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Germany enforces hate speech laws for social media


ben8884

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I don't even know where to begin on the subject because it fills so many grey areas. As simply as I can narrow it down, I believe in freedom of speech but I also believe lines should be drawn when said speech actively promotes negative actions against something. Even this explanation is riddled with holes because how far do you draw the line? Who or what is the absolute arbiter of authority on making this decision?

 

I remember reading exstensively into an account of something grey like this. The man was of high influence in religious stature and actively encouraged his followers to do shitty things, but that was it. He never committed a crime that would flag him as a religious terrorist, and so they let him be. But at the same time, there he was acting like an ignition agent to a bonfire.

 

Manson was thrown in prison even though he he had no physical hand in the matter, but he was undeniably the ignitor of the atrocities committed.

 

My real problem with cencoring freedom of speech is how disgustingly abusable it is. Any warped mind or politically and monetarilly motivated party can swoop in and make claims against individuals or organisations and remove them from thier way. In some cases, yes it is very easy to say when somebody is committing hate speech or inciting hateful actions, but once you remove the barrier of protection you open up all forms of speech to being controlled. And none of you here can tell me that this form of leverage and power won't be abused in the slightest.

 

I'm conflicted. Shitty people and promotion of shitty things shouldn't be given power, so shutting it down is good. But the door opened with this is equally as bad as the original problem itself.

 

 

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It was only a matter of time until there was such a law for the internet. There are laws for the 'real life' for that too. 

 

Hate speech in general is crap, but so far its removal was mostly due to breach of ToS. It happened that only certain types of hate speech where removed (like right wing hate speech) and others (e.g. leftist hate speech) were not. I hope a law like this will create equal removal for any hate speech. At first it might seem that personal opinions are affected but as in real life it certainly is about things like defamation, offenses and calling people bad words. It all is illegal online, just like it is in the real world. The NetzDG is made to enforce existing criminal law (StGB) online.

 

 

 

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straightouttamordor

If hate speech is anything you disagree with that's Orewellian. How do you run any organization ?  From business to academia to a civic club to a friendship, if everyone is hypersensitive and spoiled to having a bunch of yes men telling you that you're right all the time what becomes of civilization at this rate ?  Just a question. Squelching debate or opinion stomping will lead to chaos and anarchy. Perhaps this is the goal of the deep state ?  To divide and conquer.

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Complete and utter bs. I hope this gets overruled by court (and I have no doubt that it will because if there's one thing Germany really sucks at, it's making laws within the rules of making laws.)

 

All it does is catering to extremists. Oh, you disagree with me? Must be "hate speech". I can't believe how low we've sunk. This will backfire so hard.

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imnotafreakofnature!

Sadly, Germany (along with many other European nations) is already being taken over by the extremists, and the citizens are afraid to stand up for themselves or say anything for fear of being accused of hate speech or being labeled racist. I can see it happening in America, too, if we let it.

 

What is hate speech, anyway? At least in America, disagreeing with any liberal or "progressive" person, ideology, thought or quote is now considered hate speech. Basically, that means that conservative people are nothing more than nasty, hateful slime that don't deserve to say anything. How can you have constructive debates, even if they may get heated sometimes, without freedom of speech? In any relationship, whether parent/child, employer/employee, love relationship or friendship, problems can never be worked out if only one person has a say. New ideas that may turn out to be the best solution can never be put forward if only one person is in charge. That works the same whether it's the president trying to solve a problem with international consequences, or a couple trying to decide which movie to go to this weekend. Censoring speech is always a slippery slope that eventually leads to only the people in power deciding what can and can't be said. (Try going to North Korea and disagreeing with Rocket Man.)

 

I remember when I was a kid (which wasn't all that long ago), there was a popular saying often seen on T-shirts, button pins and bumper stickers: "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it." What ever happened to that belief? Over the course of my life, I've been called, and accused of, a lot of vile and heinous things. Everyone reading this probably has, too. Right or wrong, that's always going to happen - sometimes because people are foul-mouthed, sometimes because they think foul language is funny, sometimes because they really are nasty and hateful, and sometimes just because even good people say terrible things in anger that they don't mean and later regret. We've all been there, on both the giving and the receiving end. But when it gets to the point that we feel we have to censor someone else's speech (or even that we have the right to censor someone else's speech) because we don't have a backbone and crumble when someone screams "Racist!" or "Bigot!" - even though we know it's not true - well, in my mind, there's more than one problem that needs to be addressed.

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Good - 'bout time.

Trying to protect your hate speech by hiding behind freedom of speech laws should never be acceptable.

 

Now, it also names "Fake News" and "Illegal Material", which sounds like a harder call to make.

 

If we are talking displaying Nazi symbolism (e.g. the swastika) in a positive way, then I'm cool with the illegal material part (that's already outlawed in general in Germany)

In case it goes beyond that, it could get questionable.

 

As for Fake News: That sound even harder. Are we talking clearly non-satirical, clearly factually incorrect news? Sure, remove them I guess, but proving beyond a doubt that something is incorrect is problematic. (and we are talking in a major way: I don't want my news flagged as incorrect because they reported 35 casualties instead of the actual 36, which is what this could technically be abused for if abused for proactive censorship)

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Give them an inch, and they will take the whole fucking thing.

