The problem with things like this is that it's really hard to actually comply without causing other issues. If there are 5 million reported posts every day, it's not feasible to have people actually review them all, and taking things down automatically can lead to abuse (see DMCA)
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Germany warns Facebook of penalties over online hate speech
- Thread starter Dram
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Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
Hey now, hate speech is as American as apple pie
While companies are required to comport to any laws in countries they have active business presence or risk banning, I think they baseline should respect the most open version of free speech used in democratic countries if given the option. Once you start voluntarily acquiescing to more authoritarian takes you end up catering to the abusers like Russia and China quite quickly.
Stuff like removing Nazi imagery from games such as Wolfenstein should not be the standard, but the deviation for countries who impose/elect those limits on their population. If companies want a local presence then they will have to comply but it shouldn't be the default stance.
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
Facebook logic
A nipel? NOPE, gotta save the children!
Neo-Nazis and death threats? A-OKAY! Neo-Nazi on, here on Facebook!
Fuck Facebook. I hope Germany doesn't just warn them but actually acts.
A nipel? NOPE, gotta save the children!
Neo-Nazis and death threats? A-OKAY! Neo-Nazi on, here on Facebook!
Fuck Facebook. I hope Germany doesn't just warn them but actually acts.
By that standard they also need to obey the best privacy laws, which means the European ones. Which conflicts with the free speech one as defined in America. But if they want to do business in Europe, they should obey local laws. Simple as that. You won't hear them claim they don't need to follow us law so why should they be able to claim the same about eu law? Their presence here isn't smaller
Yeah, I find it hilarious how you can post the most deplorable hateful shit on Facebook (because muh freedom of speech!!1one) but if you post a female nipple, suddenly it's ok to censor everything that moves.
No. Lol.
Critical comments are welcomed. Hate speech has no purpose but to harm and discriminate.
freeofgreed
Member
Thank you!!!
What? It absolutely is FB's responsibility to adhere to every nuanced law in every country it's available in. This is true for all businesses. Germany is free to impose whatever laws it likes on FB. and if FB wishes to do bussiness in Germany than it can either comply or pull out on it's own.
Audioboxer
Member
Regardless of charitable intent the government should not be involving itself with speech on private sites.
The only time the state should be involved is if there is incitement to violence or credible threats to someone's safety.
Facebook needs to do a job of cleaning its own house or losing users. People acting like having a FB is a given right are drinking the FB coolaid. You don't need to be on FB.
The only time the state should be involved is if there is incitement to violence or credible threats to someone's safety.
Facebook needs to do a job of cleaning its own house or losing users. People acting like having a FB is a given right are drinking the FB coolaid. You don't need to be on FB.
If they make it accessible to a country you have to adhere to said laws... or face risk of ban. Just because it is facebook it is no difference.
If I want to launch a product in USA, a physical product, I need to compile with the law, what is the difference here really?
That's exactly what this is about.
Not sure why people (seems like mostly americans) think otherwise.
hobblygobbly
Member
Hate speech laws in Germany are very clear, it's about how this hate is expressed in a public fashion (specifically incitement). German politicians and lawmakers see social media as "public".
To expand on this, in Germany it is prohibited to incite hatred towards a group in a public nature that rallies/incites the public and spreads this hatred, disturbing the "societal peace" of the nation/national unity. This hatred encompasses verbal abuse that affects their dignity, physical abuse, etc.
To put in context with Facebook, say a bunch of people having some neo-nazi group spreading hateful things, people joining it, spreading it to their friends, group is filled with spreading Islamaphobia, homophobia, anti-semitism, spreading that "there should be a holocaust 2.0 against Muslims in Europe" - this is not see any different than if these people were doing this on the streets of Berlin. Facebook is seen as "public" in the same manner. It is why it would also be impossible for people like the Westboro Baptist Church to operate in Germany.
Germany is not the only country with these sort of laws, Sweden, UK, etc have them too.
Hate speech laws don't stop you from being racist or having an opinion of something or whatever, you can express that opinion, but there are many ways you can express it... and some of these ways are not accepted, especially the ones that incite mass hatred, incite physical assault, etc.
To use an example, in the U.S there are people that call for community members to patrol their communities and "protect" it from Muslims, and actually doing it (with guns no less). This would be considered hate speech in Germany, the both calling/spreading of this, plus actually doing it.
