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France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

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Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#61
post #16
post #2

france is such a weird place. In some ways it's a very free society. In other ways it's not free at all. Don't most of the euro countries have weird laws about hate speech like this?

I guess it is "weird" in a sense that in various places in Europe online platforms are (and have been for long time) liable for user generated content. E.g. if a Swiss news site has a comment section where users violate anti racism laws, the site owner can be sued since they published and didn't remove it. Regarding free society. I think each one has its own quirks and difference where they consider someone's freedom…

>the US's handling of nudity and swear words is absolutely bizarre to me as a European and as someone from the US you might think the restriction on speech and use of symbols many places in Europe have go too far.

Does the law in the US actually regulate that? I was under the assumption that the nudity prohibition on TV and such was simply a voluntary measure. Facebook is welcome to allow it at any moment, they just choose not to, in order to prevent it from becoming a porn repository. I could be totally wrong on this one, but it makes sense, and it explains why it is still totally allowed elsewhere.

Similar to how videogame ratings in the US issued by ESRB are not legally binding and are just a voluntary system that stores use, to decide which games to carry (e.g., most stores won't be carrying Adults Only rated games) and who to sell them to.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#62
post #14
post #2

france is such a weird place. In some ways it's a very free society. In other ways it's not free at all. Don't most of the euro countries have weird laws about hate speech like this?

It can be argued the U.S. is the “weird” country for not restricting hate speech. It’s not just the EU, most countries regulate hate speech. This is not perceived as restricting freedom, because it protects the freedoms of the group the hate speech targets (one person’s freedom ends where another’s begins).

[deleted]

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#63
post #2

france is such a weird place. In some ways it's a very free society. In other ways it's not free at all. Don't most of the euro countries have weird laws about hate speech like this?

It’s simple. You’re not free to be intolerant. What is intolerant? Anything that involves biological differences that people are unable to change.

The kids movie Shrek was hate speech for making fun of the king being short? People were actually offended by that but you want the movie outlawed which is extreme.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#64

I bet this will induce deplatformization. You do not react the same way if you are a platform (in which case you just deactivate or delete the contents as soon as it is flagged by anyone), or if you are yourself responsible for your website (in which case you will fight to defend that you don't need to take down the contents). My big question is: is AWS, or any other cloud-based hosting system, considered a platform…

> I bet this will induce deplatformization.

And that would the return of the web as I liked it.

One can dream.

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#65
post #32

How long until internet companies decide that relatively small and litigious markets aren't worth their time and simply ignore laws like this? If every country with an economy the size of 1 or 2 large US states start making up their own censorship laws and trying to force companies to enforce them, at some point this causes huge inefficiencies. I can see two end states to this: 1. If the censoring country has enough…

There is a third possible 'end state', which is that each restrictive country with a large market ends up in a 'sandbox'. This could look a lot like the Great Firewall, but outsourced.

Isn't there already a de-facto sandboxing by language?

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How long until internet companies decide that relatively small and litigious markets aren't worth their time and simply ignore laws like this? We saw it happen with GDPR already. Though we also see many companies play ball with censors, e.g. in places like China. If suddenly a Winnie-the-Pooh cartoon is judged to be "hate speech", it's easy to just censor the cartoons. Most users won't exactly care, there's plenty…

What happened with GDPR exactly?

Many sites hosted in the US aren't accessible from the EU due to GDPR. Also GDPR reduced VC investment in EU startups by 1/3rd.[1]

1. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3278912

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#67
post #51

Poor admins and moderators... I genuinely never understood what the fuss is about. Hear me out here. I spent a good amount of time of my life living abroad. Almost 6 years to be exact. And this was during a time when commenting stuff online was relatively rare still. That said, an eastern European in a western European country is inevitably going to face racism/xenophobia. If you are a man it will hit you even sooner…

You're missing the point.

"A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to." -Anthony Daniels

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#68
post #51

Poor admins and moderators... I genuinely never understood what the fuss is about. Hear me out here. I spent a good amount of time of my life living abroad. Almost 6 years to be exact. And this was during a time when commenting stuff online was relatively rare still. That said, an eastern European in a western European country is inevitably going to face racism/xenophobia. If you are a man it will hit you even sooner…

Fully agreed. Just "hate speech" on its own seems like a non-issue.

If it gets to a point where it obstructs your way of life or people spewing that kind of language are following you and such, it sounds more like "harassment" or "threats", and we already have laws in effect that protect people against that. Same with calling for harm to certain groups of people, as that would fall under "inciting violence".

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who decides what needs to be censored? How do we ensure a fair process if we could be silenced for just questioning the censors? The hate speech slope is slippery and unscrupulous politicians will always want to interfere.

Anything you cannot biologically change is hate speech. It’s not complicated and it’s objective.

You can tie a whole hell of a lot of things to biologically immutable attributes. Are these hate speech?

- I don't like short men

- I like blondes

- We want to hire smart people

- man how can he/she be so dumb?

So now I can't say any of these things?

Re: France passes law forcing online platforms to delete hate-speech within 24 hours

#70
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a third possible 'end state', which is that each restrictive country with a large market ends up in a 'sandbox'. This could look a lot like the Great Firewall, but outsourced.

Isn't there already a de-facto sandboxing by language?

Not really, many countries share languages but not regulations. In addition to that, many people move from one country to another, while staying in touch with their old friends.

Facebook has also been working hard on their translation features to reduce language barriers.

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