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Germany Approves Plans To Fine Social Media Firms Up To $57M (theguardian.com)
Social media companies face fines of up to 50m Euro ($57m) if they persistently fail to remove illegal content from their sites under a new law passed in Germany. From a report: The German parliament on Friday approved the bill aimed at cracking down on hate speech, criminal material and fake news on social networks -- but critics warn it could have drastic consequences for free speech online. Germany has some of the world's toughest laws covering defamation, public incitement to commit crimes and threats of violence, with prison sentences for Holocaust denial or inciting hatred against minorities. The measure requires social media platforms to remove obviously illegal hate speech and other postings within 24 hours after receiving a notification or complaint, and to block other offensive content within seven days. The German justice minister, Heiko Maas, who was the driving force behind the bill, said: "Freedom of speech ends where the criminal law begins."
whatever -ism, Germany is having another bout of authoritarianism that could be more fatal than the last one.
You *will* make people speak correctly or you *will* be fined! Germany Über Alles!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If someone takes a chalk marker and draws something anti-Semitic on a window, you must go after the window manufacturer!
Freedom ends where religious law begins FTFY.
This is the correct thing to do. Too bad the US doesn't also protect it like this.
Did they clearly define what exactly comprises "hate speech", or is it just generally anything someone complains about (unless you're a white christian male of course)?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Social media firms should not have to altogether delete hate speech, only make it inaccessible to IP addresses in Germany. The content should still be visible elsewhere unless the social media firm wants to delete it. Germany does not have the right to force it's draconian anti-free speech laws on the rest of the world. Laws that limit the ability to express ideas can and will be abused to censor ideas that are potentially threatening to the government. If Germany wants to leave the free world and become a repressive state, that's their business. However, the rest of the world should not have to abide by Germany's anti-freedom laws.
So we can chop off Germany along with the Russian MAGA trolls, I guess. Done and done!
"Freedom of speech ends where the criminal law begins." --- adolf hitler ?
So there is no use complaining about their censorship. Maybe they do it to avoid the issue of their own savagery. Introspection failure. What can be said? Some things will never change. If the US ever bugs out, it's over. It will be back to the old days of locking up the beautiful babes in the towers.
Only the USA has a true free speech law on the books, but it is frequently misinterpreted and inadequately enforced.
Congress shall make no law...!
I noticed just now something about /. headline style that seems a bit new to me and it is not too subtle.
Germany Approves Plans To Fine Social Media Firms Up To $57M
Investors Who Back VC Funds Are Worried About Valley Culture
With a Single Wiretap Order, US Authorities Listened In on 3.3 Million Phone Calls
Facebook Inches Closer To Its Goal of Beaming Internet to World's Remotest Places
Japan Wants To Put a Man On the Moon, Accelerating Asian Space Race
The Life, Death, and Legacy of iPhone Jailbreaking
Ends, Means, and Antitrust
A Million Bottles a Minute: World's Plastic Binge 'As Dangerous as Climate Change'
Vertu, Phone-Maker To the Rich, Says It's Broke
You're Thinking About the Dictionary All Wrong, Lexicographers Say
The Age of Distributed Truth
AMD Launches Ryzen PRO CPUs: Enhanced Security, Longer Warranty, Better Quality
Sony Will Start Pressing Vinyl Records After 28-Year Hiatus
France Drops Windows 10 Privacy Case After Microsoft Changes Telemetry Settings
India Presses Microsoft For Windows Discount in Wake of Cyber Attacks
Look at all these headlines... Can you see?
You can't handle the truth.
Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!
Look, all you have to do is use a social media platform that isn't a corporation with a presence in Germany. Self-hosting on a decentralized social media network is the best way to go and avoids those nasty ads and deceptive information gather/selling altogether. Sure, you're hateful rants about group XYZ wont reach as many people but you get what you pay for and you haven't paid jack shit.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
They're going to be paying off VW's dieselgate fines for decades.
If someone takes a chalk marker and draws something anti-Semitic on a window, and the owner of the window refuse to clean it up you indeed go after the window owner (not manufacturer incidentally, as facebook and social media are the owner, not manufacturer). See if you are getting reported that somebody put anti semite message on your window, then in germany you HAVE to remove it. Now you may culturally have grown in a place where one think *any* speech must be allowed (or nearly), that is fine and dandy, I am not about to debate the merit here. But the point is that your analogy is flawed - within the context of german law.
......except diversity of opinion.
"Freedom of speech ends where the criminal law begins."
No shit. If something is against the law, by definition you are not free to do it without consequences. The question is: what exactly constitutes illegal speech? (Maybe whatever I say it is?) And, why should it be illegal?
Dees ees NOT ALLOWED!
The big players should pull out of Germany and put up a notice to German readers telling the gov't to Fuck Off.
Table-ized A.I.
Disappointed. I was hoping they'd fine social media companies just for being social media companies.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Free speech in Europe only exists at the whim of the governments. The European Convention on Human Rights makes this all too clear:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. ... The exercise of these freedoms ... may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others ..."
