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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

#111

Post by paulddraper »

alphonsegaston wrote: post #109
novalis78 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen...and that's how Bismark's Prussian super government whose bureaucratic super machine was the pride and glory of the Germans turned into Hitler's nefarious totalitarian regime more or less overnight. The same tools that ensure 'order and safety' become tools for 'suppression and conformity'. You would think the Germans, if any, would have learnt what totalitarianism feels like. But no, all they learned is that t…

Ah yes, that bastion of freedom the US. The place that promulgated eugenics as the solution to all social ills and forcibly sterilized the poor and minorities. Whose ideas Hitler so loved, he decided it was necessary to do one further. Who turned away Jews fleeing his genocide because of its own fabricated, racist ideas about genetic “undesirablity,” which were presented uncontested all over popular media. I’m starti…

Yet somehow the US didn't exterminate millions of its own citizens.

Regrettably, no human system seems to avoid all violations of human rights. But the totalitarian systems will have the worst excesses.

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

#112

Post by sctb »

sprash wrote: post #33

Completely backward. Real world events have consequences on how people talk in general and this spills over into the online world. The new years event was a real event carried out by real people. It was the first mass rape event in the entire history of Germany. Something like this has never been seen before. Now the last, most well meaning person has noticed that those so called "refugees" are either from countries…

This is not a civil comment and if you post like this again we'll ban the account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#113

Post by pmyteh »

candiodari wrote: post #94
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Unfortunately government making laws boils, when examining this closely, comes down to lawyers making laws. That is the most common job and education in congress, and parliaments in Europe are no different, even stronger. Second is economics. What you won't find is engineers, of any kind, developers, or any kind of practical education. Which means laws very often ignore practical considerations as to how they were ap…

Oh, don't be daft. It's never as careless as 'simply legislate equality'. Look at the UK's Civil Partnership Act 2004 if you want to see how this stuff is normally done. 264 clauses and 30 schedules to make clear what law applies to people in civil partnerships and what doesn't (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/33/contents).

When a government passes a law prohibiting discrimination in employment on the basis of (say) gender identity, it essentially inherits the previous caselaw from previous employment discrimination acts - so if you know how not to discriminate against women, you have a pretty good idea how not to discriminate against transwomen.

Finally, quite a lot of changes are made piecemeal by caselaw anyway - that's the basis of the Anglo-American common law. So even as adoption law (say) evolves, it does so casewise, not generally by handing a large edict from on high and breaking people's understanding of what the law is.

At least in the UK, parental responsibility (and, separately, custody) are well-defined, including the cases where there are zero, one, two, or more people holding it. Grandparents and friends raising children has, after all, been a thing for centuries. Ditto handling splitting partnerships, ditto handling unconventional domestic arrangements.

Ditto tenancy law. Ditto contract law. Particularly ditto shared ownership, which can even legally handle weird situations where people bought houses on behalf of other people who died, and...

I'm really not sure what basis your argument is actually on.

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

#114

Post by falsprofet »

elgenie wrote: post #101
funkythings wrote: post #6

This comment vastly understates the effects of this law. Social Media companies are scared af to be fined by the German government, so the filters are so strong, that it targets the wrong people. A couple of comedians and satire magazines have been hit, left leaning people as well as right leaning people alike. In general, I don't think it's a good idea for the government to decide what I can post on social media or…

"Volksverhetzung" is a compound word with two roots: "Volks" (the people) + "Verhetzung" (manipulation) and the official translation of the criminal code is "Incitement to hatred" [1], rather than the "instigation of the people/masses" that a naive translation would imply. [1] http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stg...

Which is a rather rough translation, as its missing the relation to Volk. Which is tricky to translate, but nevertheless detailed in the law and officially translated: "... hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins, against ...".

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

#115

Post by MulliMulli »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #21
CaptainZapp wrote: post #8

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…

Facebook paid 466.000 Euros in taxes in Germany / 2015.

(Source http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/neue-finanzstruktur-wi...)

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

#116

Post by hardwires »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #92
hardwires wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I would have no problem with them deciding it‘s not worth the trouble and banning German users. Why should they ban them? They should allow access from all countries. Would you argue that Twitter and Facebook should help enforce all the customs of countries like Iran or North Korea by banning its users? Just get out of the way! >> I have a problem with how they want to make money here, but illegally. They aren't m…

> If they did, law enforcement could stop them and there wouldn't have been a need for this new law. So? Now, there is a law, and so what was legal before is not anymore. That is the point of creating new laws. > They can still make money off a German audience without any business presence in Germany. Legally, from the US. Where you are acting from does not have any influence on legality. If Germany has a law that ma…

>> So? Now, there is a law, and so what was legal before is not anymore.

That's my whole point, it was legal before and they weren't "making money illegally" (as the parent claimed), hence my the need for new laws.

>> Where you are acting from does not have any influence on legality. If Germany has a law that makes what someone does in the US illegal, then it's illegal.

It's not illegal in the US, from which they are operating. That's what matters. Close to 100% of porn sites are probably doing things illegally from a German legislative point of view. They're making money off of horny Germany nonetheless. So, the idea that our laws can "teach" them is ludicrous.

>> But it seems like Facebook is of the opinion that they have enough Business in Germany that it's worth for them to comply with the laws to be able to keep that business.

Yes, they chose that tradeoff over leaving the market, because at the end of the day they don't give a fuck. They did the same for China. They are probably working on AI-based deletion bots as we speak. What a great success, eh?

>> Well, but most advertisers that want to advertise to a German audience are from Germany. If you want to be paid by advertisers from Germany, you better follow German laws, or Germany will seize the funds your German advertisers are paying you to pay fines or other debts that you owe in Germany.

Oh really? When has that ever happened? If I turn off my adblock, most of what I get is international brands (YMMV), so even if all the German advertisers were gone, it would be a drop in a bucket. Maybe big enough of a drop for the company to care, maybe not, but the point remains that it is that the users stand to lose more here than any of the companies involved.

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

#117

Post by hardwires »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #95
hardwires wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 "…

> Clearly whatever they did was legal in however way they operate "in Germany", or there would have been a German court case. Actually, what they did was not legal. Not appearing in court when a judge orders you to is not legal. It just so happens that it's not enforcable when the person ordered to appear happens to be in a different country. In order to limit the negative effects of this illegal behaviour, now more…

>> Not appearing in court when a judge orders you to is not legal.

That's not actually true.

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

#118

Post by hardwires »

Dumbdo wrote: post #106
hardwires wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 "…

> We killed millions of people, not even a hundred years ago, but now we're the paragons of virtue? I don't see how this was relevant in any way to the discussion. What happened 100 years ago should of course be considered in discussions and in the law-making process today and it should not be forgotten, so that it will not repeat. But it isn't fair to still judge people born in a country where some of their grand(gr…

>> But it isn't fair to still judge people born in a country where some of their grand(grand)parents did bad things.

I'm not doing that. I'm pointing out that it is laughable to believe that German society could "teach our manners and morals" to the "foreigners" conducting business here.

The German society didn't create Nazism out of nothing, the (repressed) superiority complex is still very strong, only now the schizophrenic strategy is to appear like we're the best at "being good humans" instead of outright conquest. Our society is as pathological as it ever was, we have no business teaching anyone.

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

#119

Post by hardwires »

germanier wrote: post #72
hardwires wrote: post #69

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…

I don't like all our laws either (this included) but I accept that as a society we must respect and enforce the laws we democratically choose to enact. Rule of law is a fundamental pillar of society and if that is stopped getting accepted by society at large we are in for a bad time. I don't make the laws and Facebook doesn't either. If Facebook and co. don't want to operate in Germany, they are free to withdraw from…

>> I don't like all our laws either (this included) but I accept that as a society we must respect and enforce the laws we democratically choose to enact.

No, we don't. Who taught you this nonsense? In fact, it is our duty as citizens to fight bad laws, no matter if they were "democratically chosen" or not. In Germany, we don't choose laws democratically, either. We elect representatives who may or may not do a good job at legislation, and it's our duty to scrutinize that.

Don't forget that Hitler was elected democratically and pretty much everything that happened from thereon was legal under German law.

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

#120

Post by [deleted] »

paulddraper wrote: post #111
alphonsegaston wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, that bastion of freedom the US. The place that promulgated eugenics as the solution to all social ills and forcibly sterilized the poor and minorities. Whose ideas Hitler so loved, he decided it was necessary to do one further. Who turned away Jews fleeing his genocide because of its own fabricated, racist ideas about genetic “undesirablity,” which were presented uncontested all over popular media. I’m starti…

Yet somehow the US didn't exterminate millions of its own citizens. Regrettably, no human system seems to avoid all violations of human rights. But the totalitarian systems will have the worst excesses.

[deleted]
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