 

Have fun with your Orwellian surveillance Germany. You were warned many times, as was Canada. Eventually, they will be black bagging everyone you know and people won't be able to say anything against it, as your country is destroyed by population replacement and the German people will be hauled off to prison. 

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4 hours ago, Dreamer23 said:

Trying to protect your hate speech by hiding behind freedom of speech laws should never be acceptable.

I feel that this ^ is hate speech. You should be punished for that.

 

(Just in case someone left their brain in the fridge: This is not my actual opinion.)

 

I can't believe there are people actually supporting this. It blows my mind. Like, seriously...? How can one be that blissfully ignorant and gullible?

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14 hours ago, imnotafreakofnature! said:

Sadly, Germany (along with many other European nations) is already being taken over by the extremists, and the citizens are afraid to stand up for themselves or say anything for fear of being accused of hate speech or being labeled racist. I can see it happening in America, too, if we let it.

 

Yeah, that's why the AfD got 12% and Die Linke 9% in the last elections... sure... keep telling yourself that. 

 

The law itself doesn't offer anything NEW per se. It doesn't redefine what is hate speech. It's about the SPEED at which these reports should be handled. Content that violates laws that ALREADY EXIST should be deleted within 24 hours (THAT'S the new law). Of course that offers problems, as nothing comes without drawbacks, for example some networks may delete too much. But the law doesn't say "hate speech is anything leftists say it is!!!!!!". 

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44 minutes ago, Kelpie said:

The law itself doesn't offer anything NEW per se. It doesn't redefine what is hate speech. It's about the SPEED at which these reports should be handled. Content that violates laws that ALREADY EXIST should be deleted within 24 hours (THAT'S the new law). Of course that offers problems, as nothing comes without drawbacks, for example some networks may delete too much. But the law doesn't say "hate speech is anything leftists say it is!!!!!!". 

Yes it does. It is not up to private companies nor admins to determine what is within the laws or not. That's what courts are for.

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This is problematical, especially when it comes to things like Facebook. Are German courts only going to police German content on Facebook or can German Courts demand that Facebook remove posts made by a foreign national or foreign organization? Can I sue Germany for violating my right to free speech if they make my social media content go away?

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2 hours ago, Grinchmer said:

I feel that this ^ is hate speech. You should be punished for that.

 

(Just in case someone left their brain in the fridge: This is not my actual opinion.)

 

I can't believe there are people actually supporting this. It blows my mind. Like, seriously...? How can one be that blissfully ignorant and gullible?

That's nice and all, but that's not how hate speech works.

Hate speech is explicitly defined in Germany's StGB section 130.

Feel free to complain about the law and dislike it, but please inform yourself about the thing you are railing against and don't base your opinion and insults on baseless theories and definitions you come up with.

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Facebook has shown time and time again that they won't enforce the law of even their own tos. So the government is stepping in.

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8 hours ago, Grinchmer said:

Yes it does. It is not up to private companies nor admins to determine what is within the laws or not. That's what courts are for.

But that's how it was before too. 

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8 hours ago, Nevyn said:

This is problematical, especially when it comes to things like Facebook. Are German courts only going to police German content on Facebook or can German Courts demand that Facebook remove posts made by a foreign national or foreign organization? Can I sue Germany for violating my right to free speech if they make my social media content go away?

 

The obvious solution is to block such content specifically in Germany. For a company that has advanced algorithms so people get only exposed to content that Facebook thinks they like, that should be a piece of cake.

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13 hours ago, Yato said:

Give them an inch, and they will take the whole fucking thing.

 

Have fun with your Orwellian surveillance Germany. You were warned many times, as was Canada. Eventually, they will be black bagging everyone you know and people won't be able to say anything against it, as your country is destroyed by population replacement and the German people will be hauled off to prison. 

Germany is not an "Orwellian" society. Hate speech isn't allowed in the US either. Another fun fact is that Orwell was a volunteer for Spanish Trotskyist aka. admirer of the Leninist USSR, he merely wanted another totalitarian regime than present in USSR. Even then Germany is no more totalist than USA. Claiming Germany or USA to be Orwellian is equally wrong, along the lines of claiming Iran is a Jewish Democratic Republic.

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Facebook and Googles algorithms are half the reason why we have fake news in the first place. They only care about popularity, likes, shares, and selling you junk. In a way I’m glad some country is holding them accountable, just not Germany where you get punished by the government for using restricted speech. Of course, if the rest of the world had Germany’s past we might be more like that too. 

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1 hour ago, Nevyn said:

Of course, if the rest of the world had Germany’s past we might be more like that too. 

 

This is absolutely spot on. You cannot understand it without understanding Germany's history. In fact Germany was a very liberal, fairly unregulated democracy a long time ago, the Weimar Republic. The way it ended is responsible for almost everything about the way modern Germany works, which I believe has a remarkably robust constitution and political system. The people who elaborated the German constitution, closely watched by the allied forces, put a lot of effort into making sure that what happened will never happen again.

