Abstract

Excerpted From: Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Reducing Hate Online: The Myth of Colorblind Content Policy by Ángel Díaz, 103 Boston University Law Review 1985 (December, 2023) (88 Footnotes) (Full Document)

Cyberspace bristles with racially disparaging material even more so, it appears, than most other channels of communication. In a 2014 article, we sought to explain the abundance of vituperation in that forum and suggested a few measures to abate it.

In Online Racialization and the Myth of Colorblind Content Policy, Ángel Díaz offers further explanation. Focusing on large social media platforms like Facebook/Meta, Twitter, and YouTube, he points out defects in the dominant approach to addressing racism on platforms like these, namely content moderation performed under colorblind rules, in which a moderator reviews texts for objectionable material, deletes it, and warns the sender to desist from posting similar passages in the future.

Díaz's article is one of the first to apply critical race theory in this area. His conclusion is straightforward: content moderation will fail unless it takes into account the history and logic of racism. Proceeding, as it currently does, in colorblind terms--banning, for example, any imminent threat--will merely magnify the advantages attendant to whiteness by making them appear natural and inevitable.

But colorblind moderation does not merely shield white supremacists. Minorities who speak out against oppression may easily find themselves banned from a favorite site, especially if they do not speak the King's English, use terms like “goddamn” or “racist,” or speak of wanting to bring down the current social order. Majority-group users, however, who disparage minorities via code words or circumlocution (as lazy, undeserving, having a poor work ethic, or un-American, for example) will pass muster. Moderators will deem their speech mere humor or political commentary. For Díaz, these flaws are systemic, not products of the occasional reviewer who is asleep at the switch, overworked, or secretly in league with white supremacy.

[. . .]

Readers reluctant to discard the mannerly approach of law and legal regulation should also remind themselves that many early radical lawyers refused, on principle, to bring cases to court; they put their faith in organizing and social movements. Judges were The Man, and they knew it. The problem really is structural, just as Díaz says. But he, perhaps, does not appreciate the full implications of his own intuition: the system will change only if it is in its own interest to do so. As Derrick Bell pointed out, milestone events like Brown v. Board of Education tend to arrive only when momentary coincidences of Black and majority interests call them forth. Managers of online sites are likely to resist even the small Americanization measures we suggest. But when the first unruly crowd bursts into the board room at their annual meeting, they may begin to see things differently. Putting the American flag prominently on a few places in the platform is, after all, just a small thing.

Distinguished Professor, Seattle University School of Law.

Research Professor, Seattle University School of Law.