> sites with more that two million users in Germany must take down posts containing hate speech or other criminal material within 24 hours.
Censorship and fines galore. Just this week: a €2.4B fine from the EU for Google's integrated shopping view. A Canadian ruling stating that Google had to enforce Canadian censorship worldwide. And now, huge fines for content that the German government finds objectionable.
How long before google, Facebook, etc. retreat to the US entirely (or even to some liberal island nation)? Sooner or later, the economic benefit of a data company having a physical presence somewhere is outweighed by the cost of overbearing censorship laws. Maybe it's time for the Sultanate of Kinakuta to become a reality.
Google and Facebook should start investing heavily in anti-censorship technology a la Tor and I2P. Sadly, I fear that this may soon become necessary in "liberal" nations like Germany. It's already necessary in the U.K., with draconian anti-pornography and anti-cryptography laws.
As much as I'd be impressed if Europe managed to pull a China and replace the unicorns from SV with homegrown (and tax-paying) alternatives, I doubt that's ever going to happen. Google and FB have such ridiculously high profit margins that this is still just nibbling at the edges of it.
€2.4B is a very large chunk of Google's annual profit. How much do these companies gain from having a legally vulnerable physical presence in the EU? I'd guess not more than a few billion dollars a year. The primary benefits are hiring, taxes, and maybe some CDN improvements, but those can be worked around.
The primary benefit is having an entity to bill their customers (i.e. advertisers). And no, the shop next door will never go through the hassle to wire money to the US (which can be seized in transfer anyway).
That would be fun, what with the ultimate dispute resolution procedure against a sovereign Google being the lobbing of heavy ordnance at Kinakuta Googleplex until they cease and desist :)
Aside from the censorship debate, I still wonder what measures the German government has to enforce these fines. None of the discussed big companies are settled in Germany, but are regulated under European law. Where is the connection? Does a EU member have the capability to use EU regulators to enforce fines based on state law?
I would expect any large company to have a subsidiary legal entity in each country it operates, even if just a sales office - they are operating in the local legal environment (in this case Germany).
e.g. Here is the UK subsidiary of Facebook - I'd expect there to be a German equivalent:
Germany has seized assets of corporations (for example, they did seize an airplane, to force the airline to pay back the cost of a ticket to a traveller whose flight was cancelled) before to enforce regulations.
Facebook will definitely want to avoid their hard- and software being seized and sold off to pay for a potential fine.
> Do you think Facebook has no servers in Germany?
They might have some leased servers, but afaik none of their custom built data centers are located there. Compared to abandoning a bespoke facility, packing up and moving out of a server farm is little more than a hassle.
Facebook has custom-built servers in Sweden and Ireland, both of which could be easily seized via an EU-wide court warrant (which is actually possible to get).
And just seizing and selling their IP would be enough to encourage facebook not to violate the law.
Everyone would love buying their software and trained models.
Fair point, which I suspect will eventually lead to all major tech companies radically scaling back their investment in Europe. The cost of doing business was already high, now it's prohibitive and tyrannical.
The cost of doing business just with US companies is the same. The US will seize your assets, no matter where you are, if you as much as ever violate any of their laws.
Kim Dotcom is a good example.
Companies having to follow the law of where they provide their services is a far deal less prohibitive.
And, frankly said, I'd love it if Google, Facebook etc would leave the European market — as local competitors would appear very quickly, and, due to the huge size of the European market — would actually become viable competitors to the American companies even in the international market.
Germany wields a ton of power within the EU, so it's reasonable to assume that if FB decides this is worth a fight they have to take into account that the fight could end up expanding beyond just Germany.
Even so, it's debatable how much actual authority the entirety of the EU has in this matter. They're not guaranteed cooperation via US courts and public institutions. They could threaten to wholesale block Facebook (or [insert other tech property here]), but I'm not sure that's realistic.
All in all I suspect we'll soon find out whether or not the EU is in fact a complete paper tiger : if they lose against Google & Facebook, they'll be unmasked as weak chest thumpers.
I don't think they expect to ever collect a fine at all; they can reasonably expect this law to eventually fail review with one or both of Germany's own supreme court and the EU.
The law only needs to hold up and silence dissent until Merkle is re-elected in a few months. Rank cynicism.
As much as I hate Facebook and I think it's one of the main vectors of all the social unrest cancer we see metastasizing everywhere in western society nowadays, this decision is stupid and does only yet more harm to free speech than actually address any real problem, but serves only to sweep it under the rug until it explodes in our face.
Of course, most politicians involved in making this happen won't ever have to deal with one iota of the inconvenience they bestow over their general population.
I'm with you. This is the first time in a very long time that I had to defend Facebook.
What does "obviously illegal" even mean? And is it like "obvious porn"? Because politicians themselves seem to be doing a terrible job at recognizing that, too:
> During the various internet censorship cases the ACLU brought, we asked the government to identify speech in each category, and they were largely unable to do so. For example, they said that an online photo on Playboy’s website of a topless woman was not harmful to minors, but a virtually identical photo on Penthouse’s website was.
Social media are arguably amplifying those "real problems" and regulating them is therefore a very reasonable thing to do, as it is reasonable to do something about mosquitoes that are spreading deadly diseases [0] (using this example because you mentioned vectors as an analogy). I don't think that the law they passed implies that nothing else will be done to address the underlying causes of these issues. Suggesting it does is disingenuous.
> I don't think that the law they passed implies that nothing else will be done to address the underlying causes of these issues. Suggesting it does is disingenuous.
Many politicians, especially in the mainstream, operate on a 'lowest possible effort' basis to pretend they're giving a damn about their electorate, which is why so many completely awful laws and trade deals get passed just by giving it a friendly-sounding name, all while pocketing a hefty 'extra payment' for their collaboration.
I'll be more surprised to find out that something concrete was done about the cause of extremism in Europe than to find out that there was a ridiculously large network of bribed politicians involved in passing this law.
Between terror risk amplified by the refugee situation conveniently created by Germany and growing "dangerous" internal opposition amplified by the refugee situation conveniently created by Germany, the Merkle regime finds itself conveniently "forced" to sand off the thin veneer of freedom it had to coat itself with after WWII? Surprise.
The refugee situation was created by bad middle east policy mainly by the United States and Saudi Arabia. Germany for some reason felt like bearing the cost of other people's bad decisions. If Germany was more American it would've known not to do that. America knows how to create problems, but does not bother bearing costs of the problems it creates in foreign lands... instead they profit from it, that's the main reason they create those problems in the first place.
