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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."
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!
This is the correct thing to do. Too bad the US doesn't also protect it like this.
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.
The party in power was elected through the democratic process, and the party in power decided what had to be banned. The party democratically elected by the german people was removed from power in 1945 by a foreign invader.
BS. The Nazi's did not have a majority in the parliament. Hindenburg made Hitler chancellor, thinking he could be controlled. Instead the Nazis dismantled the parliament. And made sure it never reopened after the convenient Reichstag fire.
Many Germans gave the Nazis their vote as a protest vote against the established elite (that included my grandfather), not realizing that this was to be their last vote.
Until his death my grandfather was mad as hell that Hitler tricked the country into another war. After the experience of WW1 there was absolutely no appetite for yet another war. His oft repeated lament was that he only talked about peace until he had his dictatorship firmly entrenched.
Both your and OP's analogies fail to consider the vast scale. Maybe a better analogy would be to say you have millions of windows popping up everyday. Some may have wrongthink on them. You are expected to know where and when the wrongthink will occur on a window, or else you are also guilty of thought crime by virtue of ignorance.
Somehow, this is considered something other than madness, despite not just the inherent immorality and hypocrisy of censorship, but also the sheer impracticality of the matter. I sure as shit don't see Germany stepping up to propose how social media filters for latent thought crime.
Either way, the US may have a flaming dumpster full of faults, but I'm at least glad we have the Second Amendment.
So... political speech is alright so long as the politics are approved by the state, and unapproved opinions are to be censored by criminalizing their communication?
I see a pattern repeating here, and not a good one.
As a European citizen, I find your lack of understanding of sarcasm disturbing.
I also suggest you stop tilting at windmills: Europe is sliding more and more into authoritarianism/totalitarianism. And it's only going to get worse as the European economy deteriorates and the old social contracts fall apart.