8 ms·

Where Online Hate Speech Can Bring the Police to Your Door

69 points by ColinWright 4y ago

ghiluops 4y ago
Speech like credible threats to life, plotting violent assaults, and so on, should invite investigation. But this sort of thing? No. Where's the harm? Or even the potential harm? The other thing is, do we really want a sacred caste of people who can't be criticized? This gets uncomfortably close to the incredibly oppressive lèse-majesté laws that some jurisdictions have.
- theprincess 4y ago
  > Where's the harm? The harm is in stochastic terrorism. You can make up lies that are intended to spur people who feel they have nothing to lose into action. https://csl.mpg.de/en/projects/philosophical-and-public-security-law-implications-of-stochastic-terrorism#:~:text=As%20described%20by%20leading%20scholars,Hamm%20and%20Spaaij%2C%202017 https://csl.mpg.de/en/projects/philosophical-and-public-secu...). It's similar to the concept of blood libel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel For example, imagine that online discourse on some fringe website that has a few hundred thousand members devolves into a theory that some house in your neighborhood is harboring a secret dungeon full of children underneath it. There is no direct threat to you per se, but a few hundred thousand people think that a house - maybe your house - has a basement full of unspeakable horrors. As the rumor spreads and grows the chances of your house being broken into by one of the believers goes up exponentially. Suddenly nobody in your neighborhood is safe anymore as random weirdos keep scoping out your houses and following you to and from the grocery to see if you're the one with the dungeon beneath your house. Eventually one of these weirdos pulls a gun on your neighbor and demands to see his basement and while there was no dungeon the firearm accidentally went off and killed your neighbor. Your neighbor's death would trace directly back to the spread of this rumor.
  - jimbob45 4y ago
    stochastic terrorism Is there a more intellectually dishonest idea? That someone somewhere could misconstrue your words as a call to violence by virtue of the large number of people in the world? And what better way to enforce censorship than to selectively enforce this idea on the topics most important to the party in power?
    - chowells 4y ago
      So... you think it's a total coincidence that after lots of people start talking about specific acts of violence, people start doing them? There's no connection at all?
    - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
      > dishonest idea stochastic terrorism appears to be the academic way of saying “inciting mob violence” seems pretty straightfoward and honest, to me
      - fwn 4y ago
        > stochastic terrorism appears to be the academic way of saying “inciting mob violence” Do you have an example where you think those two concepts could be used interchangeably in academia? I weren't able to find one and I don't think those terms describe similar ideas. Mob dynamics might be about scale in some form, but they are usually not about what we would commonly refer to as terrorism.
        9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
        The OP article refers to the following research: “As described by leading scholars, stochastic terrorism involves ‘the use of mass media to provoke random acts of ideologically motivated violence that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable’ (Hamm and Spaaij, 2017)” maybe inciting “distributed mob violence” would be a better way to translate it for laymen.
      - _bfhp 4y ago
- RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
  > The other thing is, do we really want a sacred caste of people who can't be criticized? This gets uncomfortably close to the incredibly oppressive lèse-majesté laws that some jurisdictions have. That's effectively what a supreme court justice said should be the case last week. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/supreme-court-roberts-kagan-legitimacy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/supreme-c...
  - hexis 4y ago
    "“All of our opinions are open to criticism,” Roberts said in remarks to judges and lawyers. “In fact, our members do a great job of criticizing some opinions from time to time. But simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for criticizing the legitimacy of the court.”" Were you thinking of a different quote from your source? This quote, which seemed closest to your intent, does not at all say what you were suggesting.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I don't think that's what it being said there. Conservatives on the Supreme Court are being whiny babies about the criticism that their obviously biased rulings are getting (and if we ever get an unbiased court, these rulings will all be thrown out ASAP), but none are actually suggesting that that criticism should be illegal as far as I've seen.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
  > The other thing is, do we really want a sacred caste of people who can't be criticized? Since 1948, all people are due the basic human right of dignity. Sacred caste or not. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Hum...
  - ghiluops 4y ago
    The declaration also enshrines the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
    - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
      As well as the following: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
      - ghiluops 4y ago
        That article does not preclude expressing criticism of others, or opinions about their actions.
        9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
