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Digital Berlin wall: How the German prototype for online censorship went global

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Re: Digital Berlin wall: How the German prototype for online censorship went global

#41

Post by helloworld11 »

tablespoon wrote: post #27
swayvil wrote: post #17

We can't have the hoi polloi just freely talking to each other willy nilly.

> We can't have the hoi polloi just freely talking to each other willy nilly. They can freely talk all they want, but it might have been a mistake to give them all frictionless broadcasting licenses. In those conditions, it seems like crowdsourced viral misinformation is quite competitive in the marketplace of ideas, perhaps even to the point of winning fair and square.

God forbid people should have the unlicensed freedom to misinform. Before, this privilege was only in the hands of the same major media giants that now rail about the supposed epidemic in misinformation of the type that they had no problem themselves creating however it suited their purposes or political alignments previously.

That anyone who even basically believes in the importance of free speech and individual freedom should jump on the same bandwagon of paranoia about members of the public holding and promoting ideas that aren't always "correct" or literally correct and calling this a threat to freedom is absurd. This is a complete turning of cause and effect upon its head. No, the danger is explicitly much more so in the idea that some supposedly proper consensus of ideas should be enforced so that nobody does something silly, like voting for the "wrong" candidate, or viewing certain medical mandates in the "incorrect" way.

Re: Digital Berlin wall: How the German prototype for online censorship went global

#42

Post by tablespoon »

swayvil wrote: post #36
tablespoon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't have the hoi polloi just freely talking to each other willy nilly. They can freely talk all they want, but it might have been a mistake to give them all frictionless broadcasting licenses. In those conditions, it seems like crowdsourced viral misinformation is quite competitive in the marketplace of ideas, perhaps even to the point of winning fair and square.

If we have a problem with "misinformation" (what a delicious figure of newspeak!) then provide us with the tools for managing that. We do not desire your kindly administration.

> If we have a problem with "misinformation" (what a delicious figure of newspeak!) then provide us with the tools for managing that.

The point is maybe the hoi polloi can't manage that in this environment, regardless of tools.

> We do not desire your kindly administration.

Administration happens when people aren't solving problems on their own. So if you don't desire administration, solve the problem without it. Don't do stuff like declaring it a non-issue or hiding behind some principle, because that doesn't actually work. The former is obviously unserious, and the latter just weakens and eventually destroys the principle.

Re: Digital Berlin wall: How the German prototype for online censorship went global

#43

Post by V__ »

DocTomoe wrote: post #37
V__ wrote: post #9

> Even if there are good reasons to counter online hate speech and disinformation, the approach prototyped by the German NetzDG law will exacerbate the decade-long global free speech recession which is part and parcel of the wider democratic recession.” > “Once democracies cede the high ground and renege on their commitment to free speech by privatizing and outsourcing regulation, authoritarians will rush in creating…

The problem is that the platform has to decide if a given piece of content actually is illegal under German law, something courts may take years to decide, and forces them to make that decision in minutes. On the other hand, it does not provide an instrument to punish malicious use of that instrument. In that situation, platforms will - and do - just block by default. We have independent courts for a reason. Privatiz…

That is a valid criticism, and I agree. At the same time, due to the reach of social media and the possible implications and the timely manner in which action should be taken, I think there has to be a system with some middle ground.

Maybe, forcing platforms to hide the content for some period of time and establishing a new court which only handles these cases, so a quick judgement can be made. But it's a really hard problem to solve.

Re: Digital Berlin wall: How the German prototype for online censorship went global

#44

Post by at_a_remove »

Y-bar wrote: post #34
simion314 wrote: post #15

What idiot believes that authoritarian governments were incapable of censorship until some democratic one decided to update their laws for misinformation /hate/defamation to also apply to social media / internet ? Bad faith article, I would use more competent authors to push my agenda.

This author (Jacob Mchangama) is an absolutist with regards to free speech and subscribes fully to the idea that in the marketplace of ideas the truth and correct result will always come out on top. As an example, just recently he argued in another article titled "The Problem With Banning Russian Disinformation FREE SPEECH HELPS UKRAINE" that preventing state-sponsored propaganda from reaching its target audience is…

Let's do the smoking thing, since you picked that one.

1) We eventually found out the truth. Nobody guarantees that the wins will be fast.

2) You have to be kidding yourself if you think that the suppressed speech wouldn't be that of the people saying "Smoking is dangerous." The tobacco companies can and did hire experts, manufacture the results they wanted, and so forth. They, the establishment, the moneyed, would be deemed "correct" and all else disinformation. Look at these guys in white lab coats! They sure do look smart, meanwhile that other side looks like a bunch of cranks.

Re: Digital Berlin wall: How the German prototype for online censorship went global

#45

Post by nfreising »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #39
car_analogy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are defending generic restrictions on speech, but the NetzDG makes very specific restrictions - such as prohibitive (up to €50 million) fines if something claimed to be illegal (by a mere complainant , not a court order) is not taken down within 7 days, and within 24 hours if it is "clearly illegal", resulting in severe chilling effects. Try to defended those instead. (Yes, no fine is levied if the content is not…

Do you have a precedent where this resulted in unlawful restriction of speech or it’s just a generic speculation? I had a look once at the form in one of Meta services to report hate speech: it does require some effort to fill the form and it does require the issue to be reported to police. If you don’t want to report the case to authorities, the platform will not take down the content. I do not see how this could re…

I have looked at the NetzDG reporting on YouTube and Twitter and while both of them require you to cite a specific law the content is in violation of, they both do not require any report to authorities. The NetzDG doesn't require involvement of authorities, it was especially designed with the goal of moving the work from the state to private companies.

