3 ms·

What the article is also missing and what will be a major problem for FB: FB will have to give the user the opportunity of a statement _before_ blocking their a

by corty 5y ago

What the article is also missing and what will be a major problem for FB: FB will have to give the user the opportunity of a statement _before_ blocking their account and give reasons for blocking and why the statement was not acceptable. https://www.heise.de/news/BGH-Facebook-muss-geloeschte-Hassrede-wieder-freischalten-6150978.html https://www.heise.de/news/BGH-Facebook-muss-geloeschte-Hassr...

hef19898 5y ago
I don't see a big problem there. Have a bot alerting the user, giving him e.g. three days to respond. Get the response, block the user anyway. Wait for the next law suite.
- corty 5y ago
  Canned responses from a bot and answers without weighing the arguments given will loose them the following lawsuits. And Germany is a looser-pays country, so given a lost lawsuit after each deleted post or blocked account, they'll be out of a lot of money. And Germany's equivalent of ambulance chasers ("Abmahnanwaelte") are certainly cooling the champagne already.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Not sure, the ruling affected two accounts temporarily suspended in 2018. One auch law suite every couple of years, why not? Also, it would be up to the compliant to proof the arguments against suspension were not properly evaluated. I have a hard time a German court would go to ruling on Facebook internal procedures around community rule enforcement. They didn't neither in thay ruling, they just said Facebook needs some kind of process in place, not what kind of process.
    - corty 5y ago
      The above article isn't very elaborate on that, but the heise one[0] cites the judges: 'Es bedürfe "einer umfassenden Würdigung und Abwägung der wechselseitigen Interessen", insbesondere der "kollidierenden Grundrechte", betonen die Richter: "Auf Seiten der Nutzer die Meinungsäußerungsfreiheit, auf Seiten der Beklagten vor allem die Berufsausübungsfreiheit."' roughly: 'One needs "a comprehensive judgement and weighing of mutual interest", especially of the "colliding basic rights", as the judges emphasize: "on the users' side freedom of expression, on the side of the defendant [FB] freedom of trade and profession". This is a high standard that needs quite some text and elaboration to fulfil, not at all doable by form letter. 'Im Sinne des Interessenausgleichs müsste sich Facebook aber verpflichten, den Nutzer "über die Entfernung eines Beitrags zumindest nachträglich und über eine beabsichtigte Sperrung seines Nutzerkontos vorab zu informieren, ihm den Grund dafür mitzuteilen und eine Möglichkeit zur Gegenäußerung einzuräumen, an die sich eine Neubescheidung anschließt".' roughly: 'However, in the way of balancing interests, Facebook has to pledge to "inform [the user] about removal of a post at least after the fact and about planned blocking of an account before the fact, to name the reason thereof and offer an opportunity to issue an opposing statement, which is followed by a subsequent further decision and information.".' So they are relatively explicit in how Facebook must do things and that they cannot just file the opposing statement to the recycle bin. Facebook's lawyer called this "completely impractical" (but of course he would...) because of the hundreds of daily cases. [0] https://www.heise.de/news/BGH-Facebook-muss-geloeschte-Hassrede-wieder-freischalten-6150978.html https://www.heise.de/news/BGH-Facebook-muss-geloeschte-Hassr... Oh, and btw., the court that decided this is the highest regular court in Germany, setting a binding precedent for all other German courts. There are many more cases than just those two, all the others you just don't read about because everyone knows that lower courts' decisions aren't that important and frequently overturned. So even if it was just about 2 posts, this decision is important and will shape all future cases.
      - Vespasian 5y ago
