14 ms·

German MPs vote for new law to fine social media companies over illegal content

52 points by mgliwka 9y ago

akerro 9y ago
>must take down posts containing hate speech or other criminal material within 24 hours Maybe this will convince facebook to remove decapitation videos.
- josefx 9y ago
  After 24 hours those are old news anyway, just flag it for automatic removal after 23 hours and 59 minutes.
wyager 9y ago
> sites with more that two million users in Germany must take down posts containing hate speech or other criminal material within 24 hours. Censorship and fines galore. Just this week: a €2.4B fine from the EU for Google's integrated shopping view. A Canadian ruling stating that Google had to enforce Canadian censorship worldwide. And now, huge fines for content that the German government finds objectionable. How long before google, Facebook, etc. retreat to the US entirely (or even to some liberal island nation)? Sooner or later, the economic benefit of a data company having a physical presence somewhere is outweighed by the cost of overbearing censorship laws. Maybe it's time for the Sultanate of Kinakuta to become a reality. Google and Facebook should start investing heavily in anti-censorship technology a la Tor and I2P. Sadly, I fear that this may soon become necessary in "liberal" nations like Germany. It's already necessary in the U.K., with draconian anti-pornography and anti-cryptography laws.
- m12k 9y ago
  As much as I'd be impressed if Europe managed to pull a China and replace the unicorns from SV with homegrown (and tax-paying) alternatives, I doubt that's ever going to happen. Google and FB have such ridiculously high profit margins that this is still just nibbling at the edges of it.
  - wyager 9y ago
    €2.4B is a very large chunk of Google's annual profit. How much do these companies gain from having a legally vulnerable physical presence in the EU? I'd guess not more than a few billion dollars a year. The primary benefits are hiring, taxes, and maybe some CDN improvements, but those can be worked around.
    - germanier 9y ago
      The primary benefit is having an entity to bill their customers (i.e. advertisers). And no, the shop next door will never go through the hassle to wire money to the US (which can be seized in transfer anyway).
      - wyager 9y ago
        Great, this opens up an opportunity for Bitcoin transfers to Kinakuta.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Hey, if they got together, they could buy a small country. Love that Sultanate of Kinakuta reference :)
  - cronjobber 9y ago
    That would be fun, what with the ultimate dispute resolution procedure against a sovereign Google being the lobbing of heavy ordnance at Kinakuta Googleplex until they cease and desist :)
    - mirimir 9y ago
      They would need nukes, for sure ;)
grx 9y ago
Aside from the censorship debate, I still wonder what measures the German government has to enforce these fines. None of the discussed big companies are settled in Germany, but are regulated under European law. Where is the connection? Does a EU member have the capability to use EU regulators to enforce fines based on state law?
- arethuza 9y ago
  I would expect any large company to have a subsidiary legal entity in each country it operates, even if just a sales office - they are operating in the local legal environment (in this case Germany). e.g. Here is the UK subsidiary of Facebook - I'd expect there to be a German equivalent: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06331310 https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06331310
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Well, then they should shut down that German one, no? And move all operations out of Germany. Maybe blacklist all German IPs, just for jolly ;) Edit: Also, Facebook does have a Tor onion gateway. For users in places that block access. That'd work as well for Germans as well as Chinese etc.
    - arethuza 9y ago
      And lose a potentially valuable market - yes they could do that.
      - mirimir 9y ago
        I wonder who would back down first. At some point, Internet-based firms will need to take a stand on this. Otherwise, they'll just get pecked to death.
    - lnsp 9y ago
      I would love that blacklist idea. I could finally remove all the Facebook DNS block entries from my devices.
nippples 9y ago
As much as I hate Facebook and I think it's one of the main vectors of all the social unrest cancer we see metastasizing everywhere in western society nowadays, this decision is stupid and does only yet more harm to free speech than actually address any real problem, but serves only to sweep it under the rug until it explodes in our face. Of course, most politicians involved in making this happen won't ever have to deal with one iota of the inconvenience they bestow over their general population.
- mtgx 9y ago
  I'm with you. This is the first time in a very long time that I had to defend Facebook. What does "obviously illegal" even mean? And is it like "obvious porn"? Because politicians themselves seem to be doing a terrible job at recognizing that, too: > During the various internet censorship cases the ACLU brought, we asked the government to identify speech in each category, and they were largely unable to do so. For example, they said that an online photo on Playboy’s website of a topless woman was not harmful to minors, but a virtually identical photo on Penthouse’s website was. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170626/16543937676/how-aclus-fight-to-protect-indecent-speech-saved-internet-being-treated-like-broadcast-tv.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170626/16543937676/how-a...
- tmalsburg2 9y ago
  Social media are arguably amplifying those "real problems" and regulating them is therefore a very reasonable thing to do, as it is reasonable to do something about mosquitoes that are spreading deadly diseases [0] (using this example because you mentioned vectors as an analogy). I don't think that the law they passed implies that nothing else will be done to address the underlying causes of these issues. Suggesting it does is disingenuous. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_control
  - nippples 9y ago
    > I don't think that the law they passed implies that nothing else will be done to address the underlying causes of these issues. Suggesting it does is disingenuous. Many politicians, especially in the mainstream, operate on a 'lowest possible effort' basis to pretend they're giving a damn about their electorate, which is why so many completely awful laws and trade deals get passed just by giving it a friendly-sounding name, all while pocketing a hefty 'extra payment' for their collaboration. I'll be more surprised to find out that something concrete was done about the cause of extremism in Europe than to find out that there was a ridiculously large network of bribed politicians involved in passing this law.
