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Delete Hate Speech or Pay Up, Germany Tells Social Media Companies

55 points by dbcooper 9y ago

ams6110 9y ago
Wonder how this affects websites that allow comments, but are not primarily "social media" sites? Many sites that use e.g. Disqus for comments are filled with vile racist, homophobic, and other hateful comments.
- xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
  Also, what about Twitch or Youtube chat?
- kuschku 9y ago
  Any site that isn't social media is exempt. Any site with less than 2'000'000 German users is exempt. You only have to remove content if it is obvious that it is violating existing law, and someone has filed a report, within of 24 hours. The original poster can also oppose this. The law is basically the same as the DMCA.
- dhruvrrp 9y ago
  According the European Digital Rights association, the law's definition of social media is so broad that it would apply there as long as the service has 2 million German users (the wording is not clear whether this number is active/registered/total users). The law's definition of social media - telemedia providers who operate commercial platforms that allow users to exchange or share any kind of content with other users or make such content accessible to other users (“Social Network”).
tehabe 9y ago
The issue of hate speech is real, but putting private companies in charge of deciding what is hate speech and what isn't, is a bad idea.
- mowenz 9y ago
  It was not too long ago that in Germany a political artist was prosecuted for a poem insulting a politician. In other words, governments have already repeatedly proven they should not have authority over what speech is acceptable, even in Germany currently.
  - FabHK 9y ago
    Not so fast. That was German satirist Jan Böhmermann reading a "poem" on TV about Turkish president Erdoğan (the content is not really important, but it was rather insulting, and purposefully so: calling him dumb, cowardly, and smelly; alleging he beat little girls, fucked goats, watched child porn, and subjugated minorities, and so on.) Now, as it happens, Germany has a paragraph on its criminal code, § 103, that prohibits insulting foreign heads of state. Thus, prosecution was initiated. However: 1. The case was dropped. 2. In fact, legislative proceedings to drop § 103 are on their way. So, I'm not too worried about the freedom of political speech in Germany. Holocaust denial and nazi propaganda are prohibited, for historical reasons, but apart from that political speech is free and vigorous.
    - poikniok 9y ago
      I see makes sense.
      - FabHK 9y ago
        The satirist was (and remains) free to express himself.
        nailer 9y ago
        The law still exists, right? Maybe the case won't be dropped next time. So no.
        mowenz 9y ago
        Germany has been criticized by many for their questionable free speech. Snowden is one famous person to do this. The right to offend is also considered by many to be an important part of free speech-1. In fact, I'm not so sure why the person responding to me is not at all worried. Even if the law is dropped, and this particular prosecution dropped, the fact remains: "a political artist was prosecuted for a poem insulting a politician." If his point is simply Germany has better free speech than other countries, naming Thailand; then OK, I agree, but they're still getting close to treading a dangerous line. 1-https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/16/free-speech-means-nothing-without-right-to-offend-paris-copenhagen https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/16/free-s...
rl3 9y ago
I'd love to see tech companies band together and play hardball with governments that try and pull this shit. Just discontinue services on the whole country. The politicans would quickly change their tune once the entire country's voting base wakes up to the fact they've been thrust into the internet dark ages by their own legislators.
- rgbrenner 9y ago
  Like when Google left china.. that really showed them /s You know there are countries where Facebook does not operate.. local companies get easy funding to recreate the service.. after all it's a proven business model The eu is certainly a big enough market to support a local version
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
    Maybe the EU is, but I doubt Germany is. In addition, Even though there is Baidu, it is preferable that the rest of the world can Google "Tianamen square" and get back something resembling the facts. If Google had used this logic of "well somebody else will do it anyway", the rest of us would have only seen what China permitted.
    - FRex 9y ago
      This is such a dumb argument. Google already did and does censorship per country (including adhering to Chinese law back when they operated there) and so does their subsidiary YouTube (in regards to copyright, maybe in other areas too). At no point was "Tianmen square" search banned to "the rest of us" because of this. In EU it already censors some searches because of the "law to be forgotten". The technology to do this censorship without making any country adhere to law of any other country online is clearly feasible, seamless and even already in place and active.
    - rgbrenner 9y ago
      I wasnt advocating western companies compromise their values. I was saying if they withdraw, other companies will fill the void... so any pain that the people experience will be temporary and the western company will be forgotten. Just like Google was forgotten in China. Companies disappear for many reasons all the time. People dont go out and protest to change the laws.. they move on and find alternatives. That's not a call to abandon values. It's just an acknowledgement of reality and market forces. Just because someone else will do it, doesnt mean that you have to.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
charia 9y ago
From what I've heard, this isn't/shouldn't stand up when challenged in court.
ericdykstra 9y ago
