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Germany Threatens To Fine Facebook Over Hate Speech (go.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: German officials are stepping up their criticism of Facebook, saying the social network is doing too little to stop hate speech and could face stiff fines unless it deletes illegal content faster. In an interview published Friday, Justice Minister Heiko Maas said his ministry was checking whether it would be possible to make social networking sites legally liable for illegal posts. Germany has seen a sharp increase in vitriolic posts on social media in recent years amid a heated public debate over the influx of more than a million migrants since the start of 2015. The country has laws against speech deemed to be racist, defamatory or inciting violence -- a response to Germany's Nazi legacy. But authorities have struggled with the deluge of often anonymous postings on foreign-owned websites. Thomas Oppermann, a senior lawmaker in Maas' Social Democratic Party, told German weekly Der Spiegel that dominant social media sites like Facebook could be required to delete illegal posts within 24 hours or face fines up to 500,000 euros ($522,000). Facebook also could be compelled to distribute corrections that reach the same number of people as the original post, Oppermann suggested, something traditional media companies in Germany are already required to do.
The problem runs much deeper.
There is an increasing number of people who are losing out in the general development today. The refugees are just the tip of the iceberg, they're noticeable but by far not the biggest problem here.
But yes, people see these refugees and now they become the embodiment of the problems. To explain it to US readers, they're basically becoming Germany's Mexicans.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They didn't manage shit. They still can't figure out what to do with all these people. The reason merkel is still here is that there was no alternative. About 40% of germans didn't even bother to vote last time. It won't help to shut people up, it'll only make them angry.
This oft-cited sentiment was first verbalized by a Supreme Court Justice in 1919. The case was not about any actual fire or theater, but about a man distributing leaflets and otherwise agitating against World War I draft. The protester was trying to defend his speech by the First Amendment and failed.
As later anti-draft protests — and the legal reaction to them — made clear, such speech is now not only legal, but commendable.
As the 1919 case I cited above makes regretfully if abundantly obvious, the difference is not at all "distinct", and the country's top legal minds can very well err on the side of oppression. That later-amended decision passed by SCOTUS unanimously...
Even today, a sizable portion of Americans — plenty of lawyers among them — would consider Donald Trump's speech "hateful" and "inflammatory", making it most tempting for the party at the helm of the Executive branch to prosecute him, thus helping their own candidate win. Do you really want a country like that? Oh, wait.... You probably do...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Right. There are not any no-go areas in western Europe. It's all just hysterical bullshit from the alt-right.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC