5 ms·

What Can Prewar Germany Teach Us About Social-Media Regulation?

SiempreViernes 7y ago
Clickbait title: the only lesson I can see presented here is that if you build infrastructure and a dictatorship takes over, you save them some effort. There isn't even an account of how the nazis used the system in a new way, and certainly not even a hint of a case that unregulated radio would have weakened the nazis.
- repolfx 7y ago
  The case for free speech preventing nasty dictators is an empirical one - America has the strictest free speech laws and has never been taken over by a dictatorship, Germany and other places had very weak free speech laws and was taken over repeatedly. Also, dictators are always very keen on censorship. To what extent it really helps them is a matter of debate; probably it depends a lot on how effective the censorship is for any given topic.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - shaki-dora 7y ago
    It's obviously statistical malpractice to draw conclusions from one or two datapoints. But anyway: the UK and France have arguably more restrictive free speech laws than Germany, yet they have far longer democratic histories than the US. It's also somewhat misleading to present the US as some sort of haven of free speech. Just look at the widespread "de-platforming" of anyone even remotely left-wing during the "red scare"/McCarty era. Or the FBI and other agencies' efforts to undermine both the Civil Rights movement as well as anti-war effort in the 1970s.
    - alephnerd 7y ago
      Your statement that the UK and France had a longer democratic history is patently false. France was an absolute monarchy until the French Revolution in 1789 (which was a major splitting point between the Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton factions of the early United States), and the UK had a very limited form of franchise compared to the US until the Reform Act was passed in 1832, and even then it was still lacking due to the undue power of unelected, monarchy chosen House of Lords (though the US Senate as well didn’t have elections, but Senators were directly chosen by democratically elected governors)
    - repolfx 7y ago
      The UK has not had more restrictive free speech laws than Germany, what are you thinking of exactly? Certainly for most of the 20th century the UK was a bastion of free speech compared to Germany during WW1, then pre-war Germany in which political censorship was rife, then Germany during WW2 in which it was total, and then post-WW2 in which half of Germany was still controlled by a socialist dictatorship and had very little freedom of speech and the other half did still have restrictions on speech related to Nazi-ism. What has the UK got compared to that? Yeah, in recent years it's gone down the same road as most of Europe with vaguely defined "hate speech" laws. But there's little or no political censorship in the UK, even bias at the BBC attracts a lot of attention and that's not exactly censorship.
  - imgabe 7y ago
    Ah, one of my favorite Simpsons moments. Homer: Not a bear in sight. The bear patrol must be working like a charm. Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad. Homer: Thank you, honey. Lisa: No, I mean by that logic, I could say that this rock keeps tigers away. Homer: How does it work? Lisa: It doesn't! It's just a stupid rock! Homer: ahuh... Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around here, do you? Homer: ... Lisa, I would like to buy your rock.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    > Germany and other places had very weak free speech laws and was taken over repeatedly. I'm counting 1 takeover, in 1933. The 1871 Reich was before the revolution, the GDR was due to the Soviet occupation. The Parliamentary Council, who wrote the West German constitution, clearly did not think the Weimar Republic failed because of too much free speech. They made our free speech "very weak" because a democracy should not help its enemies destroy it. Which is what the Weimar Republic did.
- HillaryBriss 7y ago
  It seems like the answer to the article's headline should be something like: "Not all that much because 1930's Germany was very, very different from the US today." We would probably learn more by simply comparing these upcoming regulations to real US regulations on the radio, television and cable industries over the last 75 years.
repolfx 7y ago
A good essay. Something it didn't seem to mention (or maybe it danced around it) is that one reason Hitler flew around in planes so much was he was completely banned from the airwaves by state censorship. Obviously that didn't stop his rise, which should (but won't) give pause for thought to those supporting deplatforming, hate speech laws and other modernised forms of censorship. I suspect the reason such censorship isn't effective is that by blocking a viewpoint from being heard you are implicitly agreeing that it must be correct. The logic is that if people heard this argument they would start to agree with it i.e. because it's right. That's why we need to work so hard to stop it being heard at all. So to anyone on the fence who doesn't have a clear opinion yet, the censorship sends a strong message that the victims of it are winning the argument, without giving anyone the chance to truly make their own judgement about that argument.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  > How far can the media protect or undermin edemocratic institutions in unconsolidated democracies, and how persuasive can they be in ensuring public support for dictator’s policies? We study this question in the context of Germany between 1929 and 1939. Using geographical and temporal variation in radio availability, we show that radio had a significant negative effect on the Nazi electoral support between 1929 and 1932, when political news were slanted against Nazi party. This effect was reversed in just 5 weeks following Hitler’s appointment as chancellor and the transfer of control of the radio to the Nazis. Pro-Nazi radio propaganda caused higher vote for the Nazis in March 1933 election. After full consolidation of power, radio propaganda helped the Nazis to enroll new party members and encouraged denunciations of Jews and other open expressions of anti-Semitism. -- Radio and the Rise of the Nazis in Prewar Germany, Adena et al.
