Facebook Must Delete Hate Postings Worldwide, Rules Austrian Court (reuters.com)

An Austrian court has ruled that Facebook must delete hate speech postings worldwide. "The case -- brought by Austria's Green party over insults to its leader -- has international ramifications as the court ruled the postings must be deleted across the platform and not just in Austria, a point that had been left open in an initial ruling," reports Reuters. From the report: The case comes as legislators around Europe are considering ways of forcing Facebook, Google, Twitter and others to rapidly remove hate speech or incitement to violence. Facebook's lawyers in Vienna declined to comment on the ruling, which was distributed by the Greens and confirmed by a court spokesman, and Facebook did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Strengthening the earlier ruling, the Viennese appeals court ruled on Friday that Facebook must remove the postings against Greens leader Eva Glawischnig as well as any verbatim repostings, and said merely blocking them in Austria without deleting them for users abroad was not sufficient. The court added it was easy for Facebook to automate this process. It said, however, that Facebook could not be expected to trawl through content to find posts that are similar, rather than identical, to ones already identified as hate speech. The Greens hope to get the ruling strengthened further at Austria's highest court. They want the court to demand Facebook remove similar - not only identical - postings, and to make it identify holders of fake accounts. The Greens also want Facebook to pay damages, which would make it easier for individuals in similar cases to take the financial risk of taking legal action.

Comments

Farenheight 451

[goombah99]

ANyone ever read Ray Bradburys forward on why he wrote F451? He wrote it years later and it was included in some editions. He described something akin to creeping political correctness arguments put forth by narrow interest groups were going to strangle all expression because everything offends somebody. The solution the politicians favor is to ban things that offend. So soon books would be not only banned but people would go out of their way to try to make sure nobody could have access to offensive books. It would all be bread and circuses.

At the time I read that, San Francisco was going through a phase where the public libraries were Bolwderizing Mary Poppins so that the slang spoken by the Black maid was converted to a more respectable kings english. Original copies were pulled from the libraries.

I felt he had a point. It doesn't really matter if the book is offensive. Protecting people from offense is worse.

Re:Farenheight 451

[goombah99]

Adding to my own post. I'm all in favor of community standards and even community laws that ban behaviours. Even libertarians should be in favor of not interferring with communities that want to regulate themselves. It's a free country. But banning something in someone elses community because you don't like it is something to fear.

Real simple solution...

[r_naked]

Tell them to piss off and block Austria from Facebook. I hate Facebook, but I can't stand it when some country (be it the USA, some member of the EU, or Austria) tries to enforce their laws on another country. Someone is going to have to eventually show them the middle finger.

I'm going to get Slashdot in trouble

[MightyYar]

Austria's leader is a giant douche. He rapes babies. Once I saw him watching hardcore bestiality porn in his car, stealing WiFi from a nearby cafe. I hate him. This is hate speech.

You Cannot Give Offense

[RobotRunAmok]

You can only take it.

Re:You Cannot Give Offense

[goombah99]

You can only take it.

Fuck you

Re:You Cannot Give Offense

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone offends you, you should apologize to them because...

1: You took offense at something not intended to be offensive.
2: You took offense purely to start a fight.
3: You did something in the past to warrant being subject to offensive matter.

If none of the above apply, you should ignore the person and not feed the troll. Otherwise, apologize for your loss of control.

"hate speech" is it's defined by idiots

[Chrisq]

The problem is that "hate speech" is it's defined by idiots. A muslim saying that atheists should be killed is seen as an expression of faith. Someone saying that Islam is backwards and violent for sentencing atheists to death is hate speech

Not happening, Austria

[Headw1nd]

So looking it up, apparently the Greens were upset that their leader, Eva Glawischnig, was being called a "lousy traitor" and a "corrupt bumpkin". I would say it's relatively important for people to know, so we can tell this lousy traitor and the corrupt bumpkins on the courts in Austria what we think.

Re:if we learned anything in the past

[Big Hairy Ian]

Doesn't the Austrian appeals court know the limitations of it's own jurisdiction?

In other news

[nospam007]

A Saudi court has ordered Facebook to cover up ankles and hair of women, worldwide.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Barbra Barbra Barbra

[ArhcAngel]

I hear that Barbra Streisand is a special advisor to the court on this case.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[spikenerd]

I would guess that they intend to enforce it the same way every country enforces laws that reach outside of their jurisdiction. They levy unreasonable penalties against the portion of the company within their jurisdiction until they get what they want from the company as a whole. The companies almost always comply in the long run out of fear of losing business in that country to some other company that will comply. Very few large companies have the chutzpah to sacrifice a portion of their market just to take a moral stand. Governments everywhere know that, and that knowledge is what gives them "authority".

