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German hate speech law tested as Twitter blocks satire account

reuters.com

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Re: German hate speech law tested as Twitter blocks satire account

#191

Post by toomanybeersies »

Amezarak wrote: post #101
shaki-dora wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's such a juvenile reaction... Germany is considering a stable, open, democratic, peaceful, constructive and successful country. There are any number of rankings/scoring regarding freedom of the press and of expression, resilience to corruption, democracy, economic opportunity etc in which Germany scores better than the US. These are laws passed by the national parliament, elected to represent its constituents. T…

> There are any number of rankings/scoring regarding freedom of the press and of expression, resilience to corruption, democracy, economic opportunity etc in which Germany scores better than the US. One of the reasons people regard these rankings as a total joke is exactly because of incidents like this - Twitter being forced to delete satirical tweets. More broadly, I think most people would agree that beyond the ex…

Freedom is a strange thing. It's not really tangible or measurable in an easy way.

I would feel more free in New Zealand than in the USA, even though New Zealand has hate speech laws. However, in New Zealand, the police don't carry guns, I'm not at risk of getting shot because of a blown tail light.

Personally, I don't measure freedom by what tweets Twitter is required to remove.

Re: German hate speech law tested as Twitter blocks satire account

#192

Post by Mithaldu »

Amezarak wrote: post #126
Mithaldu wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter being forced to delete It is not at all though. The law very clearly spells out that for unclear cases (and the satire tweet definitely falls under that) there are significant exceptions and leeway.

Twitter is strongly incentivized to err on the side of caution (for them) by deleting in unclear cases. If they wrongly believe a tweet is legal, they are punished. If they wrongly believe a tweet is illegal, nothing happens. To pretend a company in this situation is not being legally forced to delete "protected" satire is sophistry. The only rational thing to do in that situation is delete all tweets anyone could po…

You're incorrect. They have no reason to fear punishment from a wrong call.

For one, the law doesn't require deletion. They just have to make it publically inaccessible pending outcome of inspection. And if they're unsure about the legality they can punt it to another org and won't suffer consequences.

In fact, the law even stipulates that the data must be retained for 10 weeks to allow further action.

Re: German hate speech law tested as Twitter blocks satire account

#193

Post by averagewall »

mc32 wrote: post #181
labster wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet is a terrible safety valve to vent at, because it's too easy to pretend what you say doesn't have consequences. One tweet by a dude having a bad day can help normalize stereotyping to 50 people. And there's always that other guy who takes things too far. I know that people might intend Twitter or blogs to be for friends, but it's mass media nonetheless.

See, philosophically stereotyping doesn't have to be a "bad thing". When I went to school there we "polack" jokes, blond/e jokes, yo mamma jokes, etc. They were not "mean" or meant to denigrate people. They were ways to "break the ice" as it were. But nowadays people are super sensitive, unless it's a majority or almost majority population, or it has power, unless it has power but it's also seen as being singled out…

Sure, that kind of stereotyping by parents teaching their children to be bigots is probably harmful overall! Harmful neighbor country rivalries last centuries, probably because of just this kind of reinforcement. Then every now and then you get a Kosovo or a holocaust.

Re: German hate speech law tested as Twitter blocks satire account

#194

Post by synotna »

nine_k wrote: post #48
nsnick wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter should not enforce ridiculous German laws. The tech companies need to call the bluff of countries that demand censorship.

Twitter, if it wants to continue operating in Germany without facing lawsuits / prosecution, has to bow to German law. It would be better if they could just reliably block the account from reaching German users only, while other users would continue reading the tweets. It, of course, is impossible unless Germany implements a country-wide firewall, the way China did. I don't think it's likely, though. The point of act…

Reddit does geofence some subreddits in at least Germany, returning status code 451

Re: German hate speech law tested as Twitter blocks satire account

#195

Post by averagewall »

sintaxi wrote: post #104
Razengan wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the moral dilemma Why is it so hard to codify “Don’t be a dick to anyone” into a law? (non-rhetorical question)

It already is, just some people want want to extend the law to force people to think & behave the way they want them to. American law covers everything necessary for every individual to live a civilized life where they can pursue happiness and meaning as they choose to define it.

I think hate speech is a bit like drink driving. Perfectly harmless itself but can cause follow-on real world problems that do impact people's lives - ie discrimination in hiring/etc.

Re: German hate speech law tested as Twitter blocks satire account

#196

Post by nailer »

everdev wrote: post #183
nailer wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike stuffed crust pizzas, which are also not a race, but I imagine everdev considers that racist too.

You can hate whatever pizza you want

Wouldn't that be racist against stuffed crust pizza?

Why one idea and not the other? Are we allowed to dislike Christianity? Scientology? Libertarianism? Socialism? Capitalism? Cutting off dogs tails? If so, what makes Islam non dislikeable?

Are you aware of the many ex Muslims and the harassment they receive? The people who've criticised Islam and been killed for it? Do you think declaring Islam non dislikeable helps this?

Do you know anyone who is an ex black person or ex white person or ex asian? Why not?

Re: German hate speech law tested as Twitter blocks satire account

#197

Post by Houshalter »

everdev wrote: post #47
dilap wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no dilema. It's just an excuse for control. Letting Nazis speak will not actually convert modern society into Nazis.

It happened 70 years ago. Obama has a good line, something similar to: If you were in a restaurant in 1930s Vienna surrounded by great art, music and intellectuals you may have been forgiven for thinking that wonderful setting would continue on forever. Unfortunately, a short time later millions we're dying on a continent engulfed in war. When the stock market is up we think it'll keep going up. When we have peace we…

Why on Earth is my comment hidden with +9 points? And the others flagged with +4 and +5? Was anything I said untrue or off topic? This is disgusting HN.

Re: German hate speech law tested as Twitter blocks satire account

#198

Post by nailer »

everdev wrote: post #184
kofejnik wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the left are constantly calling out Christians for certain behaviors, is this racist?

If you try to define all Christians as X, you're probably mistaken. If it's a negative definition designed to insult then it's probably discrimination. The whole point of being anti racism, anti religious discrimination etc., is that race and religion are not good qualifiers for making assumptions or decisions.

The parent asked you if disliking Christianity was racist, not if it was religious discrimination. Please answer them.

If, say PEW Research asks a statistically significant portion of people who identify themselves one way, and a large amount of them self declare they have awful views, is reporting this bad because it's 'negative'?

Re: German hate speech law tested as Twitter blocks satire account

#199

Post by Retra »

wernercd wrote: post #166
danschumann wrote: post #57

The problem with hate speech laws are, it means you can't insult everyone equally. If you call someone stupid, they could accuse you of a crime, but you're not calling them stupid because of their race. And I want people who actually are racist to talk, so I know who I don't want to be friends with. If they're all keeping their racist opinions to themselves, I might waste a bunch of time being their friends. And I ca…

> I want people who actually are racist to talk, so I know who I don't want to be friends with. It's more important and wide than "I don't want to be their friends"... How can you attack ideas if they aren't brought out into the open? How can you convince the racist? Or the people that have those thoughts but don't mention them? They corner stone of freedom is discussing ideas. I want the most vile pieces of shit to…

>How can you attack ideas if they aren't brought out into the open?

You attack ideas by suffocating them, not by repeating them. Children learn words by hearing them spoken. Nothing more needs to happen; the brain is quite good at drawing the intended implications out. To promote an idea, you need only put it in people's heads over and over again.

The major problem with hate speech laws is trying to separate propaganda from education or intellectual discussion from dogmatic bigotry. It is trivial to mask one as the other and vice versa. And while an honest and critical person can make a good distinction in narrow contexts, nobody has been able to do it effectively on a cultural scale.

Re: German hate speech law tested as Twitter blocks satire account

#200

Post by anigbrowl »

abiox wrote: post #171
anigbrowl wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are 'calls for genocide' actually a thing worth caring about? If you're a member of the subject group, then they most certainly are. Instead of constructing silly examples, let me suggest you look into the history of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia or Hutu-Tutsi animus in Rwanda.

military or organized physical violence is not the same as a random yokel saying dumb things on the internet. invoking real world violence as a stand-in for which one calibrates their regard for a person's tweets seems more like an emotional appeal rather than a logical dialog.

The internet is a great organizing tool, and you have no way to know whether any given comment is random or coordinated.
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