cronjobber 9y ago
Between terror risk amplified by the refugee situation conveniently created by Germany and growing "dangerous" internal opposition amplified by the refugee situation conveniently created by Germany, the Merkle regime finds itself conveniently "forced" to sand off the thin veneer of freedom it had to coat itself with after WWII? Surprise.
- devoply 9y ago
  The refugee situation was created by bad middle east policy mainly by the United States and Saudi Arabia. Germany for some reason felt like bearing the cost of other people's bad decisions. If Germany was more American it would've known not to do that. America knows how to create problems, but does not bother bearing costs of the problems it creates in foreign lands... instead they profit from it, that's the main reason they create those problems in the first place.
  - DomreiRoam 9y ago
    Remember that german population are getting older and there is a case to allow younger people to come in to pay for the pension. The only country that really don't want to rely on immigration for a growing elderly population is Japan. They choose to try robotizing a lot of support function.
skrebbel 9y ago
As a European I love to write smug rants on the internet about how our governments and our political culture are better than those of the US. However, stuff like this worries me. We need more freedom of speech, not less. The US is miles ahead of us in this respect. Here in Europe, we're missing that fundamental value of "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it". Instead, it's more like "I disagree with what you say so I'm going to try to get you arrested for it". Eg Dutch xenophobe politician Geert Wilders got dragged into court twice! (ridiculous, and also countereffective because guess what it did for his ratings) This sort of stuff is much worse, however. Given the 24 hour deadline, the only way Facebook reasonably can implement this is automation. A computer program determining whether my post is hate speech or satire? Seriously? Computers can't even tell the difference between a puppy and a cupcake. Why does anyone think this is a good idea? A long time ago I used to hang out on an IRC channel that banned "bad words". The bot was very enthusiastically tuned with conservative American values. There was a user called "War^" but "war" was a forbidden word. Talking to him got you kicked out, mentioning him thrice got you banned. Obviously, the solution there was simple: leave the IRC channel and never come back. But I'm not sure people will feel they have the same option for their favorite social media.
- realusername 9y ago
  "Freedom of Speech" only is there until you have some nudity on US-owned social media strangely. You can put as much blood as you want but not one picture with some small nudity in it, there are definitely cultural issues on the US side as well. The only picture I've ever reported was a picture of the Bataclan massacre used for karma and I got told by Facebook that it did not violate any guidelines.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Freedom of speech applies to prior or posterior restraint by government. It does not mean that anyone who owns a platform has to let you say whatever you like on it. There's an old canard about how speech is only truly free for those who own a printing press - fortunately, running a website requires much less capital investment, and distribution is pretty much automatic, too. Don't mistake my intent here - it would vastly understate the case to say merely that I do not love Facebook. But free speech is the wrong line of attack, because that is something which we have no legal precedent for obliging them to provide, and this lack of precedent has enduring value exceeding what we might in the short term realize from its contravention.
Grue3 9y ago
It wasn't that long ago when they were burning books that didn't conform to the social norms of the establishment. You'd think Germans would be smarter than to make the same mistake twice. The social media companies must fight this law. What if, say, Russian government demands removing any content promoting homosexuality (as it is currently against Russian law)? This type of shit will destroy Internet as we know it.
- tmalsburg2 9y ago
  Honestly, comparing this to burning books in the Third Reich is simply showing that you know very little about history or that you choose to ignore it to make some simplistic argument for unconditional free speech. The horrible crimes of the Third Reich shouldn't be invoked so casually.
  - pavelludiq 9y ago
    There is no such thing as conditional free speech.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      Well, there are circumstances like yelling "fire" in a crowded place. But otherwise, I agree.
      - Asooka 9y ago
        Even in that case, I'd argue that you're penalised not for the speech itself, but because it was used in a premediated way that caused concrete physical harm to people. As in, you're free to carry a gun, but you're not free to fire at people without good reason. And even then you're free (as in unrestrained) to fire at whoever you like, but there are consequences. Contrast that with automatic censorship on the internet which is like having a gun that will not fire at certain people, period, and the bullets themselves would change trajectory to not hit anyone the algorithm deems "not worthy of being shot".
odiroot 9y ago
What the heck is happening to this thread? The comments disappear before I manage to answer to them. What sort of Soviet-alike censorship is that?
- arethuza 9y ago
  It could be the author of comments deleting them - I quite often delete comments a few moments after posting them.
  - quakenul 9y ago
    To add to that, I usually do so because somebody beat me to what I wanted to say. As was the case in this thread.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 9y ago
