7 ms·

Multiple heads of states across the world are sharing the same message, see for example Germany and France : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-11

Multiple heads of states across the world are sharing the same message, see for example Germany and France : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-11/merkel-sees-closing-trump-s-social-media-accounts-problematic https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-11/merkel-se... > Rights like the freedom of speech “can be interfered with, but by law and within the framework defined by the legislature -- not according to a corporate decision."

tpush 6y ago
Small inaccuracy by Bloomberg: Merkel was speaking of freedom of opinion(Meinungsfreiheit) and not freedom of speech(Redefreiheit), the latter doesn’t exist as such in Germany.
- samoa42 6y ago
  > freedom of speech(Redefreiheit), the latter doesn’t exist as such in Germany. yes it does! article 5 of the constitution http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_5.html http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_5.html
  - tpush 6y ago
    Well, that’s freedom of expression. Not quite the same, but I will concede your point :)
bzb6 6y ago
It takes balls to say that as the prime minister of Germany, probably the western country that limits speech the most.
- Majestic121 6y ago
  They are disturbed by the fact that this speech limitation is decided single-handedly by the management of private companies, not by the speech limitation in itself.
  - psychoslave 6y ago
    These private companies didn’t come out of nowhere. They were able to exist because people were educated in a certain fashion that allowed large central attention grabbers to have a large impact on people. And this came largely as a consequence of political decisions.
- throwaway54095 6y ago
  The procedure should be: Parlaments make law, public/private agents file a complaint, judges decide if that applies, then the legal system shuts down content. NEVER EVER private parties, nor goverments, should be allowed to silence the free speech on their own criteria. As far as I know, that's how things work in Germany.
  - BuildTheRobots 6y ago
    What are platforms supposed to do when the speech is illegal, or inciting violence or just against their terms of service or code of conduct? You seem to be saying no online platform can have any sort of moderation of posted messages unless it's backed up by a court order, which seems crazy.
    - robin21 6y ago
      > illegal, incites violence Who decides what these terms mean? At present its a small group of left-leaning corporate executives. At the moment it just seems like people doing their own interpretation of what someone's inner motives are, because I really can't see a clear cut example of incitement of violence from any of this. This to me is a perfect example of the term "thought police" - we are guessing what your thinking. E.g. Steve Bannon putting "heads on pikes" is clearly a common figure of speech and simply an emotive expression of anger. I'm sure you can find many politicians expressing similar things..."let's punch nazis" etc. Sounds like it can't cause harm...but what if you are called a Nazi and you are not? Every single atrocity in history comes from a group of people being portrayed as something they are not and then dehumanized because of it. "Trump supporters" are incredibly dehumanized at present. They are nazis, racists, etc. It's okay to mistreat them because they are really bad people. 70mm people voted for Trump, and would probably disagree with the interpretations of the free speech violations. Do we actually believe a democratic process would result in a decision to permanently censor? No way. All you have to do is imagine the reverse situation by swapping the two sides and imagining how you would feel. Would you ever be okay having your speech taken away from you from a side that you disagree with? You might say "but I would never incite hatred", but what if they say you do?
    - 6y ago
dmode 6y ago
Germany has some of harshest anti free speech law, where you can go to prison for denying Holocaust
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  Germany also limits free speech under other provisions such as incitement and slander under criminal law, and subsequent compensation for libel under civil law. For all I know, the US also has strong legislation against complicit behavior for harboring acts of terrorism and/or treachery.
- the_french 6y ago
  a law which was democratically approved, with public oversight, a mechanism for undoing it and not at the whim of private shareholders.
  - syshum 6y ago
    Personally I think such massive changes in society should not be down to either private company tyranny nor tyranny of the majority in a "democratically approved" why, i.e 50.000009% "ruling" over 49.999991% of the people. In the US to undue the 1st amendment it would take not only a super majority of both houses congress, but then it would take 3/4 of all state legislatures to ratify the change. This is far more stringent of a requirement than is simply majority. Republican forms of government, ones with lots distributed power, are far far far better than democracies
    - shripadk 6y ago
      Exactly right. There are already properly defined rules and regulations in the Constitution of every country. These rules and regulations have been implemented by elected representatives of the people of those countries. If there is anything lacking it should be done through legislation legally. Not through private companies deciding on their own whims and fancies. Which is why GDPR exists isn't it? Every country can frame it's own rules. Private companies must abide by those rules. Neither should they be allowed to create rules for their platforms beyond what is defined in the Constitution of the countries they operate in. Restricting speech by private companies must be made illegal. If someone says or does something wrong on social media there is recourse for it already defined by the law. Any content removal should be in the hands of the users of the platform (similar to GDPR) or the elected Government. Private companies must only be allowed to remove content that has been explicitly defined as illegal in the constitution of the particular country. For everything else they can enjoy immunity from being liable for whatever is posted on their platform. Liability is always with the end user of their services. That way, there won't be any extra burden on these private companies to moderate content.
mech422 6y ago
Its a bit ironic, China didn't want to be beholden to anyone and buggered off and built their own... meanwhile, the rest of the world whines - but doesn't seem to be interested in building anything similar for national infrastructure. If you consider social media to so critical, shouldn't you have internal infrastructure? These services are hardly rocket science now - we have over a decade experience building and scaling them. If you're really so concerned about it, it would seem prudent to build something under public perview? ps - this stuff really annoys me, as I generally don't 'like' megacorps, and really dislike feeling I'm 'supporting' them :-/
- jeromenerf 6y ago
  > Its a bit ironic, China didn't want to be beholden to anyone and buggered off and built their own... meanwhile, the rest of the world whines - but doesn't seem to be interested in building anything similar for national infrastructure. Maybe the alphabets, the culture, the political regime and the available funds make it possibly successful for China. Most of the time, the “there can be only one” rule seems to apply. We may live to see the day where the giant US proprietary networks morph into some kind of federated “national” networks, with different set of legal rules. Somehow reminiscent of email, dns, xmpp... There doesn’t seem to be an easy fix or alternatives to Twitter or Facebook.
  - mech422 6y ago
    >>Most of the time, the “there can be only one” rule seems to apply. I don't think thats an issue given we have FB, Twitter, Insta, Snapchat, Reddit, etc etc. I think even myspace is still around.. >>giant US proprietary networks morph into some kind of federated “national” networks, with different set of legal rules. I just don't think US _companies_ should morph into 'national' anything.. If you feel freedom of opinion/speech is so important, and you're counting on private companies in foreign countries to provide it - you've failed your citizens. Germany has its own armed forces, because they consider that key to the peace and sovereignty of their nation. Wouldn't a similar approach to digital infrastructure be prudent?
    - 6y ago
babesh 6y ago
It’s going to be great as Facebook and Twitter try to silence heads of state of other countries.