Remember that german population are getting older and there is a case to allow younger people to come in to pay for the pension. The only country that really don't want to rely on immigration for a growing elderly population is Japan. They choose to try robotizing a lot of support function.
As a European I love to write smug rants on the internet about how our governments and our political culture are better than those of the US. However, stuff like this worries me.
We need more freedom of speech, not less. The US is miles ahead of us in this respect. Here in Europe, we're missing that fundamental value of "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it". Instead, it's more like "I disagree with what you say so I'm going to try to get you arrested for it". Eg Dutch xenophobe politician Geert Wilders got dragged into court twice! (ridiculous, and also countereffective because guess what it did for his ratings)
This sort of stuff is much worse, however. Given the 24 hour deadline, the only way Facebook reasonably can implement this is automation. A computer program determining whether my post is hate speech or satire? Seriously? Computers can't even tell the difference between a puppy and a cupcake. Why does anyone think this is a good idea?
A long time ago I used to hang out on an IRC channel that banned "bad words". The bot was very enthusiastically tuned with conservative American values. There was a user called "War^" but "war" was a forbidden word. Talking to him got you kicked out, mentioning him thrice got you banned.
Obviously, the solution there was simple: leave the IRC channel and never come back. But I'm not sure people will feel they have the same option for their favorite social media.
"Freedom of Speech" only is there until you have some nudity on US-owned social media strangely. You can put as much blood as you want but not one picture with some small nudity in it, there are definitely cultural issues on the US side as well. The only picture I've ever reported was a picture of the Bataclan massacre used for karma and I got told by Facebook that it did not violate any guidelines.
Freedom of speech applies to prior or posterior restraint by government. It does not mean that anyone who owns a platform has to let you say whatever you like on it. There's an old canard about how speech is only truly free for those who own a printing press - fortunately, running a website requires much less capital investment, and distribution is pretty much automatic, too.
Don't mistake my intent here - it would vastly understate the case to say merely that I do not love Facebook. But free speech is the wrong line of attack, because that is something which we have no legal precedent for obliging them to provide, and this lack of precedent has enduring value exceeding what we might in the short term realize from its contravention.
Parent was talking about the "Freedom of Speech" that's imbued in the American zeitgeist. It is crystallised most clearly in the first amendment, but in general Americans value their freedom of speech in many situations where the one taking the speech away is not the government per se, but another ruling body acting as de-facto government over some small area of influence. And really, if the best you can say about censoring my speech is that "it's not illegal", maybe you shouldn't be doing it.
You're quite right that freedom of speech and expression is a core American value.
Another core American value is independence of thought and action. We are a nation of grown-ass men and women who do not require a company, a government, or any other arbitrary authority to sign off on the exercise of those rights and liberties which are our common birthright.
So if Facebook chooses not to permit its users to say controversial things, the American response is not to go crying to Daddy to make that mean old mister Zuckerberg be nice, but instead to say: "Well, then, you do just as you please - and be damned to you, because I will go and do as I please." And then, suiting action to word, to set up one's own website, where one may speak as one likes without fear of being suppressed by the ukaze of some billionaire overlord. We do, after all, still have an open Internet. I think it would behoove us to use it.
To that last point, let me reiterate that I have no love for Facebook, and would prefer that such a behemoth, opaque monstrosity - with such an astonishing degree of power to mediate the social interactions of more than a quarter of our entire species - not only did not, but could not, exist. That is far too much power to inhere in any single organization.
Where we differ, I think, is in our evaluation of the most useful method of taking that power away from the organization which holds it now. You seem inclined to prefer that government should do so - an obvious answer, to be sure, but in my view fatally flawed insomuch as that, in taking that power away from Facebook, this government would necessarily gather that same power to itself. (Who else, after all, would you have tell Facebook what to do?)
I would rather see that power, not still further agglomerated into a different monolithic bloc of same, but rather atomized. It seems to me much more in accord with American values that this mass power be broken down and distributed among many individuals, such that each may exercise her rights with the maximum liberty to do so, and none may forbid another from doing likewise.
There are some really exciting projects underway right now to build a framework in which this can happen - indeed, a framework in which nothing else can happen, wherein the construction of a Facebook in anything like its present leviathan form is impossible because it has no apparent benefit to offer. This is a very long-term goal, I freely concede! I may not live to see it bear fruit, if indeed it ever succeeds in so doing. But nothing else of which I'm aware offers a better prospect of upholding those American values which my fellows and I hold so dear.
You seem to be very convinced of this. Could you please list one or two concrete cases where you think free speech was too limited in Europe and where this limitation led to a poor outcome for society? I think this could make your argument much stronger.
While I agree that it's bad to prevent people from speaking poorly about a king, that's not representative of the kinds of things that the German law is addressing. As such this is not a very strong example, IMO.
You asked for examples in which free speech was too limited and resulted in a poor outcome for society. You asked that in response to:
"We need more freedom of speech, not less. The US is miles ahead of us in this respect. Here in Europe, we're missing that fundamental value of "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it". Instead, it's more like "I disagree with what you say so I'm going to try to get you arrested for it"."
Therefore my example is germane and quite a clear example given your question.
Here are more examples (again Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, Spain):
That's not how it works, and this is fundamentally different.
In the US, the offended person would have to sue the offender for libel or defamation. The State would not be bringing charges because this is not a criminal matter; it is a civil matter. Nor is it so obviously defamation or libel, as you suggest.
The lese majeste law is not a matter of the King suing the offender. It is a matter of the Dutch state pursuing criminal prosecution.
I don't follow your reasoning. Please explain how either WWI, WWII or the cold war were caused by limitations on free speech in Europe (which in this context largely means western Europe).
>where you think free speech was too limited in Europe and where this limitation led to a poor outcome for society?
The test for what values we uphold should not always be what has proven to be a good outcome for ourselves or for society.
Your same argument could be used against many human rights. What about torture: can you give me a concrete example of how US torture was bad for society?
Extending your argument from society to individuals, we make the worst tragedies possible. It is an important lesson from the history of Germany itself, in the quote: 'When they came for them, I did not speak, because I was not them. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me."
There is value in upholding human rights on principle.
Once you eliminate free speech in cases where it is convenient, you no longer have a free speech principle.
In Germany the thought police has brought people to court for things such as Facebook groups for people who don't like refugees. Maybe that seems fair to you, but then again a comedian also faced prosecution for a poem about Erdogan. Now imagine prosecution for a poem belittling Trump. It's the possibility of that outcome that we want to stay as far away from as possible.
Besides, it seems difficult to believe a legitimate role of government is to protect you from words, and words alone.
