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Essay On Hate Speech

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Ever since its inception, the internet has been praised by many for its global nature and major features, including virtually unrestricted information flow, unlimited communication possibilities, anonymity, and free speech. Unfortunately, such an open concept of the World Wide Web leaves it open to a wide range of exploitation; namely, in the era of social media platforms, created specifically to facilitate conversation among the users, one of the most common forms of abuse is hate speech. Due to the complexity of the term itself and many legal and practical issues, regulating such content online is proven to be difficult. However, while the offenders hide behind their constitutional right to free speech and the anonymity of the internet, …show more content…

Furthermore, due to its diversity, not all online hate speech is considered a punishable offense; not surprisingly, even if it is regulated by law, the sanctions for it currently range from mild to nonexistent.
To provide a broader understanding of the phenomenon, in their 2016 research, Silva et al. focus on identifying the main targets of online hate in two major social media systems: Whisper and Twitter. Defining hate speech as “any offense motivated, in whole or in a part, by the offender’s bias against an aspect of a group of people,” the authors determine that such a content includes basic hate crimes such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability, but also specific behavioral and physical aspects that are not illegal but simply harmful (688). Analyzing one-year data gathered from Whisper and Twitter and cross-referencing their findings with Hatebase, an online repository of hate speech, Silva et al. identify ten main categories of hate targets: race (black or white people); behavior (insecure, sensitive); physical (obese, but also beautiful); sexual orientation (gay, straight); class (ghetto, rich); gender (pregnant,

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