talisman: A legal term of art that’s out of place, invoked to make or justify substantive decisions that don’t involve formal legal process
"Free speech" invokes the power and responsibility of the state and an enormous body of law - in a situation involving private companies making unrelated decisions

25. © Naoise Dolan, used by permission
It's so much nonsense that social justice groups have created the "freeze peach" meme to make fun of when people are invoking free speech in this meaningless way.

26. Freeze Peach example: Twitter in 2012
"Generally, we remain neutral as to the content because our general council and CEO like to say that we are the free speech wing of the free speech party."
—Tony Wang, GM of Twitter UK
Here's an example of using freeze peach in this particularly meaningless way. First, what the heck? We're not only saying that private companies are like the government, we're bringing in political parties. And of course Twitter restricts speech all the time - it stops spam, it stops pornography, it stops fraud, and it even stops Holocaust denial, just only in countries where it's illegal.
CC BY-SA

27. Legitimate concerns about free speech
Governments do pressure companies to censor in ways that harm society
How do we know we're not just banning things because we're prejudiced against them?
Will we have to reverse our decision?
Will users leave our service?
Are we harming society?

28. Karl Popper on suppressing intolerant speech
"[...] I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise."
—Karl Popper, "The Open Society and its Enemies"

29. Karl Popper on suppressing intolerant speech
"But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."
—Karl Popper, "The Open Society and its Enemies"
In other words, you can't fight intolerant speech with more speech if the other side has decided not to listen and to use violence to get their way instead. In that case, we must be ready and able to suppress speech.

30. Even the U.S. Bill of Rights has something to say
"The First Amendment guarantees 'the right of the people peaceably to assemble.' Peaceably. When it became clear that the organizers’ goal was violence, that left me with no qualms about their lack of First Amendment rights in this matter."
—Waldo Jaquith, former ACLU Virginia board member

31. Level of tolerance changes with context
“Even in the U.S., where we have the most speech protective law, some acts of speech are illegal. Nobody has suggested that to fulfill freedom of expression every act of speech has to be allowed. It doesn’t mean you can post absolutely anything. Everyone is figuring out how to draw the lines.”
—Susan Benesch, director of the Dangerous Speech Project

32. Tech companies using Paradox of Tolerance
I made a spreadsheet!
Currently 37 entries for actions by 34 companies:
Airbnb, Apple, Bumble, CD Baby, Deezer, Discord, Facebook, GoDaddy, GoFundme, Google, Indiegogo, Kickstarter, LinkedIn/Microsoft, Mailchimp, Metafilter, OkCupid, Pandora, Paypal, Reddit, Sendgrid, Soundcloud, Spotify, Square, Squarespace, Stripe, Twitter, Uber, WordPress/Automattic

33. Before Charlottesville: Airbnb
October 27, 2016: Airbnb created "Community Commitment" for all hosts and guests
"I agree to treat everyone in the Airbnb community — regardless of their race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or age — with respect, and without judgment or bias."

34. Before Charlottesville: Airbnb
August 8, 2017: Revoked bookings and accounts for people attending the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville
"When through our background check processes or from input of our community we identify and determine that there are those who would be pursuing behavior on the platform that would be antithetical to the Airbnb Community Commitment, we seek to take appropriate action including, as in this case, removing them from the platform."

35. Before Charlottesville: Spotify
Uses a database of objectionable material maintained by the German government to pro-actively ban white supremacist material
Other bans on case-by-case basis
As of November 2014, already banned 22 of 54 white supremacist bands listed by Southern Poverty Law Center and agreed to remove more

36. After Charlottesville: Spotify
Removed additional, more obscure white supremacist bands when notified
"We are glad to have been alerted to this content - and have already removed many of the bands identified today, whilst urgently reviewing the remainder."

37. Before and after Charlottesville: Facebook
August 11, 2017: Removed "Unite the Right" rally organizing page
August 14, 2017: Deleted many more white nationalist profiles, groups, and pages

38. But Facebook ignored previous warnings
2016: SPLC reports 200+ hate group items on Facebook, Facebook deletes < 10
May 10, 2017: Fast Company reports 17 hate group items, Facebook deletes 2
July 31, 2017: The Guardian reports 175 hate group items, Facebook deletes 9

39. Moral of the story: SPLC is smart
When the Southern Poverty Law Center alerts you to hate groups using your services, listen to them!

40. Before and after Charlottesville: Bumble
Online dating service co-founded by Whitney Wolfe, who was sexually harassed and discriminated against at Tinder
As an explicitly pro-woman service, experienced plenty of misogynist attacks
Actively takes down profiles with hate symbols
Formally partnered with Anti-Defamation League, which maintains an up-to-date database of hate symbols

41. After Charlottesville: WordPress/Automattic
May 2017: Fast Company asks Automattic about white nationalist and neo-Nazi sites hosted on WordPress, answer is they don't censor
August 15, 2017: Automattic deletes American Vanguard site, a group alleged Charlottesville murder James Fields claimed membership in

42. Terms of service vs. enforcement
Most companies did not change their terms of service after Charlottesville, only changed their enforcement
This is fine and normal!
Spreadsheet of ToS:
Amazon is still not enforcing its terms of service around white supremacist-related items...

43. Not Paradox of Tolerance: Cloudflare
August 16, 2017: Cloudflare, which provides protection against denial of service attacks, terminated Daily Stormer's account:
"Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power."
—Matthew Prince, Cloudflare CEO in leaked

44. Not Paradox of Tolerance: Dreamhost
Dreamhost policy: "We will host any website as long as its content is legal in the United States of America."
August 24, 2017: Dreamhost terminates Daily Stormer's account for, basically, being the target of a denial of service attack (after they no longer have Cloudflare service)

45. "Freeze peach"
Here is another freeze peach. It was handmade and given to me by a friend. I'll pass it around the audience
Freeze peach pendant by Gretchen Koch

46. "The Intolerable Speech rule" - proposed
Ban people from using your products if they are:
Advocating for the removal of human rights
From people based on an aspect of their identity
In the context of systemic oppression primarily harming that group
In a way that overall increases the danger to that group

47. 1. Advocating for the removal of human rights
This includes right to life, vote, travel, medical care, speech, shelter, food, education, etc.
Dehumanizing or treating a group as inferior meets this criteria, because non-humans don't have human rights
Many tech company terms of service already forbid promoting, advocating, or encouraging violence or hate

48. 2. From people based on an aspect of their identity
Must be based on a part of their identity which is difficult to change: race, gender, sexuality, disability, religion (except intolerant parts), etc.
Identity does not include intolerant or bigoted parts of someone's beliefs - religious, political, or otherwise
It's fine to advocate removing rights from people based on freely chosen actions or opinions (e.g., someone convicted of murder loses some rights during their prison sentence)

49. 3. In the context of systemic oppression
Is there a proven, on-going system of oppression which primarily harms this group?
Example: systemic sexism hurts everyone, but it hurts women and non-binary people far more than men
Plenty of reliable research and evidence exists
You don't have to convince anyone but yourself

50. 4. That overall increases the danger to that group
Much hate speech is better off not being censored and subject to normal criticism, counterspeech, etc.
Some hate speech makes the target group safer, e.g.:
Quoting hate speech in order to denounce it
Providing material for those studying hate groups
Publishing private communications of hate groups in order to embarrass or hurt their organization

51. Examples: does not meet test
Famous Black person tweets, "Maybe white people shouldn't vote for 10 years, just take a break"
Does not meet #3: in the context of systemic oppression
White people are in zero danger of losing access to the vote
Raises awareness of voter suppression efforts aimed at people of color

52. Example: does not meet test
Wall Street Journal op-ed suggesting that Democrats should not be allowed to vote
Does not meet #2: based on an aspect of identity
Political opinions are freely chosen
You can suppress this speech for other reasons, like believing that universal suffrage is crucial to democracy or wanting to protect your newspaper's reputation

53. Example: does not meet test
Fast Company reporter asks Cloudflare CEO: "If I were to write on my blog, ‘I think Cloudflare is homophobic, and that’s good because I hate gays,’ that puts you in the same position that you were with The Daily Stormer, right?"
Does not meet #4: overall increases danger to that group
This is a easily mocked argument on a tiny blog, reasonable to publish and let people respond

54. Example: does not meet test
People posting the Daily Stormer article attacking Heather Heyer on Facebook with comments denouncing it
Does not meet #4: overall increases danger to that group
This actually helps protect the endangered group
Facebook made this exception too

55. This is not the only test!
Lots of other reasons not to support some speech (illegal, against other values, spam, harms your platform)
This is just one of many rules that come into play
The Intolerable Speech rule covers a particularly bad loophole in most terms of service

56. https://the-orbit.net/almostdiamonds/swag/
© Stephanie Zvan, used by permission
Here's another freeze peach by my friend Stephanie Zvan.