But who gets to decide what constitutes a human right and why is hate speech a human right in your opinion? Hate speech hurts people, please explain why it should still be considered a human right.
The test to outlaw something should not be because it hurts someone. Just because you know some people will drive, or drive drunk, and this will kill people, does not mean you should ban driving, or alcohol.
Another example is democracy. Just because you support someone's right to vote for, and you know a few people will go vote for fascists, it does not mean you support fascism as a human right.
Driving has clear benefits for the individual and society. Accidents are merely an unintended side-effect. In contrast to that, the purpose of hate speech is by definition to hurt people.
The point was that both are unintended consequences of things which generally help people. If we could have free speech, or roads, with no bad side effects we'd have them.
Once you eliminate speech just because you disagree with it, you begin the process of allowing the most powerful to determine that criteria for their own benefit.
The goal of the law under discussion is not to eliminate any form of speech or even contrarian speech. This law is just about speech that is designed to hurt people.
By that criteria, everything from schoolyard insults to poems insulting Trump could be made illegal.
I know you don't want to be insulted, or let other people be insulted, but it's a dangerous responisbility to give to government to make them arbiter of what speech is acceptable.
The migrant crisis is the biggest one going on at the moment. The public discussion is seriously skewed and lacking the moderate against side. At both extremes there are very vocal advocates, and the official moderate positions are firmly towards the accepting side for migration. Very few want to touch the moderate argument for limiting migration, because you risk being interpreted as being an extremist, at which point these hate speech laws could apply -- many moderates don't want to take that risk and rather stay silent.
It is important to understand that this is, for now, a matter of a chilling effect. I don't claim that I would be put in jail or fined for my opinions, but I definitely do feel a risk of some authority possibly investigating me. And that is enough to make me not take part in the debate. And I do not see my positions being openly discussed in public, even though I know from private conversations that many, many people hold the same views. This is something that moderates on the other side seem not to understand or believe, because they do not face it.
This has lead to a number of poor outcomes for the societies in Europe. Most importantly there are possible approaches to solving the situation that have not been seriously explored and evaluated (e.g., Australia style migrant centres outside the EU). As a result the European response has been uncontrolled, inefficient and hugely expensive. I believe many more people in real need could have been helped, and many lives saved, by an approach that was not based on accepting unlimited numbers of migrants into Europe.
The second important problem is that it drives the disenfranchised moderates towards the extreme. If you feel like your voice is not heard in the debate, it becomes more likely that you will demonstrate with a protest vote for an extremist.
Personally I am absolutely against this law. Even if you accept the idea of hate speech laws, surely they should be enforced by the courts, not by Facebook?
> The public discussion is seriously skewed and lacking the moderate against side.
There is no law in Germany preventing you from voicing your opinion against immigration. We're talking about legally enforced censorship not about media bias. Having said that, I do agree with many things you say, I just think they are not directly relevant to the discussion.
> There is no law in Germany preventing you from voicing your opinion against immigration.
Could you please read my second paragraph. I'm aware the is no law against voicing my opinion on immigration (I'm not against immigration, I'm an immigrant myself). However, I am absolutely not going to publicly voice my opinions because I do not want to risk someone interpreting some part of my point out of context and investigating me for hate speech.
I don't see your point. Are you saying that such a law would necessarily be abused by the government to harass you? That seems like a strong assumption and a poor reason again introducing a law which, if interpreted sincerely, is reasonable. Your argument could also be used again a lot of other laws and when taken to the extreme the only solution would be anarchy.
Mein Kampf is banned in my country. However, it's historically relevant and it's such an insane book that the chance that it turns people into nazis is much smaller than the chance that it shows poeple what a nutjob Hitler was.
If I recall correctly, the Swastika is banned in Germany, even though it's a symbol with many meanings in many cultures. This means people can't express certain aspects of their cultures, visually, simply because the NSDAP chose to use the same logo. Context matters, you know.
Finally, I heard a law in Germany is about to get passed that is going to make large social networks program bots that automatically ban content based on whether it may contain hate speech or crime. Good satire will disappear from much of the German internet.
> If I recall correctly, the Swastika is banned in Germany, [...] Context matters, you know.
Exactly, and that's the reason why you can use the Swastika as much as you want in Germany when the context makes clear that you're not using it for political purposes. These silly strawmen arguments do not help the discussion.
For some context, it appears the law in question is the German Strafgesetzbuch (Criminal Code) section 86a. Wikipedia believes the use of a swastika (as a representation of the Nazi party) is banned in all contexts except "art or science, research or teaching".
This mostly agrees with the text of the law, which appears to include a provision translating to "... shall not be applicable if the means of propaganda or the act serves to further civil enlightenment, to avert unconstitutional aims, to promote art or science, research or teaching, reporting about current historical events or similar purposes."
Reporting on the law suggests that the purpose is much stronger than simply avoiding its political use, but also to "avert social habitation". In particular, it appears that its use in, say, a video game would in fact be illegal, as Ubisoft assumed with its 2014 release "South Park: The Stick of Truth".
"From October, Facebook, YouTube, and other sites with more that two million users in Germany must take down posts containing hate speech or other criminal material within 24 hours. Content that is not obviously unlawful must be assessed within seven days."
To me, this seems more like reasonable regulation than oppression, although some people confuse these concepts, or have a financial interest in conflating personal freedoms with market deregulation.
The german government is asking for Facebook to promptly remove content that is obviously illegal in Germany (and most of the world), like murder videos, hate speech, etc. Sounds reasonable to me.
TV stations in some (most?) European countries can be held legally responsible for the content they air. This is (fortunately) happening right now where I live, where a private TV station is being investigated for repeatedly airing a program where a psychologist spreads hate speech and fake science like "people who use marijuana have gay sex" and "gipsies don't work and live off the rest of us"; the person's professional license has been revoked as a consequence, so the TV station are being held responsible for airing blatantly illegal content by a disaccredited "psychologist".
That's why media needs basic regulation, IMO.
After reporting numerous posts for hate speech and personal insults has zero, Facebook's response is always "no breach of our terms". But it's a breach of our society's terms, and fortunately we are still (mostly) held to the rule of law.
Part of the issue with the comparison you're making is that the station you mention likely know what they were publishing at each point in time. Facebook is facing a situation more like trying to remove flyers in a town where everybody is putting up 3 new flyers per day.
And the part you don't mention is that Facebook is making 1000x more money than your avg TV station so it is not a problem to have them to conform to society.
As much as I dislike facebook. The reasoning that they can pay means they should is almost defining corruption, and an easy way for a govt to get money.