        It does preclude incitement of discrimination: “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.“ And otherwise: “In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.”
fedupssss 4y ago
As another comment suggested, the sticking part of the whole topic is the blatantly unequal treatment and enforcement around these types of rules. It’s appalling that one can justify these rules as needed because of the harmfulness of the content while simultaneously allowing their chosen target to be fair game.
theprincess 4y ago
It seems like Germany's approach here or something like it, maybe more streamlined and less heavy handed, is the only way forward in the long run. It's too easy to spread inflammatory lies right now and it's already spurring people into violence. How long before angry mobs are burning down Children's hospitals and killing doctors under the false idea that four year olds are being given sex change operations for instance? It's too much strain on society to live with this constant low level threat of violence from made up information. There's literally an infinite space of inflammatory but believable lies for bad actors to pick from and only a very small space of equally viral true information. The asymmetry is too much in favor of the bad so something has to tip the scales back toward sanity. It may seem trivial to police what someone's racist uncle says on Facebook but it's not one racist uncle, it's 10 million racist uncles who own firearms (in the US at least). Eventually some of them will decide they have nothing to lose and go on the hunt.
- nxm 4y ago
  Who deems what a lie is? That vaccines do not stop the spread of Covid? That corona originated in a lab? Should people have been prosecuted for saying that? Are there two genders? Should I get arrested if I say yes? Should I get arrested if I say no? Horrible approach that Germany is taking against a fundamental right to free speech. Gestapo like
  - theprincess 4y ago
    It's pretty simple really. Saying you don't like transgender people or some specific race makes you a jerk but shouldn't be illegal. It's just an opinion. Saying that transgender people are sacrificing children to Lucifer and someone should put a stop to it is clearly intended to move someone who feels they have nothing to lose to murder some random transgender people to "save the children from Lucifer." That should be investigated because it can and will result in real world harm.
    - jollybean 4y ago
      So if someone says 'transgenders are sacrificing children' should be illegal, does that mean 'police are arbitrarily killing unarmed blacks' - should that be illegal? Because I think the material reality could be demonstrated that the later is false as well. I think your argument demonstrates a slippery slope. I think probably claims should have to be more specific and inciteful to be considered illegal. Also - I think proportionality matters as well. Saying 'the kids who died at Sandy Hook were not real people but actors' - on a personal level should be legal. But if you have an audience of 400M people and scream that nonsense, I think this might be a problem. Right now it's handled in civic courts, but we could think a bit about what that means. It's very hard, and there are a lot of slippery slopes. Risky.
zhxshen 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- the_lonely_road 4y ago
  Huh? Jealous of a guy raping your wife? Wtf did I just read...
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    Look like maybe the result of a manic episode.
- preseinger 4y ago
  Hate speech is explicitly illegal. This isn't an opinion, it's just fact.
  - _bfhp 4y ago
    Source in U.S law?
    - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
      “Speech promoting violation of the law may still only be restricted when it poses an imminent danger of unlawful action, where the speaker has the intention to incite such action, and there is the likelihood that this will be the consequence of that speech.” [1] As others have noted, speech doesn’t have unlimited degrees of freedom in the United States. The only thing, apparent to me, that clearly protects people from hate speech in America is when that hate speech is intended to cause harm or harm would be the likely outcome of the hate speech. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_St...
      - 4y ago
valdiorn 4y ago
Wow, someone has not been keeping up with the news coming out of the UK. Lots and lots of people been arrested and charged for saying, not actually hate speech, just "mean things" on Twitter. Usually it's just obvious jokes, perhaps of bad taste, that someone decided to take literally and then claim they felt "harassed and intimidated" (the magic phrase which causes the police to investigate). https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10668005/Man-avoids-prison-offensive-tweet-Captain-Sir-Tom-Moore.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10668005/Man-avoids... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43864133 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43864133 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/john-scriven-plaid-cymru-gun-24829307 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/john-scriven-pla... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11066477/Veteran-arrested-causing-anxiety-retweeting-meme-swastika-Pride-flags.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11066477/Veteran-ar... - literally arrested for a tweet that "caused anxiety". If you want more, check out count dankula's (mark meechan) second YouTube channel, he covers pretty much all these high profile "offensive tweet" cases. Most of them are ridiculous.
