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

justitia-int.org

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

#61
> “The fact that 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” should send a clear warning signal to democracies that this model is a good faith effort gone bad.

This just sounds like the author was easily fooled by Erdogan's narrative. The nazis cited british laws to justify their genocide and I'm sure that Putin tells his people that every other nation has opressing laws similar to Russia.

Remember kids, don't believe a single word said by dictators and autocrats.

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

#62

As much as I worry about online bullying (not quite legally hate speech, but obviously hate speech) and also misinformation (anti-vax, etc), I think that anything that squelches the ability to have open discussions on any topic is wrong. It seems that we've strongly overgeneralized any fake news to be anything that is antithetical to the idea du jour, whether there is any merit to the idea or not. This harms society…

>It seems that we've strongly overgeneralized any fake news to be anything that is antithetical to the idea du jour, whether there is any merit to the idea or not.

This will also lead to deep cynicism when when it comes to fact checkers and whether or not a particular narrative is "true."

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

#63

One calls it censorship, someone else calls it protection of democracy and freedoms, because freedom of speech is not absolute and not of higher priority than other human rights. Human rights are always in conflict with each other: today USA is deciding to violate right of property for Russian oligarchs because rights of Ukrainian citizen are violated. Right for free movement was restricted during Covid pandemic for…

Speech can't hurt you. Speech by itself doesn't violate any of your rights.

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

#64

One calls it censorship, someone else calls it protection of democracy and freedoms, because freedom of speech is not absolute and not of higher priority than other human rights. Human rights are always in conflict with each other: today USA is deciding to violate right of property for Russian oligarchs because rights of Ukrainian citizen are violated. Right for free movement was restricted during Covid pandemic for…

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…

> NetzDG makes very specific restrictions - such as prohibitive (up to €50 million) fines if something claimed to be illegal

That is wrong. Merely, NetzDG imposes an obligation on specific social network providers to establish an "effective and transparent process" to deal with complaints about unlawful content. Without prescribing a specific process in itself, it specifies certain functional requirements. Among them, this process has to ensure that "blatantly illegal content" is being removed within 24 hours, unless the social network provider has agreed on a longer timespan with the law enforcement agency.

Any fines the NetzDG stipulates do only refer to failures to meet requirements of process design. In no case there are fines for social media providers in the case of wrongfully consider a piece of content lawful in a specific case.

It seems to me that this whole discussion is fundamentally unable to consider these legal nuances. Also, blaming NetzDG for actions of authoritarian governments is just plain silly.

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

#65
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Censorship is a crucial foundation of capitalism No, nothing to do with capitalism, but elitism, that happens in capitalism communism and even tribalism. >fedz for liberating science Again no, liberating the free (as in free beer) access to papers. If you want to liberate science you need to pay the scientist for what they want to study (and not you)

Elitism a crucial foundation to Capitalism. X Is a crucial foundation to Y is a transitive relationship.

>Elitism a crucial foundation to Capitalism

And Communism, but it's not the foundation....that is totally wrong.

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

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But If say country X had a law like "if you knowingly present fake shit in an ad all in the know will pay with their life" this shit could not happen, we would need to make the people involved in fabricating false stuff pay proportional with the damage. You pay for someone to fake some scientific paper - you pay , you Photoshop some images to mislead people you pay proportional with the damage caused plus some 10% of…

Most of this stuff comes out after all of the principals are retired and/or dead. This is true of government issues as well, take Tuskeegee. Nobody went to jail for that.

And you have to consider the "chain of presenting false information." Is Facebook gonna take the hit? "No, we were just doing what we were told. It isn't like we replicate scientific studies ourselves." How about Cindy, who sent the press release about the study to Facebook? Step back, Desmond wrote the press release that Cindy sent, are you going to get him, too?

Just trying to legislate this calculus of culpability is going to be filled with loopholes.

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

#67

One calls it censorship, someone else calls it protection of democracy and freedoms, because freedom of speech is not absolute and not of higher priority than other human rights. Human rights are always in conflict with each other: today USA is deciding to violate right of property for Russian oligarchs because rights of Ukrainian citizen are violated. Right for free movement was restricted during Covid pandemic for…

Without freedom of speech you don't have democracy, or true freedom of association, etc. It's a critical foundational right on which other human rights are founded.

this is not how the german state (or german democracy?) is built. Freedom of speech has bounds here and this can be defended.

