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Facebook, Google, Twitter agree to delete hate speech in 24 hours: Germany

30 points by emgoldstein 11y ago

trav4225 11y ago
Free speech, European style.
- legulere 11y ago
  Which is just free speech. Rights stop where other rights get infringed. Free speech also has its bounds in the USA. You can't scream "fire" when there's no fire and cause panic, you can't post (nude) photos of someone without their consent, you can't call for someone to get murdered. In Europe you just also can't call for crimes to be committed against ethnicities, adherents to some religion etc. I always find the american worship of the constitution as strange. It's a bit like people that try to take the bible literal and forget to think about the actual meaning behind the words. Also the constitution is not a holy scripture. Several things in it have been turned around by 180°. We have way better documents to express the basic human rights.
  - orangecat 11y ago
    In Europe you just also can't call for crimes to be committed against ethnicities, adherents to some religion etc. Or argue that Muslim immigration is harmful (http://www.reuters.com/article/people-france-bardot-muslims-dc-idUSL1584799120080415 http://www.reuters.com/article/people-france-bardot-muslims-...), or correctly state the Bible's position on homosexuality (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-preacher-arrested-for-saying-homosexuality-is-a-sin.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-p...).
- nsaje 11y ago
  Free speech does not give you the right to hate speech. The title is misleading, because they only agreed to remove hate speech only, not all anti-immigration comments. EDIT: To clarify, hate speech is for example speech inciting doing harm to others. As a concrete example, in the heat of the refugee crisis, I was regularly seeing calls to arms to go shoot all the refugees at the borders on my Facebook wall. It made me cringe.
  - adventured 11y ago
    > Free speech does not give you the right to hate speech. I would argue that's exactly what it does. I'd further argue that hate speech and the threat of violence should be separated into two distinct categories for clarity. Clarity is extremely, extremely important when you're dealing with the edges of acceptable speech. It's dangerous to load them both into one concept that can be wielded by politicians and the media for control purposes over speech and free expression. It's also important to clarify that the threat of violence is not a form of speech, it's a threat (of violence). That's another obvious reason why "hate speech" should not cover threats of violence to begin with, it intentionally muddles the concepts. Just like smashing someone in the face should not fall under free expression: it's an act of violence. Free speech ends at the point of violence, putting violence and speech together generates a contradiction of terms that can only benefit people looking for levers of control. The concept "hate speech" is already a broken, frequently abused tool for controlling people. It's clearly going to get much worse in the coming years given the rise of extreme political correctness, the 'protect my feelings' movement. "Hate speech" is by default devoid of nearly all meaning, and nearly anything can be claimed to be hate speech, because "hate" is a generic term that can vary wildly and is inherently subjective. It was of course used for that exact reason: you can't legislate control over speech, therefore create empty jargon to do the same thing, and then load anything you want into it. A method frequently employed by totalitarian regimes. Are my posts, which openly express my dislike of elves, hate speech? You bet. Why? Because I say so. You can never successfully refute that.
    - illumen 11y ago
      Except what counts is explicitly encoded in law, not what anyone makes up. "Are my posts, which openly express my dislike of elves, hate speech?" No, because that's really silly. The law would let you do that. If instead you asked people to kill people, that would be taken down.
  - rewqfdsa 11y ago
    There is no such thing as "hate speech". What you call "hate speech" is merely speech that you find disagreeable. Free speech is valuable not when it protects those who already agree with you. "Hate speech" is very vaguely defined, and you can use the label to smear people raising perfectly legitimate facts like "group differences are recent, profound, and heritable".
- Tomte 11y ago
  Free speech, the correct way. In my opinion, of course. (The following is not so much directed at you; I don't know you, after all. It's just that I need to rant, as always when Americans lecture us on free speech. "You" is not the personal you, but "you Americans on web forums") Don't mistake your version of free speech for a canonical implementation. Keep your hate speech and school shootings, be proud of it, and bury your dead. We just happen to live in peace and don't need or want your constant superiority complex in our face. Just remember, after WWII you had a wonderful opportunity to force your free speech on us. You deliberately chose to force something else on us. And had it written in our constitution. Because Nazis. Now don't you dare blame us for having it. You wanted us to not extend free speech to Nazis. You wanted us to defend our new constitution. You don't get to come back after seventy-five years and ask us to please be nicer to Nazis. And Scientology. And whatnot. Have you noticed how wherever you engage in nation building, you never implement your political system? How come? Isn't your system perfect? Maybe it's only for the enlightened American people and other peoples are too backwards and savage for that? Okay, maybe Puerto Rico, which is almost an American state. They have your system, as well. Except... all their political organs serve at the US congress' pleasure. Very colonial. It's great that you identify with your system. Really. But please enjoy it. Feel free to tell us how much you enjoy it. But stop disparaging others who disagree.