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  The third one is standing around with a gun claiming to be acting as law enforcement. That’s a crystal clear threat of violence.
  - valdiorn 4y ago
    It's an air rifle. It's also clearly a joke.
- userbinator 4y ago
  The UK has always seemed to be going down the path of 1984.
- reset-password 4y ago
  The UK seems to have gone off the deep end here. I hope that this kind of behavior by law enforcement is not something that the public will find acceptable, and that it will be rejected and ridiculed as it should be.
1123581321 4y ago
Wouldn’t the assassinated politician still be alive if he had been prohibited from making his inflammatory remark, instead? The political disease transmission theory they are using seems backwards.
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  It's a bold move to try and victim blame a politician assassinated by literal Nazis because they made a remark they disagreed with.
  - froh 4y ago
    yes. we had our free speech overdose in Germany so our post hyper-nationalism, post fascist constitution balanced your freedom of speech with the freedom and peace of mind of your neighbor. no incitement of aggression against others is a Good Thing, if you can't dissent in respect then shut the fuck up, §130 StGB. freedom of speech with no obligation for respect only serves the political bullies.
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    It’s of course no such thing, only an epidemiological question.
DeWilde 4y ago
> Hate speech, extremism, misogyny and misinformation are well-known byproducts of the internet. It is a well known fact that, before the internet, these things didn't exit.
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  And before we tackled them we had the associated lynchings and raping.
- ohCh6zos 4y ago
  Well you're correct about hate speech. There's no such thing.
  - froh 4y ago
    oh. outside of the US, in less developed "democracies" they claim there would be speech tht can incite parts of the population to physical aggression against other parts of the population. they blame it on "experience with Nazis" who purportedly had used speech, in print, radio and just public speeches to create a climate of aggression against some groups of people. §130 StGB is the result of hard lessons learned on the back of minorities. its about no bullying in politics. it's about a discourse with respect and dignity. if you can't say it without dehumanizing your opponent, don't say it. that's the rule to protect inner peace, even in dissent.
luckylion 4y ago
You'll get your door kicked in if you call a state's secretary of state "a dick" on Twitter. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's not so much about keeping the internet civil so everyone can partake in the debate. It also seems that they're quick to act (and with surprising force) if politicians or the police are the targets of "hate speech", while it's generally ignored if it's your average citizen.
nostromo 4y ago
Articles like this make me want to kiss a copy of the US constitution every night before bed. These raids are now happening in places like the UK and Canada too, places with a history of protecting speech. It seems unless your legal system has enshrined free speech as unassailable at the highest levels of law, you will slowly have those rights removed one step on a slippery slope at a time.
- userbinator 4y ago
  now happening in places like the UK and Canada I don't know about Canada, but I've never considered the UK to have "a history of protecting speech", or indeed a culture that particularly values free speech. They seem very keen on censorship and surveillance.
- jfengel 4y ago
  Your copy of the Constitution is worth what five people meeting in DC say it is worth. It sounds like you and they agree on a lot of stuff. Great. There are a lot of other people who find that rights they believed were guaranteed are in fact not. And I would not be so sure you will continue to agree with those five people indefinitely.
  - jimbob45 4y ago
    You’d do best to review the checks and balances of the US government. Those five can always be overruled by Congress and the states.
    - jfengel 4y ago
      When was the last time that happened?
  - NotYourLawyer 4y ago
    “Freedom of speech” is right there in the text. The right to an abortion was always, at best, a penumbral emanation. Whatever that means.
ARandomerDude 4y ago
Ah yes, the all too familiar "I disagree with you" = "hate speech" routine. Sadly we're deep into the tyrannical tolerance phase now.
standardUser 4y ago
"After sharing images circulating on Facebook that carried a fake statement, the perpetrators had devices confiscated and some were fined." I don't even know what I would do if the government "confiscated" my devices. First, probably freak the fuck out. Then, try desperately to log out of every service I was logged in to? Hope they aren't interested in my nudes? Go crawling to HR and explain that our entire codebase, and probably a couple sensitive keys, are now at some police department until, who knows when? And then go buy a new $1000 phone and $3000 laptop. "Confiscating devices" sounds like such an ordinary, routine thing, but it is so incredibly, profoundly invasive and would upend my life as much as being throw in jail for a week, only it would cost me a lot more. The bar should be ridiculously high for that kind of government intrusion.
- DeWilde 4y ago
  > I don't even know what I would do if the government "confiscated" my devices. You do something (full disk encryption) before the government confiscates your devices.
  - blisterpeanuts 4y ago
    Aren’t iPhones already fully encrypted? Or is that something you have to specially enable?