  - repolfx 7y ago
    I've encountered a paper before that argued the opposite, that Hitler's rallies didn't appear to actually have much impact on voter preferences, but now I can't find it. Too bad. Firstly, where did you get that abstract? It appears to be selectively quoted and also phrased much more strongly than the copy of the paper I found. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you got it from a different source to the paper itself: https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=612085086071106084126025107007023078006040020061071033076093083097072088066069082109101003043040006010034084025002117079065094061087094034004090103067083004123003030012051097123066028072092024012027124024103092111073112073002126064123084014094065024&EXT=pdf https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=6120850860711060... The final two sentences which you missed out are rather important in any discussion of the effectiveness of propaganda: "The effect of anti-Semitic propaganda varied depending on the listeners’ predispositions toward the message. Nazi radio was most effective in places where anti-Semitism was historically high and had a negative effect in places with historically low anti-Semitism." Later the paper authors draw the obvious conclusion: "This result highlights potential pitfalls of propaganda: it can backfire, if listeners are unlikely to believe its message." It's very unfortunate that this part of the abstract went missing - one might say it was censored to strengthen a political message ;) I also don't think this sort of pseudo-scientific historical analysis is much use overall, to be honest. No criticism for raising it though, as Adena et al are of course welcome to contribute their views to the debate. But consider the replication and statistical failures in fields like psychology and biology, where experimentation is possible. Now consider that this paper in the field of history, where experimentation is not possible, makes claims like this: "In the absence of radio during the campaign for the September 1930 election, the Nazis would have got additional 4.1 percentage points, i.e., 22.3% instead of 18.2% of the total vote." Two problems with this. 1) The version of abstract you quoted claims "significant negative effect", but the paper itself says the opposite. It says the modelled effects on the outcome were "modest", "not big" and "such a small difference". 1) They specify precise numbers but can't possibly know this: it's wild conjecture made to look scientific by the use of extremely high precision. Modern opinion polling in contemporary elections routinely yields numbers far off the final result - we can't even accurately measure or model things happening right now, but here they're making claims to 3 significant figures about a parallel universe that never happened, on the results of an election that took place nearly a century ago. It makes intuitive sense that campaigning and speeches have some sort of impact on voters, if only to inform them of what politicians believe. But it's not clear that trying to censor such speeches works in an environment with many other ways for people to find out what candidates stand for, like word of mouth.
tomohawk 7y ago
History shows again and again that regulating speech just doesn't work, and has many negative consequences. The best thing is to leave people be to talk and interact. People are not machines that can be controlled so easily. If they cannot talk in an open way, they'll conspire in a hidden way, and possibly even resort to violence as a remedy to the oppression. They'll use the oppression to justify violence, and to gain sympathy with their cause.
anoncake 7y ago
> Goebbels quickly exercised power over the medium, because the state already controlled its infrastructure and content. Unlikely. The Nazis exercised power over everything, including newspapers, which previously were not state-controlled. Radio being privately controlled wouldn't have stopped them. If you want to read more, this was part of the process called "Gleichschaltung". The article apparently wants to use the Weimar Republic as an argument against restricting free speech. Which is interesting because the prevailing view here in Germany is that it failed because of too much free speech. That's why the Parliamentary Council, which drafted the West German constitution, put into place certain restrictions. That's part of the concept of "militant democracy" which the article mentions, but plays down a bit. > Initially, Bredow allowed private companies to broadcast Private companies were not allowed to broadcast in post-war West Germany until the eighties. We had and still have public broadcasters (similar to the BBC) for that. Media law is a state matter to ensure a federal government hostile to freedom and democracy cannot take control of them. The private broadcasters hardly contribute to democracy. > “freedom of speech has boundaries.” That isn't quite what he said. He said that freedom of opinion has boundaries. Which they do, but the difference is still important. Forbidding people from making factually incorrect claims does not restrict their freedom of opinion because lies aren't opinions to begin with. As the Federal Constitutional Court put it: "To knowingly spread incorrect averments that have been proven false cannot contribute to the formation of public opinion and is not protected by freedom of opinion by itself."

