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In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

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Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#141

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

anigbrowl wrote: post #123
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that is a reason to make a law that has a private company decide what are in effect criminal cases against citizens. The minister responsible at some point made the completely idiotic remark that that is the right way to go because Facebook and the like are making a lot of money, so they also should be responsible for these costs. It seems like you can be a minister in Germany and never have heard of this con…

a law that has a private company decide what are in effect criminal cases against citizens The private company is a publisher which is being held responsible for what it chooses to publish. Individual citizens have a right to hold and express their views, but not an automatic right to publication. If their views are so odious as to invite criminal sanction, it's entirely reasonable for them to incur extra costs/diffi…

Which is relevant to the question of whether a private company should decide legal cases against citizens how exactly?

> Individual citizens have a right to hold and express their views, but not an automatic right to publication.

Well, yes, that is what that means. They have a right to not be hindered by the state in publishing their opinion (unless hate speech, essentially).

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#142

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

anigbrowl wrote: post #125
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By any normal definition these aren't criminal cases. It is a decision made to limit your constitutional freedoms due to legal obligations towards the public. That is very much the definition of a criminal case. > People don't end up losing jobs, going behind bars, gaining criminal records. Parking in the wrong spot also doesn't lead to any of that, but it's still a criminal case. > They simply cannot spread hate-s…

Parking in the wrong spot also doesn't lead to any of that, but it's still a criminal case. It actually isn't. PArking ticket and the like are administrative violations, not criminal. Admittedly most people are unaware of this distinction; unfortunately that lack of awareness is exploited by, for example, politicians and pundits who describe all undocumented immigrants as criminals, when in fact many of them are in a…

> It actually isn't. PArking ticket and the like are administrative violations, not criminal.

Which is, as I pointed out elsewhere, a subcategory of criminal law int he broad sense (as opposed to civil law). Yes, Ordnungswidrigkeiten are not Straftaten, but that is not what this discussion is about. Ordnungswidrigkeitenverfahren have the exact same constitutional limitations as Strafverfahren.

> Against who? I have a feeling I'm going to roll my eyes at the answer, though.

Maybe ask someone who claimed that the NetzDG only limits hate speech?

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#143

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

anigbrowl wrote: post #126
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Which is why you might want to read the full context of this discussion, which should then tell you that this is not about "Facebook just deleting a post", but about the state systematically incentivising Facebook to act in such a way that if the state itself acted in that way, that would obviously be a violation of your constitutional freedoms. Indirect action through a private entity does not make otherwis…

You know Germany doesn't govern itself according to the US constitution, yes?

You know that the word "constitution" is not reserved for the US constitution, yes?

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#144

Post by anigbrowl »

hardwires wrote: post #119
germanier wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like all our laws either (this included) but I accept that as a society we must respect and enforce the laws we democratically choose to enact. Rule of law is a fundamental pillar of society and if that is stopped getting accepted by society at large we are in for a bad time. I don't make the laws and Facebook doesn't either. If Facebook and co. don't want to operate in Germany, they are free to withdraw from…

>> I don't like all our laws either (this included) but I accept that as a society we must respect and enforce the laws we democratically choose to enact. No, we don't. Who taught you this nonsense? In fact, it is our duty as citizens to fight bad laws, no matter if they were "democratically chosen" or not. In Germany, we don't choose laws democratically, either. We elect representatives who may or may not do a good…

It's because of Hitler that Germany has laws against hate speech and proscribes displays of Nazi insignia, is it not?

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#145

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

geococcyxc wrote: post #100
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm ... in which sense exactly is an Ordnungswidrigkeitenverfahren like a Zivilprozess? How are the courts different? Also, yes, "but with the government" is exactly what makes it a criminal case!? See also: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnungswidrigkeit https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafrecht_(Deutschland)

Sorry, I was wrong about the courts, but at first it is not even handled by a court or prosecutor at all, only by the administration. If the potential fine is not accepted it then indeed goes to criminal court.

Well, yes, Ordnungswidrkeiten are "Straftaten light", if you will, so consequences are generally less severe, the process has a shortcut for undisputed cases, ... but the essence is still that the state makes a member of society experience some consequences for not following the law, and thus in particular the same constitutional protections apply.

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#146

Post by anigbrowl »

hardwires wrote: post #118
Dumbdo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We killed millions of people, not even a hundred years ago, but now we're the paragons of virtue? I don't see how this was relevant in any way to the discussion. What happened 100 years ago should of course be considered in discussions and in the law-making process today and it should not be forgotten, so that it will not repeat. But it isn't fair to still judge people born in a country where some of their grand(gr…

>> But it isn't fair to still judge people born in a country where some of their grand(grand)parents did bad things. I'm not doing that. I'm pointing out that it is laughable to believe that German society could "teach our manners and morals" to the "foreigners" conducting business here. The German society didn't create Nazism out of nothing, the (repressed) superiority complex is still very strong, only now the schi…

It sounds like your argument is 'people should ignore our laws against hate speech because we're the people who brought about WW2 and the holocaust, so you shouldn't trust us on this stuff.'

Of more simply 'ignore laws that aim at preventing a repeat of a crime because of the commission of that crime.'

¯\(°_o)/¯

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#147

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

anigbrowl wrote: post #127
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Note that the stated goal of the law is most probably the exact point: making access to effective defense of your rights possible to anyone. Which is completely and utterly fails at in the obvious way, in that your right to free speech is limited by a strong incentive for corporations to silence you if in doubt? > The reality consisted of slow law enforcement (which has to act against people who made the speech in…

Which speech acts are likely to incur legal sanction, exactly? What about the effects of those speech acts upon their subjects? The German approach is to hold the speaker liable for that cost. Some speech acts reduce the freedom of other people.