Re:if we learned anything in the past

[nucrash]

I think this would be a demonstration that they are not aware of the limitations of their jurisdiction.

Remember the last time an Austrian tried to dictate policy globally?

Re:if we learned anything in the past

[FatdogHaiku]

I think this would be a demonstration that they are not aware of the limitations of their jurisdiction.

Remember the last time an Austrian tried to dictate policy globally?

Oh My Godwin!

Re: if we learned anything in the past

[guruevi]

Arnold was pretty moderate for a Californian Democrat.

I call those exceptions "rights"

[raymorris]

> Surely one can find exceptions to the rule.

I believe those exceptions are called rights, or human rights. An individual or group may do as they please, but should not infringe on anyone's rights.

If you only have the "right" to say things everyone agrees with, that's no right at all; that's just agreement.

Note that the US Constitution and others modeled on it do not by their terms create rights, they bar the government from *infringing* on the rights. It also says "the right of free speech", not "a right of free speech" - the framers recognized that human rights *already* existed and said shall not infringe rights.

Re:I call those exceptions "rights"

[93 Escort Wagon]

Yeah, we used to have an amazing country!

Re:I call those exceptions "rights"

[drinkypoo]

the framers recognized that human rights *already* existed and said shall not infringe rights.

That's nice and all, but it's bullshit. It's a nice idea and I applaud anyone who actually believes it for their surplus of imagination, which I hope they continue to share with the world so that we can be exposed to new ideas. But in practice the only "rights" you've got are those which others will fight to defend, and this one other: to do as you will. And I don't mean this in some kind of religious sense, but in the sense that all living organisms have certain things in common based on physical reality. We all have to consume, digest, and excrete. We all reproduce, at least as species. We all attempt to survive.

The idea of "natural rights" is a lovely one, and the idea that the constitution should not exhaustively enumerate our rights as people or as citizens equally laudable, but in the really real world of people with conflicting opinions and desires, it's only those rights which are explicitly protected which you can even pretend you've got. And even then, there's practically innumerable examples of their infringement.

Re:I call those exceptions "rights"

[bluefoxlucid]

They're not "rights"; they're laws. It's a privilege. The concept of "rights" is a philosophical one which, essentially, suggests that some laws are somehow different from other laws in a metaphysical way. It's sort of like religion or some other belief system.

It's certainly convenient for us to have certain things codified as law, so long as enforcement operates in our benefit. From an economic standpoint, certain things which people might think should be rights aren't always possible. Food, medical care, shelter, and communication have all been cited as things which should be human rights; these things are possible to supply to everyone if your economy is sufficiently-developed, and they're cheap to supply to everyone if your economy is developed beyond that point, and yet you can't supply them in poorer economies because it simply won't work. An economy is poor because it doesn't have the means to produce; we think too much about the means to represent exchange (money), and not enough about where what we exchange comes from.

Freedom of expression is extending to the point that obscene speech isn't considered criminal, and nudity in public isn't illegal. A Federal court recently ruled that women's breasts are legally allowed exposure in public; and a guy at MIT used to go to class in only sandals, having won a court case that said nudity without lewdness isn't illegal. That's fine for most of us who either don't care, would like more boob flashes from cute girls, or are cute girls giving the boob flashes. However, it also means that parents will have their kids exposed to such a culture, which removes their control over their childrens's values. Girls will grow up in a world where it's okay to go topless. 15-year-olds will be flashing college students 10 years their senior, and this is totally okay now.

There are multiple groups of people here with conflicting so-called rights. Of primary importance, there's a group who believe certain behavior is impropriety, and want to instill "good family values" into their kids; and another group who believe Victorian ideals are outdated and a little playfulness and eye-candy is a good thing--including the ones who don't like being told they can't show themselves off a bat as the eye candy. These groups cannot cohabitate the same space without one oppressing the other, either by force of law or by sheer influence of presence.

So yeah. Things like rights, responsibilities, and imposition are relative based on your viewpoint. A lot of words we use to describe rights have no meaning; things like "freedom", "democracy", and "justice" are contextual to the speaker's and listener's minds, and have conflicting definitions depending on who you ask. "Patriotism" is often about doing what you're told without questioning if it's right, although the revolutionaries will tell you you're not a true patriot unless you love your country enough to remove villains from power and set it back on the path of righteousness; and in America, we talk about patriotism in a context with the Constitution and the rights it lays forth to subtly suggest that not supporting whatever the American government says right now is not supporting human rights.