    - standardUser 4y ago
      All newer MacBooks and Apple and Android phones should come encrypted by default. Not sure about other devices.
  - Nebasuke 4y ago
    Maybe if you live in the US (and quite a few other countries), but if you live in the UK, you can get a prison sentence just for not disclosing your encryption keys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_King...
phantom_of_cato 4y ago
fzeroracer 4y ago
Usually in these kind of threads I always see people defend the perpetuators of harm (such as Alex Jones and the amount of harm he did to the Sandy Hook parents) rather than the victims of said harm. Or at the very least, I never see people offer an actual solution other than completely capitulating to said perpetuators and letting them harm innocent people. Ultimately I do think Germany is a bit too heavy handed in what it's trying to do, but at the same time this is also the direct result of communities being overly tolerant of neo-Nazis and creating festering grounds for them to eventually take to action and cause real world harm. It's like what that one bartender mentioned for why he always kicks out neo-Nazis. If you don't, eventually they bring in their friends and their friends of friends and soon enough you have a neo-Nazi bar and you can't kick them out without causing trouble.
- _bfhp 4y ago
  The solutions are to convince the center, succeed at reform through protest and politics, and maybe, as necessary, go further through grassroots action. Just like the women who won the ability to vote, for example. Actual activism still works, although it requires doing a little more than sitting on your couch crying to the government to make the bad ideas go away
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  There is no solution. How do I break up with someone because I'm unhappy without harming them? I can't. It just is. Some things just are. The parents would never have suffered that particular harm if they were disallowed from having children. Is that a solution? It seems a rather effective solution to this particular problem. Or maybe we can agree that things such as freedom has inherent risks involved and we should seek to mitigate where practical rather than solving it. --- I mean, I could go on. boys going through puberty can sometimes be embarrassed by unplanned erections in school. Removing them from school would solve the problem, should we do it?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
PicassoCTs 4y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REaaC8y4GR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REaaC8y4GR8 Welcome to the world of social implants. Where we surveil one another and the historic footage of war-crimes and deeds, can be used to shame generations to come for there fathers. Making the species more reliable social. Even if it does not want to. External social control, shall force even the most uncaring socio-path to put up the act. Free entertainment as far as the eye can see, so you will never feel the need to interact with/ change the real world. Were the scissors in the head cut controversial thoughts and actions, long before they even reach the surface of socety. Were all technology rolled and handed out is by definition not exponential and nice, linear, safe. No grey goo, no fission, no flying cars. All safe gentleman, forever. Welcome, to a child proof, accessible earth, created, because the wide spread retardation of the species make a science fiction future unreachable and in fact a death trap, known as the great filter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#It_is_the_nature_of_intelligent_life_to_destroy_itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#It_is_the_nature...). And all visions of overcoming those handicaps, have been proven to be glorified wishful thinking.
Dig1t 4y ago
This is honestly completely terrifying. I grew up firmly believing that we enlightened western democracies had done away with authoritarian crackdowns on free speech. It’s so jarring and depressing to see this stuff happening. The only solution to bad speech is MORE good speech, not censorship.
bitwize 4y ago
Criminalizing hate speech is one of those things like affirmative action, where the social benefits of adopting it outweigh the theoretical unfairness of it. In Germany's case, criminalizing hate speech helped keep their country from renazifying for over eighty years now; with the USA of all places in imminent danger of nazifying, I think it's time we rethink our approach to free speech.
- _bfhp 4y ago
  Yes, they say all this about war and torture as well (curious your thoughts on those?)
  - froh 4y ago
    what do you mean?
    - _bfhp 4y ago
      "The social benefits of adopting it outweigh the theoretical unfairness" of war and torture. Would you agree?
mikessoft_gmail 4y ago
Mizza 4y ago
So worried about the Neo Nazis, they forgot to watch out for the Neo Statsis.
- optimalsolver 4y ago
  Statsis?
  - Mizza 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
prvc 4y ago
>The authorities in Germany argue that they are encouraging and defending free speech by providing a space where people can share opinions without fear of being attacked or abused. What they are claiming to be preventing is exactly what they are doing. Is there a general rhetorical term for statements like this?
WirelessGigabit 4y ago
This makes me very happy to live in the USA where there is free speech. In the European country you even have to be careful when you talk to civil servants, because insulting them is illegal. Combine that with ‘what the cop says is how it happened unless you have proof otherwise’, you gotta be really careful.

69 points by ColinWright 4y ago

Speech like credible threats to life, plotting violent assaults, and so on, should invite investigation. But this sort of thing? No. Where's the harm? Or even the potential harm? The other thing is, do we really want a sacred caste of people who can't be criticized? This gets uncomfortably close to the incredibly oppressive lèse-majesté laws that some jurisdictions have.

theprincess 4y ago
> Where's the harm? The harm is in stochastic terrorism. You can make up lies that are intended to spur people who feel they have nothing to lose into action. https://csl.mpg.de/en/projects/philosophical-and-public-security-law-implications-of-stochastic-terrorism#:~:text=As%20described%20by%20leading%20scholars,Hamm%20and%20Spaaij%2C%202017 https://csl.mpg.de/en/projects/philosophical-and-public-secu...). It's similar to the concept of blood libel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel For example, imagine that online discourse on some fringe website that has a few hundred thousand members devolves into a theory that some house in your neighborhood is harboring a secret dungeon full of children underneath it. There is no direct threat to you per se, but a few hundred thousand people think that a house - maybe your house - has a basement full of unspeakable horrors. As the rumor spreads and grows the chances of your house being broken into by one of the believers goes up exponentially. Suddenly nobody in your neighborhood is safe anymore as random weirdos keep scoping out your houses and following you to and from the grocery to see if you're the one with the dungeon beneath your house. Eventually one of these weirdos pulls a gun on your neighbor and demands to see his basement and while there was no dungeon the firearm accidentally went off and killed your neighbor. Your neighbor's death would trace directly back to the spread of this rumor.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  stochastic terrorism Is there a more intellectually dishonest idea? That someone somewhere could misconstrue your words as a call to violence by virtue of the large number of people in the world? And what better way to enforce censorship than to selectively enforce this idea on the topics most important to the party in power?
  - chowells 4y ago
    So... you think it's a total coincidence that after lots of people start talking about specific acts of violence, people start doing them? There's no connection at all?
  - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
    > dishonest idea stochastic terrorism appears to be the academic way of saying “inciting mob violence” seems pretty straightfoward and honest, to me
    - fwn 4y ago
      > stochastic terrorism appears to be the academic way of saying “inciting mob violence” Do you have an example where you think those two concepts could be used interchangeably in academia? I weren't able to find one and I don't think those terms describe similar ideas. Mob dynamics might be about scale in some form, but they are usually not about what we would commonly refer to as terrorism.
      - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
        The OP article refers to the following research: “As described by leading scholars, stochastic terrorism involves ‘the use of mass media to provoke random acts of ideologically motivated violence that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable’ (Hamm and Spaaij, 2017)” maybe inciting “distributed mob violence” would be a better way to translate it for laymen.
    - _bfhp 4y ago
RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
> The other thing is, do we really want a sacred caste of people who can't be criticized? This gets uncomfortably close to the incredibly oppressive lèse-majesté laws that some jurisdictions have. That's effectively what a supreme court justice said should be the case last week. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/supreme-court-roberts-kagan-legitimacy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/supreme-c...
- hexis 4y ago
  "“All of our opinions are open to criticism,” Roberts said in remarks to judges and lawyers. “In fact, our members do a great job of criticizing some opinions from time to time. But simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for criticizing the legitimacy of the court.”" Were you thinking of a different quote from your source? This quote, which seemed closest to your intent, does not at all say what you were suggesting.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I don't think that's what it being said there. Conservatives on the Supreme Court are being whiny babies about the criticism that their obviously biased rulings are getting (and if we ever get an unbiased court, these rulings will all be thrown out ASAP), but none are actually suggesting that that criticism should be illegal as far as I've seen.
9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
> The other thing is, do we really want a sacred caste of people who can't be criticized? Since 1948, all people are due the basic human right of dignity. Sacred caste or not. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Hum...
- ghiluops 4y ago
  The declaration also enshrines the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
  - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
    As well as the following: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
    - ghiluops 4y ago
      That article does not preclude expressing criticism of others, or opinions about their actions.
      - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
        It does preclude incitement of discrimination: “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.“ And otherwise: “In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.”

fedupssss 4y ago

As another comment suggested, the sticking part of the whole topic is the blatantly unequal treatment and enforcement around these types of rules. It’s appalling that one can justify these rules as needed because of the harmfulness of the content while simultaneously allowing their chosen target to be fair game.