Real life Ministry of Truth. Not only is this another strike at freedom of expression in Germany, but it's an attack on the privacy of Germans. The idea that arresting people for "hate speech" online is going to make your country any better or safer is laughable. It just means people making jokes will get arrested because one of their jokes offends a few people [1]. Here's a great video by a German who is concerned about the expanded surveillance state and limitations on free speech: https://youtu.be/WFCKTvGU8oU https://youtu.be/WFCKTvGU8oU Here's another video about German hate speech crime and statistics that I found insightful: https://youtu.be/kX84h6aKpaU https://youtu.be/kX84h6aKpaU 1. https://www.rt.com/uk/342513-dog-nazi-salute-arrested/ https://www.rt.com/uk/342513-dog-nazi-salute-arrested/
- FabHK 9y ago
  Sorry, but no. Forcing companies that disregard the law to pay fines (not 'arresting people') is no strike at freedom of expression in Germany. (Note that your link [1] is about the UK, a different country.) Yes, holocaust denial and Nazi propaganda are prohibited in Germany for historical reasons, but the notion that his severely impedes the freedom of political speech is mistaken. And yes, I've read my John Stuart Mill, and mostly agree with him. As an aside, I'd still rate the level of public discourse in Germany as way above what's happening in many other countries (though it's going downhill, with all the private TV stations and social media, whose goal is not edification and education, but advertisement driven profit and "engagement").
  - nyolfen 9y ago
    June 20, 2017 - Germany Raids Homes of 36 People Accused of Hateful Postings Over Social Media https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/world/europe/germany-36-accused-of-hateful-postings-over-social-media.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/world/europe/germany-36-a...
    - Mithaldu 9y ago
      Given that these types of people literally do incite things like in the following video, i fail to see anything troubling in such police action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmTtCyLvGUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmTtCyLvGUg
rbehrends 9y ago
This is a bad law, but this is also frustratingly bad reporting. I understand that American media have to often translate foreign legal concepts into something closer to American ones, so they talk about "hate crimes" and "hate speech" (offenses that as such don't accurately reflect legal concepts as they exist in Germany), but in this case it's not even an accurate representation of the law. The list of offenses that the law talks about includes a whole list of things that aren't remotely hate speech: they include things such as the creation of a criminal or terrorist organization or illegal distribution of pornography (pornography is not per se illegal, but you cannot, for example, sell it to minors). The goal of the law is basically to enforce offenses that are commonly committed online by deputizing social media companies. And this is where the actual problem lies; the law does not regulate anything that isn't already an offense, after all. 1. Many of these social media companies do not even have a legal presence in Germany and it is questionable whether Germany even has jurisdiction under current EU law. 2. Even if Germany has jurisdiction, having social media companies adjudicate the legality of online content (even where there is a legitimate interest and we are not dealing with offenses that affect freedom of speech) is a bad idea in too many ways to count. The social media company is incentivized to err on the side of banning content; they generally do not have the resources and/or personnel with adequate legal training to properly adjudicate the issue in many cases; and if they get things wrong, there is often no practical way to appeal their misjudgment. 3. The law may (due to its crude mechanisms) have a chilling effect far beyond what any that current laws create, even though on paper we're talking about the same offenses. That's because the legal system generally subjects potential prosecution for many of these offenses to a high level of scrutiny in order to protect freedom of expression. It is unlikely that Facebook and Twitter are going to do the same. 4. As a result, the law is probably headed for a collision course with the Federal Constitutional Court at the earliest opportunity.
- kuschku 9y ago
  As the law only applies to stuff that is already illegal, and only requires companies to remove it on request, if it is obviously violating the law, ... Well, we already know what this law looks like. It's just the DMCA, expanded to other types of content. This is bad, but it's not nearly the end-of-the-world that the hypocritical US-Americans on HN have been claiming it is.
dpratt 9y ago
Your daily reminder that anyone who uses the phrase 'hate speech' really means 'thoughtcrime', regardless of how disgusting, bigoted or ignorant the target.
- lobf 9y ago
  Really, anyone?
  - bionsuba 9y ago
    Technically speaking, yes. Even if it's neo-nazi propaganda, making any speech based on opinions that's not directly causing physical harm illegal is creating a class of thought crime. What other way could one classify it? People would be going to jail for wrong-think.
    - jcommon 9y ago
      1. It is hard to accept, but imho jurisdiction and law has to deal with things that cannot be defined in a technical way. 2. Although I already implied by 1. that it is not possible to make a clear machine-executable rule for everything, I would not agree that "any speech based on opinions" is a thought crime. If you constantly bully someone, althought just with words, he might even be more hurt than if you just had smashed his face once leaving him with 2 or 3 scars. Not trying to say that free speech is not important. But I wouldn't call everything that is possible by moving your mouth free speech. Note that I also unfortunately cannot provide a solution for this right now: I also don't like this new ruling because it is somehow based on some kind of definition what exactly this free speech is and with 1. in mind this is not possible easily. My statement would basically be that I just cannot support the ongoing discussion here that not banning anything is an overall better option.
- allendoerfer 9y ago
