14 ms·

I 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

I 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 ago
Why do you think the users are not liable for creating it?
- Eridrus 8y ago
  AFAICT 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 ago
    Yes, 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)
    - tannhaeuser 8y ago
      Your portrayal of NetzDG as "[allowing] for efficient implementation" is IMHO very naive. NetzDG has been highly controversial in the informed part of the populace (for example, it's frequently discussed https://netzpolitik.org https://netzpolitik.org, in German). Among the concerns are that providers preemptively take down content outside the regular juristical process without transparency and appeal. Moreover, the law is criticized for cementing the defacto monopolization on the Web, and has yet to stand before court. It is seen as a publicity stunt to "do something about hate speech and fake news" and has had also the smell of an attempt to suppress opposing views when it was signed just during last year's federal election campaign by Heiko Maas, former minister of justice, now minister of foreign affairs.
Tomte 8y ago
Where did you get the idea that the creator is not liable?
dmoy 8y ago
Depending on the type of hate speech in Germany, you can get thrown in prison for up to 5 years.
- joering2 8y ago
  Thats true. One of my ex classmates went first time abroad, and upon leaving zoll (german border) he told officer “heil hitler” out of pure excitement and probably too many historical movies watched (is there anything else to watch that is german made?). No amount of explanations was sufficient. He got 3 months behind bars and 10 years ban to visit germany. That was in 2007. I assume now its even worse.
  - cat199 8y ago
    excitement? that's just dumbness. Nazi whatever aside, these are border officers.. You don't mess with them, period, unless you're into body cavity searches and the like..
    - lopmotr 8y ago
      You really shouldn't blame the victim just because you've been reading more news stories than him. It's the sort of thing I might have done when I was younger. I grew up trusting authorities and them always being reasonable and I would never have imagined Germany was such a bizarrely brutal place. People often joke with the workers they have to interact with. I've done that before. It's human nature. I used to have a nazi symbol on my car just to rile people up. Once a neighbor called the police who were completely reasonable and asked me to please not park so close to his house because it's making him angry.
      - eropple 8y ago
        > I used to have a nazi symbol on my car just to rile people up. No healthy person does this "just to rile people up." This is profoundly fucked behavior, and in a sane society it does, and should, lead to ostracizing. Actions have consequences.
blattimwind 8y ago
> I find it interesting that platforms are liable for hosting hate speech, but individual users are not liable for creating it. NetzDG only regulates how platforms that get a lot of complaints about content that is already illegal under existing criminal code have to handle and report those complaints.
- woodpanel 8y ago
  That is precisely the problem with NetzDG: That a private company effectively becomes judge, jury and executor. It has been deemed unconstitutional by many experts - and whether it holds up against those claims will have to be decided in the supreme court. That Arvato, the company running the content-checking centers, is a subsidiary of Bertelsmann isn't helping either: Criticism of the government that gets deleted on Facebook by a pro-government company like Bertelsmann comes with a certain stench. As comes the fact that the NYT somehow forgets to mention this affiliation and somehow manages it to intertwine this with the "right cause" of post-war Germany's approach to limit free-speech for Nazism.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
namirez 8y ago
Maybe because these are public forums rather than private messaging tools. Although, I presume individual users are liable too.
- hh3k0 8y ago
  You presume correctly. The users who post hate speech are absolutely liable. It's just that those who host the content in question are liable, too.
doesnt_know 8y ago
Hate speech laws aren't completely uncommon, so individual users would be liable for creating it. In NZ law, it's part of our Human Rights Act: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1993/0082/latest/DLM304642.html http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1993/0082/latest/D... "It shall be unlawful for any person to publish or distribute written matter which is threatening, abusive, or insulting, or to broadcast by means of radio or television or other electronic communication words which are threatening, abusive, or insulting"
- labster 8y ago
  I wish the United States had that law, instant impeachable offense for our president. Especially the insulting part, he seems to need to insult others in order to breathe.
  - lopmotr 8y ago
    It could apply to you too for saying what you did just then. That's why hate speech laws are horrible. You can't criticize politicians. You can't even criticize ideas if there are people who insist on tying their identity to those ideas. They stifle public sharing of ideas. Just look at the Nazi pug conviction in the UK - 800 pound fine for training a dog wrong. His neighbor was also charged for calling him a Nazi in retaliation!
    - Pica_soO 8y ago
