France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours • Hacker News Board

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#21

Post by sneak » Thu, May 14, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

trianglem wrote: post #19

sneak wrote: post #15

Who decides authoritatively what is or isn’t “hate speech” within the 24 hour period? The conclusion TFA makes seems likely: these services will just err on the side of “delete first, ask questions later” to protect themselves from liability, making all sorts of legal expression impossible. The current state of online publishing is really sad, and getting worse. Very few modern services used for hosting can be used t…

Being made fun of for anything that people biologically cannot change is hate speech. It’s not some complicated quagmire of laws you are trying to make it out to be.

If only content moderation and human expression were that simple. Alas, it is not to be.

If you read it carefully, I just “made fun of” people who are unimaginative. Is that an innate trait? Should my content be censored?

Should a comment on a video of a tall person that says “how’s the weather up there?” be censored using criminal liability?

This criminalizes even hosting the discussion about what beliefs along these lines are or are not correct. Someone posts about their (mistaken) beliefs, in essence asking about a disproven theory correlating race and IQ. Other people correct them, educating them as well as any other lurkers. Should the sysadmins go to jail for not deleting the entire thread?

Being wrong on the internet should not be illegal.

There is absolutely not a bright line, and it is somewhat naive or perhaps even dishonest to claim otherwise.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#22

Post by Causality1 » Thu, May 14, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

It's easy to forget these days that we in the Western world are not all one big house with the same rules, and reality checks can be jarring. It behooves us to remember the differences, lest we be overly shocked when we see a diner in an American restaurant carrying a sidearm or a European getting arrested for teaching a dog the Nazi salute.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#23

Post by trianglem » Thu, May 14, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

opinion-is-bad wrote: post #20

trianglem wrote: post #7

Good. I would much rather have a good amount of censorship then let bigots hide behind the “free speech” argument.

Who decides what needs to be censored? How do we ensure a fair process if we could be silenced for just questioning the censors? The hate speech slope is slippery and unscrupulous politicians will always want to interfere.

Anything you cannot biologically change is hate speech. It’s not complicated and it’s objective.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#24

Post by zozbot234 » Thu, May 14, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

centimeter wrote: post #12

How long until internet companies decide that relatively small and litigious markets aren't worth their time and simply ignore laws like this? If every country with an economy the size of 1 or 2 large US states start making up their own censorship laws and trying to force companies to enforce them, at some point this causes huge inefficiencies. I can see two end states to this: 1. If the censoring country has enough…

> How long until internet companies decide that relatively small and litigious markets aren't worth their time and simply ignore laws like this?

We saw it happen with GDPR already. Though we also see many companies play ball with censors, e.g. in places like China. If suddenly a Winnie-the-Pooh cartoon is judged to be "hate speech", it's easy to just censor the cartoons. Most users won't exactly care, there's plenty of government-endorsed content that they're still allowed to access.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#25

Post by thoraway1010 » Thu, May 14, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

trianglem wrote: post #19

sneak wrote: post #15

Who decides authoritatively what is or isn’t “hate speech” within the 24 hour period? The conclusion TFA makes seems likely: these services will just err on the side of “delete first, ask questions later” to protect themselves from liability, making all sorts of legal expression impossible. The current state of online publishing is really sad, and getting worse. Very few modern services used for hosting can be used t…

Being made fun of for anything that people biologically cannot change is hate speech. It’s not some complicated quagmire of laws you are trying to make it out to be.

We had a recent example along these lines with certain sports and records where there were some hate speech references to a potential biological basis for differences (men vs women and masters age vs non masters).

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#26

Post by Causality1 » Thu, May 14, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

drenvuk wrote: post #18

trianglem wrote: post #7

Good. I would much rather have a good amount of censorship then let bigots hide behind the “free speech” argument.

I hate bigots as well, but I hate your kind of thinking even more.

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#27

Post by m0zg » Thu, May 14, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

I wonder what'll happen to postings by gilets jaunes now. That's still ongoing BTW, coronavirus notwithstanding.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#28

Post by jimbob45 » Thu, May 14, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

centimeter wrote: post #12

How long until internet companies decide that relatively small and litigious markets aren't worth their time and simply ignore laws like this? If every country with an economy the size of 1 or 2 large US states start making up their own censorship laws and trying to force companies to enforce them, at some point this causes huge inefficiencies. I can see two end states to this: 1. If the censoring country has enough…

France is a relatively small market?

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#29

Post by krapp » Thu, May 14, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

lykr0n wrote: post #6

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #2

france is such a weird place. In some ways it's a very free society. In other ways it's not free at all. Don't most of the euro countries have weird laws about hate speech like this?

They don't have a US style foundation of Freedom of Speech.

France provided part of that foundation. The philosophy of America's founding fathers regarding freedom of speech, and the First Amendment itself, were inspired by (among other sources) The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from revolutionary France.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#30

Post by henearkr » Thu, May 14, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

I bet this will induce deplatformization.

You do not react the same way if you are a platform (in which case you just deactivate or delete the contents as soon as it is flagged by anyone), or if you are yourself responsible for your website (in which case you will fight to defend that you don't need to take down the contents).

My big question is: is AWS, or any other cloud-based hosting system, considered a platform under this law?

Just asking because, even if I am ready to be 100% independent from platforms when they mean FB or Youtube, I certainly am not ready to get rid of cloud hosting...