tpush 6y ago

Small inaccuracy by Bloomberg: Merkel was speaking of freedom of opinion(Meinungsfreiheit) and not freedom of speech(Redefreiheit), the latter doesn’t exist as such in Germany.

samoa42 6y ago
> freedom of speech(Redefreiheit), the latter doesn’t exist as such in Germany. yes it does! article 5 of the constitution http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_5.html http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_5.html
- tpush 6y ago
  Well, that’s freedom of expression. Not quite the same, but I will concede your point :)

bzb6 6y ago

It takes balls to say that as the prime minister of Germany, probably the western country that limits speech the most.

Majestic121 6y ago
They are disturbed by the fact that this speech limitation is decided single-handedly by the management of private companies, not by the speech limitation in itself.
- psychoslave 6y ago
  These private companies didn’t come out of nowhere. They were able to exist because people were educated in a certain fashion that allowed large central attention grabbers to have a large impact on people. And this came largely as a consequence of political decisions.
throwaway54095 6y ago
The procedure should be: Parlaments make law, public/private agents file a complaint, judges decide if that applies, then the legal system shuts down content. NEVER EVER private parties, nor goverments, should be allowed to silence the free speech on their own criteria. As far as I know, that's how things work in Germany.
- BuildTheRobots 6y ago
  What are platforms supposed to do when the speech is illegal, or inciting violence or just against their terms of service or code of conduct? You seem to be saying no online platform can have any sort of moderation of posted messages unless it's backed up by a court order, which seems crazy.
  - robin21 6y ago
    > illegal, incites violence Who decides what these terms mean? At present its a small group of left-leaning corporate executives. At the moment it just seems like people doing their own interpretation of what someone's inner motives are, because I really can't see a clear cut example of incitement of violence from any of this. This to me is a perfect example of the term "thought police" - we are guessing what your thinking. E.g. Steve Bannon putting "heads on pikes" is clearly a common figure of speech and simply an emotive expression of anger. I'm sure you can find many politicians expressing similar things..."let's punch nazis" etc. Sounds like it can't cause harm...but what if you are called a Nazi and you are not? Every single atrocity in history comes from a group of people being portrayed as something they are not and then dehumanized because of it. "Trump supporters" are incredibly dehumanized at present. They are nazis, racists, etc. It's okay to mistreat them because they are really bad people. 70mm people voted for Trump, and would probably disagree with the interpretations of the free speech violations. Do we actually believe a democratic process would result in a decision to permanently censor? No way. All you have to do is imagine the reverse situation by swapping the two sides and imagining how you would feel. Would you ever be okay having your speech taken away from you from a side that you disagree with? You might say "but I would never incite hatred", but what if they say you do?
  - 6y ago