  At least in Germany, laws often have the amendment "Der Versuch ist strafbar.". Attempts to commit the the crime are punished just like actually committing it, which makes total sense to me: When you are a bad person, you should not benefit legally just because on top of it you are also incompetent. This makes sure that you still get punished for murder if your victim somehow lives, because a doctor reanimates him or her. I do think if someone is for example requesting to kill a person/group online or is searching for people to join him to do something like that, a judge should decide how severe the case is, hand out a warrant and the author should be held accountable. Of course you have to consider the context and tone. It is also very difficult to check whether someone is just thinking out loud (e.g. "one should") or actively requesting something. That's why I don't think this law is a good idea, because that's something judges should decide not some Facebook interns afraid of a 50 million dollar fine. I don't know whether hate speech is actually that big of a problem. If so, what we really need here is a streamlined way to complain to the police, gather all the evidence, categorize the issue, pre-check it and then hand it over to a judge. This process could be half-automated and have very narrow questions for the user (e.g. "Is this a death-threat?", "Is an exact date mentioned in the threat?") to exclude as much as possible as early as possible and need as few policemen as possible.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
There is a scary trend of countries trying to force internet companies to enforce their speech standards globally. We recently saw that in the Canadian Supreme Court decision forcing Google to remove a domain globally from search. If this continues, the only allowable content will be that which does not offend anybody, and if that happens, the open, free Internet we all knew and which has driven a lot of social change throughout the world will be dead. Think of an Internet where atheism is banned because it offends religious people, corrupt politicians's misdeeds are expunged pursuant to their right to be foegotten, exposure of police brutality is deemed offensive and disturbing and banned, and every country's human rights violations are suppressed because they can be.
dhruvrrp 9y ago
> The draft bill defines “violating content” as content under Sections 86 (dissemination of propaganda material of unconstitutional organizations), ... 90 (defamation of the president), ... 166 (defamation of religions, religious and ideological associations), ... 241(causing the danger of criminal prosecution by informing on a person) ... Over reaching laws like this are the biggest adversary to free speech. Even if the current government believes that hate speech/propaganda needs to be restricted, what is gonna stop someone down the line from using this law to silence all of their opponents and criticism?
fiblye 9y ago
Dangerous precedent. Expect this to be "good" for a couple years, then the definition gradually expands while nobody is looking and is used to penalize any sort of thought that doesn't fit the social norm.
- Barrin92 9y ago
  the definition isn't expanding, it's simply applying laws that existed since the inception of the German Federal state seven decades ago to businesses that operate on the internet. Here in Germany racebaiting, holocaust denial and so forth are not protected under freedom of speech, never have never will be. Americans will probably not understand it in the near future, but in German jurisdiction German law still applies. Digital business or not. I mean, Facebook basically censors every naked piece of skin already and I have to live with it because apparently this is offensive to Americans. Now I find banning nazi propaganda to be much less controversial than a naked human body, but apparently tastes diverge
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
monochromatic 9y ago
Europe has fallen.
ryankupyn 9y ago
I expect that this trend of deputizing companies to police speech on their platforms will evolve in tension with rising antitrust scrutiny of the tech giants, because the rise of utterly dominant companies (a trend that the EU seems intent on slowing) would make efforts to regulate speech easier. Large companies like Google have a global presence, and assets that can be targeted within the jurisdiction of most major governments, while a fragmented - and more competitive - market would make it more likely that "holdouts" can rise beyond the reach of a given government. These platforms would provide a redoubt for regulated speech, because it would be much harder to compel them to pay fines (though of course a country can simply block them). At the same time, these new regulations give a competitive advantage to the companies with the scale and resources to invest in automating the removal process, and increases the challenges for upstart platforms, which now need to develop the infrastructure to aggressively police content on their networks if they want to grow beyond a certain size. I think that in the long run, this will evolve into a stable equilibrium where governments periodically levy large-but-not-devastating fines in the name of "antitrust" in order to show their dedication to "competitive markets" and "customer choice", while simultaneously working hand-in-glove with these companies to enforce what they consider to be acceptable standards of speech in online communities. In the long run, no major competitors will emerge, and both the established firms and the government will silently thank their lucky stars.
honestoHeminway 9y ago
This is just media and goverment trying to put the dschinny of the internet back into the lamp. You can allmost hear the sigh: "Why, cant we go back to the days - where you all pretended that we represented the public, and the angry with there lifes citizens where firewalled from one another?" Well, guess what, these people know now that they are not alone- and even if you burned the whole internet to ashes- they would just meet in real life. Some people in germany have a serious freedom of expression is only my opinion attitude. And they radicalize there opponents regularly by not discussing with them (That opinion is beneath me).
mto 9y ago
FB's policy is ridiculous. Show a breastfeeding woman and it's certainly gone in the next hours. But I've reported countless foreigners for gas chamber and teleheating crap postings and it was not considered inappropriate...what a BS. Still, the problem with law enfocement is always that "hate speech" is pretty fuzzy (obviously especially fuzzy for facebook)
antisthenes 9y ago
..the abyss stares also into you.

