13 ms·

Can Germany Fix Facebook?

140 points by imartin2k 9y ago

derekmhewitt 9y ago
Good article, was informative. Germany isn't the only country considering laws like this, and companies with large online presences need to find some way to get a handle on the user created content they're propagating. The fact that it's open season as far as what users post is going to eventually lead to the companies doing the propagating: Facebook, Google, etc, being the ones called before the state to answer for it. This ultimately isn't fair and is terrible for business, but the situation we have right now isn't fair either, especially to the individuals who are being slandered with no recourse.
- spc476 9y ago
  It's legal in my country to mock religious figures like Jesus, Moses and Mohammad. In other countries it is illegal to do so. If I post an image portraying Jesus, Moses and Mohammad as lovers (admittedly it's in poor taste) to MyFaceGoogleLinkedSpaceBookPlusIn, does MyFaceGoogleLinkedSpaceBookPlusIn have the legal authority to delete my post since it might be seen in a country where it's illegal?
  - danbruc 9y ago
    That's obviously a complex problem that emerged because the Internet on itself does not respect traditional juridical boundaries and I doubt that there is already any general consensus on how such things ought to be handled. But in your example it seems reasonable to me to just block the post where it is illegal. If it is illegal in the home country of MyFaceGoogleLinkedSpaceBookPlusIn or if making the post were illegal in your home country, then deleting seems appropriate. In reality things are probably even more complicated, if something is illegal may for example depend on where you are when you are doing it but may also be tied to your nationality and be independent from where you are. Or think about companies operating from several countries.
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      > But in your example it seems reasonable to me to just block the post where it is illegal. From a technology perspective, that's a much harder problem than it sounds. To the degree it's even possible, it's a good way to make sure that social networking gets consolidated into the hands of a few companies and that never get challenged. Or that social networking breaks back up into country-specific sites, making the "world-wide" part of the WWW more of a technical possibility than a practical reality.
      - germanier 9y ago
        Sure, it’s probably impossible to have this block 100% effective. However, this is a bad excuse for giving up trying at all. Even the simplest technical measures will stop most people. Also, the discussed German law (which I'm not particularly fond of) addresses the problem you raised: it only applies to the largest companies giving startups enough time before needing to solve these issues.
        humanrebar 9y ago
        It's still regulatory capture, but you're probably right about the small company exception. The biggest effect is probably to make it easier for a German social network to thrive over a foreign one looking to move into (or stay in) Germany. So, again, it's probably going to reinforce information bubbles as places to share thoughts and ideas will stay tied to a nationality and/or small. > ...this is a bad excuse for giving up trying at all. I think all of Western Europe is struggling with information bubbles as surprising election results have been happening one after another. Is it "giving" up to not double down on that phenomenon?
    - jasode 9y ago
      >But in your example it seems reasonable to me to just block the post where it is illegal. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "just block the post" but it seems the algorithm for writing: is_illegal(image, country)==true .... is currently not possible to write with accuracy. (Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/) If it's a large-scale service used by a billion people posting user-generated content, you have to rely on algorithms to filter it instead of depending on users manually flagging posts. Users themselves don't know their own country's laws and would flag things like the Vietnam naked girl photo as "illegal" when it really wasn't. Even if a machine learning algorithm can be trained to flag a specific cartoon of 3 religious figures having sex as illegal, there are near-infinite variations of other drawings showing the same thing that would get passed as "legal". In fact, it doesn't even have to be a totally different comic by a different artist... just changing 1 pixel might do it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15577885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15577885
Tomte 9y ago
That's a really good article. And you cannot reiterate enough that our laws regarding free speech were heavily influenced, if not outright imposed, by the Allies, and foremost the United States. This is one of the few articles out there that explain it.
- Barrin92 9y ago
