Any site that isn't social media is exempt. Any site with less than 2'000'000 German users is exempt.
You only have to remove content if it is obvious that it is violating existing law, and someone has filed a report, within of 24 hours. The original poster can also oppose this.
According the European Digital Rights association, the law's definition of social media is so broad that it would apply there as long as the service has 2 million German users (the wording is not clear whether this number is active/registered/total users).
The law's definition of social media - telemedia providers who operate commercial platforms that allow
users to exchange or share any kind of content with other users or make such content
accessible to other users (“Social Network”).
Not so fast. That was German satirist Jan Böhmermann reading a "poem" on TV about Turkish president Erdoğan (the content is not really important, but it was rather insulting, and purposefully so: calling him dumb, cowardly, and smelly; alleging he beat little girls, fucked goats, watched child porn, and subjugated minorities, and so on.)
Now, as it happens, Germany has a paragraph on its criminal code, § 103, that prohibits insulting foreign heads of state. Thus, prosecution was initiated. However:
1. The case was dropped.
2. In fact, legislative proceedings to drop § 103 are on their way.
So, I'm not too worried about the freedom of political speech in Germany. Holocaust denial and nazi propaganda are prohibited, for historical reasons, but apart from that political speech is free and vigorous.
Germany has been criticized by many for their questionable free speech. Snowden is one famous person to do this.
The right to offend is also considered by many to be an important part of free speech-1.
In fact, I'm not so sure why the person responding to me is not at all worried. Even if the law is dropped, and this particular prosecution dropped, the fact remains: "a political artist was prosecuted for a poem insulting a politician."
If his point is simply Germany has better free speech than other countries, naming Thailand; then OK, I agree, but they're still getting close to treading a dangerous line.
> The right to offend is also considered by many to be an important part of free speech.
It sure is (as for example, highlighting, insulting and mocking absurd religious beliefs), fully on your page there.
That is also the consensus in Germany, and consequently that particular paragraph of the penal code is scheduled to be deleted by 2018. That's one reason I'm not worried about it.
Another is this: Reporters Without Borders has consistently rated Germany in the top 20 in its Press Freedom Index over the last decades, indeed better than, say, Thailand (at 142), the USA (at 43), or the UK (at 40). US-based Freedom House in their "Freedom of the Press" report rates Germany at 25, US at 33, and UK at 39.
§103 is being removed, a paragraph that had a useful existence when it was easy to start a war by insulting a foreign head.
The "right to offend" is not being instated however, as §185 (law against insults) still exists and won't be removed, as it serves as a useful outlet for insulted people other than e.g. violence.
Yeah. "Smelly goatfucker" might not be the most political of insults, but the guy certainly made a point (plus he did have actual politics in there, e.g. the one on suppressing minorities).
Also, I'm glad that this §103 will be canned - it's uncomfortably close to the Lèse-majesté laws e.g. in Thailand (that are actually used to suppress political opposition).
I'd love to see tech companies band together and play hardball with governments that try and pull this shit. Just discontinue services on the whole country.
The politicans would quickly change their tune once the entire country's voting base wakes up to the fact they've been thrust into the internet dark ages by their own legislators.
Like when Google left china.. that really showed them /s
You know there are countries where Facebook does not operate.. local companies get easy funding to recreate the service.. after all it's a proven business model
The eu is certainly a big enough market to support a local version
Maybe the EU is, but I doubt Germany is. In addition, Even though there is Baidu, it is preferable that the rest of the world can Google "Tianamen square" and get back something resembling the facts. If Google had used this logic of "well somebody else will do it anyway", the rest of us would have only seen what China permitted.
This is such a dumb argument. Google already did and does censorship per country (including adhering to Chinese law back when they operated there) and so does their subsidiary YouTube (in regards to copyright, maybe in other areas too). At no point was "Tianmen square" search banned to "the rest of us" because of this. In EU it already censors some searches because of the "law to be forgotten". The technology to do this censorship without making any country adhere to law of any other country online is clearly feasible, seamless and even already in place and active.
I wasnt advocating western companies compromise their values. I was saying if they withdraw, other companies will fill the void... so any pain that the people experience will be temporary and the western company will be forgotten. Just like Google was forgotten in China. Companies disappear for many reasons all the time. People dont go out and protest to change the laws.. they move on and find alternatives.
That's not a call to abandon values. It's just an acknowledgement of reality and market forces. Just because someone else will do it, doesnt mean that you have to.
The point is that in Western countries, their entire populations are already heavily invested in those services. Suddenly losing access would be unthinkable.
Sure.. but dont you think Germans understand that their hate speech laws arent a simple black and white issue? that theyve made a compromise of their values because of their history with nazism and the wars that devastated their country. I think they know full well the compromise they've made.