> Which speech acts are likely to incur legal sanction, exactly?

This is not about legal legal sanction, but about de-facto legal sanction. By definition, Facebook is only exercising its property rights. But that doesn't change the fact that they do limit perfectly legal speech as a result of a law that forces them to decide whether a given speech act is illegal, thus putting them in the de-facto role of a court, just with completely skewed incentives.

If the same law said that a judge would have to pay heavy fines if they didn't order the deletion of "obviously illegal speech", that would incentivise judges to not respect the constitutional rights of citizens, right? And would therefore probably be unconstitutional, right? Now, this law has effectively the exact same effect, by simply making Facebook the de-facto judge with that incentive, just with the added problem that the people making the decisions have no clue of the law.

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#148

Post by hardwires »

germanier wrote: post #129
hardwires wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I don't like all our laws either (this included) but I accept that as a society we must respect and enforce the laws we democratically choose to enact. No, we don't. Who taught you this nonsense? In fact, it is our duty as citizens to fight bad laws, no matter if they were "democratically chosen" or not. In Germany, we don't choose laws democratically, either. We elect representatives who may or may not do a good…

> No, we don't. Who taught you this nonsense? Art. 20 II of our constitution. That's the philosophical foundation of how our state works. Every state action is derived from that principle. That's of course no nonsense but thankfully absolutely unchallenged by everybody who teaches you about our state. Not every state action is good, some are even objectively bad. Of course working against such is a civic duty. But wa…

>> Art. 20 II of our constitution. That's the philosophical foundation of how our state works. Every state action is derived from that principle. That's of course no nonsense but thankfully absolutely unchallenged by everybody who teaches you about our state.

What you sounds does not follow from that article - your are mistaking an "ought" for an "is"! If our duty was to do no more than "respect and enforce" laws, how is it that the supreme court declares laws as unconstitutional on a fairly regular basis? An unconstitutional law is best left unenforced and disrespected, is it not?

>> Well, apart from basically all the things that granted that period a special place in every history book hopefully forever.

No special pleading allowed! Besides, there are countless less extreme examples of "democratic processes" leading to unfavorable outcomes. It's just not a strong argument for anything. Witch burning was a grassroots democratic movement, if you want to look at it that way!

>> We integrated various safeguards into our constitution and laws to ensure that something like that never happens again. This law (no matter how bad) is a piece in that puzzle and should be viewed as such.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. If the previous N laws to "ensure that something like that never happens again" don't, in fact, ensure that "something like that never happens again", then why would the N+1th law make any difference? The same process that created this law can be used to repeal it. Its very existence gives strength to the far right.

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#149

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

tpm wrote: post #84
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that is a reason to make a law that has a private company decide what are in effect criminal cases against citizens. The minister responsible at some point made the completely idiotic remark that that is the right way to go because Facebook and the like are making a lot of money, so they also should be responsible for these costs. It seems like you can be a minister in Germany and never have heard of this con…

If you think any judicial system in the world is - or could be - equipped to deal with millions of potentially criminal comments from a social network on a case per case basis you are deluding yourself. More than that, it would be a textcase of privatising profits and leaving the costs to pick up for everyone else, while facebook siphoons the profits to tax havens.

> If you think any judicial system in the world is - or could be - equipped to deal with millions of potentially criminal comments from a social network on a case per case basis you are deluding yourself.

So, what's your point then? No judicial system possibly could, but Facebook can? Or Facebook can't either, so let's just ignore the constitution?

> More than that, it would be a textcase of privatising profits and leaving the costs to pick up for everyone else, while facebook siphoons the profits to tax havens.

Wut? Taxing Facebook more in order to finance an independent judicial system that takes care of the legal cases involving Facebook is a textbook case of privatising profits and externalising costs? I'm not sure I follow!?

Also, I'm not sure it's really exactly correct to say that Facebook is the source of these costs, given that it's citizens who say illegal things. If people meet in a pub to commit Volksverhetzung, is the pub the source of the law enforcement costs?

Re: In Germany, online hate speech has real world consequences

#150

Post by hardwires »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #139
hardwires wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> So? Now, there is a law, and so what was legal before is not anymore. That's my whole point, it was legal before and they weren't "making money illegally" (as the parent claimed), hence my the need for new laws. >> Where you are acting from does not have any influence on legality. If Germany has a law that makes what someone does in the US illegal, then it's illegal. It's not illegal in the US , from which they ar…

> That's my whole point, it was legal before and they weren't "making money illegally" (as the parent claimed), hence my the need for new laws. Yeah, once upon a time, murder was legal, and people weren't "murdering illegally", so why the need for a law against murder? > It's not illegal in the US, from which they are operating. That's what matters. Well, if you aren't interested in reality, why are we even discussin…

>> Yeah, once upon a time, murder was legal, and people weren't "murdering illegally", so why the need for a law against murder?

The POINT is that the parent claimed Facebook is acting illegally, my point is they were not!. There's no argument against the law itself to be found within that, you can stop trying.

>> Well, if you aren't interested in reality, why are we even discussing?

What are you talking about? I am discussing reality. You must be missing the point again, which is the following: Even if something is illegal in Germany, you can not enforce German law on every company that stands to profit from a German audience. Therefore, if you want to use German law to "teach" those companies, you're out of luck.

As a German myself, I am very glad about this, because (for example) I don't have to wait until 10PM and verify my identity to consume government-sanctioned pornography, as German law would require. You don't see a lot of people asking for respect and enforcement of those laws, yet as soon as it comes to "hate speech" the nanny-state-conformists come out of the woodwork...

>> German law itself limits its geographic applicability, and therefore that limit can be changed just as any other rules in the law.

The porn law applies in the same way that the hate speech laws apply, insofar as they're dealing with German "customers".

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