  And as a German citizen I am thankful for them. The concept of dignity has, in my opinion, an important place in our society and cannot become obsolete in the digital sphere. To address one point in the article, I find the deflection of responsibility on facebook's part alarming. Imagine a scientist letting a wild chimera loose on the population, would we not hold them accountable? Companies like Facebook are getting rich off the infrastructure they provide, they are responsible for the consequences of the technology they put out into the world. And also notably, in the digital space they have acquired the size of nation states, and even that might be an understatement. Facebook is essentially the policeman, the firefighter, the inkeeper and the landlord all at the same time. As well as the sole administrator.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > Companies like Facebook are getting rich off the infrastructure they provide, they are responsibility for the consequences of the technology they put out into the world. I call this "externalization of costs". Private companies skim off the profit and leave the costs to society - be it in construction with the ÖPP (public-private-partnership) or "lease back" scams, or with social media where the victims of mobbing/nazis and police have to suffer.
    - bryansum 9y ago
      Jaron Lanier characterizes these kinds of companies as "Siren Servers": http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/the-vibrant-religious-life-of-silicon-valley-and-why-its-killing-the-economy-by-samuel-loncar/ http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/the-vibrant-religious-...
    - krona 9y ago
amelius 9y ago
“Can you delete your profile completely?” I want the ability to continuously erase everything I do on Facebook, except for the last N days, where N is a fixed number chosen by me.
- TaylorAlexander 9y ago
  I wonder why we use these services if we aren’t satisfied with how they work.
  - crush-n-spread 9y ago
    network effects, and convenience.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    Facebook does one thing that no other service can duplicate: it has all of my friends on it.
    - JoshMnem 9y ago
      Arguably, that's one of the problems with Facebook. Not all of one's contacts should be in the same conversations together.
      - throwawaysml 9y ago
        Didn't Google try to solve that with circles. I never used Facebook or any other "social network", so I'm probably unaware of some details, but I read about circles when Google+ came out and it sounded like a solution for exactly this problem.
        JoshMnem 9y ago
        I think they got the idea of circles from Diaspora. The WWW works best when used as intended: decentralized communities that encourage people to be creators rather than consumers. Instead of Facebook, participate in independent online communities around your interests (for example, forums). Instead of chat apps that attempt to envelop everyone you've ever met into monolithic walled gardens, use SMS and email. Instead of Medium, learn how to create your own independent blog with something like Metalsmith, Hugo, or Hexo. Etc.
expertentipp 9y ago
The joke is young people don't use Facebook anymore. Those most interested in policing and shaping it seem to be German internet-clueless politicians and activists in their 50s and 60s. Meanwhile half of web/IT jobs on German market require React.
- esarbe 9y ago
  I don't understand what you want to say. Your points don't seem relevant to the issues the article raises. Care to elaborate? Thanks!
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    I figured it was some new variation on the ancient Slashdot meme of "In Korea, only old people use (insert name of technology)..."
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Two billion people use Facebook a month. More than a quarter of humanity. https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/facebook-2-billion-users/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/facebook-2-billion-users/
  - zo1 9y ago
    I call BS on that number. Probably half or more of those users are fake/bots, just like on Twitter. If I can casually browse through my friends' friend list or posts on groups and see obvious fake/bot profiles with ridiculously easy to spot names, then FB has a huge problem. They don't even "catch" the obvious ones. Some users are businesses, too. I used to report both of those groups and then wait for them to get removed. It happened once only. I don't bother anymore.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      Even if fully half are somehow fake and it's only a billion people, it's still a staggering number of people.
vilda 9y ago
This is sure road to hell. I'm from post-communist country and I clearly see how the freedom is slowly vanishing in EU. The purpose of these regulations is to limit the speech within the boundaries of political correctness. And PC in Europe is mostly based on cultural marxism. Interesting fact: Radio Free Europe was called Hateful Radio in communist media; not a coincidence. RFE would be banned because of hate speech. Those interested to look outside their bubble, check this intoduction to cultural marxism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iB67rR3O3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iB67rR3O3E
- esarbe 9y ago