To expand on this, in Germany it is prohibited to incite hatred towards a group in a public nature that rallies/incites the public and spreads this hatred, disturbing the "societal peace" of the nation/national unity. This hatred encompasses verbal abuse that affects their dignity, physical abuse, etc.
To put in context with Facebook, say a bunch of people having some neo-nazi group spreading hateful things, people joining it, spreading it to their friends, group is filled with spreading Islamaphobia, homophobia, anti-semitism, spreading that "there should be a holocaust 2.0 against Muslims in Europe" - this is not see any different than if these people were doing this on the streets of Berlin. Facebook is seen as "public" in the same manner. It is why it would also be impossible for people like the Westboro Baptist Church to operate in Germany.
Germany is not the only country with these sort of laws, Sweden, UK, etc have them too.
Hate speech laws don't stop you from being racist or having an opinion of something or whatever, you can express that opinion, but there are many ways you can express it... and some of these ways are not accepted, especially the ones that incite mass hatred, incite physical assault, etc.
To use an example, in the U.S there are people that call for community members to patrol their communities and "protect" it from Muslims, and actually doing it (with guns no less). This would be considered hate speech in Germany, the both calling/spreading of this, plus actually doing it.
but thats exactly what it is about.
I'm sorry, but if someone starts to yell "Let's beat up some sandniggers right now" on a street, then you bet that police will be called and the individual in question will be detained and fined. Plus, probably beat up by locals, but that's not the point, the point is that shit will happen if the police does not show up after being alerted. And the more often that happens, the worse things will get.
So if someone on Facebook or Twitter says the same thing, then by all means their offending posts should be deleted with all due haste.
That's what this is all about. Because sites like Facebook have no police despite being a public place, their police equivalent needs to work. And it needs to do so reliably. And if it doesn't, then those sites should get incentivised accordingly.
Sure, there's the slippery slope argument, and as we all know, the road to hell is most definitely paved by good intentions, but in this case, both the law and the TOS are clear on the subject. So it's not like there's anything new happening, it's only the enforcement of already existing rules.
So if someone on Facebook or Twitter says the same thing, then by all means their offending posts should be deleted with all due haste.
That's what this is all about. Because sites like Facebook have no police despite being a public place, their police equivalent needs to work. And it needs to do so reliably. And if it doesn't, then those sites should get incentivised accordingly.
Sure, there's the slippery slope argument, and as we all know, the road to hell is most definitely paved by good intentions, but in this case, both the law and the TOS are clear on the subject. So it's not like there's anything new happening, it's only the enforcement of already existing rules.
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
The thread title literally is
What do you think "hate speech" is? Serious question. Like....seriously
Daria Morgendorffer
Member
This is bullshit and you know it.
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
So, you don't know anything about Germany. Got it
1.21Gigawatts
Banned
Germanys laws are pretty clear on that. The only opinion you are not allowed to voice is holocaust denial.
Everything else has to meet the standards of libel, terroristic threats etc. to be considered unlawful.
The posts most politicians are referring to are along the lines of "I'm going to burn down this refugee shelter." or "Lets reopen Auschwitz to 'process' all these refugees."
This isn't about simple "Fuck foreigners" posts.
PdotMichael
Banned
Speech with the goal of infringing somebody's rights isn't covered by freedom of speech.
The concept is pretty simply.
The concept is pretty simply.
Doesn't seem like you know Germany in the slightest, but nice shitpost.
Sho_Nuff82
Member
Hate speech laws are inherently unenforceable when they are as broad as they are in places like Germany.
FB will sooner pull out of the country than actively mod/censor 80 million people 24/7 or face billions in fines.
KonradLaw
Member
Germany already has laws to prosecute actual hate speech. So nothing else is needed to combat the actual cases of it. The fact that they're pushing for Facebook to be much more active can only mean the definition of banned content will have to be far wider.
Facebook actually pledged to combat not only hate speech, but also xenophobia in germany early this year.
Man-is-Obsolete
Member
Facebook and a twitter would do well to at the very least have a zero tolerance on threats. Joking or not they should be immediately met with a ban. I think wishing ill will like rape and murder upon someone constitutes a threat as well.
Address those types of comments and that would be a huge step forward.
Address those types of comments and that would be a huge step forward.
