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In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

economist.com

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

#131
post #102
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…

It's not about keeping shush about ideologies. It's about prohibiting people from actively using ideologies.

I guess I can see why Americans would object to it: political hate speech is weaponised speech and Americans are ridiculously obsessed with being allowed to own weapons. It's that absurd idea that when the time comes and the others have infiltrated the government, the common man will take to arms and overthrow it (because presumably the military will defect and not just kill everyone).

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

#132
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's amazing to how great lengths you are willing to go to defend people's right to call for women and children be shot at the border.

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

#133
post #132
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's amazing to how great lengths you are willing to go to defend people's right to call for women and children be shot at the border.

Pretty specific words to be putting in my mouth. You're the biggest agitator in this thread. I'm out.

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

#134
post #86
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I thought we'd settled this decades ago.

I must have missed the part in WW2 where the Axis surrendered because Hitler lost a debate with Churchill and all the concentration camps were shut down because the guards realised they were the bad guys.

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

#135
post #132
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's amazing to how great lengths you are willing to go to defend people's right to call for women and children be shot at the border.

Would you please stop using HN for political flamewar? It's one thing to post substantive arguments like you did earlier in the thread, and quite another to stoop to this level of internet sludge. If you can't resist that slippery slope, please don't post in the first place. The same goes for all other users of course.

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

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

#136
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bas…

> Oh, don't be daft.

This breaks the HN guideline against name-calling in arguments. Please don't do that, regardless of how bad someone's argument is.

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

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

#137

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…

> Who taught you this nonsense?

Please don't cross into name-calling and personal attack when posting to HN. This is in the site guidelines. So is the following:

Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

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

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

#138
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sure, but it didn't go nowhere because a clear procedure for reporting didn't exist, but because the law was not enforced and maybe because some pieces necessary for successful enforcement were missing (which the NetzDG adds, in addition to all the crap that privatizes the law enforcement). Really, I don't see many people in "net freedom circles" who object to forcing Facebook to delete illegal posts. The objec…

The thing missing for enforcement was Facebook respecting our laws. They simply said „none of our officers is living in Germany, so fuck off“. Now we‘ve added a way to make them hurt. Financially. And I see virtually everyone in the net freedom circles objecting to FB deleting illegal posts. Because our laws are unjust, you see. Only American laws count. We really need to teach Facebook, Twitter, Uber, AirBNB and all…

> Because our laws are unjust, you see.

Maybe you should entertain the idea that they are? It wouldn't be the first time. And what if every country had the same long arm attitude of pushing their opinions on foreign companies?

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

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ar…

> 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.

Yeah, once upon a time, murder was legal, and people weren't "murdering illegally", so why the need for a law against murder?

> It's not illegal in the US, from which they are operating. That's what matters.

Well, if you aren't interested in reality, why are we even discussing?

> 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.

http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/BJNR001270871.html#BJ...

German law itself limits its geographic applicability, and therefore that limit can be changed just as any other rules in the law.

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

#140

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.

No, but it did exterminate millions of people who live on north america and abroad.
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