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Germany Acts to Tame Facebook, Learning from Its Own History of Hate
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- baxtr 8y agoI love my “Vaterland” :) but I’m not sure if that’ll work. We are to small and Facebook to large and smart for regulation
- dcow 8y agoFacebook just removed 584 million fake accounts. Isn't that like 1/3rd of their user base?
- mic47 8y agoComparing those two numbers (removed fake account, and FB userbase) does not give you reasonable insights. FB ususally reports DAU/MAU (daily active users, weekly active users). That means, if you remove 500 million of not active users (not using facebook last month), these numbers are not affected. I don't think this would explain the majority of 500M number. Most of the 584 million removed fake accounts were most likely created in the same period (and most of them were removed quickly after registration -- as said in the FB report). So they didn't decimate their user base, but additional 500M accounts that were deleted (so they shouldn't affect the user growth). This assumes vast majority of active fake accounts will be blocked.
- adventured 8y agoFacebook will adapt to as many global regulatory approaches as it has to, and there will be dozens of them at a minimum that will be major markets and require compliance. The world is going to get very, very messy when it comes to complying with all the various approaches nations will implement (to speech broadly, politics, commerce, privacy, you name it). The compliance will act as a tax on its fat margins, basically. It will become nearly impossible to form a new global social network as these rules come into being. No other entities will be capable of dealing with it, you'll have to have vast resources to do it. It won't be about paid vs ad supported approaches, that doesn't matter for that purpose: the localized compliance will go far beyond privacy (that is merely one issue on a long list of compliance requirements that will exist in the future, it'll be as complex and varied as cultures and government systems are).
- simion314 8y agoThe solution is to have local networks, then you care only about the local laws. Like on reddit each subreddit has it's rules, you have to respect the local rules , but you can participate in any subreddit
- kodablah 8y agoAnother solution is anonymity.
- Fnoord 8y agoPretty much, but its a tad complex. Microsoft hosts for example in Ireland (part of the EU), but is an American company. A subreddit has its own moderators and rules, but has to also adhere the global Reddit policy. FOSS is developed by people all over the world. One solution is to lay low and be low profile. For example, an invite-only system, or E2EE. Another is to host in a more liberal country. But if the website is in Russian, it is assumed that its being served for Russians (people in Russia).
- shiado 8y ago"Germany, home to a tough new online hate speech law", anybody have the definition of hate speech according to this law? This article has a lot of information but a cogent definition of hate speech is not given.
- ILikeConemowk 8y agoThis will definitely be abused.
- chmod775 8y agoThere's no new "hate speech law". There's only new law that punishes sites for failing to remove content that was already illegal. For this they have up to 24 hours, or a week if it is a more complex matter. That article generally misrepresents German laws, making them seem more draconian than they actually are. For instance displaying a Swastika is perfectly legal if you don't "objectively" use it to "promote (the) national socialism". The German definition of Volksverhetzung, often translated as "hate speech", is also quite a bit a narrower than what your average native english speaker would understand as hate speech: basically, under that law, ONLY hate speech against a group or individual targeting them for belonging to a certain ethnic group, nationality, or religion is illegal IF it is disseminated in a way that has the potential to disrupt public peace.
- guitarbill 8y ago> For instance displaying a Swastika is perfectly legal if you don't "objectively" use it to "promote (the) national socialism". Yet the chilling effects are real, leading to silly examples of censorship. Particularly in new mediums such as video games - most famously Wolfenstein 3D. The Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (BPjM) / Jugendschutzgesetz (JuSchG) has made some questionable decisions in the past. I agree that "hate speech" has a different connotation than Volksverhetzung (particularly in this day and age), and it's a bit more nuances than the article presents it.
- Eridrus 8y agoI find it interesting that platforms are liable for hosting hate speech, but individual users are not liable for creating it. It's also interesting that Human Rights Watch has come out against the German law: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/14/germany-flawed-social-media-law https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/14/germany-flawed-social-me...
- anonymouz 8y agoWhy do you think the users are not liable for creating it?
- Eridrus 8y agoAFAICT the new law largely doesn't effect individuals, but you're right the existing laws do criminalise hate speech, with prosecutions up over a few years ago: https://www.eurozine.com/no-freedom-to-hate-germanys-new-law-on-online-incitement/ https://www.eurozine.com/no-freedom-to-hate-germanys-new-law... Still, the scale of the two issues - prosecutions vs platform censorship basically implies that most of the things being censored do not rise to that level of illegality.
- anonymouz 8y agoYes, the new thing is basically that the platforms are taking part in the enforcement. This provides a pragmatic and efficient solution: * The illegal content can be removed quickly, without tying up resources in the prosecution of minor offenders. Prosecution can focus on the worst of them. * The platforms get to play the role of a neutral party and are not themselves being responsible for distributing the illegal content. Given the increased centralization on the Internet to a few of these platforms, this allows for efficient implementation of the law. This is quite similar to the development of copyright law (in the US). The DMCA grants platforms immunity by actively taking part in the removal of illegal content when requested. I haven't checked the numbers, but I expect that here also the number of DMCA takedowns greatly outnumbers the copyright violation law suits (which would be kept for the worst offenders)
- kodablah 8y agoWhat even is this article? There is nothing substantive here. Like many other mainstream tech articles these days, this reeks of mass-media narrative control. I just wonder if it's the clicks that drive these or if there are other actors behind the scenes encouraging the deluge of anti-FB, anti-Goog, anti-Twitter, etc articles. Maybe I'm viewing this too broadly, but I get an icky feeling of intentional furor construction.