  I admit that I too am not quite happy with the Internet being subjected to 'traditional' law and order. I'm old enough to remember a time when the Internet was the playground of only computer scientists and some few nerds, before it was opened to commercial purposes. Before that, law never really applied to the Internet and I sometimes miss the time when it instead was this futuristic, anarchic, cyberspace that nobody but tech heads took serious. Nowadays we spend a good deal of time every day online, we manage our money through the Internet, almost all communication would be impossible without it. It's become part of the real world. So while I bristle at the thought that somebody has to delete post on their own servers - that users have to connect to and download information from, just because some weird law about inciting hate limits some certain public speech, it's their own computer! -, I have come to accept that since the Internet has become part of our life, it has to be governed by the same laws that govern our life. We cannot hide behind technical smartassery anymore. So I don't see this as - put by you - 'cultural marxism'. This law follows the same maxim as the German constitution; human dignity aforefront. There's probably a giant philosophical debate what that implies versus putting free speech aforefront (the U.S. American constitution doesn't do that; it instead required an amendment to get free speech) and I'm pretty sure that just reducing it to 'marxism vs. free market' would simplify things a bit too much. Have a good day!
  - IBM 9y ago
    It's remarkably refreshing to see this comment on HN. The pirates have become the navy and it's time to grow up.
jimmywanger 9y ago
This reminds me of Google vs. the Chinese government. The government wanted heavy censorship for certain forbidden targets. Google picked up their toys and went home, and let the Chinese discover the joys of VPN. If that's what Germany wants, Facebook should pack up and leave, and make people use a VPN to access Facebook. Every time you give censors the ability to arbitrarily determine what's ok and what's not, the ability always gets misused by the government, in my experience. For instance, compare and contrast the results shown for Tiananmen square in Baidu vs. Google. It's even forbidden to show relevant results for June 4th - most Chinese people get around that by searching for May 35th. If you can control the present, you control the future. By forbidding speech that is not currently fashionable, you open the floodgates.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  On the one hand you have a point about China's actions, on the other hand, you are comparing Germany to mainland China as equivalent threats. As an American I would trust most countries in the EU with stuff like this over even my own country given the direction of the USA. This is all opinion and I'm not criticizing your view, just disagreeing, but I would hazard a guess from the wording of the last sentence the worry is about Orwell's 1984 dystopian future coming true when the bigger problem is that the problems in Huxley Brave New World is much closer to reality (even given the current autocratic/far right's non ironic use of doublespeak across all countries and forms of government). Germany already bans Nazi imagery and wording in many forms except for history purposes and they seem to be fine. We already have problems in the USA where now nonviolent political protestors are being prosecuted by the federal government and officials are encouraging people to commit violence against the protestors in spite of the protestors having the First Amendment to back them up - statutory limits or freedoms are not magic that make things right.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - jimmywanger 9y ago
    I appreciate your response. Just one thought: > statutory limits or freedoms are not magic that make things right. You're right, they're not, we have to fight for them. But if the laws are on the books, you have at least some recourse given an independent judiciary. Hate speech and marginalizing other groups is such a maddeningly vague category that either everything falls into, or nothing does. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm highly individualistic and freedom oriented. The fact that there's an ill defined law on the books that can be enforced with no recourse raises my hackles. Just like the beef I have with the TSA and the "no fly list". You can't figure out why you're on the list, and there is no real way for you to get off the list. I think due process is the most important thing. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
riptidethrwy 9y ago
Some of the Disqus comments at the bottom of that article illustrate the complexity and prevalence of the problems. Of course, The Atlantic, and many other websites continue to tolerate massive troll operations in their own comment sections, for the same reason that FB and Twitter do.
eighthnate 9y ago
The promise of the internet was that it would be free and open to all ideas, thoughts and discussions. The hope was that it would raise the rest of the world to american ideals of liberty, free speech and right to assembly. Instead, we are dropping ourselves to the lowest common denominator. Rather than the outside world bettering themselves with free speech, we are instead lowering ourselves to the anti-free speech levels of germany, china, saudi arabia and russia. We are to stifle free speech because of "human dignity"? That's what dictators say. That's what extremists say. Theo Van Gogh was stabbed to death over a short film that insulted the "dignity" of muslims. North koreans kidnap or kill people because their "dignity" is insulted. Following that logic, aren't neo-nazis human? Don't they deserve "dignity"? It isn't facebook that needs fixing. It is germany. What germans, chinese, saudis, russians, the extreme liberals and those who are anti-free speech don't understand that free speech is a necessary component of human dignity. You can't have human dignity without it. It is an essential characteristic of human dignity.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- b0rsuk 9y ago
