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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
by 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 agoIt's remarkably refreshing to see this comment on HN. The pirates have become the navy and it's time to grow up.
- vilda 9y agoOK, Let me explain in more detail: In every redaction, there used to be a government employee called censor. This one read all articles are decides what can and what cannot go into print. Censor followed government wish what citizens can and cannot know. This German law institutes private censors. This one will behave exactly like the same, except they will be employed by the company, under penalty. This is not cultural marxism, this is censorship. The rules under which censors will operate are based on political correctness, which is based on cultural marxism. Personally, I believe that free speech is not about what you can say - it's about what you can hear. Authoritarians are not afraid of what you can say, they are afraid of those who listen to you.
- IBM 9y agoThis law is just the German constitution applied specifically to a certain industry. Germany doesn't have free speech in the same vein as the First Amendment in the US. When the Allies created the German constitution they avoided the trap of using the US model in Germany. It would have been utterly idiotic for there to be US-style "free speech" in the country that was ground zero for Nazism. Without the handcuffs of free speech, Germany was free to completely de-Nazify itself. No one would accuse Germany of being anything but an open liberal democracy. And it's a liberal democracy with unique protections that will ensure it remains one (while other liberal democracies are hijacked with their own freedoms) [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streitbare_Demokratie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streitbare_Demokratie
- gdwatson 9y ago"No one would accuse Germany of being anything but an open liberal democracy. And it's a liberal democracy with unique protections that will ensure it remains one (while other liberal democracies are hijacked with their own freedoms) [1]." The point of a liberal democracy is to protect the freedoms of its citizens. If the state sacrifices those freedoms to preserve itself, it remains a state and it may remain a democracy, but it ceases to be liberal in this sense. Germany is an illiberal democracy.
- int_19h 9y ago> No one would accuse Germany of being anything but an open liberal democracy. I would disagree with it. It's a democracy, sure, but it's not particularly liberal. This depends on your definition of liberalism, of course, but I wouldn't consider any society that censors political speech to be fully liberal.
- coffeevradar 9y agoWithout the Bill of Rights having already been drafted and clearly having enough support for success, the Constitution would not have had enough support to have been ratified because of opponents that were concerned about the very rights that the Bill of Rights enacts (including freedom of speech). It is obviously true that the first amendment is an amendment, but it is not accurate to suggest that it is (or was viewed at the time as) less essential than the document it amended. This is something that is covered in most U.S. civics classes.
- esarbe 9y agoI never took U.S. civics, so that is news to me. I always found it weird that it took an amendment to get to free speech but apparently this was all set up in one go? Thanks for that!
- humanrebar 9y ago> human dignity aforefront To me, human dignity includes the ability to form groups, state your political thoughts, and even state them to the government and voting public without becoming a criminal. I think Nazis are scumbags, but forming "dangerous" dissenting groups has been a healthy response to oppression in the past. The American founding fathers were engaged in illegal and dangerous speech, for example. They were doing literally illegal things when publishing their pamphlets and such.