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

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At least you're being honest about what that freedom can actually mean in practice, rather than telling some fairy tale about the marketplace of ideas or something. Yes, freedom of expression taken seriously does indeed mean that people, regular oridnary people in all their varieties then have the freedom to peacefully express ideas which might sometimes be abysmally stupid, ignorant or even malevolent. As long as t…

> ...peacefully express ideas which might sometimes be abysmally stupid, ignorant or even malevolent. As long as they can't extend these ideas into coercive force against others, this should be fine. That's also a fairy tale. > The fairytale idea is that by "fighting misinformation" large gatekeepers can somehow forcibly rid the world of bad ideas or make it a better place. I don't think anyone thinks they can actual…

And sincerely, how do you propose that they be stopped from spreading as quickly based on your criteria or correct spread? Honestly curious. Who should decide what ideas can be labeled bad and what ideas tolerable or good?

Also, no, it's not a fairytale. Words and expressions of ideas are one thing, coercion and physical violence are another. It's very possible to generally legally stop people from the latter while respecting their right to the former. It's done all the time if imperfectly and the much more obvious danger for bad social traits is a system in which ideas are repressed coercively under the excuse that expressing bad ideas might somehow limit individual freedom.

>And QAnon/Pizzagate, "Stop the Steal," and Ivermectin are the answer?

What an absurd way to twist narrative. These ideas obviously aren't the answer. A system that lets people compete against their expression with their own freely expressed better founded ideas is the answer. Media-induced and politically convenient hysteria aside, it has worked well for a long time in some of the freest societies in human history, right to today. The repressions on supposedly socially damaging ideas we had before that were far more pernicious to thinking and action than any number of QAnon followers or pizzagate believers today. Where do you see the decline you mention? And decline from what? Compared to what previous superior state of social expression rules?

If you want gatekeepers against these ideas then who? The government, which regularly takes mendacity to extremes no private organization can match for level of harm? Or possibly major media outlets should be responsible for "slowing misinformation spread"? You know, media organizations like those that have happily sold multiple major policy lies during decades of their existence and which have cheered on wars, military campaigns and vested narratives time and time again.

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

#69

The text comes out in a condescending tone and most of it just sounds like "blah blah free speech" But the core of the argument seems to be this > vaguely defined categories of hate speech and fake news by placing responsibility on the social media platforms for user content. (this) creates big incentives for social media companies to over-regulate online speech and risk pushing extremists towards platforms that are…

FWIW free-speech absolutist America already has this kind of law on the books. It's called DMCA 512; it only requires the allegation of a copyright infringement in order to trigger the same kind of censorship[0] as NetzDG appears to do.

If you have been unfairly targeted, you can counter-notify, but that requires doxing yourself. There's also a subpoena process to explicitly request the unmasking of anonymous users[1]. YouTube is chock full of DMCA extortion scams that specifically target smaller channels and demand payment to avoid getting one's channel deleted. Those scams work precisely because Google has an active and ongoing[2] policy of summarily executing rule breakers without explanation or recourse.

Laws like DMCA 512 and NetzDG only have these kinds of censorious effects[3] specifically because social media is itself a kind of scam. Regular publishers actually spend money to fund the creation of creative works that they expect to make a profit off of; platforms create a container and incentives for other people to fill it with amorphous "content". Publishers take on the risk of publication, including defamation and copyright liability; while platforms are set up specifically to shift that liability onto people who cannot bear that burden. The end result is that most people on social media choose to self-censor; even if they have no intention to defame, misinform, hate upon someone, or infringe a copyright.

[0] We are assuming for the sake of example that the targeted content is novel speech and not infringing. America does not consider copyright infringement to be speech.

[1] The Darkspilver / Jehovah's Witness case is a prime example of how to abuse a DMCA 512 subpoena request; we're lucky the courts came to their senses and decided not to unmask them.

[2] As far as I can tell, since the company's founding

[3] For the purpose of discussion I'm not going to argue whether or not hate speech or misinformation should be censored, we're just going to assume that it should.

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

#70

One calls it censorship, someone else calls it protection of democracy and freedoms, because freedom of speech is not absolute and not of higher priority than other human rights. Human rights are always in conflict with each other: today USA is deciding to violate right of property for Russian oligarchs because rights of Ukrainian citizen are violated. Right for free movement was restricted during Covid pandemic for…

Speech can't hurt you. Speech by itself doesn't violate any of your rights.

Oh no, verbal abuses do hurt and in very subtle ways.
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