  Unfortunately, it's also open to corporations. It's free exchange of ideas and human communication without borders... but also centralization without borders. A shop can be only in one place at once, so even a very big and optimized supermarket won't reach everywhere. Smaller shops can survive somewhere. I may be ignorant about both networking and logistics, but apparently Internet lets one deliver a whole supermarket to the most remote corners of the world. And once you're the only game in town, you can set your rules.
- camillomiller 9y ago
  >Following that logic, aren't neo-nazis human? Don't they deserve "dignity"? Banning them from insulting other people’s dignity and threatening their safety is not diminishing of their dignity.
  - eighthnate 9y ago
saagarjha 9y ago
> They also made fun of his firm’s no-frills website. You don't need a cool website to practice law.
jk2323 9y ago
Can Mugabe fix Facebook? No. And Germany can't either. The ruling German junta uses it's power to censor unwanted opinions and facts on Facebook. German Govt Hires Ex-Stasi Agent To Patrol Facebook For ‘Xenophobic’ Comments http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/09/17/german-govt-hires-ex-stasi-agent-patrol-facebook-xenophobic-comments/ http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/09/17/german-govt-hires... Xenophonic comments are for example that the flood of migrants is illegal, e.g. breaking Dublin III regulation and other laws which was declared void by the direct executive order of Angela Merkel. That the German constitution does not allow executive orders, does not makes it easier. A well known German lawyer keeps track of some deleted postings (German required): https://facebook-sperre.steinhoefel.de/ https://facebook-sperre.steinhoefel.de/
AlphaGeekZulu 9y ago
I think, what is important to understand in German law is, that you are not prevented from uttering your opinion. You are rather prevented from claiming false facts. Let's take the example of the photo of Angela Merkel and the Syrian refugee, mentioned in the article. If you publicly declare, that the person on the photo is a terrorist, and the person is not, you are clearly breaking the law, because you are damaging the persons reputation with arbitrary false claims. If you mention something as a fact, which you cannot prove, you are held responsible for the consequences of the claim and you are prevented from repeating the false fact. If you would declare "There have been rumours, that the person on the photo is a terrorist", the legal perspective is completely different. Because there obviously have been the rumours this is not a false claim. It now depends very much on the context. If it was known to you, that the person is not a terrorist and you declared the fact of the rumours, but in a way, that it nevertheless makes the person appear as a terrorist, you might be breaking law, but this now depends very much on circumstances and can only be deciced individually in a court case. Saying "I completely believe the person is a terrorist, even though there is no prove" would most likely be covered by freedom of speech in Germany, because the claim is not presented as a fact, but an opinion. There are limits here (you cannot hide abuse and revilement in an opinion), but interpretation is extremely generous in those cases and makes, in my eyes, the biggest difference to systems like China. I am completely fine with this approach. I think that a proper differentiation between fact and opinion is the key for a healthy social discourse. How would anyone be able to defend himself against false claims, if any utterance of whatever was covered by free speech?
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Your example is interesting, because 'terrorism' is a rather ill-defined term - i.e. some people refer as 'terrorists' to what other people refer to as 'freedom fighters'. When is the former making a false claim?
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    Terrorist vs. freedom fighter is opinion. Terrorist/freedom fighter vs. someone who has never committed or aided in an attack against a civilian population is objective fact. If you claim that someone is a terrorist and they have never had any involvement in an attack against a civilian population, then that is objectively false.
mk89 9y ago
> the spread of symbols belonging to unconstitutional groups Cool, so an ideal "group of people who wants separation from the state" would also be banned? (Let's say like the Catalan party which is going on since years...) > But what makes content “manifestly” illegal is left up to human The least biased would be to have 1 person from each political party to assess these things and reach an agreement. EDIT: downvoting without comments... come on guys, you can be better than this.