So if google disappeared tomorrow in Germany because of this law.. do you think they pick up their protest signs and start marching? Or do you think they understand it's more complex than that and the answer isn't that simple.. and because they are busy people, they type bing.com into their browser instead.
Their history contributes directly toward their motivation to fight for a change in those laws (for the benefit of a foreign company I might add), and their willingness to use inferior alternatives. Given what they believe they are protecting against, I don't think they will bow to pressure easily.. they'll change them when they believe the threat is gone.
>... and because they are busy people, they type bing.com into their browser instead.
All major tech companies accompany their services with user accounts that hold a treasure trove of personal information, and that users are likely to be invested in to some degree. Facebook (the subject of the article) happens to be the best example of this, because you can't simply go to some other site and have all your personal connections be present; the lock-in factor is very high there.
Moreover, if tech companies coordinated their efforts, simply using the competitor as your example suggests would not work.
>Don't give me the free speech argument, it's completely off the table ...
Well, that is the context in which my comment was made. I also beg to differ that it's completely off the table. On the contrary, give these comments a read:
You can what-if using such leverage in other scenarios all day long as a counterpoint, but obviously companies wouldn't get away with pulling such stunts without overwhelming public support. Free speech issues tend to engender such support. The vast majority of your examples would not.
Real life Ministry of Truth. Not only is this another strike at freedom of expression in Germany, but it's an attack on the privacy of Germans.
The idea that arresting people for "hate speech" online is going to make your country any better or safer is laughable. It just means people making jokes will get arrested because one of their jokes offends a few people [1].
Here's a great video by a German who is concerned about the expanded surveillance state and limitations on free speech: https://youtu.be/WFCKTvGU8oU
Here's another video about German hate speech crime and statistics that I found insightful: https://youtu.be/kX84h6aKpaU
Sorry, but no. Forcing companies that disregard the law to pay fines (not 'arresting people') is no strike at freedom of expression in Germany. (Note that your link [1] is about the UK, a different country.)
Yes, holocaust denial and Nazi propaganda are prohibited in Germany for historical reasons, but the notion that his severely impedes the freedom of political speech is mistaken.
And yes, I've read my John Stuart Mill, and mostly agree with him.
As an aside, I'd still rate the level of public discourse in Germany as way above what's happening in many other countries (though it's going downhill, with all the private TV stations and social media, whose goal is not edification and education, but advertisement driven profit and "engagement").
Germany actually has these restrictions because it affords its citizens more rights than most countries. And these restrictions exist exactly because rights may only be exercised unless they impinge on the rights of others.
And i invite you to read the very first law in the german body of law, that enshrines a right that does not exist in all countries:
This law will absolutely be used to curb political speech, that's the whole point. And you know it will be applied by the ruling party against anybody whose views they don't like.
When you're banning "hate speech" without strictly and narrowly defining what it is, it's a pure censorship instrument with pretty much unlimited reach.
I, for instance, think The Bible and The Quran are full of hate speech, but do you think they should be banned in the whole country simply based on my view?
What about a Android vs iOS debates? Should we ban every shit-talking conversation on the internet?
What about BMW vs Audi? Tabs vs spaces? Chocolate vs vanilla?
So, first, I'm no expert in this (and defer to rbehrends's excellent comments in this thread). The law seems to have problematic parts, as mentioned in the article: "the statute gives companies incentives to remove content, and it lacks a procedure for users to appeal removals."
Yet, the issue is not clear cut. There are legitimate limitations on free speech - the famous "screaming fire in a crowded theatre" thing.
So, in Germany (with a history of institutionalised genocide), the lines are drawn a bit differently.
The notion that the ruling party will use it against views they don't like seems far fetched, though again, I grant you that it's a slippery slope - Principiis obsta ("resist the beginnings").
But, I object to the notion that freedom of political speech is fundamentally under attack here.
[As for the Abrahamic texts, there is case to be made that they ought to be banned, though I grant that that wouldn't help much. As for your "reductio ad absurdum" (tabs/spaces): again, there's unproblematic speech, and there's legitimately prohibited speech, and then there's a grey area, and that's what we're discussing here - where in the grey to draw the line.]
It's just amazing that you can talk about banning the religious texts and at the same time claim the speech is not under attack. That's some olympic-level mental gymnastics.
I am saying that this law discussed in the article constitutes no attack on free speech.
By implication, hypothetical stricter laws might be defensible, even. Next, the Abrahamic texts do contain truly awful prescriptions (genocide, killing people for all sorts of silly reasons, such as blasphemy, apostasy, homosexuality, eating the wrong food, etc.), which one ought to argue against vigorously, and which could be illegal under (hypothetical, stricter) laws (insofar, for example, as quoting specific sections could be understood as a 'call for action' to murder people).