  > What sort of Soviet-alike censorship is that? It just seems that way. Alas it's a tempting conclusion to jump to. Of the 9 comments that disappeared in this thread, 8 were deleted by their authors. 1 was flagged by users. Another comment was killed by software and thus never became visible in the first place, but we've rescued that one. We don't delete anything outright, except by request of the author. If you set 'showdead' to 'yes' in your profile you can see all the comments killed by user flags, moderators, and software. "[dead]" means the comment is only visible to users logged in with 'showdead'. "[flagged]" means users flagged it. "[flagged] [dead]" means so many users flagged it that the comment was killed. If you just see "[dead]" but not "[flagged]", either it was killed by software or by mods. When you see a [dead] comment that you think shouldn't be dead, assuming you have > 30 karma you can vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'vouch'. If vouches override flags, the comment will be restored.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
theBobBob 9y ago
I really don't think that it should be a social media company's responsibility to police the internet. If a person posts something illegal, I think it should be that person that should be punished and it should be the job of the government/police/courts to do so. The social media company could then remove the content after that.
- tmalsburg2 9y ago
  I guess that's a valid stand point, but to be fair, analogous regulations are very common for other businesses, especially in the US. For example, bars have to make sure that their patrons do not smoke and that they have legal age. There are thousands of these regulations and they are rarely perceived as attacks on basic freedoms but rather seen as common sense. What is different about internet companies that they should not have the responsibility to enforce such rules on their premises?
  - mirimir 9y ago
    It's one thing to "enforce such rules on their premises", as China does. But for each nation to impose its laws on the entire Internet? That's just insane. And won't end well.
    - DanBC 9y ago
      But you seem to be saying it's okay for US companies to impose the extremist version of freedom of speech that the US has on other nations. And that's not going to end well.
      - mirimir 9y ago
        I'm arguing for more freedom of speech than the US has.
    - tmalsburg2 9y ago
      The German law doesn't require Facebook to censor hate speech in other countries. But if Facebook wants to do business in Germany, they have to obey local law.
eukara 9y ago
Social media sites != open internet. Before you make any statements about his this could potentially suppress voices and opinions, you can always make your own site. Even if the government did not interfere with these sites, the sites themselves totally have the right to regulate everything that's being posted. This is only to encourage this because companies like facebook didn't seem to give much of a damn about regulation.
- cJ0th 9y ago
  > Before you make any statements about his this could potentially suppress voices and opinions, you can always make your own site. Social media allows you to use a pseudonym which makes it possible to share an opinion (and thus, to a tiny extend, shape society) without the people who know you in "real life" learning about it. If you have a personal website you have, by German law, to publish your name and address on this website. As a result, people can google what you write. So if you want to discuss an opinion that people you interact with in real life don't accept you have to accept that they could find your posts. This, naturally, could have a chilling effect leading to you not writing about issues you care about.
jbmorgado 9y ago
I'm sorry but I can't past the hypocrisy of having a submission like this one, with so many comments being against the measure in the name of "free speech" and then immediately downvoting and flagging every comment that takes the opposite view in relation to social issues in every post that makes it to the front page of HN and even, quite ironically, in this very same post (i.e. the comment about refugees bellow, which I don't agree with, but that has nothing actually wrong with it except the guy presenting an opinion that doesn't fit your need for showing how politically correct you are). If this community is all so pro "free speech" as basically all these comments here are trying to signal, than you would do well to start exactly here instead of pointing the finger at the German government while doing the opposite.
- lucozade 9y ago
  Being an advocate of free speech isn't the same as being supportive of every poorly thought out, tangential comment ever written. Equally, a lot of the commentary here is against the idea that FB is having to make decisions about what is and is not hate speech. If there were the equivalent on HN i.e. dang et al pre-screened all comments and decided what was acceptable, I'm sure there'd be a backlash. On HN, the community decides what is acceptable having seen the comment. In the FB case, the community has decided what is acceptable in general, via laws, but FB are being forced to police those laws without the community seeing the specifics. A subtle distinction I grant you but, in my opinion, an important one. Having said all that, I can't disagree that the HN community is generally biased as it's self selecting. I personally don't have a problem with that (if I did there's a fairly straightforward fix) and I do expect to hold governments to a higher standard as it's much harder as an individual to fix the issue.
  - jbmorgado 9y ago
    > "On HN, the community decides what is acceptable having seen the comment." Not really, that's just a common fallacy perpetuated from the ones that see their political views represented by the heavy handed moderation around HN, or the ones that actually don't pay attention to what is going on in HN. Moderators in HN heavily editorialize the Front Page by removing the flags from some posts and flagging other highly voted ones by the community. They do the same to comments that don't follow their personal views even when those comments don't break any of the guidelines but happen to be against the moderators political views. Bottom line: You might be deceived by the appearances here, or you might be actually enjoying so see anyone that disagrees with you being shut up in HN, but factually, it's not the "community" of HN that is deciding what is acceptable, it's largely the moderators of HN.
amelius 9y ago
Somebody or some group might abuse this law with the intent to bring Facebook down.
thinkloop 9y ago
Hypothetically speaking, if Facebook didn't want to comply, and they shutdown any German entities that could be exposed to fines, what would Germany's next move be? To block Facebook completely from the country?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