The problem is not one of morals, as I doubt fb wants this type off content at all.
I think it's possibly unreasonable. It's fb vs the world quite literally. It's the nature off it's design.
What's next? Police gets fined if they can't catch a criminal within a week?
What about a fireman getting fined if he can't put out a fire within 20 minutes.
All these things share an uncontrollable and unpredictable situation.
You can't ignore the complex design off millions off people streaming millions of text inputs daily and checking it all 100%. That's monkey reasoning, black and white thinking fallacies.
Fb should give insight and show how they battle it, but imo it's childish to randomly give 24 hours. At least come with an argument or 'standard' if u will (ie. 1 content checker person per 1k posts or w/e).
> The reasoning that they can pay means they should is almost defining corruption, and an easy way for a govt to get money.
If the system is good enough for you to make hundreds of billions of some years, yes, you should expend a lot to conform with society's needs.
> You can't ignore the complex design off millions off people streaming millions of text inputs daily and checking it all 100%.
You can't allow a company to have so much power over millions of people just because it is difficult to make it conform and keep working. Guess what, find a better solution. The world is not 1% better with all this live Facebook BS, I'd not give a care if it was all shutdown. It is not a free speech problem if they are exploiting it for their own benefit.
I'm a European citizen and I do not agree that said content should be illegal. I suspect OP would back me (partly) on the reasoning:
I don't want it to be illegal, because policing it requires the instatement of an automatic censorship framework, that even if it works perfectly, can be trivially re-used for stifling more speech. Not regulating media has bad consequences, but regulating media has even worse consequences. You can't save people from themselves.
Let's be clear here: FB has been around for more than a decade. Germanys stance on hate speech has been clear all this while. Them now moving in to act on it in the digital domain is hardly a surprise.
Social Media giants ignoring local laws, while being occupied with taking over the world truly makes for a great Cinderella story -- but maybe part of growing is also growing up and preparing the business to comply with local laws, instead of waving the "this is so unreasonable" card when you didn't do so for a decade and then eventually get fined for it.
Local laws don't say that hate speech is allowed as long as it's within 24hrs. It's simply not allowed. But in an attempt to be reasonable for a distributed platform like FB, they are giving 24hrs - is 24hrs reasonable? That's a valid question.
"Freedom of speech" does not entail "freedom of consequences" from said speech. The US also has limitations about what speech is allowed where or when (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone for example). Conspiracy to commit crime is also not protected by free speech laws, many people would argue rightly so. It is not a major leap of logic to extend those anti-conspiracy laws to "speech" that incites other people to commit crimes.
A similar discussion can also be seen with Brexit in the UK: hate crimes have been steadily increasing since the Brexit campaign, and many people have been pointing at the divisive and malicious discourse surrounding that as one of the causes.
So yes, while I agree with you that speech in general should never be prohibited, and I also agree that automated takedowns of content are not desirable (mainly because once that's in place, the algorithms then become the law -- and that is not where I want to be); I also think that companies that facilitate large-scale communication between citizens can not hide behind "free speech" arguments to completely disavow any and all responsibility for consequences of speech on their platform.
The technology is not that different from the ones that make them a lot of money with eyeballs. FB and Google know what is happening, but they don't want to lose this easy money and have to find a new honest and socially ok revenue stream.
It wasn't that long ago when they were burning books that didn't conform to the social norms of the establishment. You'd think Germans would be smarter than to make the same mistake twice. The social media companies must fight this law. What if, say, Russian government demands removing any content promoting homosexuality (as it is currently against Russian law)? This type of shit will destroy Internet as we know it.
Honestly, comparing this to burning books in the Third Reich is simply showing that you know very little about history or that you choose to ignore it to make some simplistic argument for unconditional free speech. The horrible crimes of the Third Reich shouldn't be invoked so casually.
Even in that case, I'd argue that you're penalised not for the speech itself, but because it was used in a premediated way that caused concrete physical harm to people. As in, you're free to carry a gun, but you're not free to fire at people without good reason. And even then you're free (as in unrestrained) to fire at whoever you like, but there are consequences. Contrast that with automatic censorship on the internet which is like having a gun that will not fire at certain people, period, and the bullets themselves would change trajectory to not hit anyone the algorithm deems "not worthy of being shot".
And how is tweeting e.g. that "$minority_group is the root of all evil and should be shot on sight" not a "premeditated way [of speech] that caused concrete physical harm to people"?
> This type of shit will destroy Internet as we know it.
Not "will". It's been happening for many years. There's the "Right to Be Forgotten". The US blackholes lots of stuff that it considers illegal. At least China only censors its own people.
The only hope is overlay networks that can't be censored.
It just seems that way. Alas it's a tempting conclusion to jump to.
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I really don't think that it should be a social media company's responsibility to police the internet. If a person posts something illegal, I think it should be that person that should be punished and it should be the job of the government/police/courts to do so. The social media company could then remove the content after that.
I guess that's a valid stand point, but to be fair, analogous regulations are very common for other businesses, especially in the US. For example, bars have to make sure that their patrons do not smoke and that they have legal age. There are thousands of these regulations and they are rarely perceived as attacks on basic freedoms but rather seen as common sense. What is different about internet companies that they should not have the responsibility to enforce such rules on their premises?
It's one thing to "enforce such rules on their premises", as China does. But for each nation to impose its laws on the entire Internet? That's just insane. And won't end well.
The German law doesn't require Facebook to censor hate speech in other countries. But if Facebook wants to do business in Germany, they have to obey local law.
Having different nation-specific versions of Facebook could get complicated, no? And what if a German accesses Facebook through a VPN with non-German IP address?
I don't think it's asking too much to require different country-specific versions of Facebook. It's simply the cost of doing business and very much standard in all other industries. If I want to sell electronics in the US, I have to comply with the local safety regulations which are different from those in other countries.
Facebook somehow manages to show me German ads and trying Google to give me a non-Germany version is surprisingly hard. Netflix has another catalogue here than in other countries (and tries hard to block access to their foreign versions) because their right holders demand so. Why should a society accept lower standards than movie studios? Even if we can't get 100% reliability we shouldn't just give up completely.
One set of ads vs another is a simple thing. And for Netflix, that's just static stuff. When you drop some set of Facebook posts for German users, that has complex downstream effects. Facebook isn't threaded, as I recall, but there's still the need to look for stuff being quoted, and so on.
Showing posts only to certain people (the poster's friends) has been a core feature from the beginning. Pages currently have the option to restrict posts geographically (although I'm unsure what that setting does exactly). I'm sure Facebook has already solved many harder engineering challenges than this. I know that Twitter already has geographical blocks in place based on content and they do have similar conversation, sharing, and like features.