That last bit lets the government restrict your freedom of expression any way it damned well pleases. For example, here in Switzerland, it is illegal to insult the rulers of other countries. So it is illegal for me to state my true opinion of Mr. Erdogan in Turkey. It is illegal to question any aspect of the official history of the Holocaust: there was a professor a few years ago who wanted to use modern forensic techniques to re-analyze some old data, and he nearly went to jail. Extreme political parties are made illegal, whether or not they're violent; heck, ordinary activities with extreme political taint are banned. There was a music concert recently in Switzerland, populated by hard-right bands singing hard-right songs. They only managed the concert by lying to the authorities about which bands would be performing. FWIW, there were zero problems with violence, heck, they had parking wardens and people out after the concert cleaning up the trash.
This is, of course, in direct conflict with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which simply states
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Someone needs to take this to the European Court of Human Rights, but no one will. Certainly, the politicians find it convenient to be able to quash any speech they dislike. That will last until the worm turns: at the moment, it's the progressives prohibiting hard-right speech, but the pendulum is swinging, and probably in less than ten years it will be the alt-right in power, happily prohibiting hard-left speech.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
1. Milk big companies for no good reason. 2. Control them in their hope to 'do better'.
General "Buck" Turgidson: Hmm... Strangelove? What kind of a name is that? That ain't no Kraut name is it, Stainesey?
Mr. Staines: He changed it when he became a citizen. Used to be Merkwürdigliebe.
General "Buck" Turgidson: Well, a Kraut by any other name, uh Stainesey?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
And your bullshit censorship, aka hate speech.
--
Political Correctness, aka, Censorship, is not the solution -- it is precisely the problem.
That's a glitch which will be corrected by the courts. There's an election coming up and the coalition parties want to look busy.
Imagine muslim countries trying to fine hate speech from their point of view. Or anything that resembles nudity.
"Freedom of speech ends where the criminal law begins."
Apparently, Freedom of Speech ends where German law begins. You know, Germans, last time you cracked down on free speech, you then went on to try to kill all the Jews. Maybe that's not the best plan.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can't mention that perhaps not all the immigrants flooding into Europe are refugees.
Also you can not disagree with the Swedens politicians when they say to the people that their country are no longer theirs and they must learn how to integrate themselves into these new cultures.
Or when the politicians say that their own country has no culture worth mentioning and needs some new and better ones.
Poland seems to be the only one standing up for their own culture.
They will be despotic muslim hellhole just like every other despotic muslim hellhole within 20 years
From the 25 Point Program:
It's the same kind of people pushing the same kind of ideology.
"Freedom of speech ends where the criminal law begins."
No. The bounds of the criminal law are the exception to the underlying freedom as is agreed by the democratically functioning society. Just like self-defense is a mitigating circumstance to the underlying murder. The freedom and the murder are still there.
those germans got a lot of good excuses to sell their renewed nazism. You citizens got no rights in Germany. A country totally destroyed by the jew and their neverending hatred for anything that opposes their dominance over everything. The jews revenge for having been hunted down for what they allways do.
Now Slsashdot owes them some cash.
Woo!
Hey, hear about the jihadists in Germany? They kill people!
Woo! Shashdot owes them more!
I better stop before they arrest me.
Either way, the US may have a flaming dumpster full of faults, but I'm at least glad we have the Second Amendment.
Yes, you do now, but for how long. With the new administration not so covert war on "fake" news and inconvenient facts, one can only wonder how long that bastion of your free speech will stand.
"Freedom of speech ends wherever we move the goalposts to."
Coming to 'murika this Fall 2017.
This is not a restriction of Free Speech. Germans know the problem Americans refuse to acknowledge.
Hate Speech's only purpose is to incite violence, get people killed and destroy families.
Confusing Free Speech with Hate Speech is an American problem. While its recognized for what it is internationally there is nothing preventing it in America.
The message is clear in America. You can do say and do whatever you want under the guise of Free Speech, just let the Police take care of the fallout.
Based Stickman is the embodiment of this problem.
The violence will continue and the divide between Americans will widen as long as America continues to support Hate Speech.
There is no amount of diversity that can change this.
"Social Media Companies Block German Users"
Who makes the notification or complaint? I get shitty about Tv censorship, where 15 naysayers decide what the other 3 million viewers can see. It's CYA policy saying the whingers are more important; until it's a government-supported message, then the naysayers don't count.
Offensive to whom? No-one is entitled to ignorance and feelings of self-importance.
Germany have a long history of persecuting people that don't totally agree and comply with the official government doctrine.
...By the way, if your immediate reaction to this is "It's literally worse than Hitler and the Nazis"
et tu, idiot.
Hilter and the Nazis got less than 10% of the German population killed and failed on their malignant ideology. The mortal threat is not the ethnic Germans killing ethnic Germans, rather the indirect outcome. For domination, enslavement, and murderous intent, hardcore Islam is an even more malignant political system with 14 centuries of overall "successful" spread. Islamic "success" could easily displace ethnic German genetic content 50%-90% and annihilate any its Western roots in several generations....
You miss the point of freedom of speech.
In the USA we allow people to speak hatefully in public, where we can meet their speech with speech of our own. This encourages public debate and builds consensus.
In the EU, people still speak hatefully, but they must do it only in private -or else face criminal prosecution. This encourages them to gather in echo chambers of ever increasing extremism, and builds resentment for the oppression they face.
Had the very same rules as on TV Anything you could not post on TV you should not be ale to post on the net.