- blattimwind 8y agoIt doesn't even mention the actual name of the law.
- MereKatMoves 8y ago> the deluge of anti-FB, anti-Goog, anti-Twitter, etc articles. Maybe I'm viewing this too broadly, but I get an icky feeling of intentional furor construction. Those companies are enabling the criminals. German law defines the users as criminals and it is this pre-internet law that is being upgraded and enforced, because profiting from enabling illegal activity is clearly wrong. FB employs 1200 people to deal with this... why is that? It isn't their fault that the world has so many fucktards in it, but is their problem when they give a platform to their illegality furor over the failings of the "city state" that FB are trying to establish. Good
- kodablah 8y agoOk...I mean you see it that way and I don't really agree, but that is unrelated to my comment. Mine is a general comment about the flow of "news" concerning large web companies. It feels like this article was just the next one on the weekend assembly line. I'm not really a fan of manipulation even if I agree w/ the manipulators. Granted, my observations are my own based on the news cycles and my limited empirical evidence leaves my suspicions in the realm of conspiracy theory. Just a comment on the patterns I see.
- Faark 8y agoCould you be a bit more specific about your criticism of the article. I found it interesting. I don't really see how it is anti-FB. It seems to describe the current situation by anecdotes instead of statistics/scientific analysis. I can understand some not liking that style (especially considering information per time), but it seems highly effective at describing issues to most people (probably the thing you call media narrative control). I've got no problem with that. But your "There is nothing substantive here" is worrying me, since it probably means you'd like more that a somewhat mundane description of the situation without judgment. Did you expect a strong position, probably in favor of US free speech values? It to be a hit piece for or against NetzDG? Strong policy recommendations with big impacts? I don't want that! I like our current society and want marginal fixes for its countless little flaws. But responding to the current hot issue (lets say school shootings) with extremist positions (arm everyone vs take all guns away) seems highly unproductive in improving our lives.
- ihsw2 8y agoAnd yet the hammer and sickle are regarded as symbols of freedom and Marxism is regarded as a movement to empower the oppressed. How revolting. Adherents to Communist ideology have killed many millions more than Nazis ever dreamed of and caused untold amounts of devastation over the past century.
- lopmotr 8y agoNot only that, but communism is still an ongoing danger, unlike Nazism. Venezuela just experienced it. Zimbabwe a decade before, and now South Africa is slipping closer towards it. It's a real danger to human life but somehow people celebrate it.
- Andre_Wanglin 8y agoThe Nazis had the wrong enemies. If you have the right enemies, you can slaughter millions and statues will be built in your honor.
- KozmoNau7 8y agoThe situations in those countries are a lot more complicated than simply "COMMUNISM!".
- mayniac 8y agolol, "nazism is not an ongoing danger" This is amazing, it's like Charlottesville never happened and Bannon never had the president's ear.
- archgoon 8y agoThis article is mostly not about Nazis (search for it, it shows up once, and just one out of a number of examples). I'm a bit baffled why you think it is.
- KozmoNau7 8y ago>"the hammer and sickle are regarded as symbols of freedom" Where? >"Marxism is regarded as a movement to empower the oppressed." Because it is. That is literally the entire point of Marxism. Marxism != Communism. I'm more towards AnCom myself, but Marxism makes some extremely valid points about the exploitation of labor.
- im3w1l 8y agoGermany acts to clamp down on free speach, learning from its own history of clamping down on free speech under both the communists and the nazis. They are even hiring former stasi people to do it. 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...
- lopmotr 8y agoThe didn't have free speech to begin with. People forget Germany, France and the UK don't have the basic concept of freedom of speech that America does. You could already go to prison for insulting the wrong groups or supporting the wrong political party, and people have.
- KozmoNau7 8y agoLike who? Citations please.
- mayniac 8y ago>People forget Germany, France and the UK don't have the basic concept of freedom of speech that America does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_10_of_the_European_Convention_on_Human_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_10_of_the_European_Con...
- lopmotr 8y agoIf you read that, you see there are so many exceptions and they're so subjective (protection of morals?) that it's pretty much not a freedom at all.
- foepys 8y agoBut Germany and other countries without the concept of free speech are regularly ranking a lot higher than the US on the Press Freedom Index. How do you explain that? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index
- sqdbps 8y agoAnd there you have it: the New York Times will side with censorship and against free speech as long as it's to the detriment of a tech company.
- virmundi 8y agoI wonder, out loud to all you HN lawyers, if not officially supporting an EU country gets you out of EU law. If a site offers no official language support, does it have to follow Germany's law simply because a German saw it?
