I already submitted a story to an article on the same topic published by the New York Times [1] which got flagged reasonably because I edited the HN title to be more provocative in order to point the discussion towards the issue of free speech. However, I would love to see a discussion here, which is why I am trying again with another source.
In my opinion, the law is problematic for several reasons:
Deciding whether an input to a discussion is legal is not always easy. There have been cases where legal decisions have been revised. Furthermore, the presumption of innocence is removed. As soon as a contribution is accused to violate any laws, it will be removed.
Before, regular courts without any other incentives than administering justice would have decided on this kind of issue. Obviously, this does not scale which is one of the main reasons for the introduction of this law. Still, we cannot simply outsource the decision on legal questions because the quality of the outcome cannot be guaranteed at all. There is a reason for judges requiring university education. What will now happen on social network sites is comparable to a black box without any insights on the internal process.
The high fines up to $57 million incentivize social network sites to rather delete content than keep it up. It is reasonable to assume that comments which are not subject to freedom of expression are only a subset of those being deleted because of this newly introduced bill. As a result, free speech is limited.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 14.1 ms ] threadIn my opinion, the law is problematic for several reasons:
Deciding whether an input to a discussion is legal is not always easy. There have been cases where legal decisions have been revised. Furthermore, the presumption of innocence is removed. As soon as a contribution is accused to violate any laws, it will be removed.
Before, regular courts without any other incentives than administering justice would have decided on this kind of issue. Obviously, this does not scale which is one of the main reasons for the introduction of this law. Still, we cannot simply outsource the decision on legal questions because the quality of the outcome cannot be guaranteed at all. There is a reason for judges requiring university education. What will now happen on social network sites is comparable to a black box without any insights on the internal process.
The high fines up to $57 million incentivize social network sites to rather delete content than keep it up. It is reasonable to assume that comments which are not subject to freedom of expression are only a subset of those being deleted because of this newly introduced bill. As a result, free speech is limited.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/business/germany-facebook...