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On 1/1/2018 at 2:06 PM, imnotafreakofnature! said:

What is hate speech, anyway? At least in America, disagreeing with any liberal or "progressive" person, ideology, thought or quote is now considered hate speech. 

I don't think you've really looked at America as it is today, January 2, 2018, when Trump and the Republicans have been in power for a year.  

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1 hour ago, CaptainYesterday said:

There are no hate speech laws in the United States.

 

The closest thing is some sort of "fighting words" concept, the legality of which is actually opposite of what's happening here: it gets weaker and weaker every time it's challenged.

I'm not sure I really agree. Germany'definition of hate speech closely follows the one of the UN, roughly defining it as speech inciting imminent violence against a particular group. That seems to be in line with what was considered illegal as part of Beauharnais v. Illinois, Brandenburg v. Ohio, R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, or Snyder v. Phelps. (I realize that all the cases I quoted went in favor of free speech, but all of them only did because they determined there was no threat of imminent violence caused by the speech, which is exactly what Germany's law is meant to protect against) 

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I like freedom of speech as it's defined in America, in fact I love it. I would and have argued for people I completely disagree with because they should have the right to say what they believe in. I don't think speech should ever be curtailed, (except in cases like yelling Fire when there isn't one) because as soon as you curtail speech then you stop ideas. If I hadn't been able to hear ideas that were different from how I grew up, I would be a racist homophobe so far into the closet I could see Narnia. I'm iffy about the TOS, because I understand that it's meant to stop bullying, which I like, but I hate that some people feel like it infringes on their right to say what they like. 

I don't like that this law apparently relies on it's citizens to enforce it, they could easily Dos someone that they didn't like with this. Also what is fake news? The government shouldn't be able to pick and choose what their citizens listen too. 

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47 minutes ago, CaptainYesterday said:

The U.S. also has laws against "imminent violence," but my guess is Europe's definition of "imminent violence" is just very (in my opinion, probably criminally) low.  If I remember correctly, someone in Germany was convicted of "hate speech" for calling Muslim immigrants bad names.  Then you have the infamous case from the UK where someone is on trial for teaching his girlfriend's dog to raise its paw to a Hitler speech.

 

If your government considers these things "imminent violence," then something is wrong.

Your example would fall under insults, not hate speech in Germany (which can also be fined given the right circumstances, though significantly less so) 

You are right though that the definition of hate speech in Germany is closer to mirroring the Un one rather than the US. As in the definition itself is very similar, though it lacks the requirement of imminent the Supreme Court is always very adamant about. 

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Hate speech is subjective. To many Europeans, who remember the Berlin Wall, divided nations and families, advocating the Great Wall of Trump could qualify as hate speech, yet to some Americans that is one of the things which got him elected. Same, to the Russian security services describing Putin as a dictator could be deemed hate speech, whereas to an American it's a popularly held opinion. 

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1 hour ago, Skycaptain said:

Hate speech is subjective. To many Europeans, who remember the Berlin Wall, divided nations and families, advocating the Great Wall of Trump could qualify as hate speech, yet to some Americans that is one of the things which got him elected. Same, to the Russian security services describing Putin as a dictator could be deemed hate speech, whereas to an American it's a popularly held opinion. 

None of that would qualify as hate speech as per the German law referenced in the first post of this thread.

It's really not as subjective as many people seem to think.

After all, it's German law, and I can guarantee that everything in German law is nailed down to the finest detail - as in this case is the definition of hate speech! :D

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So what happens if hate speech is made on an overseas forum either by a German, or is accessible in Germany? 

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3 minutes ago, Skycaptain said:

So what happens if hate speech is made on an overseas forum either by a German, or is accessible in Germany? 

So, let's start with the "overseas forum" part.

Gotta be a pretty big forum - this law only applies to platforms with more than 2 million German users! :)

So it won't apply to Aven anytime soon (we're at ~100k right now, and I have a feeling not all of them are German), but it certainly will apply to Facebook and its ilk. There are also some exceptions (it has to be a social network, so even something like linkedin was explicitly considered not affected by the law)

 

Then let's go to the latter part.

First of all, the law is not directly targeted at the user making the post. The main point is that websites are required by German law to have a process in place that will allow them to review and flag a reported post quickly. For simple cases, reported posts have to be removed within 24h after being reported. For more complicated cases the website has up to one week.

In case the website continuously objects to removing content that a German court has deemed hate speech (or other statements this law applies to), they can be fined up to 50 million Euros.

 

As for the user making that post: Most likely there won't be any impact for them. There are a few exceptions. E.g. if you organize a rally to kill someone (clearly non-satirical, but an actual murder plot), then someone can go to court and get a judge's verdict on whether or not that is sufficient reason to get a court order to retrieve your personal identity. If the judge agrees that it is, you can get a court order and the platform will have to reveal details about the person making the post (IP and such).

In case the website disagrees that a court order is legit, this would most likely be able to escalate up to European courts, given that this is heavily based on directives by the European Commission.

If all courts agree and the data they have is sufficient to identify the poster, a regular lawsuit can ensue as if the statement had been made in person.

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