Clickbait title: the only lesson I can see presented here is that if you build infrastructure and a dictatorship takes over, you save them some effort. There isn't even an account of how the nazis used the system in a new way, and certainly not even a hint of a case that unregulated radio would have weakened the nazis.

repolfx 7y ago
The case for free speech preventing nasty dictators is an empirical one - America has the strictest free speech laws and has never been taken over by a dictatorship, Germany and other places had very weak free speech laws and was taken over repeatedly. Also, dictators are always very keen on censorship. To what extent it really helps them is a matter of debate; probably it depends a lot on how effective the censorship is for any given topic.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- shaki-dora 7y ago
  It's obviously statistical malpractice to draw conclusions from one or two datapoints. But anyway: the UK and France have arguably more restrictive free speech laws than Germany, yet they have far longer democratic histories than the US. It's also somewhat misleading to present the US as some sort of haven of free speech. Just look at the widespread "de-platforming" of anyone even remotely left-wing during the "red scare"/McCarty era. Or the FBI and other agencies' efforts to undermine both the Civil Rights movement as well as anti-war effort in the 1970s.
  - alephnerd 7y ago
    Your statement that the UK and France had a longer democratic history is patently false. France was an absolute monarchy until the French Revolution in 1789 (which was a major splitting point between the Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton factions of the early United States), and the UK had a very limited form of franchise compared to the US until the Reform Act was passed in 1832, and even then it was still lacking due to the undue power of unelected, monarchy chosen House of Lords (though the US Senate as well didn’t have elections, but Senators were directly chosen by democratically elected governors)
  - repolfx 7y ago
    The UK has not had more restrictive free speech laws than Germany, what are you thinking of exactly? Certainly for most of the 20th century the UK was a bastion of free speech compared to Germany during WW1, then pre-war Germany in which political censorship was rife, then Germany during WW2 in which it was total, and then post-WW2 in which half of Germany was still controlled by a socialist dictatorship and had very little freedom of speech and the other half did still have restrictions on speech related to Nazi-ism. What has the UK got compared to that? Yeah, in recent years it's gone down the same road as most of Europe with vaguely defined "hate speech" laws. But there's little or no political censorship in the UK, even bias at the BBC attracts a lot of attention and that's not exactly censorship.
- imgabe 7y ago
  Ah, one of my favorite Simpsons moments. Homer: Not a bear in sight. The bear patrol must be working like a charm. Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad. Homer: Thank you, honey. Lisa: No, I mean by that logic, I could say that this rock keeps tigers away. Homer: How does it work? Lisa: It doesn't! It's just a stupid rock! Homer: ahuh... Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around here, do you? Homer: ... Lisa, I would like to buy your rock.
- anoncake 7y ago
  > Germany and other places had very weak free speech laws and was taken over repeatedly. I'm counting 1 takeover, in 1933. The 1871 Reich was before the revolution, the GDR was due to the Soviet occupation. The Parliamentary Council, who wrote the West German constitution, clearly did not think the Weimar Republic failed because of too much free speech. They made our free speech "very weak" because a democracy should not help its enemies destroy it. Which is what the Weimar Republic did.
HillaryBriss 7y ago
It seems like the answer to the article's headline should be something like: "Not all that much because 1930's Germany was very, very different from the US today." We would probably learn more by simply comparing these upcoming regulations to real US regulations on the radio, television and cable industries over the last 75 years.

repolfx 7y ago

A good essay. Something it didn't seem to mention (or maybe it danced around it) is that one reason Hitler flew around in planes so much was he was completely banned from the airwaves by state censorship. Obviously that didn't stop his rise, which should (but won't) give pause for thought to those supporting deplatforming, hate speech laws and other modernised forms of censorship. I suspect the reason such censorship isn't effective is that by blocking a viewpoint from being heard you are implicitly agreeing that it must be correct. The logic is that if people heard this argument they would start to agree with it i.e. because it's right. That's why we need to work so hard to stop it being heard at all. So to anyone on the fence who doesn't have a clear opinion yet, the censorship sends a strong message that the victims of it are winning the argument, without giving anyone the chance to truly make their own judgement about that argument.