140 points by imartin2k 9y ago

Good article, was informative. Germany isn't the only country considering laws like this, and companies with large online presences need to find some way to get a handle on the user created content they're propagating. The fact that it's open season as far as what users post is going to eventually lead to the companies doing the propagating: Facebook, Google, etc, being the ones called before the state to answer for it. This ultimately isn't fair and is terrible for business, but the situation we have right now isn't fair either, especially to the individuals who are being slandered with no recourse.

spc476 9y ago
It's legal in my country to mock religious figures like Jesus, Moses and Mohammad. In other countries it is illegal to do so. If I post an image portraying Jesus, Moses and Mohammad as lovers (admittedly it's in poor taste) to MyFaceGoogleLinkedSpaceBookPlusIn, does MyFaceGoogleLinkedSpaceBookPlusIn have the legal authority to delete my post since it might be seen in a country where it's illegal?
- danbruc 9y ago
  That's obviously a complex problem that emerged because the Internet on itself does not respect traditional juridical boundaries and I doubt that there is already any general consensus on how such things ought to be handled. But in your example it seems reasonable to me to just block the post where it is illegal. If it is illegal in the home country of MyFaceGoogleLinkedSpaceBookPlusIn or if making the post were illegal in your home country, then deleting seems appropriate. In reality things are probably even more complicated, if something is illegal may for example depend on where you are when you are doing it but may also be tied to your nationality and be independent from where you are. Or think about companies operating from several countries.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    > But in your example it seems reasonable to me to just block the post where it is illegal. From a technology perspective, that's a much harder problem than it sounds. To the degree it's even possible, it's a good way to make sure that social networking gets consolidated into the hands of a few companies and that never get challenged. Or that social networking breaks back up into country-specific sites, making the "world-wide" part of the WWW more of a technical possibility than a practical reality.
    - germanier 9y ago
      Sure, it’s probably impossible to have this block 100% effective. However, this is a bad excuse for giving up trying at all. Even the simplest technical measures will stop most people. Also, the discussed German law (which I'm not particularly fond of) addresses the problem you raised: it only applies to the largest companies giving startups enough time before needing to solve these issues.
      - humanrebar 9y ago
        It's still regulatory capture, but you're probably right about the small company exception. The biggest effect is probably to make it easier for a German social network to thrive over a foreign one looking to move into (or stay in) Germany. So, again, it's probably going to reinforce information bubbles as places to share thoughts and ideas will stay tied to a nationality and/or small. > ...this is a bad excuse for giving up trying at all. I think all of Western Europe is struggling with information bubbles as surprising election results have been happening one after another. Is it "giving" up to not double down on that phenomenon?
  - jasode 9y ago
    >But in your example it seems reasonable to me to just block the post where it is illegal. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "just block the post" but it seems the algorithm for writing: is_illegal(image, country)==true .... is currently not possible to write with accuracy. (Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/) If it's a large-scale service used by a billion people posting user-generated content, you have to rely on algorithms to filter it instead of depending on users manually flagging posts. Users themselves don't know their own country's laws and would flag things like the Vietnam naked girl photo as "illegal" when it really wasn't. Even if a machine learning algorithm can be trained to flag a specific cartoon of 3 religious figures having sex as illegal, there are near-infinite variations of other drawings showing the same thing that would get passed as "legal". In fact, it doesn't even have to be a totally different comic by a different artist... just changing 1 pixel might do it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15577885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15577885

Tomte 9y ago

That's a really good article. And you cannot reiterate enough that our laws regarding free speech were heavily influenced, if not outright imposed, by the Allies, and foremost the United States. This is one of the few articles out there that explain it.