        If Facebook wants to own the public forum they have to manage it as well. Their power comes with responsibilities to keep it lawsful for all participants. That means removing unlawful speech while at the same time allowing lawful speech. It's only logical that conflicts needs to be settled in a similar fashion as they are in other similar situations in the offline world. For western democracies that usually means some sort of due process and unbiased weighing of facts with a decision that adheres to the existing standards in that society. Facebook would like to do everything automatically of course but with great power comes great responsibility. I predict that sooner or later the regular court system will be responsible for those cases and Facebook will be happy to make money by providing the tech platform.
        corty 5y ago
        Regular courts are already responsible. They can and do order illegal content to be removed, accounts blocked and users punished. Some new legislation in Germany requires Facebook to also proactively remove posts from users that have been reported and are "obviously" illegal, even without waiting for a court order. But Facebook goes even beyond that and uses standards that are stricter than current laws, and processes that are simpler, harsher and stricter than the usual court proceedings. The court judgement in the article limited that practice a bit. You may be right in that the legislation described in the second paragraph requiring Facebook to be proactive may be expanded. I do find this tendency unfortunate, because free speech is put in the hands of a private for-profit entity that is by law required to be very quick about its judgements.
  - simion314 5y ago
    Still we need some laws to stop the giants screwing the customers, my experience is with Sony that blocked my account for 2 months without a right to appeal or the exact reason (I have a subscription so I am a paying customer). I know some devs will say that if they told me what was the cause then I could work around that, my anwer is that the point is not to make their lazy life easier, the point devs exists is to create stuff for the customer.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      "I know some devs will say that if they told me what was the cause then I could work around that" > Sir, why am I in jail? > if we told you the law, you could work around it.
    - om3tcw 5y ago
      You're not a customer anymore, consumer.
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > some devs will say that if they told me what was the cause then I could work around that You can publish rules and principles while keeping the precise details of the deliberation confidential.
      - simion314 5y ago
        What if the moderator had a bad day or is lazy? Or the AI is wrong? In Sony's case I have no idea if maybe a screen-capture from a game triggered something, or some AI misinterpreted my bad english as "against the TOS" or maybe some idiot reported me because he lost in a multiplayer game, I will never know.
  - heisenbit 5y ago
    Canned responses won‘t cut it. Still while it is a losers pay country the costs are moderate (limited value assigned to access and therefore limited fees) and are in any case peanuts for FB. Also the industrialized cease-and-desist-letter law companies are unlikely to take these type of lawsuits.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > Still while it is a losers pay country the costs are moderate (limited value assigned to access and therefore limited fees) and are in any case peanuts for FB. Also the industrialized cease-and-desist-letter law companies are unlikely to take these type of lawsuits. That may not be true. Amazon dropped its arbitration clause because of the cost of filing fees after some attorneys mass filed disputes over a few issues (with the Echo, I believe). If these are obviously losing cases for Facebook, they may stand to lose much more.
- notahacker 5y ago
  A day or three is a long time to have to wait before being able to take actual enforcement action on a communications platform and newsfeed (assuming Facebook's response isn't "do nothing and wait for the next lawsuit"... )
- FeepingCreature 5y ago
  This is the sort of thing that makes courts get pissy at you. (When courts get pissy at you, they can start leveraging fines on the level of "percent of gross income".)
- gsich 5y ago
  Why a bot? Normal notification or email would suffice.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  My eyes, reading ahead, tried to read this as "give them three seconds to respond". Perhaps they were reading as far ahead as the rest of your comment.