theprincess 4y ago

It seems like Germany's approach here or something like it, maybe more streamlined and less heavy handed, is the only way forward in the long run. It's too easy to spread inflammatory lies right now and it's already spurring people into violence. How long before angry mobs are burning down Children's hospitals and killing doctors under the false idea that four year olds are being given sex change operations for instance? It's too much strain on society to live with this constant low level threat of violence from made up information. There's literally an infinite space of inflammatory but believable lies for bad actors to pick from and only a very small space of equally viral true information. The asymmetry is too much in favor of the bad so something has to tip the scales back toward sanity. It may seem trivial to police what someone's racist uncle says on Facebook but it's not one racist uncle, it's 10 million racist uncles who own firearms (in the US at least). Eventually some of them will decide they have nothing to lose and go on the hunt.

nxm 4y ago
Who deems what a lie is? That vaccines do not stop the spread of Covid? That corona originated in a lab? Should people have been prosecuted for saying that? Are there two genders? Should I get arrested if I say yes? Should I get arrested if I say no? Horrible approach that Germany is taking against a fundamental right to free speech. Gestapo like
- theprincess 4y ago
  It's pretty simple really. Saying you don't like transgender people or some specific race makes you a jerk but shouldn't be illegal. It's just an opinion. Saying that transgender people are sacrificing children to Lucifer and someone should put a stop to it is clearly intended to move someone who feels they have nothing to lose to murder some random transgender people to "save the children from Lucifer." That should be investigated because it can and will result in real world harm.
  - jollybean 4y ago
    So if someone says 'transgenders are sacrificing children' should be illegal, does that mean 'police are arbitrarily killing unarmed blacks' - should that be illegal? Because I think the material reality could be demonstrated that the later is false as well. I think your argument demonstrates a slippery slope. I think probably claims should have to be more specific and inciteful to be considered illegal. Also - I think proportionality matters as well. Saying 'the kids who died at Sandy Hook were not real people but actors' - on a personal level should be legal. But if you have an audience of 400M people and scream that nonsense, I think this might be a problem. Right now it's handled in civic courts, but we could think a bit about what that means. It's very hard, and there are a lot of slippery slopes. Risky.

zhxshen 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
the_lonely_road 4y ago
Huh? Jealous of a guy raping your wife? Wtf did I just read...
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Look like maybe the result of a manic episode.
preseinger 4y ago
Hate speech is explicitly illegal. This isn't an opinion, it's just fact.
- _bfhp 4y ago
  Source in U.S law?
  - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
    “Speech promoting violation of the law may still only be restricted when it poses an imminent danger of unlawful action, where the speaker has the intention to incite such action, and there is the likelihood that this will be the consequence of that speech.” [1] As others have noted, speech doesn’t have unlimited degrees of freedom in the United States. The only thing, apparent to me, that clearly protects people from hate speech in America is when that hate speech is intended to cause harm or harm would be the likely outcome of the hate speech. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_St...
    - 4y ago

valdiorn 4y ago

Wow, someone has not been keeping up with the news coming out of the UK. Lots and lots of people been arrested and charged for saying, not actually hate speech, just "mean things" on Twitter. Usually it's just obvious jokes, perhaps of bad taste, that someone decided to take literally and then claim they felt "harassed and intimidated" (the magic phrase which causes the police to investigate). https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10668005/Man-avoids-prison-offensive-tweet-Captain-Sir-Tom-Moore.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10668005/Man-avoids... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43864133 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43864133 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/john-scriven-plaid-cymru-gun-24829307 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/john-scriven-pla... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11066477/Veteran-arrested-causing-anxiety-retweeting-meme-swastika-Pride-flags.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11066477/Veteran-ar... - literally arrested for a tweet that "caused anxiety". If you want more, check out count dankula's (mark meechan) second YouTube channel, he covers pretty much all these high profile "offensive tweet" cases. Most of them are ridiculous.

throwawaysleep 4y ago
The third one is standing around with a gun claiming to be acting as law enforcement. That’s a crystal clear threat of violence.
- valdiorn 4y ago
  It's an air rifle. It's also clearly a joke.
userbinator 4y ago
The UK has always seemed to be going down the path of 1984.
reset-password 4y ago
The UK seems to have gone off the deep end here. I hope that this kind of behavior by law enforcement is not something that the public will find acceptable, and that it will be rejected and ridiculed as it should be.

