European content removal laws are scrubbing the internet of legal content
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Re: European content removal laws are scrubbing the internet of legal content
#2This analysis found that legal online speech made up most of the removed content from posts on Facebook and YouTube in France, Germany, and Sweden.
Of the deleted comments examined across platforms and countries, between 87.5% and 99.7%, depending on the sample, were legally permissible.
Re: European content removal laws are scrubbing the internet of legal content
#3This analysis found that legal online speech made up most of the removed content from posts on Facebook and YouTube in France, Germany, and Sweden. Of the deleted comments examined across platforms and countries, between 87.5% and 99.7%, depending on the sample, were legally permissible.
I assume this means “legally permissible in said country”?
Re: European content removal laws are scrubbing the internet of legal content
#4The linked PDF source does not back up the article or title. Page 19-20, Who deleted the comment – Deletion or Moderation?:
> It is essential to emphasize that identifying the actor responsible for deleting a comment is not feasible. [...] Therefore, this report treats the three reasons for comment disappearance as a single phenomenon.
Or in other words, it counts all removals, and we know that moderation always removes based on more criteria than just legality, regardless of what those laws are.
Re: European content removal laws are scrubbing the internet of legal content
#5This analysis found that legal online speech made up most of the removed content from posts on Facebook and YouTube in France, Germany, and Sweden. Of the deleted comments examined across platforms and countries, between 87.5% and 99.7%, depending on the sample, were legally permissible.
I assume this means “legally permissible in said country”?
The article or the report don't give a single example of what they think was wrongly removed when it was just "general expression of opinion".
So I'm quite critical of this kind of platform enforced censorship, but I'm not really convinced on this case that it's not just a different interpretation of what free speech means and what hate speech is between US Americans and Europeans, as is common in these discussions.
Re: European content removal laws are scrubbing the internet of legal content
#6The obligation on content platforms is not to allow any legally permissible message to be posted. It is to prevent any legally impermissible message from being posted.
Moreover, as a business, just because something’s theoretically legal, if it exposes you to a nonzero risk of being prosecuted - even if you are pretty sure you will prevail - you’re well within your rights to elect not to be the vehicle through which that bit of caselaw gets made.
The claim that 90% or so of these deleted messages were ‘legally permitted’ seems to rest on a somewhat untestable hypothesis that if these platforms had left this content up, it would not have resulted in legal consequences, or if it had, the hosting platforms and posters would have been exonerated.
Whether or not to make those gambles with facebook’s shareholders’ money is really facebook’s business.
Re: European content removal laws are scrubbing the internet of legal content
#7I guarantee you that if I started filling every HackerNews thread with My Little Pony memes, every “Free Speech Absolutist” would manage to grasp the point that sometimes you want to remove legal content.
Re: European content removal laws are scrubbing the internet of legal content
#8European content removal laws don't apply outside of Europe which means they don't apply to the internet, only a 'version' of the internet.
If you live in a country that doesn't let you access the 'true' internet, you don't live in a free country.
Re: European content removal laws are scrubbing the internet of legal content
#9Just to note some speech that has been considered illegal in Europe:
- calling Muhammad a pedophile - convicted of blasphemy (JFC!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.S._v._Austria_(2018)
- posting the government's own crime statistics - convicted of inciting hate https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/afd-politicia...
- a video of a dog doing a Hitler salute - hate crime https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925
So if that's illegal you can imagine how tame the legal content that was removed is. There is no freedom of speech in Europe.
Re: European content removal laws are scrubbing the internet of legal content
#10I guarantee you that if I started filling every HackerNews thread with My Little Pony memes, every “Free Speech Absolutist” would manage to grasp the point that sometimes you want to remove legal content.
But this is missing the issue entirely. Your spammy posts would be removed because nobody here wants to see them if they even could after the deluge of downvotes. What is happening in Europe is that people are posting things that users do want to see, but the government doesn't want people to see it.