      This- also history thought us that shunned and silenced ideas, get a "cool" bonus with the youth, who just search for a reason to provoke the previous generation. Its unbelievable, that the same methods that where used to "prevent" the spreading of Gangsta-culture, and horribly "failed" (because the music was good) are used to contain extreme-right ideas. As a result a whole generation of youth, will take to the alt-right as a "our-culture" movement and do the hitler-crib-walk. If the left ever want to recover from living historys memory fading, it has not only to rethink its core concepts but also its tools. Cause there attempts at society control basically boil down to supporting the opposing sites cause. Half, of those alt-righters you see, are basically under-class trying to distance themselves as far as possible from what is perceived as entitled culture-controll-class of university dwelling aristocrats. In short, that is the proletariat the left was made off. The irony. It also does not help that whenever you talk with them, this hidden enthusiasm for totalitarian systems (Putins Russia/China) flares up, where "the gloves are off" for Place-unwanted-Group-Here.
eksemplar 8y ago
If someone spray painted a swastika on your house, how would you react? That’s basically what people are doing to the Facebook platform, and Facebook is fine with it. Which is weird, because they are already censoring you considering there is a long range of things you can’t share in their platform, such as pictures of you breastfeeding your baby. I’m not sure why breastfeeding is considered worse than hate speech at Facebook but apparently it is. Please note that while I mentioned the swastika, I didn’t mean to imply that Facebook is only cool with alt-right nonsense, the truth is that you can share all sorts of radical hatred from any political standpoint and Facebook is completely fine with it. I get the free speech argument though, but the truth is that you’re always on someone’s platform and most of them wouldn’t be cool with your crazy. I mean, you’d get thrown out of a public park if you started making Facebook styled hate comments at random strangers.
- seertaak 8y ago
  > If someone spray painted a swastika on your house, how would you react? Where I live (Görlitzer Park), those kinds of signs are literally everywhere -- only they're the leftwing equivalent, calling for bloody revolution, for the rich to be booted from their homes, racists and xenophobes to be punched, etc. I'm actually pretty relaxed about it -- a bunch of 20 year olds who get their kicks spray painting while drinking copious amounts of booze? Big deal. And to offer another perspective on the recent emotional concern expressed so histrioniocally by a, politically speaking, suspiciously homogeneous crowd: Last year there was a huge, state financed charity billboard celebrating the life of... Fidel Castro. It was a collab between our Green local govt and the Cuban tourist ministry IIRC. Castro... who was responsible for how many deaths, 50,000? 100K? By way of comparison, Pinochet had (according to Wikipedia) 10-30K on his account. I guarantee you there were no billboards of him around. Do I need to mention the recent merry festivities surrounding Karl Marx 200th birthday -- ceremony lead by Jean-Claude Juncker? Lest I have my words twisted against: I don't desire either of the these men to be displayed on taxpayer financed billboards! The point that I'm trying to make is that this kind of legislation, and the so-called journalism and commentary surrounding it, don't fool anyone who's even the slightest bit (like me) conservative. We see right through these tendentiously applied, faux histrionic ("oh pity the poor soul who has endure watching -- and then deleting -- horribly vicious, hate-filled posts") outbursts whose real purpose is totally obvious. Namely to leverage dominance in various domains (journalism, charity, education, civil service) to usurp the electoral beating the left taken in any number of countries over the past two years. A beating meted out by a population who sees through the phony social concern, and sees the manifest and seething hypocrisy, the coziness of those who are insanely rich and the charity, journalistic, and civil service complexes. In this battle any means to push back against at the barbarians at the gate are deemed appropriate. And so we are treated to the pathetic spectacle of those screeching about the deleterious, democracy damaging impact of fake news happily engaging in its production if it suits their side, the so-called defenders of liberty and free speech engaging in a rampage of censorship, bullying, "calling out", etc. of anyone who has an even slightly different opinion. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand that those forces have no intention of trying to convince me. That is definitely not the goal, for if it were, the path that's being taken would certainly be recognized as wholly counterproductive. No, the real goal is to set boundaries, to wear out, tire, and demoralize the enemy. In other words, this is a propaganda war, exactly as e.g. Jacques Ellul described it. The very focus on such emotively charged terms as "love" (what we're about) and "hate speech" (what they do) makes this patently obvious. To finalize, my feeling is that the forces I've described are winning, and I actually think they'll prevail in the battle. The propaganda war won't make any friends, but I believe it will succeed in its purpose, which is to wear out and dissipate the forces currently arrayed against it. Final note: this is just an opinion. It's a strong one, yes. But I really love being proven wrong, so I'm really happy for the many highly intelligent and well-informed HNers to tear my argument apart. Have fun :)

anonymouz 8y ago

Why do you think the users are not liable for creating it?