1123581321 4y ago

Wouldn’t the assassinated politician still be alive if he had been prohibited from making his inflammatory remark, instead? The political disease transmission theory they are using seems backwards.

fzeroracer 4y ago
It's a bold move to try and victim blame a politician assassinated by literal Nazis because they made a remark they disagreed with.
- froh 4y ago
  yes. we had our free speech overdose in Germany so our post hyper-nationalism, post fascist constitution balanced your freedom of speech with the freedom and peace of mind of your neighbor. no incitement of aggression against others is a Good Thing, if you can't dissent in respect then shut the fuck up, §130 StGB. freedom of speech with no obligation for respect only serves the political bullies.
- 1123581321 4y ago
  It’s of course no such thing, only an epidemiological question.

DeWilde 4y ago

> Hate speech, extremism, misogyny and misinformation are well-known byproducts of the internet. It is a well known fact that, before the internet, these things didn't exit.

throwawaysleep 4y ago
And before we tackled them we had the associated lynchings and raping.
ohCh6zos 4y ago
Well you're correct about hate speech. There's no such thing.
- froh 4y ago
  oh. outside of the US, in less developed "democracies" they claim there would be speech tht can incite parts of the population to physical aggression against other parts of the population. they blame it on "experience with Nazis" who purportedly had used speech, in print, radio and just public speeches to create a climate of aggression against some groups of people. §130 StGB is the result of hard lessons learned on the back of minorities. its about no bullying in politics. it's about a discourse with respect and dignity. if you can't say it without dehumanizing your opponent, don't say it. that's the rule to protect inner peace, even in dissent.

luckylion 4y ago

You'll get your door kicked in if you call a state's secretary of state "a dick" on Twitter. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's not so much about keeping the internet civil so everyone can partake in the debate. It also seems that they're quick to act (and with surprising force) if politicians or the police are the targets of "hate speech", while it's generally ignored if it's your average citizen.

nostromo 4y ago

Articles like this make me want to kiss a copy of the US constitution every night before bed. These raids are now happening in places like the UK and Canada too, places with a history of protecting speech. It seems unless your legal system has enshrined free speech as unassailable at the highest levels of law, you will slowly have those rights removed one step on a slippery slope at a time.

userbinator 4y ago
now happening in places like the UK and Canada I don't know about Canada, but I've never considered the UK to have "a history of protecting speech", or indeed a culture that particularly values free speech. They seem very keen on censorship and surveillance.
jfengel 4y ago
Your copy of the Constitution is worth what five people meeting in DC say it is worth. It sounds like you and they agree on a lot of stuff. Great. There are a lot of other people who find that rights they believed were guaranteed are in fact not. And I would not be so sure you will continue to agree with those five people indefinitely.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  You’d do best to review the checks and balances of the US government. Those five can always be overruled by Congress and the states.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    When was the last time that happened?
- NotYourLawyer 4y ago
  “Freedom of speech” is right there in the text. The right to an abortion was always, at best, a penumbral emanation. Whatever that means.

ARandomerDude 4y ago

Ah yes, the all too familiar "I disagree with you" = "hate speech" routine. Sadly we're deep into the tyrannical tolerance phase now.

standardUser 4y ago

"After sharing images circulating on Facebook that carried a fake statement, the perpetrators had devices confiscated and some were fined." I don't even know what I would do if the government "confiscated" my devices. First, probably freak the fuck out. Then, try desperately to log out of every service I was logged in to? Hope they aren't interested in my nudes? Go crawling to HR and explain that our entire codebase, and probably a couple sensitive keys, are now at some police department until, who knows when? And then go buy a new $1000 phone and $3000 laptop. "Confiscating devices" sounds like such an ordinary, routine thing, but it is so incredibly, profoundly invasive and would upend my life as much as being throw in jail for a week, only it would cost me a lot more. The bar should be ridiculously high for that kind of government intrusion.