The "fire in a crowded theater" standard is considered a legal joke these days. It has been superseded since the 1960s by FAR more stringent tests on speech limits. Expunge this saying from your vocabulary — it has zero relevance in modern case law.
Precisely the opposite. "More stringent tests" mean that any law that tries to limit speech must pass an exceedingly high bar — higher than ever before. The "clear and present danger" test used by Oliver Wendell Holmes in his "crowded theater" opinion basically says that any speech that could cause dangerous effects could be outlawed. Modern 1st Amendment jurisprudence, by contrast, has evolved toward the "fighting words" standard, which basically limits restrictions on speech to outlawing "true threats"; e.g. me saying I'm going to kill you.
This is actually not a real risk, because the German Federal Constitutional Court is generally not any fonder of content-based speech restrictions than the US Supreme Court (it is more permissive when it comes to content-neutral speech restrictions, however).
As I wrote elsewhere, the problem here is primarily not what the government does – because there are effective constitutional safeguards in place –, but what social media companies may do.
The problem with your argument is that you're looking backwards at what the government has done to predict what it will do. What if someone like Trump is elected? Oh wait, there went that theory. How about what the south African government did or what the American dixiecrats would have done (further) if they had they power to suppress speech?
To be fair: That's the same thing. Counting on a system of humans keeping its stance regarding a certain topic while declaring laws is a recipe for disaster.
It's not the same thing. A constitutional court has independent judges bound only by their conscience, the constitution, and precedent, the government is answerable to its voters.
And if you actually get to a point where all these checks and balances do break down, you have much bigger worries than just suppression of speech (which at this point becomes just a further symptom of an autocratic or totalitarian regime, not its cause).
Illustrates that the whole concept of freedom of speech is illogical.
What if I agitate and undermine the right to "freedom of speech" itself? For self preservation, the society would need to agree that in this instance speech should be curtailed, and bit by bit it will get eroded.
This is a bad law, but this is also frustratingly bad reporting. I understand that American media have to often translate foreign legal concepts into something closer to American ones, so they talk about "hate crimes" and "hate speech" (offenses that as such don't accurately reflect legal concepts as they exist in Germany), but in this case it's not even an accurate representation of the law.
The list of offenses that the law talks about includes a whole list of things that aren't remotely hate speech: they include things such as the creation of a criminal or terrorist organization or illegal distribution of pornography (pornography is not per se illegal, but you cannot, for example, sell it to minors).
The goal of the law is basically to enforce offenses that are commonly committed online by deputizing social media companies. And this is where the actual problem lies; the law does not regulate anything that isn't already an offense, after all.
1. Many of these social media companies do not even have a legal presence in Germany and it is questionable whether Germany even has jurisdiction under current EU law.
2. Even if Germany has jurisdiction, having social media companies adjudicate the legality of online content (even where there is a legitimate interest and we are not dealing with offenses that affect freedom of speech) is a bad idea in too many ways to count. The social media company is incentivized to err on the side of banning content; they generally do not have the resources and/or personnel with adequate legal training to properly adjudicate the issue in many cases; and if they get things wrong, there is often no practical way to appeal their misjudgment.
3. The law may (due to its crude mechanisms) have a chilling effect far beyond what any that current laws create, even though on paper we're talking about the same offenses. That's because the legal system generally subjects potential prosecution for many of these offenses to a high level of scrutiny in order to protect freedom of expression. It is unlikely that Facebook and Twitter are going to do the same.
4. As a result, the law is probably headed for a collision course with the Federal Constitutional Court at the earliest opportunity.
As the law only applies to stuff that is already illegal, and only requires companies to remove it on request, if it is obviously violating the law, ...
Well, we already know what this law looks like. It's just the DMCA, expanded to other types of content. This is bad, but it's not nearly the end-of-the-world that the hypocritical US-Americans on HN have been claiming it is.
> As the law only applies to stuff that is already illegal, and only requires companies to remove it on request, if it is obviously violating the law, ...
The problem is that these things often aren't "obvious". For example, one offense that is listed in the law is §185 of the penal code, which criminalizes insults (I'm not kidding). Because making every insult a criminal offense would make real freedom of speech impossible in practice, actual application of that law is subject to various and sundry constraints as the result of case law of the Constitutional Court. As a result, it's actually virtually impossible to commit such an offense in the political arena (in practice, the law has therefore been reduced to an institutionalized form of contempt of cop for the most part, and occasionally sees use as a modern form of dueling for the few bored and rich enough to pursue a private lawsuit: lawyers at ten paces, so to speak). But to understand that, you do have to be sufficiently familiar with the case law.
That's not much of a problem when an actual prosecutor examines the facts: the case against Boehmermann, for example, was pretty quickly dismissed, because the prosecutor knew it was going nowhere fast. But now let's have Facebook's staff – most of them without legal training – examine the same facts and they may very well get it all wrong. Or, worse: decide to simply not bother with getting it right and just err on the side of caution. The law does not penalize inadvertent censorship, after all.
