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EU Threatens Twitter And Facebook With Possible 'Hate Speech' Laws (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Gizmodo:
On Sunday, the European Commission warned Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and Microsoft that if the companies do not address their hate speech problems, the EU will enact legislation that will force them to do so. In May, those five companies voluntarily signed a code of conduct to fight illegal hate speech on their platforms within 24 hours... But on Sunday, the European Commission revealed that the companies were not complying with this code in a satisfactory manner.
"In practice the companies take longer and do not yet achieve this goal. They only reviewed 40 percent of the recorded cases in less than 24 hours," a Commission official told Reuters. The Commission's report found that YouTube responded to reports of harassment the fastest, and unsurprisingly, Twitter found itself in last place. "If Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft want to convince me and the ministers that the non-legislative approach can work, they will have to act quickly and make a strong effort in the coming months," Jourova told the Financial Times on Sunday.
"In practice the companies take longer and do not yet achieve this goal. They only reviewed 40 percent of the recorded cases in less than 24 hours," a Commission official told Reuters. The Commission's report found that YouTube responded to reports of harassment the fastest, and unsurprisingly, Twitter found itself in last place. "If Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft want to convince me and the ministers that the non-legislative approach can work, they will have to act quickly and make a strong effort in the coming months," Jourova told the Financial Times on Sunday.
"Kill all white people" are ok, because fuck white people. That is perfectly acceptable statements on Twitter and are not considered racist, but everyone else demands that you bow down to their bullshit.
also:
Twitter User Replaces Word 'White' With 'Black,' Gets Banned
https://www.informationliberat...
Define hate.
Translation: "If you do not censor anti-government statement, we will censor you".
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Not unless they or whoever owns them now has a presence in an EU territory.
Why, does "Fuck off, fucktard. You're such a stupid fuck" qualify as a hate speech?
It doesn't. But there IS stuff on Slashdot that qualifies, although IMHO there's not a lot. But if you browse at -1 as I always do, you'll see it.
Arguably, the moderation system here already takes care of the problem. Users who aren't logged in won't see much if any hate speech; it almost never makes it higher than +3, and if it does then it drops below that threshold pretty quickly. So they actually have to drill down to find it - it's not immediately obvious. Users who ARE logged in are unlikely to see it if they browse at +1 or higher, (again, unless they drill down), because most of it is posted by AC's whose comments start at 0. People who browse at lower than +1 soon know what to expect and can determine if they want to see that stuff or not.
Godwin time: Mein Kampf is still available for anyone to read, but it isn't unexpectedly waved in front of anyone's face - people have to seek it out. Hate speech on Slashdot is similar to that. And this kind of speech SHOULDN'T be banned; we need to maintain an ongoing awareness that those attitudes exist and are actively shaping our world. People should be able to easily avoid most of it if they so desire, but hiding it entirely and driving it totally underground is dangerous.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Opinions I disagree with.
Freedom of speech is the essential civil right, second only to freedom of thought, which when lost describes total oppression.
Without free speech you cannot:
- Say what is true.
- Say what others are thinking and do not realize they are not alone in that.
- Say what true and so expose lies and fabrications, thereby rejecting falsehoods and those who publish them.
- Expand the debate beyond what the majority say.
- Offer alternatives to the accepted and protected norm.
- Choose, for yourself, your direction and intentions.
- Ask others to join with you and oppose.
Speech is critical.
And next, after that, nearly (pr perhaps) equal, is self-defense, which is necessary to your right to life. First, to claim your right to live, then to reject in speech (ideas for you who struggle with some plain talk) those who would deny you life, and then to defend that life.
From there, to be left alone to do as you wish, insofar as you deny no one else that, is the beginning of liberty. To defend others ensures their rights and collaterally yours, preventing oppressors from merely outnumbering you.
Speech. Without this freedom, you would not be able to present your demands for this and the others. You would know it, in your heart, you would just not be able to exercise it and others, and defend any.
And balancing rights against each other is a lie. Balancing your exercise of rights is necessary, sometimes, in current civilized society, but such accommodations are properly limited and focused.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Hate speech is merely politically incorrect speech which makes value judgements and seeks to change anything.
Point out the over-representation of Islam in terrorism, the inbreeding, lack of education and over-representation in crime in refugee populations. That's politically incorrect.
Say "We should no longer accept Muslim refugees as permanent citizens within our nation, because they make our nation worse." ... hey presto, hate speech.
"freedom of speech" is not the only freedom in the world. It has to be balanced against all other freedoms.
Nope. No, it doesn't. It needs to be absolute, or it's useless. There are no freedoms that speech impinges upon. At all, ever, in any way.
but even in the US "freedom of speech" ist not universal above everything else. Just try crying "FIRE" in a crowded theatre and then claiming freedom of speech.
You're simply wrong. It is universal. It doesn't need to be "above" anything, because it's not possible to impinge on other rights with it. It is perfectly legal and acceptable to yell "FIRE" in a crowded theatre. It's free speech. You, like everyone else, misquote the SCOTUS opinion that stated it, in an dissent from the majority opinion. The full quote is "Falsely yelling 'fire' in a crowded theatre and causing a riot." The operative parts are NOT that someone said there was a fire - it was that they (1) Lied about there being a fire, and (2) caused a riot. We have laws against fraud and inciting a riot for reasons, and those things can cause harm to others. Even the "falsely" part is not enough to take someone's free right to speech away, because they may be performing satire, protesting the lack of adequate fire exits available in a theatre, or simply making a joke for the crowd. All protected speech. Even if it caused a panic the intent must be proven.