  - eropple 11y ago
    Thank you for writing this (and I say that as an American). We as a country are are gargantuan hypocrites about this whole thing; the idea of free speech in our Constitution--to say nothing of plenty of other privileges that we pretend are rights--is one of many things we don't pass on to the people we claim hegemony over. We are tremendously bad at owning our shit. I wish we were better.
    - cgriswald 11y ago
      As a human... The GP was just as condescending as the GGP. His rush to stereotype Americans was largely comical. He makes it quite clear at the beginning that his buttons were simply (and easily) pushed; and this his rant was justified in his eyes. He simply emoted all over this thread to the benefit of no one but himself. It is not my status as an American that I defend or his status as a German(?) that I attack when I point out the hypocrisy or limits in his version of free speech. Nor does my acknoledgement of those limits imply I am not familiar with the history and hypocrisy of the United States and its voracious appetite for hegemony, empire building, and oppression of peoples (including the restriction or punishment of ostensibly free speech) both within and without its borders. This entire thread reads like a bunch of petulant children pointing fingers. Neither side defends the merits of their version of free speech nor makes salient points about the others' version of free speech; leading to no greater understanding and apparently prompting people to take sides in a conflict that doesn't even have to exist.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- marklgr 11y ago
  Free speech, American stylen is all or nothing: either you can say absolutely everything, without any reserve, or it is not free speech. Free speech, European style, is: let's cut the bottom 1% in public places--knowing full well it will necessarily be somewhat arbitrary, debatable and potentially dangerous--if it gives a much, much saner space for everybody else. That's a trade-off, and not an easy one: opponents to it will immediately ask "who decides", "what if they want to shut _you_ up", or they'll invoke slippery-slope style arguments. But, for all these issues, there is some point where the trade-off is a huge win for society, according to proponents. That's always debatable, but I think it is as reasonable a stance as the previous one. Besides, it's not because a limit is very difficult to set that we should give up defining one. For instance, think about under age sex; who's to say what age is ok, but two weeks before is a serious crime? It is prone to the same kind of induction and slippery slope arguments as free speech, but most people (me included) don't argue about setting some arbitrary limit.
DominikR 11y ago
They are now introducing "hate-crimes" here in the EU. This punishes there mere act of publicly saying or writing a hateful comment. (non threatening, non endorsing or inciting criminal acts) If people take offence, you will be persecuted. So it's a great law to further tighten the control over what can be discussed and what can't. And if that wasn't enough, our government now allows NGO's and other non state organisations to police Facebook and other social media to prevent and contain types of thoughtcrime that haven't been yet criminalised. No approval from a court needed, some privately funded NGO will in future decide for us.
- illumen 11y ago
  Which law precisely are you talking about? Racist hate speech was already illegal in Germany. I'm genuinely interested if you could link to something describing what you are talking about.
  - DominikR 11y ago
    Example (sorry, it's in German): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung The second item of StGb 130 (updated in 2015) is interesting here: die Menschenwürde anderer dadurch angreift, dass er eine vorbezeichnete Gruppe, Teile der Bevölkerung oder einen Einzelnen wegen seiner Zugehörigkeit zu einer vorbezeichneten Gruppe oder zu einem Teil der Bevölkerung beschimpft, böswillig verächtlich macht oder verleumdet, It states that if you attack/insult the dignity of a person or group with a statement, you are a to be punished. This part in specific: "oder zu einem Teil der Bevölkerung beschimpft" -> or some group within the population without further specification. So if a prosecutor feels like it he/she might persecute you for insulting for example Feminists. Compare this with the version of the same law from 1871: „Wer in einer den öffentlichen Frieden gefährdenden Weise verschiedene Klassen der Bevölkerung zu Gewaltthätigkeiten gegen einander öffentlich anreizt, wird mit Geldstrafe bis zu zweihundert Thalern oder mit Gefängniß bis zu zwei Jahren bestraft. Seems more reasonable to me, only inciting violence is criminalised here.