In the law, costs of complying were estimated to be 28 Mio. € per year (for all social networks combined). I don't know how accurate this is but probably not orders of magnitude off.
That's a good point. And maybe doing this for the German market would be feasible. But folding is still a bad precedent, in my opinion.
I can imagine some amusing outcomes. Sure, Germany can censor "hate speech", however it wants to define that. But the "hate speech" will still be there. Germans just won't see it, unless they lie about their location and hit Facebook via VPNs or Tor. So someone could spread malicious rumors about you, and you might not even know it.
No one is asking fb to "police the internet", they are being asked to abide by the law and stop disregarding the distribution of illegal content within their property.
Before you make any statements about his this could potentially suppress voices and opinions, you can always make your own site. Even if the government did not interfere with these sites, the sites themselves totally have the right to regulate everything that's being posted. This is only to encourage this because companies like facebook didn't seem to give much of a damn about regulation.
> Before you make any statements about his this could potentially suppress voices and opinions, you can always make your own site.
Social media allows you to use a pseudonym which makes it possible to share an opinion (and thus, to a tiny extend, shape society) without the people who know you in "real life" learning about it. If you have a personal website you have, by German law, to publish your name and address on this website. As a result, people can google what you write.
So if you want to discuss an opinion that people you interact with in real life don't accept you have to accept that they could find your posts. This, naturally, could have a chilling effect leading to you not writing about issues you care about.
I'm sorry but I can't past the hypocrisy of having a submission like this one, with so many comments being against the measure in the name of "free speech" and then immediately downvoting and flagging every comment that takes the opposite view in relation to social issues in every post that makes it to the front page of HN and even, quite ironically, in this very same post (i.e. the comment about refugees bellow, which I don't agree with, but that has nothing actually wrong with it except the guy presenting an opinion that doesn't fit your need for showing how politically correct you are).
If this community is all so pro "free speech" as basically all these comments here are trying to signal, than you would do well to start exactly here instead of pointing the finger at the German government while doing the opposite.
Being an advocate of free speech isn't the same as being supportive of every poorly thought out, tangential comment ever written.
Equally, a lot of the commentary here is against the idea that FB is having to make decisions about what is and is not hate speech. If there were the equivalent on HN i.e. dang et al pre-screened all comments and decided what was acceptable, I'm sure there'd be a backlash.
On HN, the community decides what is acceptable having seen the comment. In the FB case, the community has decided what is acceptable in general, via laws, but FB are being forced to police those laws without the community seeing the specifics. A subtle distinction I grant you but, in my opinion, an important one.
Having said all that, I can't disagree that the HN community is generally biased as it's self selecting. I personally don't have a problem with that (if I did there's a fairly straightforward fix) and I do expect to hold governments to a higher standard as it's much harder as an individual to fix the issue.
> "On HN, the community decides what is acceptable having seen the comment."
Not really, that's just a common fallacy perpetuated from the ones that see their political views represented by the heavy handed moderation around HN, or the ones that actually don't pay attention to what is going on in HN.
Moderators in HN heavily editorialize the Front Page by removing the flags from some posts and flagging other highly voted ones by the community.
They do the same to comments that don't follow their personal views even when those comments don't break any of the guidelines but happen to be against the moderators political views.
Bottom line: You might be deceived by the appearances here, or you might be actually enjoying so see anyone that disagrees with you being shut up in HN, but factually, it's not the "community" of HN that is deciding what is acceptable, it's largely the moderators of HN.
HN is first and foremost a promotional and growth tool for Y Combinator, and only secondarily a discussion forum for technology enthusiasts. However, HN's branding has been so successful that the public perception of HN / news.yc is the complete inverse.
Well I can agree with that, but it still doesn't change anything of what was said above, i.e. what you see and what you are allowed to discuss in HN is not what the community decides, but what the moderators decide.
My point is simply that none of that should come as a surprise. There is an element of community here, but this forum first and foremost serves a business function - and is moderated accordingly.
That's not true. I'd be interested in hearing how you think you know it.
The thing that makes HN valuable is being interesting (a.k.a. "gratification of intellectual curiosity" as the site guidelines say), so that's the one thing we try to optimize the site for. That's the way to maximize its value, including its value for YC. If that weren't true, I doubt I'd be doing this job.
> "The only thing we're trying to optimize HN for is being interesting (a.k.a. "gratification of intellectual curiosity" as the site guidelines say)"
Care to explain us how removing flags from posts that aren't about technology (like you admittedly did in the past about perceived discrimination) in order to keep them in the front page against the community wishes is a an attempt of gratification of intellectual curiosity from your part?
Care to also explain us how your constant admonitions and flagging against factual comments that challenge your views of discrimination are, yet again, an attempt of gratification of intellectual curiosity from your part?
I would be happy to have a good-faith discussion with you, but unfortunately you don't sound interested in that.
If you continue to descend into using HN exclusively for ideological battle and fulmination, we're going to have to ban you. That's not because we disagree with $your_politics, it's because ideological battle is not what the site is for (and destroys what it is for). We've asked you before to stop this, so if you want to continue commenting here, we need you to stop it now.
> "it's because ideological battle is not what the site is for"
If this is actually true then why do you keep removing flags from ideological submissions and force them into the front page when me (and others like me) keep flagging and asking to stop with the ideological posts? Quite the conundrum, isn't it?
> "We've asked you before to stop this"
Can you actually point when that happened
> "If you continue to descend into using HN exclusively for ideological battle and fulmination, we're going to have to ban you"
I clearly don't use HN for "ideological battle and fulmination" my comments clearly go into the technical realm whenever you don't keep editorializing the front page and removing flags from the actual ideological submissions. But so what if you ban me? We already understood that our downvotes and flags mean nothing since you keep removing them whenever they go against $your_politics Dang, so it's not like we miss absolutely anything by just making a new account and keep calling out your double standards with it.
Hypothetically speaking, if Facebook didn't want to comply, and they shutdown any German entities that could be exposed to fines, what would Germany's next move be? To block Facebook completely from the country?
122 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadMaybe this will convince facebook to remove decapitation videos.
Censorship and fines galore. Just this week: a €2.4B fine from the EU for Google's integrated shopping view. A Canadian ruling stating that Google had to enforce Canadian censorship worldwide. And now, huge fines for content that the German government finds objectionable.
