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In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

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Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#81

The paper can be downloaded from https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=8201061010270271... I have only skimmed through the paper, but I am a bit skeptical about their conclusions. The authors first showed that the attacks-on-refugees time series is strongly correlated to the anti-refugee-posts time series. This part is very basic and is OK. Then they tried to exhibit a causal relationship between the two series…

Another issue, they failed to investigate whether both things are caused by something else. E.g. what was the dynamic of migration inflow? If it has similar shape, this might explain both observations.

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#82
post #77
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not think there might be a difference between expressing an opinion and inciting people to violence?

Is inciting people to violence really anything other than expressing the opinion that violence is a good idea, and trying to persuade others to agree? Expressing any opinion should be allowed, and trying to persuade anyone of anything should be allowed.

Is it right that in civil society someone stands on a soapbox and calls for violence against a person or people? Witness Pres. Trump at his rallies. Not illegal but Really, telling a mob to punch someone is pretty off colour and not the sort of thing that we should be promoting. There are ways to express your opinion on any issue that don’t lead to vilification and potential or actual harm.

So I disagree. It isn’t right to form a gang on the street and attack someone, and it isn’t right to form a gang on the internet and incite violence, or strongly disrespect a person or people. Even if you take at first step the difference between actual physical harm VS a ‘bytes on the internet’ approach, the mental health harms to the persecuted group are real and have lead to suicides in individual examples, or actual violence as demonstrated in the article.

Speaking from a medical perspective, I don’t draw a difference between physical and mental harm (precious snowflaking aside).

Sure it’s a grey area but carte Blanche in this domain is damaging.

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#83

For those of you who read German the following article sheds a revealing perspective on the effects of these new laws: https://motherboard.vice.com/de/article/kznxz3/vom-netzdg-zu... The leading paragraph claims that "Trolls and right-wing activists conspire through pr0gramm, Discord and Twitter to 'turn the law against hate speech' into its opposite: a tool to denounce left-wingers, women and migrants." In other wor…

Also worth to point out that the justice secretary's party, SPD, has very close ties to various antifa, pro-migration, anti-hatespeec etc active groups. In particular, close financial ties by funnelling tax money to 'activism against the right' and so forth.

So really, there was an expectation from these groups that the law would be a weapon for them to finally silence any opposition.

Totalitarian thinking is very very deeply ingrained still, and the same people who go on 'never again' demonstrations recalling any of the totalitarian dictatorships in Germany are grouping together to oust, censor, privately harass opponents.

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my understanding that you can thank Facebook for that law. Unless it hits their bottom line (or shows naked female breasts) it was nearly impossible to get a post deleted, even if it was clearly illegal. While it's unfortunate that such a relatively crude law was implemented it's at the end a reaction to the general, ultralibertarian "we don't give a fuck, unless it really hurts" attitude coming out of Silicon V…

None of that is a reason to make a law that has a private company decide what are in effect criminal cases against citizens. The minister responsible at some point made the completely idiotic remark that that is the right way to go because Facebook and the like are making a lot of money, so they also should be responsible for these costs. It seems like you can be a minister in Germany and never have heard of this con…

If you think any judicial system in the world is - or could be - equipped to deal with millions of potentially criminal comments from a social network on a case per case basis you are deluding yourself. More than that, it would be a textcase of privatising profits and leaving the costs to pick up for everyone else, while facebook siphoons the profits to tax havens.

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#85
A couple weeks ago there was this piece on leading German newspaper FAZ showing where censorship-by-law of "hate speech" will lead to (reposting it here).

[1]: http://blogs.faz.net/deus/2017/12/18/erdogans-mob-und-gruene.... (in German)

[2]: https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&....

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#86
post #80
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hitler rose to power by manipulating people's sentiments with language. He created scapegoats and convinced people it's okay to channel their hate and frustration towards those scapegoats. People should have the freedom to be persuaded to believe things that you don't agree with. It's OK to have a "wrong" opinion. Let people say what they want and believe what they want. I'm stunned that I still have to defend free…

If you think anything is worth defending at all cost , that should give you pause. You seem to understand that speech can persuade people of wrong things. Do you think it's possible you've been wrongly persuaded to hold the belief that free speech trumps all? Maybe the same people that persuade you that you need free speech above all are also those that have the most to gain from being able to persuade you freely of…

> If you think incitement should not be a crime and likely think libel and slander should not be a crime, where do you draw the line if fee speech trumps all? What about lying under oath?

I don't think libel and slander should not be crimes, I don't think lying under oath should not be a crime. I believe in freedom of expression.

I especially encourage those people with the absolute worst most harmful ideas to speak often and loudly and publicly, so that everyone has a chance to hear their ideas and think about them and come to understand for themselves how bad they are.

Freedom of expression means I can sit back and let Westboro Baptist Church explain to everyone what terrible people they are much more eloquently than I could ever hope to do. Neo Nazis, please, have a rally and explain to everyone in your own words that you latch onto pathetic ideas of racial superiority for lack of any accomplishments of your own to be proud of.

Why do you want to restrict freedom of expression? Do you find it hard to refute somebody's argument? Do you not trust people to sort out good ideas from bad themselves? The solution to bad speech is more speech. I thought we'd settled this decades ago.

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> We really need to teach Facebook, Twitter, Uber, AirBNB and all those companies some manners and respect for our society. As a German, let me tell you that this sounds absolutely ridiculous, arrogant and hubristic. You want your German Extrawurst. We're not "one society", not everyone agrees with the tons of laws and regulations we have (mostly on account of special pleading and lobbyism). German users came to Fac…

> You want your German Extrawurst. Now, that is an interesting interpretation of the rule of law if I have ever seen one! So, in your opinion, having to follow the laws of a country you visit or that you do business in is somehow illegitimate because it's an Extrawurst? Is it your expectation that the US will apply German law to you when you visit the US? > These are not German companies, they don't need to operate o…

>> Now, that is an interesting interpretation of the rule of law if I have ever seen one!

That isn't an "interpretation of the rule of law", that's a response to the bold statement that "We really need to teach [...] all those companies some manners and respect for our society".

Yes, we can introduce all sorts of stupid laws to make foreign companies do as we please or have them leave. No, we're not "teaching" them "manners and respect" for our society. We killed millions of people, not even a hundred years ago, but now we're the paragons of virtue? Give me a fucking break...

>> Because they do operate in Germany?

Clearly whatever they did was legal in however way they operate "in Germany", or there would have been a German court case.

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#89
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hitler rose to power by manipulating people's sentiments with language. He created scapegoats and convinced people it's okay to channel their hate and frustration towards those scapegoats. People should have the freedom to be persuaded to believe things that you don't agree with. It's OK to have a "wrong" opinion. Let people say what they want and believe what they want. I'm stunned that I still have to defend free…

Exactly. And here I was thinking there was such a thing as 'being an adult' and 'education' and 'freedom of speech' - do we really want to undermine the basic tenets of the Age of Reason? Because if I am not mistaken, censorship was a widespread reality and it took a very long time and a lot of blood to crawl out from underneath it. In other words: Do you think Hitler could have been stopped by not letting 'The Storm…

I think "could X have stopped Hitler" is asking the wrong question (and it betrays the same kind of black/white thinking that is fundamental to the rhetoric I mentioned).

The Treaty of Versailles was crippling the economy, the royalists felt betrayed by the social democrats who ended the Great War by surrendering, the Great Depression destabilised the banks, and so on. Even a bullet in the brain wouldn't necessarily have "stopped Hitler" at the time (the reason we talk about "stopping Hitler" is that Hitler wasn't stopped so we don't know who'd have taken his place and where that would have led the movement at the time).

But this is irrelevant because 2010s Germans aren't 1920s/1930s Germans. West Germany underwent a massive process of Denazification, we entered into and established ourselves in the European Union and Germans who grew up in post-war Germany are used to the idea that incitement is a crime and racial hatred has no place in a civilised society.

It's irrelevant whether criminalising incitement ("censorship") would have stopped Hitler in the 1930s because a single law doesn't instantly transform society. It's 2018 and this is not a new law. But we'll never be able to tell whether it stopped Hitler today because if we stopped him we won't know who he is because he'll never ascend to the same significance in history in the first place. It's a strawman.

You also seem to be under the false presumption that you having legal "freedom of speech" means you can express anything you want without consequences. As is being pointed out all the time, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, just freedom from direct legal consequences.

If you hold no significant political power and say something other people find disagreeable, you will be called out at best and ostracized at worst. In fact, freedom of speech might actually help those seeking to harm you because they have the righteous fury on their side.

If you hold significant power, there are plenty of examples in US politics how that usually works out (though time will tell how it works out for Trump in particular).

Fun side effect: dehumanising people also makes it easier to justify war. The US has been in a perpetual state of war since WW2. Do you even remember how to recognise propaganda and war rhetoric if it's been part of the mainstream since before you were born?

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is, in the broad sense, a subcategory of criminal law (as opposed to civil law).

This is at least wrong in Germany, they are handled by different courts, will not show up on criminal record etc., it's more like a civil case, but with the government. Though of course you could park your car so horribly that it might get to be one, there's criminal neglect.

Erm ... in which sense exactly is an Ordnungswidrigkeitenverfahren like a Zivilprozess? How are the courts different?

Also, yes, "but with the government" is exactly what makes it a criminal case!?

See also:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnungswidrigkeit

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafrecht_(Deutschland)

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