Well they already can do so lest someone dare something that could be aired on German TV at any time (i. e. bad, bad sexual things), so I don't really see a problem here.
God Dayumm
Banned
Unlikely it will be like that. Terrorists and ISIS sympathyzers are using social media more. Germany probably wants to stop that.
ClosingADoor
Member
So this part:
While I think Facebook should do a lot more to get hate speech and harassment from their platform, how will this even work. Is that the government who comes knocking at Facebook saying something should be removed, is it other Facebook users using a report function, is it a judge ruling on it? Because shouldn't a judge be ruling on this and then Facebook should remove it? And I doubt that happens within a week.
While I think Facebook should do a lot more to get hate speech and harassment from their platform, how will this even work. Is that the government who comes knocking at Facebook saying something should be removed, is it other Facebook users using a report function, is it a judge ruling on it? Because shouldn't a judge be ruling on this and then Facebook should remove it? And I doubt that happens within a week.
No, it simply means that Facebook isn't doing enough about it.
Speaking from personal experience reporting a case like that, they simply don't care.
24 million users, where the majority will not participate in threats and hate speech.
Yet those who do, barely faced any consequences as Facebook barely does anything about it.
We don't have to argue that it's a big task, but hell those people also infringe the FB TOS in the majority of cases and still, FB doesn't react in alot of cases.
They will definitely not pull out, the market is to valuable.
However, they need to react sooner or later.
KonradLaw
Member
That's kind of an interesting question. Do we really want them to stop? On one hand it limits the spread of harmful ideology, but also denies you information about people who are interested in it that would be good targets for monitoring. I wonder what's more beneficial for combating terrorist threat. For society as a whole it's propbably the first one. I mean..there are very few terrorist in Europe, but for example in France, almost half of young muslims support suicidal bombings, even if vast majority of them would never do it themselves.
When it looks like recruters are mostly utilizing social media to manipulate young and impressionable minds, yes, we want it.
Germany has very particular procedures regarding racism or hate speech and it all comes from the war.
its forbidden by law to wear, show or otherwise endorse a Swastika
you can't call yourself "National Sozialisten" (Nazi) because it's forbidden to use that term.
in the same vein, they want to forbid hate speech that would allow people to go back "that way", so I can see the concern.
that's that.
its forbidden by law to wear, show or otherwise endorse a Swastika
you can't call yourself "National Sozialisten" (Nazi) because it's forbidden to use that term.
in the same vein, they want to forbid hate speech that would allow people to go back "that way", so I can see the concern.
that's that.
Facebook tried to ignore German law on hate speech and such for a while (takedown requests against posts that saw the poster arrested were rejected as "not violating community guidelines")... until the prosecutor's office sent some people to their local company HQ and informed their managers that they are very much within the reach of the law and can be thrown in prison for this.
StGB §130 defines it. This law is well tested and has been used for almost 70 years now to prevent the Nazis from regaining power.
Regarding freedom of speech:
Abusing the freedom of stating your opinion (equivalent to freedom of speech), especially the freedom of the press, teaching, assembly, secrecy in communications, property or the right to asylum to fight against the basic free democratic order of the state makes you lose those freedoms (requires supreme court decision).
Mind you, even without an HQ full of managers who can be held personally accountable there's a significant amount of cash flowing from Germany to Facebook (I see gift cards in every store!) and Germany is not the only EU country with laws like this, in fact most of the EU makes Nazi propaganda or holocaust denial a criminal offense.
China saw dissidents using code language and kept banning those codes until they got so obtuse that nobody outside of the inner circle of dissidents could even figure out what they meant. That completely suppressed their ability to communicate with the masses and recruit new followers. The dissidents still talk among themselves but cannot reach out anymore.
StGB §130 defines it. This law is well tested and has been used for almost 70 years now to prevent the Nazis from regaining power.
Regarding freedom of speech:
Abusing the freedom of stating your opinion (equivalent to freedom of speech), especially the freedom of the press, teaching, assembly, secrecy in communications, property or the right to asylum to fight against the basic free democratic order of the state makes you lose those freedoms (requires supreme court decision).
Mind you, even without an HQ full of managers who can be held personally accountable there's a significant amount of cash flowing from Germany to Facebook (I see gift cards in every store!) and Germany is not the only EU country with laws like this, in fact most of the EU makes Nazi propaganda or holocaust denial a criminal offense.