legulere 11y ago
I think it's a really good idea to read the wikipedia article about the law this is based on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung It makes some things clear, what is allowed, what isn't and why.
merpnderp 11y ago
Don't like what someone is saying? Point out why they're wrong, but don't send guys with guns (the police) to force them to shut up. That's far more unethical than anything anyone could say.
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
If it's speech condoning or encouraging harm against others, then it should be removed. But if people are just voicing their opinions, even hateful opinions, then it doesn't take a genius to figure out that banning such speech makes the sentiment run deeper, and only offloads it to even less "tolerant" parts of the web, like 4chan.
- ianferrel 11y ago
  What about: "The US and Western Europe should attack ISIS soldiers", or "Convicted murderers should be executed by the state". Both of those statements are condoning and encouraging harming others. Should they be removed? Can you not see the impossibility of regulating which speech is justified, and which is not?
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    The difference is proximity and legitimacy. One can say ISIS should be bombed but that's a matter of war, declared by one's state, and is therefore considered legitimate. It's also far different from posting "Someone should stab these immigrants down the block living in state housing." Yes it's hypocritical and arbitrary when considering that we are all humans, but that is simply how law and society stratifies speech worthy of regulation. I don't think it's impossible at all.
  - adventured 11y ago
    You can easily separate the concepts via the initiation of force. The murderer is the initiator. ISIS is the initiator. Example: "The US should murder the Japanese people and nuke all of their cities immediately." Japan isn't an aggressor, hasn't invaded anyone, isn't slaughtering the people of some country they're trying to annex (ISIS). Calling for a response to to the initiation of violence, is not the same as calling for the initiation of violence. If you remove these blatant lines, you can never differentiate on a legal basis who is the victim and who is the perpetrator in acts of eg crime.
    - mrtree 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
empressplay 11y ago
The title of this article needs to be changed. There is a world of difference between "anti-immigrant comments" and hate speech that incites violence (which is what's really being discussed here.) @dang
- illumen 11y ago
  Yes, why was the title changed to "anti-immigrant" rather than the more accurate "hate speech" that the original article uses? Facebook previously would allow hate speech(like calling for violence), but take down comments by people talking about sex.
- dang 11y ago
  Changed now. Submitted title was "Facebook, Google, Twitter agree to delete anti-immigrant comments: Germany". There's probably no way to make this title neutral so we might as well stick with the original even though people object to it.
ferrari8608 11y ago
I don't understand how deleting an online record of hate speech and threats of violence is going to do anything to help solve any problems. It will make the net look prettier, but the people who would post such things will still be there thinking and feeling exactly as they do now.
- illumen 11y ago
  A call for violence can incite violence. So, removing calls for violence will help reduce violence.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  Post-WWII Germany has had strict controls on public hate speech of all types, as a legacy of national shame/disgust about the Holocaust. I’m all for free speech, but I can’t really blame them for exercising caution, all things considered.
  - legulere 11y ago
    The law against it actually already existed previous to WWII, starting with 1871. But it wasn't strongly enforced, and worded not clear enough.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- marklgr 11y ago
  The goal is to prevent "echo chambers" where prone to be influenced people build violent or extreme views that will have a real and very detrimental impact on society. It denies the premisse that "speech is just speech and does not harm anyone". It sure is debatable and it raises many issues, but it is not about just making the net look prettier.
  - emp_zealoth 11y ago
    What you get is exactly an echo chamber - like ok HN,anyone disagreeing with consensus gets downvoted into oblivion.
jqm 11y ago
I don't follow the topic closely but it seems there would be a difference between "hate speech" and not wanting large numbers of immigrants from a poor violent region immigrating into one's society. I suspect the second is sometimes confused with the first, maybe on occasion deliberately by policy makers or others with an agenda.
- illumen 11y ago
  The title used here on HN is inaccurate, and not what was used in the article. It's not what is actually happening either. People can still say they don't want immigrants. What they can't do is ask people to burn down houses where they live or do 'vigilante justice' on them. These are actual things that people have asked others to do, and actually done. Facebook previously limited speech for things like sex, but was ok with keeping up criminal posts calling for murder.