52 points by mgliwka 9y ago

>must take down posts containing hate speech or other criminal material within 24 hours Maybe this will convince facebook to remove decapitation videos.

josefx 9y ago
After 24 hours those are old news anyway, just flag it for automatic removal after 23 hours and 59 minutes.

wyager 9y ago

> sites with more that two million users in Germany must take down posts containing hate speech or other criminal material within 24 hours. Censorship and fines galore. Just this week: a €2.4B fine from the EU for Google's integrated shopping view. A Canadian ruling stating that Google had to enforce Canadian censorship worldwide. And now, huge fines for content that the German government finds objectionable. How long before google, Facebook, etc. retreat to the US entirely (or even to some liberal island nation)? Sooner or later, the economic benefit of a data company having a physical presence somewhere is outweighed by the cost of overbearing censorship laws. Maybe it's time for the Sultanate of Kinakuta to become a reality. Google and Facebook should start investing heavily in anti-censorship technology a la Tor and I2P. Sadly, I fear that this may soon become necessary in "liberal" nations like Germany. It's already necessary in the U.K., with draconian anti-pornography and anti-cryptography laws.

m12k 9y ago
As much as I'd be impressed if Europe managed to pull a China and replace the unicorns from SV with homegrown (and tax-paying) alternatives, I doubt that's ever going to happen. Google and FB have such ridiculously high profit margins that this is still just nibbling at the edges of it.
- wyager 9y ago
  €2.4B is a very large chunk of Google's annual profit. How much do these companies gain from having a legally vulnerable physical presence in the EU? I'd guess not more than a few billion dollars a year. The primary benefits are hiring, taxes, and maybe some CDN improvements, but those can be worked around.
  - germanier 9y ago
    The primary benefit is having an entity to bill their customers (i.e. advertisers). And no, the shop next door will never go through the hassle to wire money to the US (which can be seized in transfer anyway).
    - wyager 9y ago
      Great, this opens up an opportunity for Bitcoin transfers to Kinakuta.
mirimir 9y ago
Hey, if they got together, they could buy a small country. Love that Sultanate of Kinakuta reference :)
- cronjobber 9y ago
  That would be fun, what with the ultimate dispute resolution procedure against a sovereign Google being the lobbing of heavy ordnance at Kinakuta Googleplex until they cease and desist :)
  - mirimir 9y ago
    They would need nukes, for sure ;)

grx 9y ago

Aside from the censorship debate, I still wonder what measures the German government has to enforce these fines. None of the discussed big companies are settled in Germany, but are regulated under European law. Where is the connection? Does a EU member have the capability to use EU regulators to enforce fines based on state law?