In these cases the problem is *really* hate. Hate in "you f*cking b*tch! I hate everything you say and if we ever meet i will rape you and hang you on your own intestines" (withouth the * of course). Should posts like these *really* be protected with nothing the person attacked can do? EU law says otherwise, but twitter&co rather do nothing - some say because a good hate-filled "discussion" gives more page views and therefore more ad revenue.
You can always come up with extreme, indefensible statements bordering on credible threats to point to and say "this should be banned" and lots of people will agree with you. But where is the line? It's very subjective, and the line can be moved this way and that on a subjective basis without anyone really noticing. Until it affects them. And that's why the right to free speech must be absolute. Because as that line gets moved, and the censors' conscious and unconscious biases creep into the censorship decisions, soon there are simply ideas and voices and opinions that are important and relevant that will never get heard. That way leads inevitably to tyranny.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Yet for someone in marketing a nazi euro is as good as an euro from a card carrying "better rapist than racist" suicidal maniac.
Yeah we get it. Europeans are enlightened and superior to Americans. Plus you like nipples, and Americans don't, I guess. The point is that you are just masking the problem by limiting speech, not solving it. Do you think the crazy people who deny the Holocaust will stop believing it just because you have a law against it? That is the problem with Europe in general: they pretend everything is fine but don't solve the root problems. It is better to identify the problem and come up with solutions.
I think the EU is afraid that its own citizens can't resist hate speech.
I can't imagine why. I mean it's not like there's ever been a problem with it before in Eurpope...
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Freedom of Speech matters more. It also is the key to fighting racism with anti-racism. The door swings both ways. Someone can post horrible racist shit to people, and then ten people can post about what a douchebag the racist is, and make him look like a shithead.
Censoring racist speech helps racism, it really does, because it hides racist attitudes in a place where it can fester and become worse. Don't confuse racism with White Supremacy, or Christian Supremacy. There are many non-white racist out there. ISIS, Al-Queda, and other terrorists are racists. They are not racists in the same way that the KKK is racist, but they are racist.
It is a little known fact that ISIS and Al-Queda have executed African Blacks and Indians, and untold numbers of Persians because they were not of the same Ethnicity as Saudi Arabs. These groups are as racist, if not worse than the KKK, or the various racist Neo-Nazi militia groups in the USA.
The hate speech laws in Germany and other parts of the EU, are empowering groups like the Golden Dawn, because people on the Secular left have been conditioned to see Racism in the Prism of White Supremacy only, and while yes that still exists, the secular left is seen as a defender of the Right wing Saudi-Arab supremacist ideology these hate groups present. I still don't think the answer to fighting hate is more hate. I don't think the White Supremacist right wing Demagogues is a way to save western civilization from destruction.
I think that the way to stop this cycle of madness we are trapped in is to expose the lunatics on both sides for the sick madmen they are. If an individual person is trying to make everyone's life miserable, that person should become the object of everyone's ire.
... I have a hard time with the typical US notion of free speech and no censorship.
To those of us whose parents or grandparents had to live and suffer through WW2, I is pretty much unthinkable to allow someone to deny the horrors of the concentration camps and all things associated.
We didn't sacrifice a million casualties and $4 trillion in treasure for your political ideals and way of life, we sacrificed them for our political ideals and way of life, and that includes unfettered freedom of speech.
Yes, various Authoritarians — from Franco in the West to Stalin in the East — made elimination of the freedom of speech their top priorities:
The proper reaction to "bad" speech is good speech.
But if you are willing to justify other nations' not having an equivalent of the First Amendment by their history, what other freedoms and liberties would you excuse them not having, uhm? Maybe, Iran is justified in its persecution of gays by some terrible homosexuality-related episode of the past — I'm sure, one or two can be named by an expert on the country's history? Or, perhaps, it is Ok for the sunny and cheerful people of Mexico to continue banning abortions — because of some exquisite evils taking place in Chichen-Itza centuries ago?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Anyways, I'm curious why they are being so aggressive about this
Because Brexit, Trump, and the rise of a true conservative backlash in Europe has the liberal establishment there scared as fuck. Turns out that the common people are sick of open-door immigration policies and decades of sucking EU dick. And the left-wing establishment desperately wants to do everything they can to silence this growing popular backlash, by force if necessary.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The EU clearly needs a ministry to decide what is true.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"which widened the income gaps"
You just aren't following this closely. Let me bring you up to speed.
You are right that income inequality happens during GOP presidencies, but it happens a LOT more during democrat presidencies. The reason why the GOP doesn't flaunt this is they aren't trying to get everyone the same salary.
Income inequality in the US INCREASED under Obama -even though he retired tax cuts for the rich. Which place in the US has the highest concentration of millionaires? Washington DC. In other words, government HQ.
The US isn't the only country where planned economies lead to HUGE income gaps. Hugo Chavez died with $2 billion in his wallet. Look at the government elite in places like China, Russia, etc.