I worry that the chilling effect, and people self-silencing/self-limiting, are already happening to an extreme degree. One might even regard this law as an expression of that. So I worry that this law is fruit of what is happening, not the other way around. I wonder whether there isn't already too much self-censorship going on, especially with people who just have their own nuanced (harmless) ideas.
HackerNews to me sits is remarkably well inside the eye of numerous storms. Really happy about that.
Outside from here though people might just risk so much when all they want is to try and express those (apparently "arguably") harmless thoughts. The risk of falling pray to all kinds of social dangers can be very scary. Not worth it at all, in fact. So devolves the discourse which obviously gives rise to agression and spite as the most popular clothing of free speech.
To an extent we're doing this to ourselves more than the governments are to blame. I'm not arguing that this law is any kind of solution to our problems. Au contraire - what I'm just saying is that individuals in positions of authority get more than their fair share of spite and hate, so, this is what happens.
Yet however also, not long ago the public discourses that take place at present were unfathomable! The whole world being able to talk together on to such an immense scale via thing called the Internet - which, somewhat hilariously ironically, apparently should be called just internet without a 'the' and capital I from now on, per decree put forth by some editors.
But never mind that. Point is, when we do a thing like this (give ourselves 'an internet' -o, hey!), pain is just bound to start flowing and we should be careful with that. Our social evolution is what feels to be at stake here, with the way things are headed.
Little bit disappointed that you talk the insult law down that much. It serves a very real purpose in providing a tangible recourse that is at least better than the usual default, violence.
So if a company doesn't have a direct presence in a country but has many users from that country (for example, the German law this article is talking about has a threshold of 2 million German users), it doesn't have to follow the laws of that country?
For example, if a newspaper company was about to publish something illegal (like something pro-Nazi), who polices that? My understanding is that its the newspaper company because they know the laws around print media. So, why is social media any different? Why are they not in charge of policing their content? I believe that in some ways, their policing efforts aren't the same as a newspaper because they're not the ones directly creating the content, but they still have a responsibility to police it in some way because it is on their platform.
Your daily reminder that anyone who uses the phrase 'hate speech' really means 'thoughtcrime', regardless of how disgusting, bigoted or ignorant the target.
Even if it's neo-nazi propaganda, making any speech based on opinions that's not directly causing physical harm illegal is creating a class of thought crime.
What other way could one classify it? People would be going to jail for wrong-think.
1. It is hard to accept, but imho jurisdiction and law has to deal with things that cannot be defined in a technical way.
2. Although I already implied by 1. that it is not possible to make a clear machine-executable rule for everything, I would not agree that "any speech based on opinions" is a thought crime.
If you constantly bully someone, althought just with words, he might even be more hurt than if you just had smashed his face once leaving him with 2 or 3 scars.
Not trying to say that free speech is not important.
But I wouldn't call everything that is possible by moving your mouth free speech.
Note that I also unfortunately cannot provide a solution for this right now: I also don't like this new ruling because it is somehow based on some kind of definition what exactly this free speech is and with 1. in mind this is not possible easily.
My statement would basically be that I just cannot support the ongoing discussion here that not banning anything is an overall better option.
At least in Germany, laws often have the amendment "Der Versuch ist strafbar.". Attempts to commit the the crime are punished just like actually committing it, which makes total sense to me: When you are a bad person, you should not benefit legally just because on top of it you are also incompetent. This makes sure that you still get punished for murder if your victim somehow lives, because a doctor reanimates him or her.
I do think if someone is for example requesting to kill a person/group online or is searching for people to join him to do something like that, a judge should decide how severe the case is, hand out a warrant and the author should be held accountable.
Of course you have to consider the context and tone. It is also very difficult to check whether someone is just thinking out loud (e.g. "one should") or actively requesting something. That's why I don't think this law is a good idea, because that's something judges should decide not some Facebook interns afraid of a 50 million dollar fine.
I don't know whether hate speech is actually that big of a problem. If so, what we really need here is a streamlined way to complain to the police, gather all the evidence, categorize the issue, pre-check it and then hand it over to a judge. This process could be half-automated and have very narrow questions for the user (e.g. "Is this a death-threat?", "Is an exact date mentioned in the threat?") to exclude as much as possible as early as possible and need as few policemen as possible.
There is a scary trend of countries trying to force internet companies to enforce their speech standards globally. We recently saw that in the Canadian Supreme Court decision forcing Google to remove a domain globally from search.
If this continues, the only allowable content will be that which does not offend anybody, and if that happens, the open, free Internet we all knew and which has driven a lot of social change throughout the world will be dead. Think of an Internet where atheism is banned because it offends religious people, corrupt politicians's misdeeds are expunged pursuant to their right to be foegotten, exposure of police brutality is deemed offensive and disturbing and banned, and every country's human rights violations are suppressed because they can be.
> The draft bill defines “violating content” as content under Sections 86 (dissemination of propaganda material of unconstitutional organizations), ... 90 (defamation of the president), ... 166 (defamation of religions, religious and ideological associations), ... 241(causing the danger of criminal prosecution by informing on a person) ...
Over reaching laws like this are the biggest adversary to free speech. Even if the current government believes that hate speech/propaganda needs to be restricted, what is gonna stop someone down the line from using this law to silence all of their opponents and criticism?
Dangerous precedent. Expect this to be "good" for a couple years, then the definition gradually expands while nobody is looking and is used to penalize any sort of thought that doesn't fit the social norm.
the definition isn't expanding, it's simply applying laws that existed since the inception of the German Federal state seven decades ago to businesses that operate on the internet.
Here in Germany racebaiting, holocaust denial and so forth are not protected under freedom of speech, never have never will be. Americans will probably not understand it in the near future, but in German jurisdiction German law still applies. Digital business or not.
I mean, Facebook basically censors every naked piece of skin already and I have to live with it because apparently this is offensive to Americans. Now I find banning nazi propaganda to be much less controversial than a naked human body, but apparently tastes diverge
I expect that this trend of deputizing companies to police speech on their platforms will evolve in tension with rising antitrust scrutiny of the tech giants, because the rise of utterly dominant companies (a trend that the EU seems intent on slowing) would make efforts to regulate speech easier.
Large companies like Google have a global presence, and assets that can be targeted within the jurisdiction of most major governments, while a fragmented - and more competitive - market would make it more likely that "holdouts" can rise beyond the reach of a given government. These platforms would provide a redoubt for regulated speech, because it would be much harder to compel them to pay fines (though of course a country can simply block them).
At the same time, these new regulations give a competitive advantage to the companies with the scale and resources to invest in automating the removal process, and increases the challenges for upstart platforms, which now need to develop the infrastructure to aggressively police content on their networks if they want to grow beyond a certain size.
I think that in the long run, this will evolve into a stable equilibrium where governments periodically levy large-but-not-devastating fines in the name of "antitrust" in order to show their dedication to "competitive markets" and "customer choice", while simultaneously working hand-in-glove with these companies to enforce what they consider to be acceptable standards of speech in online communities. In the long run, no major competitors will emerge, and both the established firms and the government will silently thank their lucky stars.
This is just media and goverment trying to put the dschinny of the internet back into the lamp. You can allmost hear the sigh:
"Why, cant we go back to the days - where you all pretended that we represented the public, and the angry with there lifes citizens where firewalled from one another?"
Well, guess what, these people know now that they are not alone- and even if you burned the whole internet to ashes- they would just meet in real life. Some people in germany have a serious freedom of expression is only my opinion attitude. And they radicalize there opponents regularly by not discussing with them (That opinion is beneath me).
FB's policy is ridiculous. Show a breastfeeding woman and it's certainly gone in the next hours. But I've reported countless foreigners for gas chamber and teleheating crap postings and it was not considered inappropriate...what a BS. Still, the problem with law enfocement is always that "hate speech" is pretty fuzzy (obviously especially fuzzy for facebook)
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadMany sites that use e.g. Disqus for comments are filled with vile racist, homophobic, and other hateful comments.
You only have to remove content if it is obvious that it is violating existing law, and someone has filed a report, within of 24 hours. The original poster can also oppose this.
The law is basically the same as the DMCA.
The law's definition of social media - telemedia providers who operate commercial platforms that allow users to exchange or share any kind of content with other users or make such content accessible to other users (“Social Network”).
In other words, governments have already repeatedly proven they should not have authority over what speech is acceptable, even in Germany currently.
Now, as it happens, Germany has a paragraph on its criminal code, § 103, that prohibits insulting foreign heads of state. Thus, prosecution was initiated. However:
1. The case was dropped.
2. In fact, legislative proceedings to drop § 103 are on their way.
So, I'm not too worried about the freedom of political speech in Germany. Holocaust denial and nazi propaganda are prohibited, for historical reasons, but apart from that political speech is free and vigorous.
The right to offend is also considered by many to be an important part of free speech-1.
In fact, I'm not so sure why the person responding to me is not at all worried. Even if the law is dropped, and this particular prosecution dropped, the fact remains: "a political artist was prosecuted for a poem insulting a politician."
If his point is simply Germany has better free speech than other countries, naming Thailand; then OK, I agree, but they're still getting close to treading a dangerous line.
1-https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/16/free-s...
It sure is (as for example, highlighting, insulting and mocking absurd religious beliefs), fully on your page there.
That is also the consensus in Germany, and consequently that particular paragraph of the penal code is scheduled to be deleted by 2018. That's one reason I'm not worried about it.
Another is this: Reporters Without Borders has consistently rated Germany in the top 20 in its Press Freedom Index over the last decades, indeed better than, say, Thailand (at 142), the USA (at 43), or the UK (at 40). US-based Freedom House in their "Freedom of the Press" report rates Germany at 25, US at 33, and UK at 39.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index
§103 is being removed, a paragraph that had a useful existence when it was easy to start a war by insulting a foreign head.
The "right to offend" is not being instated however, as §185 (law against insults) still exists and won't be removed, as it serves as a useful outlet for insulted people other than e.g. violence.
That's like the definition of political speech.
Also, I'm glad that this §103 will be canned - it's uncomfortably close to the Lèse-majesté laws e.g. in Thailand (that are actually used to suppress political opposition).
The politicans would quickly change their tune once the entire country's voting base wakes up to the fact they've been thrust into the internet dark ages by their own legislators.
You know there are countries where Facebook does not operate.. local companies get easy funding to recreate the service.. after all it's a proven business model
The eu is certainly a big enough market to support a local version
That's not a call to abandon values. It's just an acknowledgement of reality and market forces. Just because someone else will do it, doesnt mean that you have to.
So if google disappeared tomorrow in Germany because of this law.. do you think they pick up their protest signs and start marching? Or do you think they understand it's more complex than that and the answer isn't that simple.. and because they are busy people, they type bing.com into their browser instead.
Their history contributes directly toward their motivation to fight for a change in those laws (for the benefit of a foreign company I might add), and their willingness to use inferior alternatives. Given what they believe they are protecting against, I don't think they will bow to pressure easily.. they'll change them when they believe the threat is gone.
All major tech companies accompany their services with user accounts that hold a treasure trove of personal information, and that users are likely to be invested in to some degree. Facebook (the subject of the article) happens to be the best example of this, because you can't simply go to some other site and have all your personal connections be present; the lock-in factor is very high there.
Moreover, if tech companies coordinated their efforts, simply using the competitor as your example suggests would not work.
Well, that is the context in which my comment was made. I also beg to differ that it's completely off the table. On the contrary, give these comments a read:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14679941
You can what-if using such leverage in other scenarios all day long as a counterpoint, but obviously companies wouldn't get away with pulling such stunts without overwhelming public support. Free speech issues tend to engender such support. The vast majority of your examples would not.
The idea that arresting people for "hate speech" online is going to make your country any better or safer is laughable. It just means people making jokes will get arrested because one of their jokes offends a few people [1].
Here's a great video by a German who is concerned about the expanded surveillance state and limitations on free speech: https://youtu.be/WFCKTvGU8oU
Here's another video about German hate speech crime and statistics that I found insightful: https://youtu.be/kX84h6aKpaU
1. https://www.rt.com/uk/342513-dog-nazi-salute-arrested/
Yes, holocaust denial and Nazi propaganda are prohibited in Germany for historical reasons, but the notion that his severely impedes the freedom of political speech is mistaken.
And yes, I've read my John Stuart Mill, and mostly agree with him.
As an aside, I'd still rate the level of public discourse in Germany as way above what's happening in many other countries (though it's going downhill, with all the private TV stations and social media, whose goal is not edification and education, but advertisement driven profit and "engagement").
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/world/europe/germany-36-a...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmTtCyLvGUg
i was also posting it in response to GP's line:
> disregard the law to pay fines (not 'arresting people')
you may not treasure your rights enough to protect them even on behalf of people you despise, but you will forgive those of us who do.
And i invite you to read the very first law in the german body of law, that enshrines a right that does not exist in all countries:
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.h...
When you're banning "hate speech" without strictly and narrowly defining what it is, it's a pure censorship instrument with pretty much unlimited reach.
I, for instance, think The Bible and The Quran are full of hate speech, but do you think they should be banned in the whole country simply based on my view?
What about a Android vs iOS debates? Should we ban every shit-talking conversation on the internet?
What about BMW vs Audi? Tabs vs spaces? Chocolate vs vanilla?
Yet, the issue is not clear cut. There are legitimate limitations on free speech - the famous "screaming fire in a crowded theatre" thing.
So, in Germany (with a history of institutionalised genocide), the lines are drawn a bit differently.
The notion that the ruling party will use it against views they don't like seems far fetched, though again, I grant you that it's a slippery slope - Principiis obsta ("resist the beginnings").
But, I object to the notion that freedom of political speech is fundamentally under attack here.
[As for the Abrahamic texts, there is case to be made that they ought to be banned, though I grant that that wouldn't help much. As for your "reductio ad absurdum" (tabs/spaces): again, there's unproblematic speech, and there's legitimately prohibited speech, and then there's a grey area, and that's what we're discussing here - where in the grey to draw the line.]
By implication, hypothetical stricter laws might be defensible, even. Next, the Abrahamic texts do contain truly awful prescriptions (genocide, killing people for all sorts of silly reasons, such as blasphemy, apostasy, homosexuality, eating the wrong food, etc.), which one ought to argue against vigorously, and which could be illegal under (hypothetical, stricter) laws (insofar, for example, as quoting specific sections could be understood as a 'call for action' to murder people).
I don't see the mental gymnastics there?
Do I understand you correctly in saying "more stringent tests" that more types of speech (beyond that) are considered off limits today?
So what's the new thing then?
As I wrote elsewhere, the problem here is primarily not what the government does – because there are effective constitutional safeguards in place –, but what social media companies may do.
I am not predicting what the government will do. I am predicting what the Constitutional Court will do.
And if you actually get to a point where all these checks and balances do break down, you have much bigger worries than just suppression of speech (which at this point becomes just a further symptom of an autocratic or totalitarian regime, not its cause).
What if I agitate and undermine the right to "freedom of speech" itself? For self preservation, the society would need to agree that in this instance speech should be curtailed, and bit by bit it will get eroded.
The list of offenses that the law talks about includes a whole list of things that aren't remotely hate speech: they include things such as the creation of a criminal or terrorist organization or illegal distribution of pornography (pornography is not per se illegal, but you cannot, for example, sell it to minors).
The goal of the law is basically to enforce offenses that are commonly committed online by deputizing social media companies. And this is where the actual problem lies; the law does not regulate anything that isn't already an offense, after all.
1. Many of these social media companies do not even have a legal presence in Germany and it is questionable whether Germany even has jurisdiction under current EU law.
2. Even if Germany has jurisdiction, having social media companies adjudicate the legality of online content (even where there is a legitimate interest and we are not dealing with offenses that affect freedom of speech) is a bad idea in too many ways to count. The social media company is incentivized to err on the side of banning content; they generally do not have the resources and/or personnel with adequate legal training to properly adjudicate the issue in many cases; and if they get things wrong, there is often no practical way to appeal their misjudgment.
3. The law may (due to its crude mechanisms) have a chilling effect far beyond what any that current laws create, even though on paper we're talking about the same offenses. That's because the legal system generally subjects potential prosecution for many of these offenses to a high level of scrutiny in order to protect freedom of expression. It is unlikely that Facebook and Twitter are going to do the same.
4. As a result, the law is probably headed for a collision course with the Federal Constitutional Court at the earliest opportunity.
Well, we already know what this law looks like. It's just the DMCA, expanded to other types of content. This is bad, but it's not nearly the end-of-the-world that the hypocritical US-Americans on HN have been claiming it is.
The problem is that these things often aren't "obvious". For example, one offense that is listed in the law is §185 of the penal code, which criminalizes insults (I'm not kidding). Because making every insult a criminal offense would make real freedom of speech impossible in practice, actual application of that law is subject to various and sundry constraints as the result of case law of the Constitutional Court. As a result, it's actually virtually impossible to commit such an offense in the political arena (in practice, the law has therefore been reduced to an institutionalized form of contempt of cop for the most part, and occasionally sees use as a modern form of dueling for the few bored and rich enough to pursue a private lawsuit: lawyers at ten paces, so to speak). But to understand that, you do have to be sufficiently familiar with the case law.
That's not much of a problem when an actual prosecutor examines the facts: the case against Boehmermann, for example, was pretty quickly dismissed, because the prosecutor knew it was going nowhere fast. But now let's have Facebook's staff – most of them without legal training – examine the same facts and they may very well get it all wrong. Or, worse: decide to simply not bother with getting it right and just err on the side of caution. The law does not penalize inadvertent censorship, after all.
I worry that the chilling effect, and people self-silencing/self-limiting, are already happening to an extreme degree. One might even regard this law as an expression of that. So I worry that this law is fruit of what is happening, not the other way around. I wonder whether there isn't already too much self-censorship going on, especially with people who just have their own nuanced (harmless) ideas.
HackerNews to me sits is remarkably well inside the eye of numerous storms. Really happy about that.
Outside from here though people might just risk so much when all they want is to try and express those (apparently "arguably") harmless thoughts. The risk of falling pray to all kinds of social dangers can be very scary. Not worth it at all, in fact. So devolves the discourse which obviously gives rise to agression and spite as the most popular clothing of free speech.
To an extent we're doing this to ourselves more than the governments are to blame. I'm not arguing that this law is any kind of solution to our problems. Au contraire - what I'm just saying is that individuals in positions of authority get more than their fair share of spite and hate, so, this is what happens.