arethuza 9y ago
I would expect any large company to have a subsidiary legal entity in each country it operates, even if just a sales office - they are operating in the local legal environment (in this case Germany). e.g. Here is the UK subsidiary of Facebook - I'd expect there to be a German equivalent: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06331310 https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06331310
- mirimir 9y ago
  Well, then they should shut down that German one, no? And move all operations out of Germany. Maybe blacklist all German IPs, just for jolly ;) Edit: Also, Facebook does have a Tor onion gateway. For users in places that block access. That'd work as well for Germans as well as Chinese etc.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    And lose a potentially valuable market - yes they could do that.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      I wonder who would back down first. At some point, Internet-based firms will need to take a stand on this. Otherwise, they'll just get pecked to death.
  - lnsp 9y ago
    I would love that blacklist idea. I could finally remove all the Facebook DNS block entries from my devices.

nippples 9y ago

As much as I hate Facebook and I think it's one of the main vectors of all the social unrest cancer we see metastasizing everywhere in western society nowadays, this decision is stupid and does only yet more harm to free speech than actually address any real problem, but serves only to sweep it under the rug until it explodes in our face. Of course, most politicians involved in making this happen won't ever have to deal with one iota of the inconvenience they bestow over their general population.

mtgx 9y ago
I'm with you. This is the first time in a very long time that I had to defend Facebook. What does "obviously illegal" even mean? And is it like "obvious porn"? Because politicians themselves seem to be doing a terrible job at recognizing that, too: > During the various internet censorship cases the ACLU brought, we asked the government to identify speech in each category, and they were largely unable to do so. For example, they said that an online photo on Playboy’s website of a topless woman was not harmful to minors, but a virtually identical photo on Penthouse’s website was. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170626/16543937676/how-aclus-fight-to-protect-indecent-speech-saved-internet-being-treated-like-broadcast-tv.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170626/16543937676/how-a...
tmalsburg2 9y ago
Social media are arguably amplifying those "real problems" and regulating them is therefore a very reasonable thing to do, as it is reasonable to do something about mosquitoes that are spreading deadly diseases [0] (using this example because you mentioned vectors as an analogy). I don't think that the law they passed implies that nothing else will be done to address the underlying causes of these issues. Suggesting it does is disingenuous. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_control
- nippples 9y ago
  > I don't think that the law they passed implies that nothing else will be done to address the underlying causes of these issues. Suggesting it does is disingenuous. Many politicians, especially in the mainstream, operate on a 'lowest possible effort' basis to pretend they're giving a damn about their electorate, which is why so many completely awful laws and trade deals get passed just by giving it a friendly-sounding name, all while pocketing a hefty 'extra payment' for their collaboration. I'll be more surprised to find out that something concrete was done about the cause of extremism in Europe than to find out that there was a ridiculously large network of bribed politicians involved in passing this law.

cronjobber 9y ago

Between terror risk amplified by the refugee situation conveniently created by Germany and growing "dangerous" internal opposition amplified by the refugee situation conveniently created by Germany, the Merkle regime finds itself conveniently "forced" to sand off the thin veneer of freedom it had to coat itself with after WWII? Surprise.

devoply 9y ago
The refugee situation was created by bad middle east policy mainly by the United States and Saudi Arabia. Germany for some reason felt like bearing the cost of other people's bad decisions. If Germany was more American it would've known not to do that. America knows how to create problems, but does not bother bearing costs of the problems it creates in foreign lands... instead they profit from it, that's the main reason they create those problems in the first place.
- DomreiRoam 9y ago
  Remember that german population are getting older and there is a case to allow younger people to come in to pay for the pension. The only country that really don't want to rely on immigration for a growing elderly population is Japan. They choose to try robotizing a lot of support function.

skrebbel 9y ago

As a European I love to write smug rants on the internet about how our governments and our political culture are better than those of the US. However, stuff like this worries me. We need more freedom of speech, not less. The US is miles ahead of us in this respect. Here in Europe, we're missing that fundamental value of "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it". Instead, it's more like "I disagree with what you say so I'm going to try to get you arrested for it". Eg Dutch xenophobe politician Geert Wilders got dragged into court twice! (ridiculous, and also countereffective because guess what it did for his ratings) This sort of stuff is much worse, however. Given the 24 hour deadline, the only way Facebook reasonably can implement this is automation. A computer program determining whether my post is hate speech or satire? Seriously? Computers can't even tell the difference between a puppy and a cupcake. Why does anyone think this is a good idea? A long time ago I used to hang out on an IRC channel that banned "bad words". The bot was very enthusiastically tuned with conservative American values. There was a user called "War^" but "war" was a forbidden word. Talking to him got you kicked out, mentioning him thrice got you banned. Obviously, the solution there was simple: leave the IRC channel and never come back. But I'm not sure people will feel they have the same option for their favorite social media.

realusername 9y ago
"Freedom of Speech" only is there until you have some nudity on US-owned social media strangely. You can put as much blood as you want but not one picture with some small nudity in it, there are definitely cultural issues on the US side as well. The only picture I've ever reported was a picture of the Bataclan massacre used for karma and I got told by Facebook that it did not violate any guidelines.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Freedom of speech applies to prior or posterior restraint by government. It does not mean that anyone who owns a platform has to let you say whatever you like on it. There's an old canard about how speech is only truly free for those who own a printing press - fortunately, running a website requires much less capital investment, and distribution is pretty much automatic, too. Don't mistake my intent here - it would vastly understate the case to say merely that I do not love Facebook. But free speech is the wrong line of attack, because that is something which we have no legal precedent for obliging them to provide, and this lack of precedent has enduring value exceeding what we might in the short term realize from its contravention.

Grue3 9y ago

It wasn't that long ago when they were burning books that didn't conform to the social norms of the establishment. You'd think Germans would be smarter than to make the same mistake twice. The social media companies must fight this law. What if, say, Russian government demands removing any content promoting homosexuality (as it is currently against Russian law)? This type of shit will destroy Internet as we know it.

tmalsburg2 9y ago
Honestly, comparing this to burning books in the Third Reich is simply showing that you know very little about history or that you choose to ignore it to make some simplistic argument for unconditional free speech. The horrible crimes of the Third Reich shouldn't be invoked so casually.
- pavelludiq 9y ago
  There is no such thing as conditional free speech.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Well, there are circumstances like yelling "fire" in a crowded place. But otherwise, I agree.
    - Asooka 9y ago
      Even in that case, I'd argue that you're penalised not for the speech itself, but because it was used in a premediated way that caused concrete physical harm to people. As in, you're free to carry a gun, but you're not free to fire at people without good reason. And even then you're free (as in unrestrained) to fire at whoever you like, but there are consequences. Contrast that with automatic censorship on the internet which is like having a gun that will not fire at certain people, period, and the bullets themselves would change trajectory to not hit anyone the algorithm deems "not worthy of being shot".

odiroot 9y ago

What the heck is happening to this thread? The comments disappear before I manage to answer to them. What sort of Soviet-alike censorship is that?

arethuza 9y ago
It could be the author of comments deleting them - I quite often delete comments a few moments after posting them.
- quakenul 9y ago
  To add to that, I usually do so because somebody beat me to what I wanted to say. As was the case in this thread.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dang 9y ago
> What sort of Soviet-alike censorship is that? It just seems that way. Alas it's a tempting conclusion to jump to. Of the 9 comments that disappeared in this thread, 8 were deleted by their authors. 1 was flagged by users. Another comment was killed by software and thus never became visible in the first place, but we've rescued that one. We don't delete anything outright, except by request of the author. If you set 'showdead' to 'yes' in your profile you can see all the comments killed by user flags, moderators, and software. "[dead]" means the comment is only visible to users logged in with 'showdead'. "[flagged]" means users flagged it. "[flagged] [dead]" means so many users flagged it that the comment was killed. If you just see "[dead]" but not "[flagged]", either it was killed by software or by mods. When you see a [dead] comment that you think shouldn't be dead, assuming you have > 30 karma you can vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'vouch'. If vouches override flags, the comment will be restored.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

theBobBob 9y ago

I really don't think that it should be a social media company's responsibility to police the internet. If a person posts something illegal, I think it should be that person that should be punished and it should be the job of the government/police/courts to do so. The social media company could then remove the content after that.