30 points by emgoldstein 11y ago

trav4225 11y ago

Free speech, European style.

legulere 11y ago
Which is just free speech. Rights stop where other rights get infringed. Free speech also has its bounds in the USA. You can't scream "fire" when there's no fire and cause panic, you can't post (nude) photos of someone without their consent, you can't call for someone to get murdered. In Europe you just also can't call for crimes to be committed against ethnicities, adherents to some religion etc. I always find the american worship of the constitution as strange. It's a bit like people that try to take the bible literal and forget to think about the actual meaning behind the words. Also the constitution is not a holy scripture. Several things in it have been turned around by 180°. We have way better documents to express the basic human rights.
- orangecat 11y ago
  In Europe you just also can't call for crimes to be committed against ethnicities, adherents to some religion etc. Or argue that Muslim immigration is harmful (http://www.reuters.com/article/people-france-bardot-muslims-dc-idUSL1584799120080415 http://www.reuters.com/article/people-france-bardot-muslims-...), or correctly state the Bible's position on homosexuality (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-preacher-arrested-for-saying-homosexuality-is-a-sin.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-p...).
nsaje 11y ago
Free speech does not give you the right to hate speech. The title is misleading, because they only agreed to remove hate speech only, not all anti-immigration comments. EDIT: To clarify, hate speech is for example speech inciting doing harm to others. As a concrete example, in the heat of the refugee crisis, I was regularly seeing calls to arms to go shoot all the refugees at the borders on my Facebook wall. It made me cringe.
- adventured 11y ago
  > Free speech does not give you the right to hate speech. I would argue that's exactly what it does. I'd further argue that hate speech and the threat of violence should be separated into two distinct categories for clarity. Clarity is extremely, extremely important when you're dealing with the edges of acceptable speech. It's dangerous to load them both into one concept that can be wielded by politicians and the media for control purposes over speech and free expression. It's also important to clarify that the threat of violence is not a form of speech, it's a threat (of violence). That's another obvious reason why "hate speech" should not cover threats of violence to begin with, it intentionally muddles the concepts. Just like smashing someone in the face should not fall under free expression: it's an act of violence. Free speech ends at the point of violence, putting violence and speech together generates a contradiction of terms that can only benefit people looking for levers of control. The concept "hate speech" is already a broken, frequently abused tool for controlling people. It's clearly going to get much worse in the coming years given the rise of extreme political correctness, the 'protect my feelings' movement. "Hate speech" is by default devoid of nearly all meaning, and nearly anything can be claimed to be hate speech, because "hate" is a generic term that can vary wildly and is inherently subjective. It was of course used for that exact reason: you can't legislate control over speech, therefore create empty jargon to do the same thing, and then load anything you want into it. A method frequently employed by totalitarian regimes. Are my posts, which openly express my dislike of elves, hate speech? You bet. Why? Because I say so. You can never successfully refute that.
  - illumen 11y ago
    Except what counts is explicitly encoded in law, not what anyone makes up. "Are my posts, which openly express my dislike of elves, hate speech?" No, because that's really silly. The law would let you do that. If instead you asked people to kill people, that would be taken down.
- rewqfdsa 11y ago
  There is no such thing as "hate speech". What you call "hate speech" is merely speech that you find disagreeable. Free speech is valuable not when it protects those who already agree with you. "Hate speech" is very vaguely defined, and you can use the label to smear people raising perfectly legitimate facts like "group differences are recent, profound, and heritable".
Tomte 11y ago
Free speech, the correct way. In my opinion, of course. (The following is not so much directed at you; I don't know you, after all. It's just that I need to rant, as always when Americans lecture us on free speech. "You" is not the personal you, but "you Americans on web forums") Don't mistake your version of free speech for a canonical implementation. Keep your hate speech and school shootings, be proud of it, and bury your dead. We just happen to live in peace and don't need or want your constant superiority complex in our face. Just remember, after WWII you had a wonderful opportunity to force your free speech on us. You deliberately chose to force something else on us. And had it written in our constitution. Because Nazis. Now don't you dare blame us for having it. You wanted us to not extend free speech to Nazis. You wanted us to defend our new constitution. You don't get to come back after seventy-five years and ask us to please be nicer to Nazis. And Scientology. And whatnot. Have you noticed how wherever you engage in nation building, you never implement your political system? How come? Isn't your system perfect? Maybe it's only for the enlightened American people and other peoples are too backwards and savage for that? Okay, maybe Puerto Rico, which is almost an American state. They have your system, as well. Except... all their political organs serve at the US congress' pleasure. Very colonial. It's great that you identify with your system. Really. But please enjoy it. Feel free to tell us how much you enjoy it. But stop disparaging others who disagree.
- eropple 11y ago
  Thank you for writing this (and I say that as an American). We as a country are are gargantuan hypocrites about this whole thing; the idea of free speech in our Constitution--to say nothing of plenty of other privileges that we pretend are rights--is one of many things we don't pass on to the people we claim hegemony over. We are tremendously bad at owning our shit. I wish we were better.
  - cgriswald 11y ago
    As a human... The GP was just as condescending as the GGP. His rush to stereotype Americans was largely comical. He makes it quite clear at the beginning that his buttons were simply (and easily) pushed; and this his rant was justified in his eyes. He simply emoted all over this thread to the benefit of no one but himself. It is not my status as an American that I defend or his status as a German(?) that I attack when I point out the hypocrisy or limits in his version of free speech. Nor does my acknoledgement of those limits imply I am not familiar with the history and hypocrisy of the United States and its voracious appetite for hegemony, empire building, and oppression of peoples (including the restriction or punishment of ostensibly free speech) both within and without its borders. This entire thread reads like a bunch of petulant children pointing fingers. Neither side defends the merits of their version of free speech nor makes salient points about the others' version of free speech; leading to no greater understanding and apparently prompting people to take sides in a conflict that doesn't even have to exist.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
marklgr 11y ago
Free speech, American stylen is all or nothing: either you can say absolutely everything, without any reserve, or it is not free speech. Free speech, European style, is: let's cut the bottom 1% in public places--knowing full well it will necessarily be somewhat arbitrary, debatable and potentially dangerous--if it gives a much, much saner space for everybody else. That's a trade-off, and not an easy one: opponents to it will immediately ask "who decides", "what if they want to shut _you_ up", or they'll invoke slippery-slope style arguments. But, for all these issues, there is some point where the trade-off is a huge win for society, according to proponents. That's always debatable, but I think it is as reasonable a stance as the previous one. Besides, it's not because a limit is very difficult to set that we should give up defining one. For instance, think about under age sex; who's to say what age is ok, but two weeks before is a serious crime? It is prone to the same kind of induction and slippery slope arguments as free speech, but most people (me included) don't argue about setting some arbitrary limit.