- KozmoNau7 8y agoFB, Google and so on have subsidiaries in Germany (+other EU countries) and have a significant part of their user base there. They are very deliberately focused on having a large number of Germans use their services. It wouldn't apply to a site like HN, for instance.
- pimmen 8y agoThey have to follow German law because they have German users, German customers (German companies buying ads), use German infrastructure, German marketing and German offices housing German employees. If they would like to turn their back to an 80 million people market, sure. However, if this becomes the EU standard, it jumps up to a market of almost 500 million people. Hard to turn that down.
- virmundi 8y agoIf they have users, but transact everything in Dollars and only host out of the US, does Germany have claim to dictate terms? For example if Germans come to America and buy things, the German government has little control to exert power.
- pimmen 8y agoYou're correct, but that's not the case. They host all across the EU (and have special agreements with the local governments about power supply for example), have employees all across the EU, accept Euros as payment and wouldn't want it any other way. If they didn't, it would be much harder for them to stay competitive in the EU. If they stop they would negatively impact the experience for their users and customers in Germany, meaning losses of revenue from that market and the risk of being overtaken.
- Andre_Wanglin 8y agoIs hate never justifiable?
- travmatt 8y agoThere’s a difference between what’s good for a country and what’s good for an individual person - society at large can’t really function if it laws place the singular wants and needs of any given person as the metric of allowable. Just because you can justify a hatred doesn’t mean there’s some transitive property that means society should therefore tolerate it.
- KozmoNau7 8y agoYou can hate as much as you want, in private. Germans are very adamant about the protection of privacy. The problem starts if you go around in public, making hateful speeches that incite violence.
- Andre_Wanglin 8y agoThat sounds like a great way to protect those who commit acts worthy of hate from any public remonstration.
- KozmoNau7 8y agoYou are absolutely and perfectly allowed to speak out in public against such people. But you must be prepared to take responsibility if your speech is worded to spur people into violent action and to incite hateful action. The court of public opinion is notoriously fickle. Rousing hate in the masses is not a reliable tactic, and often backfires.
- jk2323 8y agoThis bullshit is not a "hate crime law", it is a law to silence opponents of the ruling junta. Worse, it enables blocking of US citizens (like me), that don't live in Germany, through dubious, semi-private entities, based in Germany. Both things are a scandal. And why does have Facebook problems in China? Why not grant the Chinese government the same rights as the German government?
- KozmoNau7 8y agoHow so? They are simply making people liable for breaking laws that already existed. How are they blocking you? How are they cementing their power by punishing people for inciting to violence against people with specific religious/political viewpoints or sexual orientations etc.?
- naturalgradient 8y agoYou seem to be completely uninformed regarding the actual implementation of the law. Any criticism of anything can and will be deleted under the scope of the law. Want to criticise any policy? Hatespeech. Criticise religion? Hatespeech. It would of course never hold up in court, but that doesn't matter, for social media platforms deleting anything that could be construed as hate by anyone who feels offended is the path of least resistance. You are not made accountable for breaking laws that already existed, you are being censored for something that is not illegal, never was, still isn't, but could offend someone if it's disagreement on a sensitive topic. It's the end of any sort of free speech on social media in Germany.
- KozmoNau7 8y agoI'm sorry, but you're spouting absolute nonsense. I have discussed this topic many times with my German girlfriend and her family in Germany (we live in Denmark), and you are so completely off on your "predictions", it's not even funny. German law has a very specific definition of what material is targeted, and "hate speech" is an inadequate translation. Only public speech that incites violence against religious, political groups or sexual orientations and the like, will be targeted by this. NOT general critique of religions, nor of political standpoints or anything of the sort. Only public speech that incites to violence. You are utterly wrong in your scaremongering, and this is NOT the "end of free speech on German social media".
- js8 8y agoThey are NOT learning from their history. In fact (to quote from https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-violence https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v...): "I found that, contrary to what most people think, Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences. Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate. In the years from 1923 to 1933, Der Stürmer [Streicher's newspaper] was either confiscated or editors taken to court on no fewer than thirty-six occasions. The more charges Streicher faced, the greater became the admiration of his supporters. The courts became an important platform for Streicher's campaign against the Jews. In the words of a present-day civil-rights campaigner, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the anti-hate laws of today, and they were enforced with some vigor. As history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it."
- KozmoNau7 8y agoThe lesson to be learned is that they did not strike down the fascists hard enough, while they still could. Fascism must be met at all time with hard, Swift and decisive opposition, violent if necessary. There must be no tolerance for ideologies built on intolerance.
- dynamicvariable 8y agoConsidering Germany's history, maybe they aren't the best example of dealing with "hate". History has shown that the best antidote to hate is sunlight. Let the hateful spew hate and let people see it. The vast majority of people are going to be turned off by it. People forget that germany once banned hitler and the nazi party and censored it. Amazingly enough, when you make something taboo, it makes it more attractive to the people. Also, keep in mind that all the anti-facebook, anti-social media, etc propaganda lately has nothing to do with "hate". It's all about take control over an information medium.