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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.
All the influx of refugee's from Syria is causing a rebellion of the German people. Repressing it won't solve it.
What if we made homeowners responsible for hateful graffiti scrawled on their house? Or pubs and cafes liable for what is discussed there?
John_Chalisque
Because Americans already dug their own hole by willingly submitting to the "free speech at any price" philosophy, whereas most other Western nations take a more pragmatic approach of limiting people's speech when it impinges on other's right to exist.
.. in the first place?
It's an American country.
What happen if Facebook simply says "fuck off"?
Now the EU are banning (?) negative speak about refugees from the parties.
But how is that even the problem? The problem is that our traitor government let these people in in the first place. We don't want them here. That's the scenario. Why are they brought in? EU, Germany and Sweden are the enemies of the European peoples and democracy.
.. in the first place?
It's an American country.
I assume you mean company? But it's not. The parent company is, but it has subsidiaries all over the world.
What happen if Facebook simply says "fuck off"?
Then the German police will raid Facebook's German offices.
We don't want them here.
Speak for yourself. I'm only here because enough people did not have your shitty attitude to my great grandparents who were also refugees from persecution.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And in Spain it is illegal to criticise the Monarchy and the Church. Better use VPN+Tor, not necessarily in this order.
Dude, if you think what comes out of Bruxelles is "leftist", you might want to watch out, you're about to fall off the right end of the political spectrum.
I think you and OP are confusing 'Left-Right' with 'more-authoritarian/less-authoritarian'. Either can be very authoritarian. Left at it's extreme is Marxist/socialist/communist and Right at it's extreme is fascist/dictatorship.
It's like a set of railroad tracks. One rail is Left, the other Right, and stretch from anarchy to authoritarian.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
She's number 4 on the list of most popular politicians in Germany. Her party is still 14 percentage points in front of every other party. 50% think she is doing a good job.(Source) Yes, there is a vocal minority that hates her and calls the media "Lügenpresse" or lying press and vote for the new right-wight populist party "AfD"(12%) but far more people either support Merkel's party (36%) or center to left-wing parties (22%+10%+10%). And this isn't just MSM, many of the federal states of Germany had elections this year and while AfD had impressive gains, it is nowhere near a majority anywhere.
Jan
Sorry, but that is just plain bullshit. You fully allowed to criticize migrants and immigration in Germany. What is not allowed is to incite hatred or violence against them and Jailterm based on this law rarely happens.
Jan
Having failed to force the sun to shine at night and the wind to blow constantly all the time, the German legal system is trying to force people to like a vast swarm of insurgents who arrived without visas and who are getting away with Allah knows what.
Well your citations totally convinced me.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Then the German police will raid Facebook's German offices.
Just close them down and ignore the Germans?
Speak for yourself.
As for volumes I'm speaking for the majority even in Sweden and I of course also speak for the majority of the Europeans.
I'm only here because enough people did not have your shitty attitude to my great grandparents who were also refugees from persecution.
My opinion doesn't even matter since the ruling elite is possibly even beyond the EU but if nothing else there and that's law which become superior to Swedish law and even if that wasn't the case Sweden is a consensus democrature where established media and the political elite holds hands and go their own way and don't listen to the people but rather tell the people what they should believe and accept.
I can raise it (and be hushed in all mainstream and social media and possibly jailed or killed for it) but unless half+ of the Swedish population voted for the same alternative it will have little result. And even then as said we're ruled by the EU and they can still decide against the will of the Swedish politicians and people. We could of course leave the EU and should. Eventually if we talked things like deportation the UN would likely be upset too.
Also the attitude isn't shitty just because you say so. It's a sane attitude.
If nothing else the welfare system should be completely abolished so we don't attract people who don't want freedom and Swedish culture but come from the money such as the guy who punched out the teeth of the teacher who talked to his wife. He's obviously not here because of his great knowledge about the Swedes and their society beyond how much money he could leech from the system.
Why does any multinational do it? Because they have to have a registered presence in a country to do business there.
This wouldn't apply if you're selling knitted toilet roll covers via spamazon and turning over 50 bucks a year in Portugal.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
Protip, German cluetards: Quite aside from the personal liberty issue you're blowing so badly here, it's always better to let the crazies sing, dance, speechify, and wear silly outfits. This way everyone knows who they are and you don't end up getting blindsided by some bastard(s) percolating in their own repressed hate for just a little too long.
Yeah, right. Except, that's what we did in the 1920s: Lete everybody say everything they want. And that allowed extremists like Hitler to amass a strong following and take over the government and transform the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich.
You know, there's a reason we changed our laws after WWI and then again after WWII: We learnt from our mistakes and are trying to not repeat them. Letting hate speech go unchecked is NOT the way to a less extrem society.
Except, that's what we did in the 1920s: Lete everybody say everything they want. And that allowed extremists like Hitler to amass a strong following and take over the government and transform the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich.
I guess you missed the memo about the Nazis using the court system of the Weimar Republic as a huge propaganda vehicle. The Weimar Republic had hate speech laws. The Wiemar Republic prosecuted various high ranking Nazis for hate speech against Jews and other minorities. And the Nazis won big as a result.
Researching my book "The Tyranny of Silence: How One Cartoon Ignited a Global Debate on the Future of Free Speech," I looked into the status of free speech in Weimar Germany. To my surprise, I found that Weimar Germany had hate speech laws, and that they were applied against anti-Semites like Julius Streicher, the publisher of the Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer; Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda; and Theodor Fritsch,a journalist and publisher of anti-Semitic propaganda. Streicher was sent to jail twice, and Goebbels lost every case that Bernhard Weiss, the deputy police chief of Berlin (and frequent target of anti-Semitic vilification), brought against him for defamation.
Further, this aid was quite material. It was these repeated, petty, ineffectual persecutions that brought the Nazis to the public eye and transformed them from some Bavarian gang to a national movement in Germany.
So the Weimar Republic isn't a case where evil happened because there was no hate speech law. Instead, it's a case where evil was greatly abetted by hate speech law.