4 ms·

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.

mirimir 9y ago
Having different nation-specific versions of Facebook could get complicated, no? And what if a German accesses Facebook through a VPN with non-German IP address?
- tmalsburg2 9y ago
  I don't think it's asking too much to require different country-specific versions of Facebook. It's simply the cost of doing business and very much standard in all other industries. If I want to sell electronics in the US, I have to comply with the local safety regulations which are different from those in other countries.
- thinkloop 9y ago
  They do already, at minimum by supporting different languages.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    That's simple. It just affects static stuff, but not user content.
- germanier 9y ago
  Facebook somehow manages to show me German ads and trying Google to give me a non-Germany version is surprisingly hard. Netflix has another catalogue here than in other countries (and tries hard to block access to their foreign versions) because their right holders demand so. Why should a society accept lower standards than movie studios? Even if we can't get 100% reliability we shouldn't just give up completely.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    One set of ads vs another is a simple thing. And for Netflix, that's just static stuff. When you drop some set of Facebook posts for German users, that has complex downstream effects. Facebook isn't threaded, as I recall, but there's still the need to look for stuff being quoted, and so on.
    - germanier 9y ago
      Showing posts only to certain people (the poster's friends) has been a core feature from the beginning. Pages currently have the option to restrict posts geographically (although I'm unsure what that setting does exactly). I'm sure Facebook has already solved many harder engineering challenges than this. I know that Twitter already has geographical blocks in place based on content and they do have similar conversation, sharing, and like features. In the law, costs of complying were estimated to be 28 Mio. € per year (for all social networks combined). I don't know how accurate this is but probably not orders of magnitude off.
      - mirimir 9y ago
        That's a good point. And maybe doing this for the German market would be feasible. But folding is still a bad precedent, in my opinion. I can imagine some amusing outcomes. Sure, Germany can censor "hate speech", however it wants to define that. But the "hate speech" will still be there. Germans just won't see it, unless they lie about their location and hit Facebook via VPNs or Tor. So someone could spread malicious rumors about you, and you might not even know it.

mirimir 9y ago

Having different nation-specific versions of Facebook could get complicated, no? And what if a German accesses Facebook through a VPN with non-German IP address?

tmalsburg2 9y ago
I don't think it's asking too much to require different country-specific versions of Facebook. It's simply the cost of doing business and very much standard in all other industries. If I want to sell electronics in the US, I have to comply with the local safety regulations which are different from those in other countries.
thinkloop 9y ago
They do already, at minimum by supporting different languages.
- mirimir 9y ago
  That's simple. It just affects static stuff, but not user content.
germanier 9y ago
Facebook somehow manages to show me German ads and trying Google to give me a non-Germany version is surprisingly hard. Netflix has another catalogue here than in other countries (and tries hard to block access to their foreign versions) because their right holders demand so. Why should a society accept lower standards than movie studios? Even if we can't get 100% reliability we shouldn't just give up completely.
- mirimir 9y ago
  One set of ads vs another is a simple thing. And for Netflix, that's just static stuff. When you drop some set of Facebook posts for German users, that has complex downstream effects. Facebook isn't threaded, as I recall, but there's still the need to look for stuff being quoted, and so on.
  - germanier 9y ago
    Showing posts only to certain people (the poster's friends) has been a core feature from the beginning. Pages currently have the option to restrict posts geographically (although I'm unsure what that setting does exactly). I'm sure Facebook has already solved many harder engineering challenges than this. I know that Twitter already has geographical blocks in place based on content and they do have similar conversation, sharing, and like features. In the law, costs of complying were estimated to be 28 Mio. € per year (for all social networks combined). I don't know how accurate this is but probably not orders of magnitude off.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      That's a good point. And maybe doing this for the German market would be feasible. But folding is still a bad precedent, in my opinion. I can imagine some amusing outcomes. Sure, Germany can censor "hate speech", however it wants to define that. But the "hate speech" will still be there. Germans just won't see it, unless they lie about their location and hit Facebook via VPNs or Tor. So someone could spread malicious rumors about you, and you might not even know it.