dmode 6y ago

Germany has some of harshest anti free speech law, where you can go to prison for denying Holocaust

tannhaeuser 6y ago
Germany also limits free speech under other provisions such as incitement and slander under criminal law, and subsequent compensation for libel under civil law. For all I know, the US also has strong legislation against complicit behavior for harboring acts of terrorism and/or treachery.
the_french 6y ago
a law which was democratically approved, with public oversight, a mechanism for undoing it and not at the whim of private shareholders.
- syshum 6y ago
  Personally I think such massive changes in society should not be down to either private company tyranny nor tyranny of the majority in a "democratically approved" why, i.e 50.000009% "ruling" over 49.999991% of the people. In the US to undue the 1st amendment it would take not only a super majority of both houses congress, but then it would take 3/4 of all state legislatures to ratify the change. This is far more stringent of a requirement than is simply majority. Republican forms of government, ones with lots distributed power, are far far far better than democracies
  - shripadk 6y ago
    Exactly right. There are already properly defined rules and regulations in the Constitution of every country. These rules and regulations have been implemented by elected representatives of the people of those countries. If there is anything lacking it should be done through legislation legally. Not through private companies deciding on their own whims and fancies. Which is why GDPR exists isn't it? Every country can frame it's own rules. Private companies must abide by those rules. Neither should they be allowed to create rules for their platforms beyond what is defined in the Constitution of the countries they operate in. Restricting speech by private companies must be made illegal. If someone says or does something wrong on social media there is recourse for it already defined by the law. Any content removal should be in the hands of the users of the platform (similar to GDPR) or the elected Government. Private companies must only be allowed to remove content that has been explicitly defined as illegal in the constitution of the particular country. For everything else they can enjoy immunity from being liable for whatever is posted on their platform. Liability is always with the end user of their services. That way, there won't be any extra burden on these private companies to moderate content.

mech422 6y ago

Its a bit ironic, China didn't want to be beholden to anyone and buggered off and built their own... meanwhile, the rest of the world whines - but doesn't seem to be interested in building anything similar for national infrastructure. If you consider social media to so critical, shouldn't you have internal infrastructure? These services are hardly rocket science now - we have over a decade experience building and scaling them. If you're really so concerned about it, it would seem prudent to build something under public perview? ps - this stuff really annoys me, as I generally don't 'like' megacorps, and really dislike feeling I'm 'supporting' them :-/

jeromenerf 6y ago
> Its a bit ironic, China didn't want to be beholden to anyone and buggered off and built their own... meanwhile, the rest of the world whines - but doesn't seem to be interested in building anything similar for national infrastructure. Maybe the alphabets, the culture, the political regime and the available funds make it possibly successful for China. Most of the time, the “there can be only one” rule seems to apply. We may live to see the day where the giant US proprietary networks morph into some kind of federated “national” networks, with different set of legal rules. Somehow reminiscent of email, dns, xmpp... There doesn’t seem to be an easy fix or alternatives to Twitter or Facebook.
- mech422 6y ago
  >>Most of the time, the “there can be only one” rule seems to apply. I don't think thats an issue given we have FB, Twitter, Insta, Snapchat, Reddit, etc etc. I think even myspace is still around.. >>giant US proprietary networks morph into some kind of federated “national” networks, with different set of legal rules. I just don't think US _companies_ should morph into 'national' anything.. If you feel freedom of opinion/speech is so important, and you're counting on private companies in foreign countries to provide it - you've failed your citizens. Germany has its own armed forces, because they consider that key to the peace and sovereignty of their nation. Wouldn't a similar approach to digital infrastructure be prudent?
  - 6y ago

babesh 6y ago

It’s going to be great as Facebook and Twitter try to silence heads of state of other countries.