Re: Digital Berlin wall: How the German prototype for online censorship went global

#46

Post by soco »

eigenrick wrote: post #33
soco wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However Twitter and al are not exactly a place to hold discussions, by definition. They facilitate (if not straight up favor) quick visceral reactions and whatever type of bullying will feel at ease in there. So I agree with you on the point of censorship being bad, but disagree on calling bullying "open discussions". Yes I'm aware that real life bullying is in some places tolerated just as well, and I fully disagree…

Twitter is definitely a bad place for nuanced discussion. I disagree about the 'and al', though. Other platforms are much better for for long form communication and open discussion, e.g. Reddit, Zulip, etc.

I never heard of Zulip and kinda agree with you on Reddit (but which is also censored). To my unpopular point above I must clarify that most of the complaints about censorship are that it tries to censor traditional bullying attempts at minorities. Yes, there are also exceptions where unpopular thought pieces are attacked, but still, the big majority complains why can't they call names a certain group anymore.

Re: Digital Berlin wall: How the German prototype for online censorship went global

#47

Post by [deleted] »

tablespoon wrote: post #42
swayvil wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we have a problem with "misinformation" (what a delicious figure of newspeak!) then provide us with the tools for managing that. We do not desire your kindly administration.

> If we have a problem with "misinformation" (what a delicious figure of newspeak!) then provide us with the tools for managing that. The point is maybe the hoi polloi can't manage that in this environment, regardless of tools. > We do not desire your kindly administration. Administration happens when people aren't solving problems on their own. So if you don't desire administration, solve the problem without it. Don…

[deleted]

Re: Digital Berlin wall: How the German prototype for online censorship went global

#48

Post by usrusr »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #39
car_analogy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are defending generic restrictions on speech, but the NetzDG makes very specific restrictions - such as prohibitive (up to €50 million) fines if something claimed to be illegal (by a mere complainant , not a court order) is not taken down within 7 days, and within 24 hours if it is "clearly illegal", resulting in severe chilling effects. Try to defended those instead. (Yes, no fine is levied if the content is not…

Do you have a precedent where this resulted in unlawful restriction of speech or it’s just a generic speculation? I had a look once at the form in one of Meta services to report hate speech: it does require some effort to fill the form and it does require the issue to be reported to police. If you don’t want to report the case to authorities, the platform will not take down the content. I do not see how this could re…

Laws that are bad because of abuseability didn't somehow transcend from good to bad the first time they were abused, they would have already been bad before that event.

But you still have a point in so far as that you can't look at a law ignoring the legal conventions and processes of the environment where "the code is run", something that would be perfectly fine in one environment could be terrible in another.

Re: Digital Berlin wall: How the German prototype for online censorship went global

#49

Post by simion314 »

xbar wrote: post #26
simion314 wrote: post #15

What idiot believes that authoritarian governments were incapable of censorship until some democratic one decided to update their laws for misinformation /hate/defamation to also apply to social media / internet ? Bad faith article, I would use more competent authors to push my agenda.

No idiot, nor the author I suspect, believes that. The author probably exaggerated the total risk to people living under authoritarian regimes. I think his inspiration from the article can be seen in this statement: "Erdogan’s Turkey – one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists – is citing NetzDG as inspiration for its new draconian law on “The Regulation of Publications made in the Internet Environment” I rem…

But If I am paid to make a case this German law I would honestly do a better job then "some dictator somewhere said that he likes this law", dictators like a lot of things like music,sports,cars and they also lie a lot. I would probably find or if I am a fake journalist invent some story about a poor child, mother, freedom fighter hurt by this law.

Edit, don't want to give a judgement for this specific law just saying the article did not convinced me, gives me a feel of bad reddit,HH comment.

Re: Digital Berlin wall: How the German prototype for online censorship went global

#50

Post by Y-bar »

at_a_remove wrote: post #44
Y-bar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This author (Jacob Mchangama) is an absolutist with regards to free speech and subscribes fully to the idea that in the marketplace of ideas the truth and correct result will always come out on top. As an example, just recently he argued in another article titled "The Problem With Banning Russian Disinformation FREE SPEECH HELPS UKRAINE" that preventing state-sponsored propaganda from reaching its target audience is…

Let's do the smoking thing, since you picked that one. 1) We eventually found out the truth. Nobody guarantees that the wins will be fast. 2) You have to be kidding yourself if you think that the suppressed speech wouldn't be that of the people saying "Smoking is dangerous." The tobacco companies can and did hire experts, manufacture the results they wanted, and so forth. They, the establishment, the moneyed, would b…

> 1. We eventually found out the truth.

Yes. Narrowly. After decades of suffering and deaths, which I personally suffer from today. And we were helped by putting legal limits on the lies presented by bad-faith participants.

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