How long before google, Facebook, etc. retreat to the US entirely (or even to some liberal island nation)? Sooner or later, the economic benefit of a data company having a physical presence somewhere is outweighed by the cost of overbearing censorship laws. Maybe it's time for the Sultanate of Kinakuta to become a reality.
Google and Facebook should start investing heavily in anti-censorship technology a la Tor and I2P. Sadly, I fear that this may soon become necessary in "liberal" nations like Germany. It's already necessary in the U.K., with draconian anti-pornography and anti-cryptography laws.
Love that Sultanate of Kinakuta reference :)
e.g. Here is the UK subsidiary of Facebook - I'd expect there to be a German equivalent:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06331310
And move all operations out of Germany.
Maybe blacklist all German IPs, just for jolly ;)
Edit: Also, Facebook does have a Tor onion gateway. For users in places that block access. That'd work as well for Germans as well as Chinese etc.
At some point, Internet-based firms will need to take a stand on this. Otherwise, they'll just get pecked to death.
https://www.facebook.com/shiploveahoi https://www.firmenwissen.de/az/firmeneintrag/20355/215148792...
Germany has seized assets of corporations (for example, they did seize an airplane, to force the airline to pay back the cost of a ticket to a traveller whose flight was cancelled) before to enforce regulations.
Facebook will definitely want to avoid their hard- and software being seized and sold off to pay for a potential fine.
They might have some leased servers, but afaik none of their custom built data centers are located there. Compared to abandoning a bespoke facility, packing up and moving out of a server farm is little more than a hassle.
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/the-facebook-data-center-...
And just seizing and selling their IP would be enough to encourage facebook not to violate the law.
Everyone would love buying their software and trained models.
Kim Dotcom is a good example.
Companies having to follow the law of where they provide their services is a far deal less prohibitive.
And, frankly said, I'd love it if Google, Facebook etc would leave the European market — as local competitors would appear very quickly, and, due to the huge size of the European market — would actually become viable competitors to the American companies even in the international market.
Even so, it's debatable how much actual authority the entirety of the EU has in this matter. They're not guaranteed cooperation via US courts and public institutions. They could threaten to wholesale block Facebook (or [insert other tech property here]), but I'm not sure that's realistic.
All in all I suspect we'll soon find out whether or not the EU is in fact a complete paper tiger : if they lose against Google & Facebook, they'll be unmasked as weak chest thumpers.
The law only needs to hold up and silence dissent until Merkle is re-elected in a few months. Rank cynicism.
Of course, most politicians involved in making this happen won't ever have to deal with one iota of the inconvenience they bestow over their general population.
What does "obviously illegal" even mean? And is it like "obvious porn"? Because politicians themselves seem to be doing a terrible job at recognizing that, too:
> During the various internet censorship cases the ACLU brought, we asked the government to identify speech in each category, and they were largely unable to do so. For example, they said that an online photo on Playboy’s website of a topless woman was not harmful to minors, but a virtually identical photo on Penthouse’s website was.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170626/16543937676/how-a...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_control
Many politicians, especially in the mainstream, operate on a 'lowest possible effort' basis to pretend they're giving a damn about their electorate, which is why so many completely awful laws and trade deals get passed just by giving it a friendly-sounding name, all while pocketing a hefty 'extra payment' for their collaboration.
I'll be more surprised to find out that something concrete was done about the cause of extremism in Europe than to find out that there was a ridiculously large network of bribed politicians involved in passing this law.
We need more freedom of speech, not less. The US is miles ahead of us in this respect. Here in Europe, we're missing that fundamental value of "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it". Instead, it's more like "I disagree with what you say so I'm going to try to get you arrested for it". Eg Dutch xenophobe politician Geert Wilders got dragged into court twice! (ridiculous, and also countereffective because guess what it did for his ratings)
This sort of stuff is much worse, however. Given the 24 hour deadline, the only way Facebook reasonably can implement this is automation. A computer program determining whether my post is hate speech or satire? Seriously? Computers can't even tell the difference between a puppy and a cupcake. Why does anyone think this is a good idea?
A long time ago I used to hang out on an IRC channel that banned "bad words". The bot was very enthusiastically tuned with conservative American values. There was a user called "War^" but "war" was a forbidden word. Talking to him got you kicked out, mentioning him thrice got you banned.
Obviously, the solution there was simple: leave the IRC channel and never come back. But I'm not sure people will feel they have the same option for their favorite social media.
Don't mistake my intent here - it would vastly understate the case to say merely that I do not love Facebook. But free speech is the wrong line of attack, because that is something which we have no legal precedent for obliging them to provide, and this lack of precedent has enduring value exceeding what we might in the short term realize from its contravention.
Another core American value is independence of thought and action. We are a nation of grown-ass men and women who do not require a company, a government, or any other arbitrary authority to sign off on the exercise of those rights and liberties which are our common birthright.
So if Facebook chooses not to permit its users to say controversial things, the American response is not to go crying to Daddy to make that mean old mister Zuckerberg be nice, but instead to say: "Well, then, you do just as you please - and be damned to you, because I will go and do as I please." And then, suiting action to word, to set up one's own website, where one may speak as one likes without fear of being suppressed by the ukaze of some billionaire overlord. We do, after all, still have an open Internet. I think it would behoove us to use it.
To that last point, let me reiterate that I have no love for Facebook, and would prefer that such a behemoth, opaque monstrosity - with such an astonishing degree of power to mediate the social interactions of more than a quarter of our entire species - not only did not, but could not, exist. That is far too much power to inhere in any single organization.
Where we differ, I think, is in our evaluation of the most useful method of taking that power away from the organization which holds it now. You seem inclined to prefer that government should do so - an obvious answer, to be sure, but in my view fatally flawed insomuch as that, in taking that power away from Facebook, this government would necessarily gather that same power to itself. (Who else, after all, would you have tell Facebook what to do?)
I would rather see that power, not still further agglomerated into a different monolithic bloc of same, but rather atomized. It seems to me much more in accord with American values that this mass power be broken down and distributed among many individuals, such that each may exercise her rights with the maximum liberty to do so, and none may forbid another from doing likewise.
There are some really exciting projects underway right now to build a framework in which this can happen - indeed, a framework in which nothing else can happen, wherein the construction of a Facebook in anything like its present leviathan form is impossible because it has no apparent benefit to offer. This is a very long-term goal, I freely concede! I may not live to see it bear fruit, if indeed it ever succeeds in so doing. But nothing else of which I'm aware offers a better prospect of upholding those American values which my fellows and I hold so dear.
You seem to be very convinced of this. Could you please list one or two concrete cases where you think free speech was too limited in Europe and where this limitation led to a poor outcome for society? I think this could make your argument much stronger.