SiempreViernes 7y ago
> How far can the media protect or undermin edemocratic institutions in unconsolidated democracies, and how persuasive can they be in ensuring public support for dictator’s policies? We study this question in the context of Germany between 1929 and 1939. Using geographical and temporal variation in radio availability, we show that radio had a significant negative effect on the Nazi electoral support between 1929 and 1932, when political news were slanted against Nazi party. This effect was reversed in just 5 weeks following Hitler’s appointment as chancellor and the transfer of control of the radio to the Nazis. Pro-Nazi radio propaganda caused higher vote for the Nazis in March 1933 election. After full consolidation of power, radio propaganda helped the Nazis to enroll new party members and encouraged denunciations of Jews and other open expressions of anti-Semitism. -- Radio and the Rise of the Nazis in Prewar Germany, Adena et al.
- repolfx 7y ago
  I've encountered a paper before that argued the opposite, that Hitler's rallies didn't appear to actually have much impact on voter preferences, but now I can't find it. Too bad. Firstly, where did you get that abstract? It appears to be selectively quoted and also phrased much more strongly than the copy of the paper I found. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you got it from a different source to the paper itself: https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=612085086071106084126025107007023078006040020061071033076093083097072088066069082109101003043040006010034084025002117079065094061087094034004090103067083004123003030012051097123066028072092024012027124024103092111073112073002126064123084014094065024&EXT=pdf https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=6120850860711060... The final two sentences which you missed out are rather important in any discussion of the effectiveness of propaganda: "The effect of anti-Semitic propaganda varied depending on the listeners’ predispositions toward the message. Nazi radio was most effective in places where anti-Semitism was historically high and had a negative effect in places with historically low anti-Semitism." Later the paper authors draw the obvious conclusion: "This result highlights potential pitfalls of propaganda: it can backfire, if listeners are unlikely to believe its message." It's very unfortunate that this part of the abstract went missing - one might say it was censored to strengthen a political message ;) I also don't think this sort of pseudo-scientific historical analysis is much use overall, to be honest. No criticism for raising it though, as Adena et al are of course welcome to contribute their views to the debate. But consider the replication and statistical failures in fields like psychology and biology, where experimentation is possible. Now consider that this paper in the field of history, where experimentation is not possible, makes claims like this: "In the absence of radio during the campaign for the September 1930 election, the Nazis would have got additional 4.1 percentage points, i.e., 22.3% instead of 18.2% of the total vote." Two problems with this. 1) The version of abstract you quoted claims "significant negative effect", but the paper itself says the opposite. It says the modelled effects on the outcome were "modest", "not big" and "such a small difference". 1) They specify precise numbers but can't possibly know this: it's wild conjecture made to look scientific by the use of extremely high precision. Modern opinion polling in contemporary elections routinely yields numbers far off the final result - we can't even accurately measure or model things happening right now, but here they're making claims to 3 significant figures about a parallel universe that never happened, on the results of an election that took place nearly a century ago. It makes intuitive sense that campaigning and speeches have some sort of impact on voters, if only to inform them of what politicians believe. But it's not clear that trying to censor such speeches works in an environment with many other ways for people to find out what candidates stand for, like word of mouth.

tomohawk 7y ago

History shows again and again that regulating speech just doesn't work, and has many negative consequences. The best thing is to leave people be to talk and interact. People are not machines that can be controlled so easily. If they cannot talk in an open way, they'll conspire in a hidden way, and possibly even resort to violence as a remedy to the oppression. They'll use the oppression to justify violence, and to gain sympathy with their cause.

anoncake 7y ago

> Goebbels quickly exercised power over the medium, because the state already controlled its infrastructure and content. Unlikely. The Nazis exercised power over everything, including newspapers, which previously were not state-controlled. Radio being privately controlled wouldn't have stopped them. If you want to read more, this was part of the process called "Gleichschaltung". The article apparently wants to use the Weimar Republic as an argument against restricting free speech. Which is interesting because the prevailing view here in Germany is that it failed because of too much free speech. That's why the Parliamentary Council, which drafted the West German constitution, put into place certain restrictions. That's part of the concept of "militant democracy" which the article mentions, but plays down a bit. > Initially, Bredow allowed private companies to broadcast Private companies were not allowed to broadcast in post-war West Germany until the eighties. We had and still have public broadcasters (similar to the BBC) for that. Media law is a state matter to ensure a federal government hostile to freedom and democracy cannot take control of them. The private broadcasters hardly contribute to democracy. > “freedom of speech has boundaries.” That isn't quite what he said. He said that freedom of opinion has boundaries. Which they do, but the difference is still important. Forbidding people from making factually incorrect claims does not restrict their freedom of opinion because lies aren't opinions to begin with. As the Federal Constitutional Court put it: "To knowingly spread incorrect averments that have been proven false cannot contribute to the formation of public opinion and is not protected by freedom of opinion by itself."