Barrin92 9y ago
And as a German citizen I am thankful for them. The concept of dignity has, in my opinion, an important place in our society and cannot become obsolete in the digital sphere. To address one point in the article, I find the deflection of responsibility on facebook's part alarming. Imagine a scientist letting a wild chimera loose on the population, would we not hold them accountable? Companies like Facebook are getting rich off the infrastructure they provide, they are responsible for the consequences of the technology they put out into the world. And also notably, in the digital space they have acquired the size of nation states, and even that might be an understatement. Facebook is essentially the policeman, the firefighter, the inkeeper and the landlord all at the same time. As well as the sole administrator.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Companies like Facebook are getting rich off the infrastructure they provide, they are responsibility for the consequences of the technology they put out into the world. I call this "externalization of costs". Private companies skim off the profit and leave the costs to society - be it in construction with the ÖPP (public-private-partnership) or "lease back" scams, or with social media where the victims of mobbing/nazis and police have to suffer.
  - bryansum 9y ago
    Jaron Lanier characterizes these kinds of companies as "Siren Servers": http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/the-vibrant-religious-life-of-silicon-valley-and-why-its-killing-the-economy-by-samuel-loncar/ http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/the-vibrant-religious-...
  - krona 9y ago

amelius 9y ago

“Can you delete your profile completely?” I want the ability to continuously erase everything I do on Facebook, except for the last N days, where N is a fixed number chosen by me.

TaylorAlexander 9y ago
I wonder why we use these services if we aren’t satisfied with how they work.
- crush-n-spread 9y ago
  network effects, and convenience.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  Facebook does one thing that no other service can duplicate: it has all of my friends on it.
  - JoshMnem 9y ago
    Arguably, that's one of the problems with Facebook. Not all of one's contacts should be in the same conversations together.
    - throwawaysml 9y ago
      Didn't Google try to solve that with circles. I never used Facebook or any other "social network", so I'm probably unaware of some details, but I read about circles when Google+ came out and it sounded like a solution for exactly this problem.
      - JoshMnem 9y ago
        I think they got the idea of circles from Diaspora. The WWW works best when used as intended: decentralized communities that encourage people to be creators rather than consumers. Instead of Facebook, participate in independent online communities around your interests (for example, forums). Instead of chat apps that attempt to envelop everyone you've ever met into monolithic walled gardens, use SMS and email. Instead of Medium, learn how to create your own independent blog with something like Metalsmith, Hugo, or Hexo. Etc.

expertentipp 9y ago

The joke is young people don't use Facebook anymore. Those most interested in policing and shaping it seem to be German internet-clueless politicians and activists in their 50s and 60s. Meanwhile half of web/IT jobs on German market require React.

esarbe 9y ago
I don't understand what you want to say. Your points don't seem relevant to the issues the article raises. Care to elaborate? Thanks!
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  I figured it was some new variation on the ancient Slashdot meme of "In Korea, only old people use (insert name of technology)..."
emodendroket 9y ago
Two billion people use Facebook a month. More than a quarter of humanity. https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/facebook-2-billion-users/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/facebook-2-billion-users/
- zo1 9y ago
  I call BS on that number. Probably half or more of those users are fake/bots, just like on Twitter. If I can casually browse through my friends' friend list or posts on groups and see obvious fake/bot profiles with ridiculously easy to spot names, then FB has a huge problem. They don't even "catch" the obvious ones. Some users are businesses, too. I used to report both of those groups and then wait for them to get removed. It happened once only. I don't bother anymore.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Even if fully half are somehow fake and it's only a billion people, it's still a staggering number of people.

vilda 9y ago

This is sure road to hell. I'm from post-communist country and I clearly see how the freedom is slowly vanishing in EU. The purpose of these regulations is to limit the speech within the boundaries of political correctness. And PC in Europe is mostly based on cultural marxism. Interesting fact: Radio Free Europe was called Hateful Radio in communist media; not a coincidence. RFE would be banned because of hate speech. Those interested to look outside their bubble, check this intoduction to cultural marxism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iB67rR3O3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iB67rR3O3E