China saw dissidents using code language and kept banning those codes until they got so obtuse that nobody outside of the inner circle of dissidents could even figure out what they meant. That completely suppressed their ability to communicate with the masses and recruit new followers. The dissidents still talk among themselves but cannot reach out anymore.
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
So ignoring the swing from "Only refugees welcome will be allowed" drivel to this, this is about Facebook actually doing something to abide by those laws, not making up new ones.
Pledging to do something and doing it are two differen things.
they pledged and have done jack shit so far. Hell, I reported some hate speech that was pretty freaking ugly and got the usual answer "oh, that's no hate speech". mind you someone called for euthanising a whole race in that post.
Stiflers Mom
Banned
Well, then weird that I get banned here (rightly so) if I practice hate speech.
Why can't Facebook do the same?
Why can't Facebook do the same?
Do you think gaf is legally obligated to ban you? I'm having trouble understanding your point.
Yep and from the sound of it that's the experience the prosecutor's office had too. They reported posts that were bad enough to get their authors imprisoned but Facebook told them it looks fine to them. So the prosecutor figured that keeping those posts up against an official request is pretty close to making those statements yourself. Mind you, they aren't asking for Facebook to scan for problems itself, just for Facebook to respond when an official agency tells them that something is bad.
It's so weird how American free speech is able to be mutilated in name of counter productive measures while the rest of democracies have comprehensive free speech laws under a secular government that is able to regulate with libel and hate speech laws.
Good for Germany, they're really proactive against the cyber.
Good for Germany, they're really proactive against the cyber.
It's either a different philosophy or the European laws were written with experience from what went wrong with the US. Though I still don't get how the US legal system got away with its BS exemption for porn. Germany has a specific legal hook in its constitution to allow age restricting porn but the US had to come up with a nonsense "no actual value" logic. If the constitution allowed for exceptions they'd be written in there.
Facebook and Twitter hide behind "free speech" but are in fact private companies that have no requirement to uphold free speech on their platforms. They are complicit in facilitating death threats, terrorism and illegal incitement since they do nothing about it, positioning their platforms as some kind of quasi-utility instead of what they actually are: for-profit enterprises that are happy to monetise any kind of legal or illegal content. Their Terms of Service are nothing more than a fig leaf seeing as they don't actually want to police their platforms. After all, why would you ban thousands of users carrying out hate crimes against women and minorities using your platform, when the value of your company is directly tied to the revenue generated by active users like these?
Even worse, they actively encourage the formation of echo chambers by treating ideas and speech as consumer products, "recommending" a narrow range of similar news items and users to the point of creating silos of insulated groups where dissent and discourse has vanished. That is the antithesis of why free speech laws exist.
Countries should absolutely take legal action against these platforms that are only too happy to monetise illegal activity. This situation is like a privately owned cafe not only casting a blind eye on hate crimes occurring on their property, but also actively giving tips to the perpetrators about who else to get in touch with to beat on minorities.
If you were using GAF to carry out illegal activity, then yes GAF is absolutely obligated to ban you. Do you think Silk Road was a perfectly legal enterprise?
Even worse, they actively encourage the formation of echo chambers by treating ideas and speech as consumer products, "recommending" a narrow range of similar news items and users to the point of creating silos of insulated groups where dissent and discourse has vanished. That is the antithesis of why free speech laws exist.
Countries should absolutely take legal action against these platforms that are only too happy to monetise illegal activity. This situation is like a privately owned cafe not only casting a blind eye on hate crimes occurring on their property, but also actively giving tips to the perpetrators about who else to get in touch with to beat on minorities.
If you were using GAF to carry out illegal activity, then yes GAF is absolutely obligated to ban you. Do you think Silk Road was a perfectly legal enterprise?
Did you read the post I quoted? There is no legal requirement for gaf to ban someone for what they say. That is the difference the post I quoted failed to identify. Gaf can ban whoever it wants for whatever reason it wants, and gaf making that decision has no relevance to a scenario in which Facebook is legally obligated to remove users or content.
exactly, that's something a lot of people here aren't keeping in mind. Facebook just needs to react and delete stuff when it has been reported..not search for it themselves.
Mental Atrophy
Banned
It's because America is able to handle hate speech without it resulting in world wars.
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