Eridrus 8y ago
AFAICT 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 ago
  Yes, 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)
  - tannhaeuser 8y ago
    Your portrayal of NetzDG as "[allowing] for efficient implementation" is IMHO very naive. NetzDG has been highly controversial in the informed part of the populace (for example, it's frequently discussed https://netzpolitik.org https://netzpolitik.org, in German). Among the concerns are that providers preemptively take down content outside the regular juristical process without transparency and appeal. Moreover, the law is criticized for cementing the defacto monopolization on the Web, and has yet to stand before court. It is seen as a publicity stunt to "do something about hate speech and fake news" and has had also the smell of an attempt to suppress opposing views when it was signed just during last year's federal election campaign by Heiko Maas, former minister of justice, now minister of foreign affairs.

Tomte 8y ago

Where did you get the idea that the creator is not liable?

dmoy 8y ago

Depending on the type of hate speech in Germany, you can get thrown in prison for up to 5 years.

joering2 8y ago
Thats true. One of my ex classmates went first time abroad, and upon leaving zoll (german border) he told officer “heil hitler” out of pure excitement and probably too many historical movies watched (is there anything else to watch that is german made?). No amount of explanations was sufficient. He got 3 months behind bars and 10 years ban to visit germany. That was in 2007. I assume now its even worse.
- cat199 8y ago
  excitement? that's just dumbness. Nazi whatever aside, these are border officers.. You don't mess with them, period, unless you're into body cavity searches and the like..
  - lopmotr 8y ago
    You really shouldn't blame the victim just because you've been reading more news stories than him. It's the sort of thing I might have done when I was younger. I grew up trusting authorities and them always being reasonable and I would never have imagined Germany was such a bizarrely brutal place. People often joke with the workers they have to interact with. I've done that before. It's human nature. I used to have a nazi symbol on my car just to rile people up. Once a neighbor called the police who were completely reasonable and asked me to please not park so close to his house because it's making him angry.
    - eropple 8y ago
      > I used to have a nazi symbol on my car just to rile people up. No healthy person does this "just to rile people up." This is profoundly fucked behavior, and in a sane society it does, and should, lead to ostracizing. Actions have consequences.

blattimwind 8y ago

> I find it interesting that platforms are liable for hosting hate speech, but individual users are not liable for creating it. NetzDG only regulates how platforms that get a lot of complaints about content that is already illegal under existing criminal code have to handle and report those complaints.

woodpanel 8y ago
That is precisely the problem with NetzDG: That a private company effectively becomes judge, jury and executor. It has been deemed unconstitutional by many experts - and whether it holds up against those claims will have to be decided in the supreme court. That Arvato, the company running the content-checking centers, is a subsidiary of Bertelsmann isn't helping either: Criticism of the government that gets deleted on Facebook by a pro-government company like Bertelsmann comes with a certain stench. As comes the fact that the NYT somehow forgets to mention this affiliation and somehow manages it to intertwine this with the "right cause" of post-war Germany's approach to limit free-speech for Nazism.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

namirez 8y ago

Maybe because these are public forums rather than private messaging tools. Although, I presume individual users are liable too.

hh3k0 8y ago
You presume correctly. The users who post hate speech are absolutely liable. It's just that those who host the content in question are liable, too.

doesnt_know 8y ago

Hate speech laws aren't completely uncommon, so individual users would be liable for creating it. In NZ law, it's part of our Human Rights Act: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1993/0082/latest/DLM304642.html http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1993/0082/latest/D... "It shall be unlawful for any person to publish or distribute written matter which is threatening, abusive, or insulting, or to broadcast by means of radio or television or other electronic communication words which are threatening, abusive, or insulting"