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/07/man-jailed-for...
edit: more examples from some other European countries http://www.euronews.com/2016/04/15/beyond-a-joke-7-countries...
"We need more freedom of speech, not less. The US is miles ahead of us in this respect. Here in Europe, we're missing that fundamental value of "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it". Instead, it's more like "I disagree with what you say so I'm going to try to get you arrested for it"."
Therefore my example is germane and quite a clear example given your question.
Here are more examples (again Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, Spain):
http://www.euronews.com/2016/04/15/beyond-a-joke-7-countries...
In the US, the offended person would have to sue the offender for libel or defamation. The State would not be bringing charges because this is not a criminal matter; it is a civil matter. Nor is it so obviously defamation or libel, as you suggest.
The lese majeste law is not a matter of the King suing the offender. It is a matter of the Dutch state pursuing criminal prosecution.
The test for what values we uphold should not always be what has proven to be a good outcome for ourselves or for society.
Your same argument could be used against many human rights. What about torture: can you give me a concrete example of how US torture was bad for society?
Extending your argument from society to individuals, we make the worst tragedies possible. It is an important lesson from the history of Germany itself, in the quote: 'When they came for them, I did not speak, because I was not them. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me."
There is value in upholding human rights on principle.
Once you eliminate free speech in cases where it is convenient, you no longer have a free speech principle.
In Germany the thought police has brought people to court for things such as Facebook groups for people who don't like refugees. Maybe that seems fair to you, but then again a comedian also faced prosecution for a poem about Erdogan. Now imagine prosecution for a poem belittling Trump. It's the possibility of that outcome that we want to stay as far away from as possible.
Besides, it seems difficult to believe a legitimate role of government is to protect you from words, and words alone.
Another example is democracy. Just because you support someone's right to vote for, and you know a few people will go vote for fascists, it does not mean you support fascism as a human right.
Once you eliminate speech just because you disagree with it, you begin the process of allowing the most powerful to determine that criteria for their own benefit.
I know you don't want to be insulted, or let other people be insulted, but it's a dangerous responisbility to give to government to make them arbiter of what speech is acceptable.
It is important to understand that this is, for now, a matter of a chilling effect. I don't claim that I would be put in jail or fined for my opinions, but I definitely do feel a risk of some authority possibly investigating me. And that is enough to make me not take part in the debate. And I do not see my positions being openly discussed in public, even though I know from private conversations that many, many people hold the same views. This is something that moderates on the other side seem not to understand or believe, because they do not face it.
This has lead to a number of poor outcomes for the societies in Europe. Most importantly there are possible approaches to solving the situation that have not been seriously explored and evaluated (e.g., Australia style migrant centres outside the EU). As a result the European response has been uncontrolled, inefficient and hugely expensive. I believe many more people in real need could have been helped, and many lives saved, by an approach that was not based on accepting unlimited numbers of migrants into Europe.
The second important problem is that it drives the disenfranchised moderates towards the extreme. If you feel like your voice is not heard in the debate, it becomes more likely that you will demonstrate with a protest vote for an extremist.
Personally I am absolutely against this law. Even if you accept the idea of hate speech laws, surely they should be enforced by the courts, not by Facebook?
There is no law in Germany preventing you from voicing your opinion against immigration. We're talking about legally enforced censorship not about media bias. Having said that, I do agree with many things you say, I just think they are not directly relevant to the discussion.
Could you please read my second paragraph. I'm aware the is no law against voicing my opinion on immigration (I'm not against immigration, I'm an immigrant myself). However, I am absolutely not going to publicly voice my opinions because I do not want to risk someone interpreting some part of my point out of context and investigating me for hate speech.
If I recall correctly, the Swastika is banned in Germany, even though it's a symbol with many meanings in many cultures. This means people can't express certain aspects of their cultures, visually, simply because the NSDAP chose to use the same logo. Context matters, you know.
Finally, I heard a law in Germany is about to get passed that is going to make large social networks program bots that automatically ban content based on whether it may contain hate speech or crime. Good satire will disappear from much of the German internet.
Exactly, and that's the reason why you can use the Swastika as much as you want in Germany when the context makes clear that you're not using it for political purposes. These silly strawmen arguments do not help the discussion.
This mostly agrees with the text of the law, which appears to include a provision translating to "... shall not be applicable if the means of propaganda or the act serves to further civil enlightenment, to avert unconstitutional aims, to promote art or science, research or teaching, reporting about current historical events or similar purposes."
Reporting on the law suggests that the purpose is much stronger than simply avoiding its political use, but also to "avert social habitation". In particular, it appears that its use in, say, a video game would in fact be illegal, as Ubisoft assumed with its 2014 release "South Park: The Stick of Truth".
To me, this seems more like reasonable regulation than oppression, although some people confuse these concepts, or have a financial interest in conflating personal freedoms with market deregulation.
The german government is asking for Facebook to promptly remove content that is obviously illegal in Germany (and most of the world), like murder videos, hate speech, etc. Sounds reasonable to me.
TV stations in some (most?) European countries can be held legally responsible for the content they air. This is (fortunately) happening right now where I live, where a private TV station is being investigated for repeatedly airing a program where a psychologist spreads hate speech and fake science like "people who use marijuana have gay sex" and "gipsies don't work and live off the rest of us"; the person's professional license has been revoked as a consequence, so the TV station are being held responsible for airing blatantly illegal content by a disaccredited "psychologist".
That's why media needs basic regulation, IMO.
After reporting numerous posts for hate speech and personal insults has zero, Facebook's response is always "no breach of our terms". But it's a breach of our society's terms, and fortunately we are still (mostly) held to the rule of law.
The problem is not one of morals, as I doubt fb wants this type off content at all.
I think it's possibly unreasonable. It's fb vs the world quite literally. It's the nature off it's design.
What's next? Police gets fined if they can't catch a criminal within a week?
What about a fireman getting fined if he can't put out a fire within 20 minutes.
All these things share an uncontrollable and unpredictable situation.
You can't ignore the complex design off millions off people streaming millions of text inputs daily and checking it all 100%. That's monkey reasoning, black and white thinking fallacies.
Fb should give insight and show how they battle it, but imo it's childish to randomly give 24 hours. At least come with an argument or 'standard' if u will (ie. 1 content checker person per 1k posts or w/e).
If the system is good enough for you to make hundreds of billions of some years, yes, you should expend a lot to conform with society's needs.
> You can't ignore the complex design off millions off people streaming millions of text inputs daily and checking it all 100%.
