In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by Mithaldu » Sun, Jan 14, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

insickness wrote: post #97

pluma wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the massive understanding I see when people who don't live in Germany complain about German censorship of speech: It's not about feelings. It's about shaping other people's opinions. If someone says "jack9 is a kiddy fiddler" the damage is not that it might make jack9 upset, the damage is that others might think it's true and take actions that harm him. If someone says "kill the kikes" the damage is not that J…

In the US there is a fear of government taking too much of a role in "shaping the people's opinions." While your argument makes sense in combating xenophobia, it seems these controls are authoritarian in that you're still allowing the government--and individuals within government--to exercise such control over non-government individuals.

The difference is that this is made public. There is no secret conspiracy and marketing campaign to change public opinion. It is taught in schools and encoded in publically accessible law.

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

#122

Post by Mithaldu » Sun, Jan 14, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

psyc wrote: post #102

pluma wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of expression is meaningless unless you have the social/political power to back that expression up. If Joe Blow tweets "kill the kikes", nobody cares. If someone with millions of devout followers says the same, there will eventually be blood. Or in your case, if a person with influence tells their fan club to harass someone, the victim may suffer actual mental health issues when enough of them act on it.

I simply disagree that the speaking is a good place to insert the pre-emptive legal monkey-wrench. It's paranoid. The idea that you can keep ideological genies in their bottles by zipping people's lips is superstitious, like something a schoolchild would believe. It's obvious Germany is overcompensating here out of national shame. The whole idea seems to be: murder and genocide are so bad, that any legislation that e…

> The idea that you can keep ideological genies in their bottles

You're misunderstanding what the idea is. The idea is to show german children:

That person has that opinion and they may think it, but the opinion is wrong. We had a huge big argument over it, some people call it WW2, and the result was: Their opinion is wrong. So we decided to let that be the last argument about it and not let them start another argument, because the question has been answered at length.

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

#123

Post by anigbrowl » Sun, Jan 14, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

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…

a law that has a private company decide what are in effect criminal cases against citizens

The private company is a publisher which is being held responsible for what it chooses to publish. Individual citizens have a right to hold and express their views, but not an automatic right to publication. If their views are so odious as to invite criminal sanction, it's entirely reasonable for them to incur extra costs/difficulty of publication.

Now this is where someone usually pipes up with 'but my freedoms!' and that's all very well, but if the freedom they wish to exercise involves proposing limits on the freedom of others (perhaps even by ending their lives) then that person is proposing a zero-sum view of freedom for others and cannot complain about having a zero-sum calculus imposed upon their own political expression.

Popper's paradox of tolerance may be explicable in terms of the boundary between positive and zero-sum games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

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

#124

Post by tannhaeuser » Sun, Jan 14, 2018, 5:58 PM UTC

tannhaeuser wrote: post #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&... .

This just in:

[1]: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/menschen/deutschland... (in German)

Links to Google's translation service appear broken for me, though.

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

#125

Post by anigbrowl » Sun, Jan 14, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #42

emn13 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By any normal definition these aren't criminal cases. People don't end up losing jobs, going behind bars, gaining criminal records. They usually won't even lose their accounts; certainly the law doesn't suggest that. They simply cannot spread hate-speech. The actual effects of this law in terms of possibly useful message lost are minuscule compared to the real culprits of goverment-enforced speech restrictions: namel…

> By any normal definition these aren't criminal cases. It is a decision made to limit your constitutional freedoms due to legal obligations towards the public. That is very much the definition of a criminal case. > People don't end up losing jobs, going behind bars, gaining criminal records. Parking in the wrong spot also doesn't lead to any of that, but it's still a criminal case. > They simply cannot spread hate-s…

Parking in the wrong spot also doesn't lead to any of that, but it's still a criminal case.

It actually isn't. PArking ticket and the like are administrative violations, not criminal. Admittedly most people are unaware of this distinction; unfortunately that lack of awareness is exploited by, for example, politicians and pundits who describe all undocumented immigrants as criminals, when in fact many of them are in administrative violation and might be deportable but are not guilty of criminal acts or subject to criminal penalties.

So, Titanic was spreading hate speech then?

Against who? I have a feeling I'm going to roll my eyes at the answer, though.

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

#126

Post by anigbrowl » Sun, Jan 14, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #56

thesimon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is a decision made to limit your constitutional freedoms Just because your Facebook post is deleted does not mean your constitional right to free speech is limited.

Correct. Which is why you might want to read the full context of this discussion, which should then tell you that this is not about "Facebook just deleting a post", but about the state systematically incentivising Facebook to act in such a way that if the state itself acted in that way, that would obviously be a violation of your constitutional freedoms. Indirect action through a private entity does not make otherwis…

You know Germany doesn't govern itself according to the US constitution, yes?

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

#127

Post by anigbrowl » Sun, Jan 14, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #28

hwh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A notion in the more calmed legal discussion (as opposed to lobby talk from the freedom movements, which I usually support but feel to be very narrow-sighted at the moment w/ regard to this law - see what is now carried into the comments here) is that this effect might be mitigated by a counterweight law - or rather addendum - that mitigates overreaction by the corporations. This is german legal culture: our law syst…

> Note that the stated goal of the law is most probably the exact point: making access to effective defense of your rights possible to anyone. Which is completely and utterly fails at in the obvious way, in that your right to free speech is limited by a strong incentive for corporations to silence you if in doubt? > The reality consisted of slow law enforcement (which has to act against people who made the speech in…

Which speech acts are likely to incur legal sanction, exactly? What about the effects of those speech acts upon their subjects? The German approach is to hold the speaker liable for that cost. Some speech acts reduce the freedom of other people.

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

#128

Post by pluma » Sun, Jan 14, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

insickness wrote: post #97

pluma wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the massive understanding I see when people who don't live in Germany complain about German censorship of speech: It's not about feelings. It's about shaping other people's opinions. If someone says "jack9 is a kiddy fiddler" the damage is not that it might make jack9 upset, the damage is that others might think it's true and take actions that harm him. If someone says "kill the kikes" the damage is not that J…

In the US there is a fear of government taking too much of a role in "shaping the people's opinions." While your argument makes sense in combating xenophobia, it seems these controls are authoritarian in that you're still allowing the government--and individuals within government--to exercise such control over non-government individuals.

The big mistake in that logic is that controlling speech also means controlling what speech politicians can use. In the past years American politicians have literally asked for people like Assange and Snowden to be lynched or murdered in cold blood -- no due process, no courts, just shooting them or striking them down with a drone. If those politicians had expressed those sentiments on public TV in Germany, they'd have faced prison sentences.

The same people in the US who are scared of their government taking stances like "man-made climate change is real", "same-sex couples should be treated the same" or "maybe some people shouldn't own firearms" are the same people who comfortably arm the police to the teeth, send American soldiers to countries they wouldn't be able to find on a map, perpetually increase military spending, and demand the government regulates what people can do in their bedrooms or what public toilets they can use.

Americans aren't afraid of government getting too much power. Americans are afraid of government taking on positions they don't personally agree with and partisan thinking has led them to believe that "the others" are one term away from ruining the Greatest Nation on Earth and to think that as long as "their team" wins on election day, everything will be perfect.

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

#129

Post by germanier » Sun, Jan 14, 2018, 6:32 PM UTC

hardwires wrote: post #119

germanier wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> No, we don't. Who taught you this nonsense?

Art. 20 II of our constitution. That's the philosophical foundation of how our state works. Every state action is derived from that principle. That's of course no nonsense but thankfully absolutely unchallenged by everybody who teaches you about our state.

Not every state action is good, some are even objectively bad. Of course working against such is a civic duty. But wanting to enforce a law against corporations that interacts with and clearly influences people here is neither ridiculous, nor arrogant or hubristic.

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

Well, apart from basically all the things that granted that period a special place in every history book hopefully forever.

We integrated various safeguards into our constitution and laws to ensure that something like that never happens again. This law (no matter how bad) is a piece in that puzzle and should be viewed as such.

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

#130

Post by psyc » Sun, Jan 14, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

Mithaldu wrote: post #122

psyc wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply disagree that the speaking is a good place to insert the pre-emptive legal monkey-wrench. It's paranoid. The idea that you can keep ideological genies in their bottles by zipping people's lips is superstitious, like something a schoolchild would believe. It's obvious Germany is overcompensating here out of national shame. The whole idea seems to be: murder and genocide are so bad, that any legislation that e…

> The idea that you can keep ideological genies in their bottles You're misunderstanding what the idea is. The idea is to show german children: That person has that opinion and they may think it, but the opinion is wrong. We had a huge big argument over it, some people call it WW2, and the result was: Their opinion is wrong. So we decided to let that be the last argument about it and not let them start another argume…

The law in question is explicitly geared towards incitement to hatred against groups of people, not towards wrong opinions.