55 points by dbcooper 9y ago

Wonder how this affects websites that allow comments, but are not primarily "social media" sites? Many sites that use e.g. Disqus for comments are filled with vile racist, homophobic, and other hateful comments.

xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
Also, what about Twitch or Youtube chat?
kuschku 9y ago
Any site that isn't social media is exempt. Any site with less than 2'000'000 German users is exempt. You only have to remove content if it is obvious that it is violating existing law, and someone has filed a report, within of 24 hours. The original poster can also oppose this. The law is basically the same as the DMCA.
dhruvrrp 9y ago
According the European Digital Rights association, the law's definition of social media is so broad that it would apply there as long as the service has 2 million German users (the wording is not clear whether this number is active/registered/total users). The law's definition of social media - telemedia providers who operate commercial platforms that allow users to exchange or share any kind of content with other users or make such content accessible to other users (“Social Network”).

tehabe 9y ago

The issue of hate speech is real, but putting private companies in charge of deciding what is hate speech and what isn't, is a bad idea.

mowenz 9y ago
It was not too long ago that in Germany a political artist was prosecuted for a poem insulting a politician. In other words, governments have already repeatedly proven they should not have authority over what speech is acceptable, even in Germany currently.
- FabHK 9y ago
  Not so fast. That was German satirist Jan Böhmermann reading a "poem" on TV about Turkish president Erdoğan (the content is not really important, but it was rather insulting, and purposefully so: calling him dumb, cowardly, and smelly; alleging he beat little girls, fucked goats, watched child porn, and subjugated minorities, and so on.) Now, as it happens, Germany has a paragraph on its criminal code, § 103, that prohibits insulting foreign heads of state. Thus, prosecution was initiated. However: 1. The case was dropped. 2. In fact, legislative proceedings to drop § 103 are on their way. So, I'm not too worried about the freedom of political speech in Germany. Holocaust denial and nazi propaganda are prohibited, for historical reasons, but apart from that political speech is free and vigorous.
  - poikniok 9y ago
    I see makes sense.
    - FabHK 9y ago
      The satirist was (and remains) free to express himself.
      - nailer 9y ago
        The law still exists, right? Maybe the case won't be dropped next time. So no.
        mowenz 9y ago
        Germany has been criticized by many for their questionable free speech. Snowden is one famous person to do this. The right to offend is also considered by many to be an important part of free speech-1. In fact, I'm not so sure why the person responding to me is not at all worried. Even if the law is dropped, and this particular prosecution dropped, the fact remains: "a political artist was prosecuted for a poem insulting a politician." If his point is simply Germany has better free speech than other countries, naming Thailand; then OK, I agree, but they're still getting close to treading a dangerous line. 1-https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/16/free-speech-means-nothing-without-right-to-offend-paris-copenhagen https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/16/free-s...