You can't allow a company to have so much power over millions of people just because it is difficult to make it conform and keep working. Guess what, find a better solution. The world is not 1% better with all this live Facebook BS, I'd not give a care if it was all shutdown. It is not a free speech problem if they are exploiting it for their own benefit.
I don't want it to be illegal, because policing it requires the instatement of an automatic censorship framework, that even if it works perfectly, can be trivially re-used for stifling more speech. Not regulating media has bad consequences, but regulating media has even worse consequences. You can't save people from themselves.
Social Media giants ignoring local laws, while being occupied with taking over the world truly makes for a great Cinderella story -- but maybe part of growing is also growing up and preparing the business to comply with local laws, instead of waving the "this is so unreasonable" card when you didn't do so for a decade and then eventually get fined for it.
A similar discussion can also be seen with Brexit in the UK: hate crimes have been steadily increasing since the Brexit campaign, and many people have been pointing at the divisive and malicious discourse surrounding that as one of the causes.
So yes, while I agree with you that speech in general should never be prohibited, and I also agree that automated takedowns of content are not desirable (mainly because once that's in place, the algorithms then become the law -- and that is not where I want to be); I also think that companies that facilitate large-scale communication between citizens can not hide behind "free speech" arguments to completely disavow any and all responsibility for consequences of speech on their platform.
Not "will". It's been happening for many years. There's the "Right to Be Forgotten". The US blackholes lots of stuff that it considers illegal. At least China only censors its own people.
The only hope is overlay networks that can't be censored.
The comments disappear before I manage to answer to them.
What sort of Soviet-alike censorship is that?
It just seems that way. Alas it's a tempting conclusion to jump to.
Of the 9 comments that disappeared in this thread, 8 were deleted by their authors. 1 was flagged by users. Another comment was killed by software and thus never became visible in the first place, but we've rescued that one.
We don't delete anything outright, except by request of the author. If you set 'showdead' to 'yes' in your profile you can see all the comments killed by user flags, moderators, and software. "[dead]" means the comment is only visible to users logged in with 'showdead'. "[flagged]" means users flagged it. "[flagged] [dead]" means so many users flagged it that the comment was killed. If you just see "[dead]" but not "[flagged]", either it was killed by software or by mods.
When you see a [dead] comment that you think shouldn't be dead, assuming you have > 30 karma you can vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'vouch'. If vouches override flags, the comment will be restored.
And that's not going to end well.
In the law, costs of complying were estimated to be 28 Mio. € per year (for all social networks combined). I don't know how accurate this is but probably not orders of magnitude off.
I can imagine some amusing outcomes. Sure, Germany can censor "hate speech", however it wants to define that. But the "hate speech" will still be there. Germans just won't see it, unless they lie about their location and hit Facebook via VPNs or Tor. So someone could spread malicious rumors about you, and you might not even know it.
Before you make any statements about his this could potentially suppress voices and opinions, you can always make your own site. Even if the government did not interfere with these sites, the sites themselves totally have the right to regulate everything that's being posted. This is only to encourage this because companies like facebook didn't seem to give much of a damn about regulation.
Social media allows you to use a pseudonym which makes it possible to share an opinion (and thus, to a tiny extend, shape society) without the people who know you in "real life" learning about it. If you have a personal website you have, by German law, to publish your name and address on this website. As a result, people can google what you write.
So if you want to discuss an opinion that people you interact with in real life don't accept you have to accept that they could find your posts. This, naturally, could have a chilling effect leading to you not writing about issues you care about.
If this community is all so pro "free speech" as basically all these comments here are trying to signal, than you would do well to start exactly here instead of pointing the finger at the German government while doing the opposite.
Equally, a lot of the commentary here is against the idea that FB is having to make decisions about what is and is not hate speech. If there were the equivalent on HN i.e. dang et al pre-screened all comments and decided what was acceptable, I'm sure there'd be a backlash.
On HN, the community decides what is acceptable having seen the comment. In the FB case, the community has decided what is acceptable in general, via laws, but FB are being forced to police those laws without the community seeing the specifics. A subtle distinction I grant you but, in my opinion, an important one.
Having said all that, I can't disagree that the HN community is generally biased as it's self selecting. I personally don't have a problem with that (if I did there's a fairly straightforward fix) and I do expect to hold governments to a higher standard as it's much harder as an individual to fix the issue.
Not really, that's just a common fallacy perpetuated from the ones that see their political views represented by the heavy handed moderation around HN, or the ones that actually don't pay attention to what is going on in HN.
Moderators in HN heavily editorialize the Front Page by removing the flags from some posts and flagging other highly voted ones by the community.
They do the same to comments that don't follow their personal views even when those comments don't break any of the guidelines but happen to be against the moderators political views.
Bottom line: You might be deceived by the appearances here, or you might be actually enjoying so see anyone that disagrees with you being shut up in HN, but factually, it's not the "community" of HN that is deciding what is acceptable, it's largely the moderators of HN.
The thing that makes HN valuable is being interesting (a.k.a. "gratification of intellectual curiosity" as the site guidelines say), so that's the one thing we try to optimize the site for. That's the way to maximize its value, including its value for YC. If that weren't true, I doubt I'd be doing this job.
Care to explain us how removing flags from posts that aren't about technology (like you admittedly did in the past about perceived discrimination) in order to keep them in the front page against the community wishes is a an attempt of gratification of intellectual curiosity from your part?
Care to also explain us how your constant admonitions and flagging against factual comments that challenge your views of discrimination are, yet again, an attempt of gratification of intellectual curiosity from your part?
Thank you.
If you continue to descend into using HN exclusively for ideological battle and fulmination, we're going to have to ban you. That's not because we disagree with $your_politics, it's because ideological battle is not what the site is for (and destroys what it is for). We've asked you before to stop this, so if you want to continue commenting here, we need you to stop it now.
If this is actually true then why do you keep removing flags from ideological submissions and force them into the front page when me (and others like me) keep flagging and asking to stop with the ideological posts? Quite the conundrum, isn't it?
> "We've asked you before to stop this"
Can you actually point when that happened
> "If you continue to descend into using HN exclusively for ideological battle and fulmination, we're going to have to ban you"
I clearly don't use HN for "ideological battle and fulmination" my comments clearly go into the technical realm whenever you don't keep editorializing the front page and removing flags from the actual ideological submissions. But so what if you ban me? We already understood that our downvotes and flags mean nothing since you keep removing them whenever they go against $your_politics Dang, so it's not like we miss absolutely anything by just making a new account and keep calling out your double standards with it.