DeWilde 4y ago
> I don't even know what I would do if the government "confiscated" my devices. You do something (full disk encryption) before the government confiscates your devices.
- blisterpeanuts 4y ago
  Aren’t iPhones already fully encrypted? Or is that something you have to specially enable?
  - standardUser 4y ago
    All newer MacBooks and Apple and Android phones should come encrypted by default. Not sure about other devices.
- Nebasuke 4y ago
  Maybe if you live in the US (and quite a few other countries), but if you live in the UK, you can get a prison sentence just for not disclosing your encryption keys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_King...

phantom_of_cato 4y ago

fzeroracer 4y ago

Usually in these kind of threads I always see people defend the perpetuators of harm (such as Alex Jones and the amount of harm he did to the Sandy Hook parents) rather than the victims of said harm. Or at the very least, I never see people offer an actual solution other than completely capitulating to said perpetuators and letting them harm innocent people. Ultimately I do think Germany is a bit too heavy handed in what it's trying to do, but at the same time this is also the direct result of communities being overly tolerant of neo-Nazis and creating festering grounds for them to eventually take to action and cause real world harm. It's like what that one bartender mentioned for why he always kicks out neo-Nazis. If you don't, eventually they bring in their friends and their friends of friends and soon enough you have a neo-Nazi bar and you can't kick them out without causing trouble.

_bfhp 4y ago
The solutions are to convince the center, succeed at reform through protest and politics, and maybe, as necessary, go further through grassroots action. Just like the women who won the ability to vote, for example. Actual activism still works, although it requires doing a little more than sitting on your couch crying to the government to make the bad ideas go away
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
There is no solution. How do I break up with someone because I'm unhappy without harming them? I can't. It just is. Some things just are. The parents would never have suffered that particular harm if they were disallowed from having children. Is that a solution? It seems a rather effective solution to this particular problem. Or maybe we can agree that things such as freedom has inherent risks involved and we should seek to mitigate where practical rather than solving it. --- I mean, I could go on. boys going through puberty can sometimes be embarrassed by unplanned erections in school. Removing them from school would solve the problem, should we do it?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

PicassoCTs 4y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REaaC8y4GR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REaaC8y4GR8 Welcome to the world of social implants. Where we surveil one another and the historic footage of war-crimes and deeds, can be used to shame generations to come for there fathers. Making the species more reliable social. Even if it does not want to. External social control, shall force even the most uncaring socio-path to put up the act. Free entertainment as far as the eye can see, so you will never feel the need to interact with/ change the real world. Were the scissors in the head cut controversial thoughts and actions, long before they even reach the surface of socety. Were all technology rolled and handed out is by definition not exponential and nice, linear, safe. No grey goo, no fission, no flying cars. All safe gentleman, forever. Welcome, to a child proof, accessible earth, created, because the wide spread retardation of the species make a science fiction future unreachable and in fact a death trap, known as the great filter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#It_is_the_nature_of_intelligent_life_to_destroy_itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#It_is_the_nature...). And all visions of overcoming those handicaps, have been proven to be glorified wishful thinking.

Dig1t 4y ago

This is honestly completely terrifying. I grew up firmly believing that we enlightened western democracies had done away with authoritarian crackdowns on free speech. It’s so jarring and depressing to see this stuff happening. The only solution to bad speech is MORE good speech, not censorship.

bitwize 4y ago

Criminalizing hate speech is one of those things like affirmative action, where the social benefits of adopting it outweigh the theoretical unfairness of it. In Germany's case, criminalizing hate speech helped keep their country from renazifying for over eighty years now; with the USA of all places in imminent danger of nazifying, I think it's time we rethink our approach to free speech.

_bfhp 4y ago
Yes, they say all this about war and torture as well (curious your thoughts on those?)
- froh 4y ago
  what do you mean?
  - _bfhp 4y ago
    "The social benefits of adopting it outweigh the theoretical unfairness" of war and torture. Would you agree?

mikessoft_gmail 4y ago

Mizza 4y ago

So worried about the Neo Nazis, they forgot to watch out for the Neo Statsis.

optimalsolver 4y ago
Statsis?
- Mizza 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

prvc 4y ago

>The authorities in Germany argue that they are encouraging and defending free speech by providing a space where people can share opinions without fear of being attacked or abused. What they are claiming to be preventing is exactly what they are doing. Is there a general rhetorical term for statements like this?

WirelessGigabit 4y ago

This makes me very happy to live in the USA where there is free speech. In the European country you even have to be careful when you talk to civil servants, because insulting them is illegal. Combine that with ‘what the cop says is how it happened unless you have proof otherwise’, you gotta be really careful.