tmalsburg2 9y ago
I guess that's a valid stand point, but to be fair, analogous regulations are very common for other businesses, especially in the US. For example, bars have to make sure that their patrons do not smoke and that they have legal age. There are thousands of these regulations and they are rarely perceived as attacks on basic freedoms but rather seen as common sense. What is different about internet companies that they should not have the responsibility to enforce such rules on their premises?
- mirimir 9y ago
  It's one thing to "enforce such rules on their premises", as China does. But for each nation to impose its laws on the entire Internet? That's just insane. And won't end well.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    But you seem to be saying it's okay for US companies to impose the extremist version of freedom of speech that the US has on other nations. And that's not going to end well.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      I'm arguing for more freedom of speech than the US has.
  - tmalsburg2 9y ago
    The German law doesn't require Facebook to censor hate speech in other countries. But if Facebook wants to do business in Germany, they have to obey local law.

eukara 9y ago

Social media sites != open internet. Before you make any statements about his this could potentially suppress voices and opinions, you can always make your own site. Even if the government did not interfere with these sites, the sites themselves totally have the right to regulate everything that's being posted. This is only to encourage this because companies like facebook didn't seem to give much of a damn about regulation.

cJ0th 9y ago
> Before you make any statements about his this could potentially suppress voices and opinions, you can always make your own site. Social media allows you to use a pseudonym which makes it possible to share an opinion (and thus, to a tiny extend, shape society) without the people who know you in "real life" learning about it. If you have a personal website you have, by German law, to publish your name and address on this website. As a result, people can google what you write. So if you want to discuss an opinion that people you interact with in real life don't accept you have to accept that they could find your posts. This, naturally, could have a chilling effect leading to you not writing about issues you care about.

jbmorgado 9y ago

I'm sorry but I can't past the hypocrisy of having a submission like this one, with so many comments being against the measure in the name of "free speech" and then immediately downvoting and flagging every comment that takes the opposite view in relation to social issues in every post that makes it to the front page of HN and even, quite ironically, in this very same post (i.e. the comment about refugees bellow, which I don't agree with, but that has nothing actually wrong with it except the guy presenting an opinion that doesn't fit your need for showing how politically correct you are). If this community is all so pro "free speech" as basically all these comments here are trying to signal, than you would do well to start exactly here instead of pointing the finger at the German government while doing the opposite.

lucozade 9y ago
Being an advocate of free speech isn't the same as being supportive of every poorly thought out, tangential comment ever written. Equally, a lot of the commentary here is against the idea that FB is having to make decisions about what is and is not hate speech. If there were the equivalent on HN i.e. dang et al pre-screened all comments and decided what was acceptable, I'm sure there'd be a backlash. On HN, the community decides what is acceptable having seen the comment. In the FB case, the community has decided what is acceptable in general, via laws, but FB are being forced to police those laws without the community seeing the specifics. A subtle distinction I grant you but, in my opinion, an important one. Having said all that, I can't disagree that the HN community is generally biased as it's self selecting. I personally don't have a problem with that (if I did there's a fairly straightforward fix) and I do expect to hold governments to a higher standard as it's much harder as an individual to fix the issue.
- jbmorgado 9y ago
  > "On HN, the community decides what is acceptable having seen the comment." Not really, that's just a common fallacy perpetuated from the ones that see their political views represented by the heavy handed moderation around HN, or the ones that actually don't pay attention to what is going on in HN. Moderators in HN heavily editorialize the Front Page by removing the flags from some posts and flagging other highly voted ones by the community. They do the same to comments that don't follow their personal views even when those comments don't break any of the guidelines but happen to be against the moderators political views. Bottom line: You might be deceived by the appearances here, or you might be actually enjoying so see anyone that disagrees with you being shut up in HN, but factually, it's not the "community" of HN that is deciding what is acceptable, it's largely the moderators of HN.

amelius 9y ago

Somebody or some group might abuse this law with the intent to bring Facebook down.

thinkloop 9y ago

Hypothetically speaking, if Facebook didn't want to comply, and they shutdown any German entities that could be exposed to fines, what would Germany's next move be? To block Facebook completely from the country?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]