labster 8y ago
I wish the United States had that law, instant impeachable offense for our president. Especially the insulting part, he seems to need to insult others in order to breathe.
- lopmotr 8y ago
  It could apply to you too for saying what you did just then. That's why hate speech laws are horrible. You can't criticize politicians. You can't even criticize ideas if there are people who insist on tying their identity to those ideas. They stifle public sharing of ideas. Just look at the Nazi pug conviction in the UK - 800 pound fine for training a dog wrong. His neighbor was also charged for calling him a Nazi in retaliation!
  - Pica_soO 8y ago
    This- also history thought us that shunned and silenced ideas, get a "cool" bonus with the youth, who just search for a reason to provoke the previous generation. Its unbelievable, that the same methods that where used to "prevent" the spreading of Gangsta-culture, and horribly "failed" (because the music was good) are used to contain extreme-right ideas. As a result a whole generation of youth, will take to the alt-right as a "our-culture" movement and do the hitler-crib-walk. If the left ever want to recover from living historys memory fading, it has not only to rethink its core concepts but also its tools. Cause there attempts at society control basically boil down to supporting the opposing sites cause. Half, of those alt-righters you see, are basically under-class trying to distance themselves as far as possible from what is perceived as entitled culture-controll-class of university dwelling aristocrats. In short, that is the proletariat the left was made off. The irony. It also does not help that whenever you talk with them, this hidden enthusiasm for totalitarian systems (Putins Russia/China) flares up, where "the gloves are off" for Place-unwanted-Group-Here.

eksemplar 8y ago

If someone spray painted a swastika on your house, how would you react? That’s basically what people are doing to the Facebook platform, and Facebook is fine with it. Which is weird, because they are already censoring you considering there is a long range of things you can’t share in their platform, such as pictures of you breastfeeding your baby. I’m not sure why breastfeeding is considered worse than hate speech at Facebook but apparently it is. Please note that while I mentioned the swastika, I didn’t mean to imply that Facebook is only cool with alt-right nonsense, the truth is that you can share all sorts of radical hatred from any political standpoint and Facebook is completely fine with it. I get the free speech argument though, but the truth is that you’re always on someone’s platform and most of them wouldn’t be cool with your crazy. I mean, you’d get thrown out of a public park if you started making Facebook styled hate comments at random strangers.

seertaak 8y ago
> If someone spray painted a swastika on your house, how would you react? Where I live (Görlitzer Park), those kinds of signs are literally everywhere -- only they're the leftwing equivalent, calling for bloody revolution, for the rich to be booted from their homes, racists and xenophobes to be punched, etc. I'm actually pretty relaxed about it -- a bunch of 20 year olds who get their kicks spray painting while drinking copious amounts of booze? Big deal. And to offer another perspective on the recent emotional concern expressed so histrioniocally by a, politically speaking, suspiciously homogeneous crowd: Last year there was a huge, state financed charity billboard celebrating the life of... Fidel Castro. It was a collab between our Green local govt and the Cuban tourist ministry IIRC. Castro... who was responsible for how many deaths, 50,000? 100K? By way of comparison, Pinochet had (according to Wikipedia) 10-30K on his account. I guarantee you there were no billboards of him around. Do I need to mention the recent merry festivities surrounding Karl Marx 200th birthday -- ceremony lead by Jean-Claude Juncker? Lest I have my words twisted against: I don't desire either of the these men to be displayed on taxpayer financed billboards! The point that I'm trying to make is that this kind of legislation, and the so-called journalism and commentary surrounding it, don't fool anyone who's even the slightest bit (like me) conservative. We see right through these tendentiously applied, faux histrionic ("oh pity the poor soul who has endure watching -- and then deleting -- horribly vicious, hate-filled posts") outbursts whose real purpose is totally obvious. Namely to leverage dominance in various domains (journalism, charity, education, civil service) to usurp the electoral beating the left taken in any number of countries over the past two years. A beating meted out by a population who sees through the phony social concern, and sees the manifest and seething hypocrisy, the coziness of those who are insanely rich and the charity, journalistic, and civil service complexes. In this battle any means to push back against at the barbarians at the gate are deemed appropriate. And so we are treated to the pathetic spectacle of those screeching about the deleterious, democracy damaging impact of fake news happily engaging in its production if it suits their side, the so-called defenders of liberty and free speech engaging in a rampage of censorship, bullying, "calling out", etc. of anyone who has an even slightly different opinion. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand that those forces have no intention of trying to convince me. That is definitely not the goal, for if it were, the path that's being taken would certainly be recognized as wholly counterproductive. No, the real goal is to set boundaries, to wear out, tire, and demoralize the enemy. In other words, this is a propaganda war, exactly as e.g. Jacques Ellul described it. The very focus on such emotively charged terms as "love" (what we're about) and "hate speech" (what they do) makes this patently obvious. To finalize, my feeling is that the forces I've described are winning, and I actually think they'll prevail in the battle. The propaganda war won't make any friends, but I believe it will succeed in its purpose, which is to wear out and dissipate the forces currently arrayed against it. Final note: this is just an opinion. It's a strong one, yes. But I really love being proven wrong, so I'm really happy for the many highly intelligent and well-informed HNers to tear my argument apart. Have fun :)