Yet however also, not long ago the public discourses that take place at present were unfathomable! The whole world being able to talk together on to such an immense scale via thing called the Internet - which, somewhat hilariously ironically, apparently should be called just internet without a 'the' and capital I from now on, per decree put forth by some editors.
But never mind that. Point is, when we do a thing like this (give ourselves 'an internet' -o, hey!), pain is just bound to start flowing and we should be careful with that. Our social evolution is what feels to be at stake here, with the way things are headed.
"Obvious" wasn’t the term I’ve chosen, but the term chosen in the definition of the law and the official commentary of the law.
For example, if a newspaper company was about to publish something illegal (like something pro-Nazi), who polices that? My understanding is that its the newspaper company because they know the laws around print media. So, why is social media any different? Why are they not in charge of policing their content? I believe that in some ways, their policing efforts aren't the same as a newspaper because they're not the ones directly creating the content, but they still have a responsibility to police it in some way because it is on their platform.
Even if it's neo-nazi propaganda, making any speech based on opinions that's not directly causing physical harm illegal is creating a class of thought crime.
What other way could one classify it? People would be going to jail for wrong-think.
2. Although I already implied by 1. that it is not possible to make a clear machine-executable rule for everything, I would not agree that "any speech based on opinions" is a thought crime. If you constantly bully someone, althought just with words, he might even be more hurt than if you just had smashed his face once leaving him with 2 or 3 scars.
Not trying to say that free speech is not important. But I wouldn't call everything that is possible by moving your mouth free speech. Note that I also unfortunately cannot provide a solution for this right now: I also don't like this new ruling because it is somehow based on some kind of definition what exactly this free speech is and with 1. in mind this is not possible easily.
My statement would basically be that I just cannot support the ongoing discussion here that not banning anything is an overall better option.
I do think if someone is for example requesting to kill a person/group online or is searching for people to join him to do something like that, a judge should decide how severe the case is, hand out a warrant and the author should be held accountable.
Of course you have to consider the context and tone. It is also very difficult to check whether someone is just thinking out loud (e.g. "one should") or actively requesting something. That's why I don't think this law is a good idea, because that's something judges should decide not some Facebook interns afraid of a 50 million dollar fine.
I don't know whether hate speech is actually that big of a problem. If so, what we really need here is a streamlined way to complain to the police, gather all the evidence, categorize the issue, pre-check it and then hand it over to a judge. This process could be half-automated and have very narrow questions for the user (e.g. "Is this a death-threat?", "Is an exact date mentioned in the threat?") to exclude as much as possible as early as possible and need as few policemen as possible.
If this continues, the only allowable content will be that which does not offend anybody, and if that happens, the open, free Internet we all knew and which has driven a lot of social change throughout the world will be dead. Think of an Internet where atheism is banned because it offends religious people, corrupt politicians's misdeeds are expunged pursuant to their right to be foegotten, exposure of police brutality is deemed offensive and disturbing and banned, and every country's human rights violations are suppressed because they can be.
Over reaching laws like this are the biggest adversary to free speech. Even if the current government believes that hate speech/propaganda needs to be restricted, what is gonna stop someone down the line from using this law to silence all of their opponents and criticism?
Here in Germany racebaiting, holocaust denial and so forth are not protected under freedom of speech, never have never will be. Americans will probably not understand it in the near future, but in German jurisdiction German law still applies. Digital business or not.
I mean, Facebook basically censors every naked piece of skin already and I have to live with it because apparently this is offensive to Americans. Now I find banning nazi propaganda to be much less controversial than a naked human body, but apparently tastes diverge
Large companies like Google have a global presence, and assets that can be targeted within the jurisdiction of most major governments, while a fragmented - and more competitive - market would make it more likely that "holdouts" can rise beyond the reach of a given government. These platforms would provide a redoubt for regulated speech, because it would be much harder to compel them to pay fines (though of course a country can simply block them).
At the same time, these new regulations give a competitive advantage to the companies with the scale and resources to invest in automating the removal process, and increases the challenges for upstart platforms, which now need to develop the infrastructure to aggressively police content on their networks if they want to grow beyond a certain size.
I think that in the long run, this will evolve into a stable equilibrium where governments periodically levy large-but-not-devastating fines in the name of "antitrust" in order to show their dedication to "competitive markets" and "customer choice", while simultaneously working hand-in-glove with these companies to enforce what they consider to be acceptable standards of speech in online communities. In the long run, no major competitors will emerge, and both the established firms and the government will silently thank their lucky stars.
"Why, cant we go back to the days - where you all pretended that we represented the public, and the angry with there lifes citizens where firewalled from one another?"
Well, guess what, these people know now that they are not alone- and even if you burned the whole internet to ashes- they would just meet in real life. Some people in germany have a serious freedom of expression is only my opinion attitude. And they radicalize there opponents regularly by not discussing with them (That opinion is beneath me).