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Germany Starts Enforcing Hate Speech Law (bbc.com)

Germany is set to start enforcing a law that demands social media sites move quickly to remove hate speech, fake news and illegal material. From a report: Sites that do not remove "obviously illegal" posts could face fines of up to 50m euro ($60m). The law gives the networks 24 hours to act after they have been told about law-breaking material. Social networks and media sites with more than two million members will fall under the law's provisions. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will be the law's main focus but it is also likely to be applied to Reddit, Tumblr and Russian social network VK. Other sites such as Vimeo and Flickr could also be caught up in its provisions.

13 of 545 comments (clear)

  1. Shouldn't they, of all countries, know better? by muecksteiner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know, what with their long and illustrious history of totalitarianism and censorship. Which always worked out so perfectly, right?

    I guess the correct reply to this whole censorship thing would be "Jawohl, mein Führer!" (spoken to their "Minister of Justice" who came up with this insanity). And I wish this was funny, instead of tragic.

    1. Re:Shouldn't they, of all countries, know better? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The "hate speech" laws are designed to crack down on "extremists" but of course they'll be used to crack down on "dissenting opinion" soon enough as the concept of hate speech is ill-defined and open to interpretation.

    2. Re:Shouldn't they, of all countries, know better? by muecksteiner · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Precisely this, a hundred times over. The current political establishment in DE gets a lot of good press, but mainly because the press loves them regardless of what they do. In reality, the current German government makes Mr. Trump seem sane and connected to reality, if you look closely how well their actions match their rhetoric.

      In particular with regard to their stance on immigration, and with regard to Islamic fundamentalism in their own country. Are all Muslim immigrants radicals? No, of course not. But if a minority of immigrant Muslims routinely get away with anti-semitic rhetoric that would land a "native" German in jail, what the hell do they expect the outcome to be?

    3. Re:Shouldn't they, of all countries, know better? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's all good and well when you agree with what constitutes evil, but if you had asked anyone in the German government in the 1930's what evil needed prevention I bet it wouldn't have been people saying mean things about Jews. Now you've created a legal instrument to suppress speech the government decides is "bad." What happens when what the government decides is "bad" isn't what you think is "bad"? They have a legal tool to stop you from saying "hateful" things, like that the Aryan race isn't the master race.

      Why are pro-authoritarians always such morons?

    4. Re:Shouldn't they, of all countries, know better? by ScentCone · · Score: 4, Insightful

      corporations had no problem doing business with Hitler

      Because, in most cases, they saw things exactly as the British prime minister did. How bad could this guy REALLY be, after all? Or, they were businesses that literally had no choice because if they didn't play ball they were destroyed, and the company's assets and reigns handed to someone else. But for companies outside of Germany, don't underestimate the Chamberlain effect. Or the sort of blithe dismissal of Nazi evilness exhibited by Democrats like FDR until it was much too late.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    5. Re:Shouldn't they, of all countries, know better? by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 4, Informative

      They are trying to prevent the Evil that happened before from coming back. Hate speach against Jews -> violence against Jews -> death camps for Jews.

      Very understandable. Yet one thing very important to the NAZI government was control of the media and its content, so they should proceed with caution.

    6. Re:Shouldn't they, of all countries, know better? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In the UK each time there's a terrorist attack the hate speech laws get tightened up to catch 'extremists'. And each time it seems like a lot more people complaining about terrorism get caught than actual terrorists. Or even Islamists. Anjem Choudary was regularly invited on TV to spread his loathsome views and was allowed to recruit people for al Qaeda, ISIS etc up until 2016, even though hate speech laws were supposed to stop him

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Meanwhile this hapless bastard got sent to prison, and mysteriously died there for putting a ham sandwich on a mosque. What did he die of? No one seems to care - even though there's supposed to be an inquiry no results of it were ever released.

