Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Is Handing the Future of the Internet to China

foreignpolicy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 60 posts

Re: Google Is Handing the Future of the Internet to China

#51

Post by yAnonymous »

undreren wrote: post #49
yAnonymous wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The companies involved (Arvato/Bertelsmann) get to make their own rules. Facebook doesn't even have a say in this, although they're paying for it as required by the law. They were threatened with fines in the millions (up to 50 mil) if they didn't comply. The situation is absurd. Facebook is legally required to pay for censorship by companies with close ties to the government.

Source?

https://www.arvato.com/en/about/press/2018/facebook-and-arva...

Directly from the devil himself.

Arvato belongs to Bertelsmann. Here's a German article about how close they are to the government.

https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Lobbyismus-Koenig-Bertelsma...

Re: Google Is Handing the Future of the Internet to China

#52

Post by dekhn »

pjc50 wrote: post #36
wildebaard wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you say there is no freedom of speech in the EU? I also live there but I do not experience it like that.

Of course this is nonsense. It's not completely unconstrained speech, but freedom of expression is right there in ECHR. " Article 10 – Freedom of expression 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from…

it's not free speech if you constrain it in the ways that clause 2 does (protection of health or morals).

Re: Google Is Handing the Future of the Internet to China

#53

Post by 394549 »

It feels like this story was suppressed from HN. Here's a story that's older but has a similar number of points that's still on the front page (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17964942; 64 pts, 13 hours ago), while this story is on page 4 (63 pts, 8 hours ago). Seems to be happening a lot for stories on topics like this.

Re: Google Is Handing the Future of the Internet to China

#54

Post by yAnonymous »

zapita wrote: post #45
yAnonymous wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my other post. Hate speech laws are actively used in Germany to manipulate political campaigns. The legal process has been removed and private organizations close to the government get to decide what's hate speech and what's not. And that's exactly the problem with it: It cannot be clearly defined and everyone is offended by different things, which makes it a perfect tool to censor just about everything you want.

Do you have an example to share? The comment I’m replying to is pretty specific about topics: homophobia and denying the holocaust. Do you feel those are reasonable things to include in a hate speech regulations?

>Do you have an example to share?

Government critical pages with millions of followers were deleted, playing directly in the hands of the (re-elected) government.

I don't want to be the judge of what's reasonable and what's not. As you see, having any kind of hate speech laws can and will be abused and end in censorship and stupid political games, as almost anything can be labelled as hate speech. It only depends on the perspective.

Personally, I'd go with the American model of anything goes. I don't think it's great, but it's better than this. Hate speech laws don't change anything - there will always be people who say something stupid or something you don't like. I prefer offensive people any day to people who deliberately misinterpret things and paint themselves or others as victims to discredit their opponents.

Re: Google Is Handing the Future of the Internet to China

#55

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jamespo wrote: post #16
ctack wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beijing currently influences it's weaker trading partners(which is most of the developing world) on various political points. For example - Taiwan policy or Dalai Lama visits. It's not hard to imagine China then asking them to use their "new and improved" version of Google too.

Slippery slope argument

Doesn't mean it's invalid. Some slopes are in fact slippery.

Re: Google Is Handing the Future of the Internet to China

#56

Post by zapita »

yAnonymous wrote: post #54
zapita wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example to share? The comment I’m replying to is pretty specific about topics: homophobia and denying the holocaust. Do you feel those are reasonable things to include in a hate speech regulations?

>Do you have an example to share? Government critical pages with millions of followers were deleted, playing directly in the hands of the (re-elected) government. I don't want to be the judge of what's reasonable and what's not. As you see, having any kind of hate speech laws can and will be abused and end in censorship and stupid political games, as almost anything can be labelled as hate speech. It only depends on…

> there will always be people who say something stupid or something you don't like. I prefer offensive people any day to people who deliberately misinterpret things and paint themselves or others as victims to discredit their opponents.

Well, hate speech is not about offending people... It's about inciting violence. A good example would be a nazi or ISIS leader publishing a video calling on their followers to attack, say, Jews, homosexuals and journalists. Hate speech laws exist to forbid such communications, because they are likely to result in violence against others. Of course there are many cases which are less clear cut than my example, where it's debatable (and hotly debated) how much violence is actually caused... but that's very different from debating "offense" or "misunderstandings", which have nothing to do with hate speech laws.

> Government critical pages with millions of followers were deleted, playing directly in the hands of the (re-elected) government.

Can you give us sources on this please?

> As you see, having any kind of hate speech laws can and will be abused and end in censorship

Not really, you haven't provided any evidence or details.

Re: Google Is Handing the Future of the Internet to China

#57

Post by amaccuish »

> decisions over what content to algorithmically uplift or suppress can involve agonizing questions of interpretation, intent, and cultural context.

Or you know, why not bring back chronological feeds... I'm convinced part of the polarisation in previous years can be put down to "algorithms" boosting particular posts.

Re: Google Is Handing the Future of the Internet to China

#58

Post by 394549 »

tanilama wrote: post #20

Interesting title. What future would Google have, regarding China, if it doesn't even exist in that country? By exiting China, except pleasing the those moral puritans, I fail to see what exactly Google achieves. China now has a self-contained internet ecosystem, which is moderated and censored by the party's will, yet vibrant and providing countless business potential and shaping the society at breakneck speed. The…

> By exiting China, except pleasing the those moral puritans, I fail to see what exactly Google achieves.

You don't even have to have much imagination to realize that by exiting China, Google removed the leverage the Chinese government had over it. If Google has operations in China that it values, the Communist Party can use those operations as a hostage to manipulate Google, just like it did with the airlines.

Do you want an authoritarian government to have leverage over the service that you use to search for the answers to your questions? It's not inconceivable that that the CCP might use that leverage to get Google to change the rankings of its search results to be more to its liking.

Re: Google Is Handing the Future of the Internet to China

#59

Post by yAnonymous »

zapita wrote: post #56
yAnonymous wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you have an example to share? Government critical pages with millions of followers were deleted, playing directly in the hands of the (re-elected) government. I don't want to be the judge of what's reasonable and what's not. As you see, having any kind of hate speech laws can and will be abused and end in censorship and stupid political games, as almost anything can be labelled as hate speech. It only depends on…

> there will always be people who say something stupid or something you don't like. I prefer offensive people any day to people who deliberately misinterpret things and paint themselves or others as victims to discredit their opponents. Well, hate speech is not about offending people... It's about inciting violence. A good example would be a nazi or ISIS leader publishing a video calling on their followers to attack,…

Here's about the most prominent example.

https://i.imgur.com/mY0iBWU.jpg

That's an earlier screenshot of the page. It had about 2 million likes at the end. They posted provocative content, government critical stuff, some of it true, some of it false and some of it utter nonsense. None of which is illegal. Welcome to election campaigns around 2018. It's not our fault they have sunk to such a low level, but that's what it is and there's no consolation price for being the good guy.

This page had more readers than all but the biggest printed newspapers, which is quite a feat. Then one day their page was disabled and later deleted.

No real person has been and would be prosecuted for what they did. Personally, I think their content was crap and didn't follow it, but that's besides the point. They did what most politicians and official newspapers do to get attention and clicks.

This was in the early days, when the law was in planning, but not officially passed. Since then, many other pages like that simply disappeared.

Re: Google Is Handing the Future of the Internet to China

#60

Post by zapita »

yAnonymous wrote: post #59
zapita wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there will always be people who say something stupid or something you don't like. I prefer offensive people any day to people who deliberately misinterpret things and paint themselves or others as victims to discredit their opponents. Well, hate speech is not about offending people... It's about inciting violence. A good example would be a nazi or ISIS leader publishing a video calling on their followers to attack,…

Here's about the most prominent example. https://i.imgur.com/mY0iBWU.jpg That's an earlier screenshot of the page. It had about 2 million likes at the end. They posted provocative content, government critical stuff, some of it true, some of it false and some of it utter nonsense. None of which is illegal. Welcome to election campaigns around 2018. It's not our fault they have sunk to such a low level, but that's what…

So a facebook page was deleted. Are you sure this wasn’t Facebook enforcing their obscure and often-changing terms of service? What makes you think this was the German government enforcing hate speech laws?
Post reply on HN