I don't have warm, fuzzy feelings.

You've come up with words and statements and justifications to frame things that make you personally comfortable as some kind of spiritual mandate from a higher power, and to frame laws as holy scripture. I only see that certain things make the world more convenient (for me and others), and that power hasn't stripped those things yet. I understand that someone else pays for those so-called rights as well, in the form of things they can't do because it would violate my more-important rights.

Delusion became dangerous to me at some point. This is how I responded. I was raised being taught that the governments of the world secretly trade with the half-fish people of sunken Atlantis and that carrying certain metals will cause spiritual energi

Re:if we learned anything in the past

[stealth_finger]

Right lads, we can compromise our world wide business or we can pull out of Austria. Hmmmmmm decisions.

Re:if we learned anything in the past

[Kernel Kurtz]

the company is operating in Austria

Time for that to end.

Re:if we learned anything in the past

[stealth_finger]

I think this would be a demonstration that they are not aware of the limitations of their jurisdiction.

Remember the last time an Austrian tried to dictate policy globally?

Oh My Godwin!

I did nazi that coming, did jew?

Re:if we learned anything in the past

[bluefoxlucid]

They are essentially suggesting Facebook is not allowed to possess certain samples of published speech in any form anywhere in the world, and not allowed to publish certain such samples anywhere in the world. That means if someone in France publishes something that Austria says to remove, and it's stored on a US server, Facebook isn't allowed to just remove it from Austria; they have to remove it from everywhere.

Seems like they're trying to play games to control speech worldwide.

Re:if we learned anything in the past

[Anonymous Coward]

the company is operating in Austria and probably has an Austrian-registered company, meaning it is well with in the jurisdiction of austrian courts to make that order

If you have a child move to Austria, does that subject you to Austrian law too?

If it were me... I'd tell Austria that it should shut the fuck up, laugh at their "ruling" and not only NOT delete it everywhere, I'd not even delete it THERE. In response instead, I'd tell the country that gave the world Adolf HITLER, that they're being a little fascist, and even if they're now trying to atone for the murder of millions upon millions of innocent people, and untold human suffering, doing so by MORE fascistic behavior only shows they've learned NOTHING from their own history.

Fascist bullshit isn't fascist because of WHOM it targets, it's fascist because of WHAT IT DOES. For example. So-called, "anti-fascists" or "antifa," seem to employ fascist or even outright terrorist tactics, making their name not only ironic, but a bitter euphemism. Austria's so-called "ruling" is the same way...

So obviously, Austria's laughable attempt at overreach should be laughed out of the room as the garbage it is, and be disregarded, ignored, and not worried in the least about. They're just an also-exists pseudo-country waiting around for Germany to annex them again.

And something about Wiener-schnitzel. That should really piss them off.

Re:if we learned anything in the past

[Anubis IV]

You've conflated jurisdiction with authority. They have the jurisdiction. They lack the authority.

While the subsidiary is within the court's jurisdiction, the court's authority does not extend beyond their jurisdiction to cover what the parent organization does outside of Austria's borders. The court can order them to remove the content from servers in Austria, order them to hide it from display to Austrians, and may even be able to do the same across the EU*, but they most certainly do NOT have the authority to enforce those rules against Facebook globally.

Rulings like these effectively trample on the sovereignty of other nations where one country's laws may not be the ones they've chosen to follow. This sort of issue has been a constant struggle in recent years with the US, as it's been attempting to overstep its bounds in similar ways. It's something we need to push back on regardless of where it occurs if we want to have any hope of encouraging the US and others to be good neighbors by confining their rulings to their borders.

* I know there are some country-level courts that can make rulings that are binding across country borders within the EU, but, as an American, I don't really have an awareness of which courts those are or if this is one of them.

Re:if we learned anything in the past

[mrbester]

That's exactly what everybody in ROW thinks when a US court decides something must happen outside US borders.

Re:if we learned anything in the past

[thomas.galvin]

Seems like they're trying to play games to control speech worldwide.

There's no "seems like"; that is explicitly what the Austrian court ruled. "We don't like this, therefore it is illegal around the world."

Re:if we learned anything in the past

[fustakrakich]

The danger isn't Austria per se. The bigger problem is the Greens. They're a global outfit. If they can win there, they can win anywhere. It's important to vote them out of the seats they have until they learn what freedom means. The freedom to 'offend' is essential.