esarbe 9y ago
I admit that I too am not quite happy with the Internet being subjected to 'traditional' law and order. I'm old enough to remember a time when the Internet was the playground of only computer scientists and some few nerds, before it was opened to commercial purposes. Before that, law never really applied to the Internet and I sometimes miss the time when it instead was this futuristic, anarchic, cyberspace that nobody but tech heads took serious. Nowadays we spend a good deal of time every day online, we manage our money through the Internet, almost all communication would be impossible without it. It's become part of the real world. So while I bristle at the thought that somebody has to delete post on their own servers - that users have to connect to and download information from, just because some weird law about inciting hate limits some certain public speech, it's their own computer! -, I have come to accept that since the Internet has become part of our life, it has to be governed by the same laws that govern our life. We cannot hide behind technical smartassery anymore. So I don't see this as - put by you - 'cultural marxism'. This law follows the same maxim as the German constitution; human dignity aforefront. There's probably a giant philosophical debate what that implies versus putting free speech aforefront (the U.S. American constitution doesn't do that; it instead required an amendment to get free speech) and I'm pretty sure that just reducing it to 'marxism vs. free market' would simplify things a bit too much. Have a good day!
- IBM 9y ago
  It's remarkably refreshing to see this comment on HN. The pirates have become the navy and it's time to grow up.

jimmywanger 9y ago

This reminds me of Google vs. the Chinese government. The government wanted heavy censorship for certain forbidden targets. Google picked up their toys and went home, and let the Chinese discover the joys of VPN. If that's what Germany wants, Facebook should pack up and leave, and make people use a VPN to access Facebook. Every time you give censors the ability to arbitrarily determine what's ok and what's not, the ability always gets misused by the government, in my experience. For instance, compare and contrast the results shown for Tiananmen square in Baidu vs. Google. It's even forbidden to show relevant results for June 4th - most Chinese people get around that by searching for May 35th. If you can control the present, you control the future. By forbidding speech that is not currently fashionable, you open the floodgates.

stevenwoo 9y ago
On the one hand you have a point about China's actions, on the other hand, you are comparing Germany to mainland China as equivalent threats. As an American I would trust most countries in the EU with stuff like this over even my own country given the direction of the USA. This is all opinion and I'm not criticizing your view, just disagreeing, but I would hazard a guess from the wording of the last sentence the worry is about Orwell's 1984 dystopian future coming true when the bigger problem is that the problems in Huxley Brave New World is much closer to reality (even given the current autocratic/far right's non ironic use of doublespeak across all countries and forms of government). Germany already bans Nazi imagery and wording in many forms except for history purposes and they seem to be fine. We already have problems in the USA where now nonviolent political protestors are being prosecuted by the federal government and officials are encouraging people to commit violence against the protestors in spite of the protestors having the First Amendment to back them up - statutory limits or freedoms are not magic that make things right.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jimmywanger 9y ago
  I appreciate your response. Just one thought: > statutory limits or freedoms are not magic that make things right. You're right, they're not, we have to fight for them. But if the laws are on the books, you have at least some recourse given an independent judiciary. Hate speech and marginalizing other groups is such a maddeningly vague category that either everything falls into, or nothing does. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm highly individualistic and freedom oriented. The fact that there's an ill defined law on the books that can be enforced with no recourse raises my hackles. Just like the beef I have with the TSA and the "no fly list". You can't figure out why you're on the list, and there is no real way for you to get off the list. I think due process is the most important thing. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

riptidethrwy 9y ago

Some of the Disqus comments at the bottom of that article illustrate the complexity and prevalence of the problems. Of course, The Atlantic, and many other websites continue to tolerate massive troll operations in their own comment sections, for the same reason that FB and Twitter do.