DominikR 11y ago

They are now introducing "hate-crimes" here in the EU. This punishes there mere act of publicly saying or writing a hateful comment. (non threatening, non endorsing or inciting criminal acts) If people take offence, you will be persecuted. So it's a great law to further tighten the control over what can be discussed and what can't. And if that wasn't enough, our government now allows NGO's and other non state organisations to police Facebook and other social media to prevent and contain types of thoughtcrime that haven't been yet criminalised. No approval from a court needed, some privately funded NGO will in future decide for us.

illumen 11y ago
Which law precisely are you talking about? Racist hate speech was already illegal in Germany. I'm genuinely interested if you could link to something describing what you are talking about.
- DominikR 11y ago
  Example (sorry, it's in German): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung The second item of StGb 130 (updated in 2015) is interesting here: die Menschenwürde anderer dadurch angreift, dass er eine vorbezeichnete Gruppe, Teile der Bevölkerung oder einen Einzelnen wegen seiner Zugehörigkeit zu einer vorbezeichneten Gruppe oder zu einem Teil der Bevölkerung beschimpft, böswillig verächtlich macht oder verleumdet, It states that if you attack/insult the dignity of a person or group with a statement, you are a to be punished. This part in specific: "oder zu einem Teil der Bevölkerung beschimpft" -> or some group within the population without further specification. So if a prosecutor feels like it he/she might persecute you for insulting for example Feminists. Compare this with the version of the same law from 1871: „Wer in einer den öffentlichen Frieden gefährdenden Weise verschiedene Klassen der Bevölkerung zu Gewaltthätigkeiten gegen einander öffentlich anreizt, wird mit Geldstrafe bis zu zweihundert Thalern oder mit Gefängniß bis zu zwei Jahren bestraft. Seems more reasonable to me, only inciting violence is criminalised here.

