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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!
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.
This. Tolerance of intolerance is intolerance.
That's correct citizen. Now step back in line and praise the great leader.
Making social media companies leaving the country? yes it is.
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.
In Tolerance Camp, intolerance will not be tolerated!
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
This is the most dangerous and stupid thing ever posted on this site. But even you, dear AC, who would so easily surrender your liberties, are allowed to spew your nonsense here, or anywhere.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
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.
It sorta reads like a battleplan for implementing 1984?
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."
Censorship is freedom, eh? Sounds like something I've heard before in a cautionary tale.
1. Milk big companies for no good reason. 2. Control them in their hope to 'do better'.
Your post is deeply intolerant of my fervent belief that all people are entitled to the right of free speech.
If you truly believe what you say, you will have your intolerant post removed.
Else, you do not truly practice what you preach and likely just assume you will always be on the right side of the censor.
Yeah, they've quit trying to invoke Betteridge's Law of Headlines with every story--a vast improvement IMNSHO.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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.
Which is why shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater is not free speech. Your understandable enthusiasm for free speech has clouded your judgement.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Which is why shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater is not free speech. Your understandable enthusiasm for free speech has clouded your judgement.
You're wrong under US law.
Shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater, whether or not there actually is a fire, is protected speech and cannot be censored or preemptively blocked.
The *consequences* of that speech, however, are not protected by the 1st Amendment and are quite negative in nature if there were no fire.
As a side note, I wish more people understood that the free speech provisions in the 1st Amendment are there precisely to protect speech that is unpopular. These attempts to silence opposing views are ignorant in the extreme and quite dangerous, far more dangerous than any POTUS, no matter how ebil he/she might be.
If such opponents of free speech were to take power, they'd make anything Trump might do in anyone's wildest nightmares look like an ice-cream social.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
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.
Making threats, i.E. declaring the intend to commit a serious crime against an individual or groups, is not protected speech in Germany. If you say that you'll kill someone and torture and kill their family if they do not comply with your demands, you're free to say it. But it'll most likely have consequences if they file charges and have tangible evidence.
Inciting criminal behaviour, like violence and arbitrary acts against individuals or groups, is not protected speech in Germany. If you say that immigrants and refugees are scum, vermin, parasites that have to be removed from the face of Earth. That they deserve to be burned alive and that everyone who helps getting rid of them is not a criminal but a true patriot. You're also free to say this, but it may have consequences if someone files charges and they have tangible evidence.
There are defamation in Germany, but the cases are notoriously difficult to prove in court if the defendant does not confess to their malicious intend out of their own volition. Otherwise it requires extensive evidence. For example if you ran a public smear campaign against an individual or a group, you might get in trouble. But posting something on facebook, twitter, instagram or the likes most likely won't have consequences.
These concepts are really not that hard to wrap your head around. Well, at long as it isn't firmly planted between your own butt cheeks.
Of course this means that all the required laws to persecute these things are already in place and have been for quite some time. So why make social media an extended arm of the government? Isn't it it kind of ironic to have social media delete 'evidence' in the first place and then punish them if they don't do it in a timely fashion?
The me the plans make little sense. It makes me think that the politicians in question neither want to follow the actual law nor do they understand how modern technology works. They're more concerned with appearing to 'do something' in the eyes of the public, by providing some ostensible treatment of the symptoms, instead of looking for the root of the problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Or maybe, just maybe, the people behind the law want the tools in place to suppress ideas that they don't like.
When someone asks for a sledgehammer to drive nails with, you have to wonder if they don't really have something else in mind for the sledgehammer - particularly if they already have a perfectly good hammer in their toolbox.
Also, the "fire in a crowded theater" argument was made in a landmark case that allowed the suppression of purely political, anti-war speech.
It was ultimately on the losing side, but for a while the official position was that opposing the US entering WWI was akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater and therefore not protected speech.
Amazing how language and history can be misappropriated and forgotten. Here's a Ken White screed on the topic.
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"
That is a distinct possibility. The proposed measures they have in mind are too broad, too vague, not warranted in my eyes. In the recent past the German government (Christian Democrats and Social Democrats) has tried to stifle the criticism of the refugee and immigrant situation in Germany and Europe. They accused some of the opposition, in particular right-wing (in German terms) politicians, of 'incitement of the masses'. But as far as I know they've always failed in court because their statements did not fulfil the requirements like inciting criminal acts like violence.
Germany have a long history of persecuting people that don't totally agree and comply with the official government doctrine.
Free speech in Europe only exists at the whim of the governments.
Free speech anywhere is at the whim of the government.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
...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....