by corty 5y ago

hef19898 5y ago

I don't see a big problem there. Have a bot alerting the user, giving him e.g. three days to respond. Get the response, block the user anyway. Wait for the next law suite.

corty 5y ago
Canned responses from a bot and answers without weighing the arguments given will loose them the following lawsuits. And Germany is a looser-pays country, so given a lost lawsuit after each deleted post or blocked account, they'll be out of a lot of money. And Germany's equivalent of ambulance chasers ("Abmahnanwaelte") are certainly cooling the champagne already.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Not sure, the ruling affected two accounts temporarily suspended in 2018. One auch law suite every couple of years, why not? Also, it would be up to the compliant to proof the arguments against suspension were not properly evaluated. I have a hard time a German court would go to ruling on Facebook internal procedures around community rule enforcement. They didn't neither in thay ruling, they just said Facebook needs some kind of process in place, not what kind of process.
  - corty 5y ago
    The above article isn't very elaborate on that, but the heise one[0] cites the judges: 'Es bedürfe "einer umfassenden Würdigung und Abwägung der wechselseitigen Interessen", insbesondere der "kollidierenden Grundrechte", betonen die Richter: "Auf Seiten der Nutzer die Meinungsäußerungsfreiheit, auf Seiten der Beklagten vor allem die Berufsausübungsfreiheit."' roughly: 'One needs "a comprehensive judgement and weighing of mutual interest", especially of the "colliding basic rights", as the judges emphasize: "on the users' side freedom of expression, on the side of the defendant [FB] freedom of trade and profession". This is a high standard that needs quite some text and elaboration to fulfil, not at all doable by form letter. 'Im Sinne des Interessenausgleichs müsste sich Facebook aber verpflichten, den Nutzer "über die Entfernung eines Beitrags zumindest nachträglich und über eine beabsichtigte Sperrung seines Nutzerkontos vorab zu informieren, ihm den Grund dafür mitzuteilen und eine Möglichkeit zur Gegenäußerung einzuräumen, an die sich eine Neubescheidung anschließt".' roughly: 'However, in the way of balancing interests, Facebook has to pledge to "inform [the user] about removal of a post at least after the fact and about planned blocking of an account before the fact, to name the reason thereof and offer an opportunity to issue an opposing statement, which is followed by a subsequent further decision and information.".' So they are relatively explicit in how Facebook must do things and that they cannot just file the opposing statement to the recycle bin. Facebook's lawyer called this "completely impractical" (but of course he would...) because of the hundreds of daily cases. [0] https://www.heise.de/news/BGH-Facebook-muss-geloeschte-Hassrede-wieder-freischalten-6150978.html https://www.heise.de/news/BGH-Facebook-muss-geloeschte-Hassr... Oh, and btw., the court that decided this is the highest regular court in Germany, setting a binding precedent for all other German courts. There are many more cases than just those two, all the others you just don't read about because everyone knows that lower courts' decisions aren't that important and frequently overturned. So even if it was just about 2 posts, this decision is important and will shape all future cases.
    - Vespasian 5y ago
      If Facebook wants to own the public forum they have to manage it as well. Their power comes with responsibilities to keep it lawsful for all participants. That means removing unlawful speech while at the same time allowing lawful speech. It's only logical that conflicts needs to be settled in a similar fashion as they are in other similar situations in the offline world. For western democracies that usually means some sort of due process and unbiased weighing of facts with a decision that adheres to the existing standards in that society. Facebook would like to do everything automatically of course but with great power comes great responsibility. I predict that sooner or later the regular court system will be responsible for those cases and Facebook will be happy to make money by providing the tech platform.
      - corty 5y ago
        Regular courts are already responsible. They can and do order illegal content to be removed, accounts blocked and users punished. Some new legislation in Germany requires Facebook to also proactively remove posts from users that have been reported and are "obviously" illegal, even without waiting for a court order. But Facebook goes even beyond that and uses standards that are stricter than current laws, and processes that are simpler, harsher and stricter than the usual court proceedings. The court judgement in the article limited that practice a bit. You may be right in that the legislation described in the second paragraph requiring Facebook to be proactive may be expanded. I do find this tendency unfortunate, because free speech is put in the hands of a private for-profit entity that is by law required to be very quick about its judgements.
- simion314 5y ago
  Still we need some laws to stop the giants screwing the customers, my experience is with Sony that blocked my account for 2 months without a right to appeal or the exact reason (I have a subscription so I am a paying customer). I know some devs will say that if they told me what was the cause then I could work around that, my anwer is that the point is not to make their lazy life easier, the point devs exists is to create stuff for the customer.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "I know some devs will say that if they told me what was the cause then I could work around that" > Sir, why am I in jail? > if we told you the law, you could work around it.
  - om3tcw 5y ago
    You're not a customer anymore, consumer.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > some devs will say that if they told me what was the cause then I could work around that You can publish rules and principles while keeping the precise details of the deliberation confidential.
    - simion314 5y ago
      What if the moderator had a bad day or is lazy? Or the AI is wrong? In Sony's case I have no idea if maybe a screen-capture from a game triggered something, or some AI misinterpreted my bad english as "against the TOS" or maybe some idiot reported me because he lost in a multiplayer game, I will never know.
- heisenbit 5y ago
  Canned responses won‘t cut it. Still while it is a losers pay country the costs are moderate (limited value assigned to access and therefore limited fees) and are in any case peanuts for FB. Also the industrialized cease-and-desist-letter law companies are unlikely to take these type of lawsuits.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Still while it is a losers pay country the costs are moderate (limited value assigned to access and therefore limited fees) and are in any case peanuts for FB. Also the industrialized cease-and-desist-letter law companies are unlikely to take these type of lawsuits. That may not be true. Amazon dropped its arbitration clause because of the cost of filing fees after some attorneys mass filed disputes over a few issues (with the Echo, I believe). If these are obviously losing cases for Facebook, they may stand to lose much more.
notahacker 5y ago
A day or three is a long time to have to wait before being able to take actual enforcement action on a communications platform and newsfeed (assuming Facebook's response isn't "do nothing and wait for the next lawsuit"... )
FeepingCreature 5y ago
This is the sort of thing that makes courts get pissy at you. (When courts get pissy at you, they can start leveraging fines on the level of "percent of gross income".)
gsich 5y ago
Why a bot? Normal notification or email would suffice.
a9h74j 5y ago
My eyes, reading ahead, tried to read this as "give them three seconds to respond". Perhaps they were reading as far ahead as the rest of your comment.