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

      So Crehan got very effectively screwed for committing 'a racially-motivated attack'. Anjem Choudhary blatantly recruited for ISIS from 2002 to 2016, was invited on the BBC to do it and is very unlikely to die mysteriously in prison. British prisons have a load of Islamists, so he'll be a hero in there.

      tl;dr - hate speech laws get people who complain about Islamism, not actual Islamists.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  2. It's an admission ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... that social media is not your father's "me too," AOL.

    The problem is not that there's hate speech on social media.

    The problem is that people on social media validate the activity by objecting.

    When governments regulate social media, social media becomes a branch of the government.

    It's not. Leave it alone and don't feed the trolls.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  3. Better question: does it apply to Slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A better question is, Does this forced censorship apply to Slashdot?

    The summary says, with added emphasis:

    Social networks and media sites with more than two million members ...

    Give that Slashdot is a discussion site and news site, I think it would match the "social network" and "media site" criteria. This brings us to the user count.

    There appear to be at least 4 million Slashdot accounts, since there are users like religionofpeas who has a user ID of 4511805. From what I can tell, the Slashdot user ID is sequential, since CmdrTaco has a user ID of 1, and we have long-time Slashdot users like jcr, who has a user ID of 53032.

    Now there's always the possibility that some user IDs were skipped at some point, or that one personal has multiple accounts (like is probably the case with the so-called "creimer" family of accounts). But since the user IDs are well into at least the 4.5 million range, it would seem to me like Slashdot is well past the two million user threshold described in the summary.

    So again, the question to ask is, Does this forced censorship apply to Slashdot?

    Another question to ask is, If Slashdot is obliged to engage in such censorship, how is Slashdot's management going to deal with it? Will they accept it and delete content deemed "bad" by some bureaucrats far off in Europe? Or will they fight it? Or will they just block all German users, as much as is possible? Just what will the Slashdot management do?

  4. MARXISM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...is always about Mind Control. They know that their ideology is so faulty it cannot stand the test of free speech. So they ALWAYS try to control the flow of information.

    Marxism, Mohammedism, SPARTA - all the same idealist, brutish, deadly stuff.

  5. Re:Meh by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Americans killed by anti-fascists: 0

    Bullshit. There have been a significant number of cops killed in ambush style killings this year alone, increasingly often by people who've bought into the "anti-fascist"/anti-cop rhetoric of the left. And additionally, racially-motivated killings happen all the time against whites as well, you just will never hear them identified as such by the media because when it's a white victim, it's *never* treated as a hate crime by the media or government (even if the perpetrators are screaming racial epithets as they attack the person).

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  6. Re:Always the left pushing "hate speech" laws. by Dare+nMc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > The political right pushes for free speech and free expression for all.

    I guess you don't count Trump as political right. His plan to tax and punish coaches who don't shut-up players who wouldn't stand for the anthem, and using his official communication channel of his office to call for firing of those who speak against him. The same guy who want to shutdown news media that has opposed him, because fake news is in no way based on truth, but that he doesn't think anything opposing him is not news, no mater how much truth it is based on. That the right isn't doing much to oppose any of this, shows how little the care for the constitution of the US.

    I am not thinking the left is all good, but they are not anything to the extreme that the right is in the US at the moment.

  7. Re:Always the left pushing "hate speech" laws. by Dare+nMc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why we don't teach civics to people like you is atrocious, clearly it is needed. The president swore to uphold the constitution, and to hold the rule of law above that of his own personal rights. The constitution is setup to give power to the people, to protect us from those with the power of the government. That is what McCain's post spells out so well.

    Trump is the same as the likes of the leaders of Iraq, Congo, North Korea, Saudi Arabia when he uses his voice as president to attack individuals in order to suppress the political speech of regular citizens. That he also threatened to use his power of presidency really pushes it over the top, and put all of us in jeopardy to be a victim of lawsuits by the people he spoke out against. That so many conservatives now fail to understand the difference between a individuals right, and separate out that any government official that uses the power of their office we gave them, to then violate the constitution ( only to protect his own ego) should be removed from office.