rl3 9y ago

I'd love to see tech companies band together and play hardball with governments that try and pull this shit. Just discontinue services on the whole country. The politicans would quickly change their tune once the entire country's voting base wakes up to the fact they've been thrust into the internet dark ages by their own legislators.

rgbrenner 9y ago
Like when Google left china.. that really showed them /s You know there are countries where Facebook does not operate.. local companies get easy funding to recreate the service.. after all it's a proven business model The eu is certainly a big enough market to support a local version
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
  Maybe the EU is, but I doubt Germany is. In addition, Even though there is Baidu, it is preferable that the rest of the world can Google "Tianamen square" and get back something resembling the facts. If Google had used this logic of "well somebody else will do it anyway", the rest of us would have only seen what China permitted.
  - FRex 9y ago
    This is such a dumb argument. Google already did and does censorship per country (including adhering to Chinese law back when they operated there) and so does their subsidiary YouTube (in regards to copyright, maybe in other areas too). At no point was "Tianmen square" search banned to "the rest of us" because of this. In EU it already censors some searches because of the "law to be forgotten". The technology to do this censorship without making any country adhere to law of any other country online is clearly feasible, seamless and even already in place and active.
  - rgbrenner 9y ago
    I wasnt advocating western companies compromise their values. I was saying if they withdraw, other companies will fill the void... so any pain that the people experience will be temporary and the western company will be forgotten. Just like Google was forgotten in China. Companies disappear for many reasons all the time. People dont go out and protest to change the laws.. they move on and find alternatives. That's not a call to abandon values. It's just an acknowledgement of reality and market forces. Just because someone else will do it, doesnt mean that you have to.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

charia 9y ago

From what I've heard, this isn't/shouldn't stand up when challenged in court.

ericdykstra 9y ago

Real life Ministry of Truth. Not only is this another strike at freedom of expression in Germany, but it's an attack on the privacy of Germans. The idea that arresting people for "hate speech" online is going to make your country any better or safer is laughable. It just means people making jokes will get arrested because one of their jokes offends a few people [1]. Here's a great video by a German who is concerned about the expanded surveillance state and limitations on free speech: https://youtu.be/WFCKTvGU8oU https://youtu.be/WFCKTvGU8oU Here's another video about German hate speech crime and statistics that I found insightful: https://youtu.be/kX84h6aKpaU https://youtu.be/kX84h6aKpaU 1. https://www.rt.com/uk/342513-dog-nazi-salute-arrested/ https://www.rt.com/uk/342513-dog-nazi-salute-arrested/

FabHK 9y ago
Sorry, but no. Forcing companies that disregard the law to pay fines (not 'arresting people') is no strike at freedom of expression in Germany. (Note that your link [1] is about the UK, a different country.) Yes, holocaust denial and Nazi propaganda are prohibited in Germany for historical reasons, but the notion that his severely impedes the freedom of political speech is mistaken. And yes, I've read my John Stuart Mill, and mostly agree with him. As an aside, I'd still rate the level of public discourse in Germany as way above what's happening in many other countries (though it's going downhill, with all the private TV stations and social media, whose goal is not edification and education, but advertisement driven profit and "engagement").
- nyolfen 9y ago
  June 20, 2017 - Germany Raids Homes of 36 People Accused of Hateful Postings Over Social Media https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/world/europe/germany-36-accused-of-hateful-postings-over-social-media.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/world/europe/germany-36-a...
  - Mithaldu 9y ago
    Given that these types of people literally do incite things like in the following video, i fail to see anything troubling in such police action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmTtCyLvGUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmTtCyLvGUg

rbehrends 9y ago

This is a bad law, but this is also frustratingly bad reporting. I understand that American media have to often translate foreign legal concepts into something closer to American ones, so they talk about "hate crimes" and "hate speech" (offenses that as such don't accurately reflect legal concepts as they exist in Germany), but in this case it's not even an accurate representation of the law. The list of offenses that the law talks about includes a whole list of things that aren't remotely hate speech: they include things such as the creation of a criminal or terrorist organization or illegal distribution of pornography (pornography is not per se illegal, but you cannot, for example, sell it to minors). The goal of the law is basically to enforce offenses that are commonly committed online by deputizing social media companies. And this is where the actual problem lies; the law does not regulate anything that isn't already an offense, after all. 1. Many of these social media companies do not even have a legal presence in Germany and it is questionable whether Germany even has jurisdiction under current EU law. 2. Even if Germany has jurisdiction, having social media companies adjudicate the legality of online content (even where there is a legitimate interest and we are not dealing with offenses that affect freedom of speech) is a bad idea in too many ways to count. The social media company is incentivized to err on the side of banning content; they generally do not have the resources and/or personnel with adequate legal training to properly adjudicate the issue in many cases; and if they get things wrong, there is often no practical way to appeal their misjudgment. 3. The law may (due to its crude mechanisms) have a chilling effect far beyond what any that current laws create, even though on paper we're talking about the same offenses. That's because the legal system generally subjects potential prosecution for many of these offenses to a high level of scrutiny in order to protect freedom of expression. It is unlikely that Facebook and Twitter are going to do the same. 4. As a result, the law is probably headed for a collision course with the Federal Constitutional Court at the earliest opportunity.

kuschku 9y ago
As the law only applies to stuff that is already illegal, and only requires companies to remove it on request, if it is obviously violating the law, ... Well, we already know what this law looks like. It's just the DMCA, expanded to other types of content. This is bad, but it's not nearly the end-of-the-world that the hypocritical US-Americans on HN have been claiming it is.

dpratt 9y ago

Your daily reminder that anyone who uses the phrase 'hate speech' really means 'thoughtcrime', regardless of how disgusting, bigoted or ignorant the target.

lobf 9y ago
Really, anyone?
- bionsuba 9y ago
  Technically speaking, yes. Even if it's neo-nazi propaganda, making any speech based on opinions that's not directly causing physical harm illegal is creating a class of thought crime. What other way could one classify it? People would be going to jail for wrong-think.
  - jcommon 9y ago
    1. It is hard to accept, but imho jurisdiction and law has to deal with things that cannot be defined in a technical way. 2. Although I already implied by 1. that it is not possible to make a clear machine-executable rule for everything, I would not agree that "any speech based on opinions" is a thought crime. If you constantly bully someone, althought just with words, he might even be more hurt than if you just had smashed his face once leaving him with 2 or 3 scars. Not trying to say that free speech is not important. But I wouldn't call everything that is possible by moving your mouth free speech. Note that I also unfortunately cannot provide a solution for this right now: I also don't like this new ruling because it is somehow based on some kind of definition what exactly this free speech is and with 1. in mind this is not possible easily. My statement would basically be that I just cannot support the ongoing discussion here that not banning anything is an overall better option.
allendoerfer 9y ago
At least in Germany, laws often have the amendment "Der Versuch ist strafbar.". Attempts to commit the the crime are punished just like actually committing it, which makes total sense to me: When you are a bad person, you should not benefit legally just because on top of it you are also incompetent. This makes sure that you still get punished for murder if your victim somehow lives, because a doctor reanimates him or her. I do think if someone is for example requesting to kill a person/group online or is searching for people to join him to do something like that, a judge should decide how severe the case is, hand out a warrant and the author should be held accountable. Of course you have to consider the context and tone. It is also very difficult to check whether someone is just thinking out loud (e.g. "one should") or actively requesting something. That's why I don't think this law is a good idea, because that's something judges should decide not some Facebook interns afraid of a 50 million dollar fine. I don't know whether hate speech is actually that big of a problem. If so, what we really need here is a streamlined way to complain to the police, gather all the evidence, categorize the issue, pre-check it and then hand it over to a judge. This process could be half-automated and have very narrow questions for the user (e.g. "Is this a death-threat?", "Is an exact date mentioned in the threat?") to exclude as much as possible as early as possible and need as few policemen as possible.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago

There is a scary trend of countries trying to force internet companies to enforce their speech standards globally. We recently saw that in the Canadian Supreme Court decision forcing Google to remove a domain globally from search. If this continues, the only allowable content will be that which does not offend anybody, and if that happens, the open, free Internet we all knew and which has driven a lot of social change throughout the world will be dead. Think of an Internet where atheism is banned because it offends religious people, corrupt politicians's misdeeds are expunged pursuant to their right to be foegotten, exposure of police brutality is deemed offensive and disturbing and banned, and every country's human rights violations are suppressed because they can be.

dhruvrrp 9y ago

> The draft bill defines “violating content” as content under Sections 86 (dissemination of propaganda material of unconstitutional organizations), ... 90 (defamation of the president), ... 166 (defamation of religions, religious and ideological associations), ... 241(causing the danger of criminal prosecution by informing on a person) ... Over reaching laws like this are the biggest adversary to free speech. Even if the current government believes that hate speech/propaganda needs to be restricted, what is gonna stop someone down the line from using this law to silence all of their opponents and criticism?

fiblye 9y ago

Dangerous precedent. Expect this to be "good" for a couple years, then the definition gradually expands while nobody is looking and is used to penalize any sort of thought that doesn't fit the social norm.

Barrin92 9y ago
the definition isn't expanding, it's simply applying laws that existed since the inception of the German Federal state seven decades ago to businesses that operate on the internet. Here in Germany racebaiting, holocaust denial and so forth are not protected under freedom of speech, never have never will be. Americans will probably not understand it in the near future, but in German jurisdiction German law still applies. Digital business or not. I mean, Facebook basically censors every naked piece of skin already and I have to live with it because apparently this is offensive to Americans. Now I find banning nazi propaganda to be much less controversial than a naked human body, but apparently tastes diverge
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

monochromatic 9y ago

Europe has fallen.

ryankupyn 9y ago

I expect that this trend of deputizing companies to police speech on their platforms will evolve in tension with rising antitrust scrutiny of the tech giants, because the rise of utterly dominant companies (a trend that the EU seems intent on slowing) would make efforts to regulate speech easier. Large companies like Google have a global presence, and assets that can be targeted within the jurisdiction of most major governments, while a fragmented - and more competitive - market would make it more likely that "holdouts" can rise beyond the reach of a given government. These platforms would provide a redoubt for regulated speech, because it would be much harder to compel them to pay fines (though of course a country can simply block them). At the same time, these new regulations give a competitive advantage to the companies with the scale and resources to invest in automating the removal process, and increases the challenges for upstart platforms, which now need to develop the infrastructure to aggressively police content on their networks if they want to grow beyond a certain size. I think that in the long run, this will evolve into a stable equilibrium where governments periodically levy large-but-not-devastating fines in the name of "antitrust" in order to show their dedication to "competitive markets" and "customer choice", while simultaneously working hand-in-glove with these companies to enforce what they consider to be acceptable standards of speech in online communities. In the long run, no major competitors will emerge, and both the established firms and the government will silently thank their lucky stars.

honestoHeminway 9y ago

This is just media and goverment trying to put the dschinny of the internet back into the lamp. You can allmost hear the sigh: "Why, cant we go back to the days - where you all pretended that we represented the public, and the angry with there lifes citizens where firewalled from one another?" Well, guess what, these people know now that they are not alone- and even if you burned the whole internet to ashes- they would just meet in real life. Some people in germany have a serious freedom of expression is only my opinion attitude. And they radicalize there opponents regularly by not discussing with them (That opinion is beneath me).

mto 9y ago

FB's policy is ridiculous. Show a breastfeeding woman and it's certainly gone in the next hours. But I've reported countless foreigners for gas chamber and teleheating crap postings and it was not considered inappropriate...what a BS. Still, the problem with law enfocement is always that "hate speech" is pretty fuzzy (obviously especially fuzzy for facebook)

antisthenes 9y ago

..the abyss stares also into you.