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Vandals Deface Facebook's Hamburg Offices (google.com)

Posted by timothy on from the wonder-if-they-set-up-a-facebook-event dept.

Reuters reports that 15 to 20 vandals dressed in black this weekend defaced Facebook's Hamburg offices, spray-painting "Facebook dislike" on a wall, and causing some minor property damage. From the story: "A Facebook spokesman said nobody was injured in the incident. He said he could not immediately comment on the possible motive for the act of vandalism. The European head of Facebook is under investigation in Germany over the social network's alleged failure to remove racist hate speech. The investigation was announced last month as German politicians and celebrities voiced concern about the rise of anti-foreigner comments in German on Facebook and other social media as the country struggles to cope with a refugee influx. (The Guardian has a nearly identical story, but a better photo.)

8 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Well that's good to hear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A Facebook spokesman said nobody was injured in the incident.

    Any sane person sees where this kind of comment comes from. It's a unilateral attempt to escalate the severity of what actually happened. All they did was break some windows and throw some paint, let's not make this a case of "domestic terrorism" etc.

  2. Freedom of Speech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >politicians and celebrities voiced concern about the rise of anti-foreigner comments in German on Facebook
    And why can't people voice their concerns over their governments giving away their tax money to middle class "refugees"?

    1. Re:Freedom of Speech by bentcd · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And why can't people voice their concerns over their governments giving away their tax money to middle class "refugees"?

      This is Europe, and Europe doesn't have the sort of unrestricted free speech that the US does. All European "free speech" laws that I've seen (which is far from all of them, I will admit) are along the lines of "speech is free so long as it's not objectionable". And I'm guessing the speech in question has been found objectionable by the people who decide such things.

      Now, it's not sufficiently bad here that govt can get away with saying something like "we object to you criticizing us go to jail", but, if it can be rephrased as "hate speech go to jail" or "supporting terrorists go to jail" (or in Germany, "go to jail you nazi") then you're screwed.

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      sigs are hazardous to your health
    2. Re:Freedom of Speech by ceoyoyo · · Score: 2

      The first amendment of the US constitution only mentions "freedom of speech." It's just as ambiguous as anything else about what freedom of speech actually means. Even in the US, freedom of speech is restricted, in ways that are very similar to elsewhere, including Germany. The US supreme court has spend a good deal of time picking and choosing what speech is protected and what isn't.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  3. Gotta say it by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Defacebook

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    Table-ized A.I.
  4. Re: What's not to dislike? by tempmpi · · Score: 2

    It's not a crime in Germany to say racist things. However claiming that the holocaust never happened is a crime, as well as some extreme forms of hate speech. Voicing an opinion against people migrating to Germany is perfectly legal and is done all the time by various people on German TV stations or newspapers. But it is not legal to call on people to kill migrants or to claim that all migrants are human waste and therefore do not deserve humane treatment. I think that is perfectly fine and is not restricting valuable opinions in any way.

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    Jan
  5. Re: What's not to dislike? by fazig · · Score: 2

    As a German, it bothers me as well, that something like that is illegal. But I'll have to thank the Allied forces for that remnant in our laws. It once served the task to get rid of the remaining Nazis after the war had ended and the rebuilding began. But today, it's mostly censorship. Especially since there are hardly any holocaust survivors left, that could be deeply hurt or offended by such a denial. After all, we don't live forever.
    In my opinion, if someone wants to present their ignorance and stupidity to the world by denying the holocaust, let them.

    However, when it comes to hate speech, things are different. In hate speech, people declare their intent to take violent actions against other people, with the intend to cause harm or death.

    This is not protected by freedom of speech. You're not free to make death threats, whether you're joking or not.

  6. Facebook should not remove hate speech. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Interesting
    There is hate. And there is hate speech. Banning it only drives it underground. Better to allow such haters to speak freely and openly so that we get an idea of how many such people there are. And we can develop ways to talk to them and try to convince the errors in their way. But we will not be able remove all hate and all haters. Some low level of hate has to be tolerated.

    Having said that, I wish Facebook would stand for free speech in all spheres. Not just racist speech. If some misguided group decides to offend some religion by depicting their deities in bad light, or even merely depicting their deity itself is considered offensive, Facebook should defend that too, to be consistent.

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    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact