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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.
Will this apply to slashdot as well?
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Sounds like the mega-companies need to step up their bribery efforts. I mean "donation" efforts.
"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.
Good! Your hate has made you powerful. Now, fulfill your destiny and take Zuckerburg's place at my side!
Opinions I disagree with.
"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
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.
Uh, isn't "whiteness" the color of his skin and "maleness" his gender? You should judge people as individuals, not simply based on their race or gender. Until you do that, you are a racist, PopeRatzo.
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.
The proper reaction to "bad" speech is good speech.
Which didn't work in literally Hitler's case. The arguments about him then banning speech don't really apply: he got to that level of power using speech when opposing speech wasn't banned.
SJW n. One who posts facts.