57. Implementing the Paradox of Tolerance
Update your terms of service if necessary
Continuously update enforcement guidelines
Proactively seek out evolving threats
Have a diverse and empowered team creating and implementing ToS and enforcement guidelines
Listen to and partner with experts

58. Implementation: Legal issues
Ask your lawyer!
In many cases, no legal issues at all
When legal requirements exist, often on your side:
Anti-discrimination laws for lodging
Anti-harassment or anti-stalking laws
Non-U.S. laws tend far more toward restricting speech

59. Implementation: Structural issues
"Why are tech companies making these decisions?" — Cloudflare CEO and a whole lotta other people
Would rather just allow everything that is legal and make governments make the decision
Many countries do have better laws, like most of EU
Laws will always lag or be out of step - we still have to be willing to take action ourselves

60. Advocating for change at your company
Liz Fong-Jones shared how she organizes tech workers at Google to change company policy:
organize-tech-workers-to-change-company-policy/
Hire me or Y-Vonne Hutchinson at ReadySet to help you:

61. Business arguments Hosting hate groups is bad for the brand
Hate groups are bad clients (unethical, cheap, mean)
Fascism is bad for business
Harder to recruit and retain employees
Reduces legal exposure (hate groups do illegal things)

62. Personal arguments
Stop feeling bad about your job, sleep better at night
You like living in a free society
You care about fairness and justice
Your friends may start avoiding you if you work for a company that supports hate groups

63. Other random arguments
Everyone else is doing it! (At least 34 tech companies)
Karl Popper and other famous old white male philosophers say you should do this
World War II is what happens when people are tolerant of intolerance - let's skip it this time around

64. Call to action Tell other people about the Paradox of Tolerance
Organize other tech workers at your company to adopt the Intolerable Speech Rule at your company
Ask your legislators to pass laws that take the Paradox of Tolerance into account
Donate to the Southern Poverty Law Center

65. CC BY-SA http://emojione.com
Q & A
CC BY-SA

66. U.S. anti-discrimination laws kind of suck
In legal matters, you can't treat groups differently based on context of systemic oppression
A "protected class" is any group based on race, gender, etc. - even ones that are currently dominant
E.g., the current legal basis for affirmative action in university admissions is creating a "critical mass of students of a particular race" and an "improved learning environment through a diverse student body"

67. Refusing to help Milo Yiannopoulos give speeches
"Though [Yiannopoulos's] ability to speak is protected by the First Amendment, I don't believe in protecting principle for the sake of principle in all cases. His actions have consequences for people I care about and for me."
—Chase Strangio, ACLU attorney, speaking for himself
Another example is ACLU attorney Chase Strangio releasing a statement disagreeing with the ACLU's decision to defend Milo Yiannopoulus in a free speech case.
Some important context here is that Yiannopoulus is transphobic and even specifically named and showed a photo of a trans student at a school he spoke at, singling her out for harassment and abuse. Chase is himself trans. Something I've noticed doing research for this talk is that people who are members of marginalized groups are the first to put the Paradox of Tolerance into practice, whether or not they can fully articulate the principle

68. This makes Richard Spencer mad - good!
“They have changed their interpretation of their own policies. Nothing has changed. We have been advocating for the same things for years; I’ve been using the same language for years. I’ve always been upfront with who I am and what our organization is.”
—Richard Spencer, white nationalist leader

69. Example: Mailchimp
August 14, 2017: Updated terms of service, which originally only included rules against spam, fraud, pornography, illegal stuff, and technical abuse
"MailChimp does not allow accounts with the primary purpose of promoting or inciting harm towards others or the promotion of discriminatory, hateful, or harassing content."

70. "Freeze peach" © Ene on Dreamstime
Here's another freeze peach. You can make this one yourself!
© Ene on Dreamstime