I just found this article about youtube (therefore google) to train 5000 kids in the 9th and 10th class (most of them will be around 14-16 years old) to detect hate speech on the net. This may sound like a good idea, but let me tell you why I think it is not. The article (german) and a tl;dr can be found at the end of this post.

Most of you know this already, but germany made bad news the last months, because "we" opened "our borders" to "welcome refugees" from war zones, mostly of syria and such. I just want to clarify some things before I come back to google, because they are important (at least to me): "we" did not want this. The whole thing may be a monumental act of kindness, but it lead to a lot of problems and anyone who thinks that the last months of terror in europe do not correlate to the unbelievable high number of refugees is, in my honestest opinion, blind. Of course, there was and is resistance: People who don't want that, but they are marked as idiots, assholes, nazis; you name it. But to be fair, there are a lot very right winged people here to refugee-bait (reading: jew-baiting for refugees). The aforementioned article does not pick up this debate and problem at all, but since they want to fight hate, discrimination, and insults. My point is: Some ultra right winged people do these things and the state should take care of them, if they harm someone, but just being against something is one's right of free opinion and speech. But it is a dangerous thing to do, because a lot of people already lost their jobs because of this, so the most people keep quiet. The refugee crisis and this project are highly connected, but I fear that it does not stop there. It will serve as a cloak for the things to come.

Some of you may remember the DDR aka. the German Democratic Republic (short GDR), I do not, but their methods were as effective as vile. In short, everyone who was unpopular (to the system, to one's neighbours, to ones colleagues at work) has to be _very_ afraid of being denounced; often without proof, imagine a modern witch hunt in the 1990s. And the media lies. Call me a scaredy-cat, an idiot, whatever, but we live in a time of mass-media control: We are told what we have to know for whatever reason "they" think of. Free speech dies piece by piece on every level of our society and with all this angst in mind I see this article.

Google wants to train around 5000 kids to locate "hate speech", but they do not clarify what hate speech is. I have a bad feeling that some 14-16 years old kids (call bs on this statement, but around 95-99 % of of kids this age can't be taken serious at all) are in charge to point their fingers at something a multinational concern defines as "hate speech", "discrimination", or whatever for them. Where does it begin? Right winged posts about actual political topics? Very likely. But what in the long run? Gender debate? Religion? Or something as simple as one's opinion about anything. I fear a state where you "hate" because you have a different opinion. This is an instrument which should not be given to anyone, especially not to kids. Ok, they just say that the user "cuddle-mouse" said something about some topic, the post will be deleted, that's it. But will that be all for the next years? I think this project will be successful: Increasing its manpower and expertise (better staff, more topics), more mandatory courses on schools (hard coded in the curriculums) and so on. The worst case would be, if the system establishes rights to "hurt" individuals to go to court because someone hurt their feelings; I remember the anecdote of the PTSD-fêmme. These adjustements are very unlikely the next 20-30 years, I think, but what then?

tl;dr: Google trains 5000 kids to detect hate speech without defining the scope (google-media only or other sites too?; what topics? what consequences for the "bad apples"?), leading to a small GDR-like taskforce of an international corporation and the german minister of women.

This really frightens me. What do you think? Will this idea backfire?

Also: What search sites and mail providers are worthy to look in? I want to turn my back to google as a search engine and mail provider, but their search results and mail service is too good in my opinion.

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Here the link to the article (german only)

http://blogs.faz.net/deus/2016/09/29/google-youtube-und-schwesig-mit-grundrechtablehnung-an-die-schulen-3746/