eighthnate 9y ago

The promise of the internet was that it would be free and open to all ideas, thoughts and discussions. The hope was that it would raise the rest of the world to american ideals of liberty, free speech and right to assembly. Instead, we are dropping ourselves to the lowest common denominator. Rather than the outside world bettering themselves with free speech, we are instead lowering ourselves to the anti-free speech levels of germany, china, saudi arabia and russia. We are to stifle free speech because of "human dignity"? That's what dictators say. That's what extremists say. Theo Van Gogh was stabbed to death over a short film that insulted the "dignity" of muslims. North koreans kidnap or kill people because their "dignity" is insulted. Following that logic, aren't neo-nazis human? Don't they deserve "dignity"? It isn't facebook that needs fixing. It is germany. What germans, chinese, saudis, russians, the extreme liberals and those who are anti-free speech don't understand that free speech is a necessary component of human dignity. You can't have human dignity without it. It is an essential characteristic of human dignity.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
b0rsuk 9y ago
Unfortunately, it's also open to corporations. It's free exchange of ideas and human communication without borders... but also centralization without borders. A shop can be only in one place at once, so even a very big and optimized supermarket won't reach everywhere. Smaller shops can survive somewhere. I may be ignorant about both networking and logistics, but apparently Internet lets one deliver a whole supermarket to the most remote corners of the world. And once you're the only game in town, you can set your rules.
camillomiller 9y ago
>Following that logic, aren't neo-nazis human? Don't they deserve "dignity"? Banning them from insulting other people’s dignity and threatening their safety is not diminishing of their dignity.
- eighthnate 9y ago

saagarjha 9y ago

> They also made fun of his firm’s no-frills website. You don't need a cool website to practice law.

jk2323 9y ago

Can Mugabe fix Facebook? No. And Germany can't either. The ruling German junta uses it's power to censor unwanted opinions and facts on Facebook. German Govt Hires Ex-Stasi Agent To Patrol Facebook For ‘Xenophobic’ Comments http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/09/17/german-govt-hires-ex-stasi-agent-patrol-facebook-xenophobic-comments/ http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/09/17/german-govt-hires... Xenophonic comments are for example that the flood of migrants is illegal, e.g. breaking Dublin III regulation and other laws which was declared void by the direct executive order of Angela Merkel. That the German constitution does not allow executive orders, does not makes it easier. A well known German lawyer keeps track of some deleted postings (German required): https://facebook-sperre.steinhoefel.de/ https://facebook-sperre.steinhoefel.de/

AlphaGeekZulu 9y ago

I think, what is important to understand in German law is, that you are not prevented from uttering your opinion. You are rather prevented from claiming false facts. Let's take the example of the photo of Angela Merkel and the Syrian refugee, mentioned in the article. If you publicly declare, that the person on the photo is a terrorist, and the person is not, you are clearly breaking the law, because you are damaging the persons reputation with arbitrary false claims. If you mention something as a fact, which you cannot prove, you are held responsible for the consequences of the claim and you are prevented from repeating the false fact. If you would declare "There have been rumours, that the person on the photo is a terrorist", the legal perspective is completely different. Because there obviously have been the rumours this is not a false claim. It now depends very much on the context. If it was known to you, that the person is not a terrorist and you declared the fact of the rumours, but in a way, that it nevertheless makes the person appear as a terrorist, you might be breaking law, but this now depends very much on circumstances and can only be deciced individually in a court case. Saying "I completely believe the person is a terrorist, even though there is no prove" would most likely be covered by freedom of speech in Germany, because the claim is not presented as a fact, but an opinion. There are limits here (you cannot hide abuse and revilement in an opinion), but interpretation is extremely generous in those cases and makes, in my eyes, the biggest difference to systems like China. I am completely fine with this approach. I think that a proper differentiation between fact and opinion is the key for a healthy social discourse. How would anyone be able to defend himself against false claims, if any utterance of whatever was covered by free speech?

Vinnl 9y ago
Your example is interesting, because 'terrorism' is a rather ill-defined term - i.e. some people refer as 'terrorists' to what other people refer to as 'freedom fighters'. When is the former making a false claim?
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  Terrorist vs. freedom fighter is opinion. Terrorist/freedom fighter vs. someone who has never committed or aided in an attack against a civilian population is objective fact. If you claim that someone is a terrorist and they have never had any involvement in an attack against a civilian population, then that is objectively false.

mk89 9y ago

> the spread of symbols belonging to unconstitutional groups Cool, so an ideal "group of people who wants separation from the state" would also be banned? (Let's say like the Catalan party which is going on since years...) > But what makes content “manifestly” illegal is left up to human The least biased would be to have 1 person from each political party to assess these things and reach an agreement. EDIT: downvoting without comments... come on guys, you can be better than this.