Issues@Hand

AFA initiatives, Christian activism, news briefs

December 2019 – Left-leaning groups of every stripe loudly denounce conservative and Christian whites as the major producers of online hate speech. But Cornell University research published in May calls into question the liberals’ allegation.

The Cornell study used artificial intelligence (AI) to flag hate speech on Twitter. Results indicated that hate speech comments made by minorities were “at substantially higher rates” than those made
by whites.

Not willing to accept the implications of their own research, Cornell conjectured the AI analyses may “discriminate against the groups who are often the targets of the abuse we are trying to detect.”

Researchers used databases such as census data, tweet location, and demographic-specific language to conclude that tweets likely from African Americans were much more often flagged as hate speech than those likely from whites.

campusreform.org, 8/11/19; pluralist.com, 8/21/19