SAP Founder Hasso Plattner Fears the Scourge of Social Media (afr.com)

In a wide-ranging interview, Hasso Plattner, the 74-year-old co-founder and chairman of global business software powerhouse SAP, talked about his apprehension of the social media. From the story: He saves his greatest condemnation for the scourge of fake news and societal manipulation on large social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Despite the founders of the social giants pledging to do more to ensure public debate is not artificially skewed, Plattner believes the solution will have to come from law enforcement and criminal penalties. He says humans are genetically wired to thrive on rumours, dating back to ancient times when rumours about what was going on in the next village would be on everyone's mind. He fears social platforms have simply become rumour distribution machines of unbelievable power.

"I was very optimistic that social networks would improve access to information and democracy in general, but I am very disappointed that the opposite is happening," he says. "Professional information producers undermine the social networks, undermine states and elections. It is unbelievable what is happening and we have a huge problem." Plattner draws a parallel with insider trading, which he says is as easy to commit as social media manipulation, but is not so common because people know they will be slugged with criminal convictions. "This is all before we look at the exploitation of personal data, where we are naked in front of the social networks, because we undress ourselves, and not only literally," he says. "I think this will continue until we have the legal systems properly looking at it, and have strong laws that people have to obey."

Comments

He's got reason to fear.

[dwywit]

But not social media. He should fear the wrath of anyone who's ever had to use or support his software.

Re:He's got reason to fear.

[sg_oneill]

Whetever his qualifications are, he's right about one thing. The human capacity for conspiracy theories is ancient,

Back in the early days of Anthropology, anthropologists and the general public where fairly convinced canibalism was *everywhere* in the "primative" world. But as it turned out, whenever they'd actually try and find canibals, well they where no where to be found. In fact with a couple of notable exceptions, canibalism is more or less a myth. What was ACTUALLY going on, was many tribes where convinced the neighboring enemy tribe was in fact canibalism, and that made THEM the bad guys. Everytime someone went missing on a hunt, well , canibals. Got mauled by an animal? Canibals. And if it wasn't canibals, it was evil sorcerers. But the key here is, every village they'd ask would say they where not canibals, the OTHER guys where the canibals.

I kinf of think conspiracy theories work the same way. Its a way of reasoning about mysterious or unexplainable shit, by positing that everything bad that happens, was some guys evil plot. Nothing bad happens by chance, theres always SOMEONE to blame. Its a convenient way to hold onto viewpoints unsupported by the evidence. Don't like climate change? Well just blame a vast spooky c,onspiracy of scientists lying about physics. Any evidence presented to the contrary is just the man lying to you. Confused about why there seems to be lots more people with autism? MUST BE VACCINES. Sure the docs will tell you "theres more diagnoses of autism because the definition changed" , but thats just what THEY want you to believe. Its a perfectly sealed mode of thinking, all evidence your wrong just proves how vast the conspiracy is.Theres no escape from it.

And yeaah, the internets making that shit a lot worse. In the olden days, oral folk-myths travelled about as far as the edge of town. Nowdays, its global. You can chose from *all sorts* of crazy now.

Re:utterly irresponsible

[Kiuas]

Given Germany's history, for a German to propose criminalizing speech is a sign of profound historical ignorance and irresponsibility.

You're obviously not up to date on German history. Hate speech has been criminalized in Germany for a long time, precisely because of the 2nd world war. It's one of the few countries where you can get fined or imprisoned for denying the holocaust, or wearing any nazi insignia in public etc. And the Americans should not take the moral high ground here, because this behavior has its roots in post-war Allied control of West Germany. The occupational forces exercised censorship to control what could and couldn't be said about them:

During the post World War II period, the West German media was subject to censorship by the Allied occupational forces. Criticism of the occupational forces and of the emerging government were not tolerated. Publications which were expected to have a negative effect on the general public were not printed. A list of over 30,000 titles, including works by such authors as Carl von Clausewitz, was drawn up. All the millions of copies of these books were to be confiscated and destroyed. The representative of the Military Directorate admitted that the order in principle was no different from the Nazi book burnings, although unlike the burnings, the measure was seen as a temporary part of the denazification program. [4]

When the official government, the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) took over, these limits were relaxed. The new German constitution guaranteed freedom of press, speech, and opinion. Since Germany kept the West German constitution after East Germany joined its jurisdiction, the same protections and restrictions in West Germany apply to contemporary Germany. However, continued globalization and the advent of Internet marketing present a new host of complications to German censorship and information laws.

Publications violating laws (e.g., such promoting Volksverhetzung or slander and libel) can be censored in today's Germany, with authors and publishers probable subjects to penalties. Strafgesetzbuch section 86a rather strictly prohibits the public display of "symbols of unconstitutional organizations" such as the NSDAP and affiliates. Materials written or printed by organizations ruled to be anti-constitutional, like the NSDAP or the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Gang), have also been placed on the index. Public Holocaust denial is also prohibited and may be severely punished with up to five years in prison.[5] A decision of a court that assumes that a publication is violating another person's personal rights may also lead to censoring (a newspaper for example can be forced not to publish private pictures).

'Volksverhetzung' is the German hate speech law prohibiting targeting of racial and ethnic groups. Quoting the translation from the wiki:

Whosoever, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace:

1. incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins, against segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or

2. assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning an aforementioned group, segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population, or defaming segments of the population,

shall be liable to imprisonment from three months to five years.

Similar (though usually less strict) laws exist in other European countries, including my own (Finland), the UK, Ireland and Sw