The infamous (no, you heard right) film review site RottenTomatoes.com recently started a campaign against "Hate Speech" in anticipation of skewed reviews upon the release of Black Panther.
If Twitter and Youtube have taught us anything, it's that "hate speech" is subjective and filtering it can be considered a form of censorship. In the case of Black Panther, it probably worked to keep the onslaught of bogus reviews from skewing results at the cost of a few honest reviews.
How has this affected other films since the campaign started though? Let's have a look.
I'm looking particularly at User Ratings and Reviews Counted. Reviews Counted is the number for how many reviews were accepted after throwing a few out. Since RottenTomatoes.com is less than transparent about what's being kept and what's being tossed, we can only imagine how this is affecting reviews.
Filtering content is a slippery slope. Personally, I'm against censorship of any kind. I'm also against SPAM and "hate speech". I think a lot of "hate speech" is left unfiltered while a lot of other content that I wouldn't consider hateful ends up being filtered. It's entirely subjective, and I don't think it's possible to get this kind of filter to work without hurting someone. I think SPAM can be dealt with in other ways.
Just my personal opinions on this matter.
This whole hate speech definition is tarnished now. Just because it might be hurtful to a protected group makes it hate speech. I'm a black African and I consider it more hurtful when darker skinned Africans deride me for saying I am black. I do not find it at all hurtful if some idiot calls me a monkey, a bushman, hotnot or any other word he or she has made up a s a racial slur. Those are water off my back. None of this is hate speech imo. Hate speech is when someone's statement actually whip up the actions of people against any person or group of people. I would prefer hate crimes to be pursued more vigorously rather than chasing after name callers. Whatever happened to sticks and stones? I am a hard core anti-racist, anti-sexist, but I don't agree with all this restriction of freedom. I liked your article as usual.
BY the way I think your posts are contributing to an informative and entertaining community here. Last I checked I am also voting for you as witness - and since today, I have selected your account to receive my tiny vote from the smartsteem whitelist ✊
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me too - ;-) your account will also receive my tiny votes in the smartsteem whitelist always resist ✊
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Thanks so much for that input. It's a sensitive topic, but I tried to approach objectively from the perspective of just filtering data. One day, someone will be able to bring everyone together and we can put isolationism behind us. I call it that because just as what happened to you shows, it's not just about race, but whatever makes us different from one another in anyway. It's a slippery slope because there is fear that joining together means we lose individuality of culture, but it doesn't have to be that way. As my man Yoda would say
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