legulere 11y ago

I think it's a really good idea to read the wikipedia article about the law this is based on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung It makes some things clear, what is allowed, what isn't and why.

merpnderp 11y ago

Don't like what someone is saying? Point out why they're wrong, but don't send guys with guns (the police) to force them to shut up. That's far more unethical than anything anyone could say.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

If it's speech condoning or encouraging harm against others, then it should be removed. But if people are just voicing their opinions, even hateful opinions, then it doesn't take a genius to figure out that banning such speech makes the sentiment run deeper, and only offloads it to even less "tolerant" parts of the web, like 4chan.

ianferrel 11y ago
What about: "The US and Western Europe should attack ISIS soldiers", or "Convicted murderers should be executed by the state". Both of those statements are condoning and encouraging harming others. Should they be removed? Can you not see the impossibility of regulating which speech is justified, and which is not?
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  The difference is proximity and legitimacy. One can say ISIS should be bombed but that's a matter of war, declared by one's state, and is therefore considered legitimate. It's also far different from posting "Someone should stab these immigrants down the block living in state housing." Yes it's hypocritical and arbitrary when considering that we are all humans, but that is simply how law and society stratifies speech worthy of regulation. I don't think it's impossible at all.
- adventured 11y ago
  You can easily separate the concepts via the initiation of force. The murderer is the initiator. ISIS is the initiator. Example: "The US should murder the Japanese people and nuke all of their cities immediately." Japan isn't an aggressor, hasn't invaded anyone, isn't slaughtering the people of some country they're trying to annex (ISIS). Calling for a response to to the initiation of violence, is not the same as calling for the initiation of violence. If you remove these blatant lines, you can never differentiate on a legal basis who is the victim and who is the perpetrator in acts of eg crime.
  - mrtree 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

empressplay 11y ago

The title of this article needs to be changed. There is a world of difference between "anti-immigrant comments" and hate speech that incites violence (which is what's really being discussed here.) @dang

illumen 11y ago
Yes, why was the title changed to "anti-immigrant" rather than the more accurate "hate speech" that the original article uses? Facebook previously would allow hate speech(like calling for violence), but take down comments by people talking about sex.
dang 11y ago
Changed now. Submitted title was "Facebook, Google, Twitter agree to delete anti-immigrant comments: Germany". There's probably no way to make this title neutral so we might as well stick with the original even though people object to it.

ferrari8608 11y ago

I don't understand how deleting an online record of hate speech and threats of violence is going to do anything to help solve any problems. It will make the net look prettier, but the people who would post such things will still be there thinking and feeling exactly as they do now.

illumen 11y ago
A call for violence can incite violence. So, removing calls for violence will help reduce violence.
jacobolus 11y ago
Post-WWII Germany has had strict controls on public hate speech of all types, as a legacy of national shame/disgust about the Holocaust. I’m all for free speech, but I can’t really blame them for exercising caution, all things considered.
- legulere 11y ago
  The law against it actually already existed previous to WWII, starting with 1871. But it wasn't strongly enforced, and worded not clear enough.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
marklgr 11y ago
The goal is to prevent "echo chambers" where prone to be influenced people build violent or extreme views that will have a real and very detrimental impact on society. It denies the premisse that "speech is just speech and does not harm anyone". It sure is debatable and it raises many issues, but it is not about just making the net look prettier.
- emp_zealoth 11y ago
  What you get is exactly an echo chamber - like ok HN,anyone disagreeing with consensus gets downvoted into oblivion.

jqm 11y ago

I don't follow the topic closely but it seems there would be a difference between "hate speech" and not wanting large numbers of immigrants from a poor violent region immigrating into one's society. I suspect the second is sometimes confused with the first, maybe on occasion deliberately by policy makers or others with an agenda.

illumen 11y ago
The title used here on HN is inaccurate, and not what was used in the article. It's not what is actually happening either. People can still say they don't want immigrants. What they can't do is ask people to burn down houses where they live or do 'vigilante justice' on them. These are actual things that people have asked others to do, and actually done. Facebook previously limited speech for things like sex, but was ok with keeping up criminal posts calling for murder.