To me, this seems more like reasonable regulation than oppression, although some people confuse these concepts, or have a financial interest in conflating personal freedoms with market deregulation.
The german government is asking for Facebook to promptly remove content that is obviously illegal in Germany (and most of the world), like murder videos, hate speech, etc. Sounds reasonable to me.
TV stations in some (most?) European countries can be held legally responsible for the content they air. This is (fortunately) happening right now where I live, where a private TV station is being investigated for repeatedly airing a program where a psychologist spreads hate speech and fake science like "people who use marijuana have gay sex" and "gipsies don't work and live off the rest of us"; the person's professional license has been revoked as a consequence, so the TV station are being held responsible for airing blatantly illegal content by a disaccredited "psychologist".
That's why media needs basic regulation, IMO.
After reporting numerous posts for hate speech and personal insults has zero, Facebook's response is always "no breach of our terms". But it's a breach of our society's terms, and fortunately we are still (mostly) held to the rule of law.
The problem is not one of morals, as I doubt fb wants this type off content at all.
I think it's possibly unreasonable. It's fb vs the world quite literally. It's the nature off it's design.
What's next? Police gets fined if they can't catch a criminal within a week?
What about a fireman getting fined if he can't put out a fire within 20 minutes.
All these things share an uncontrollable and unpredictable situation.
You can't ignore the complex design off millions off people streaming millions of text inputs daily and checking it all 100%. That's monkey reasoning, black and white thinking fallacies.
Fb should give insight and show how they battle it, but imo it's childish to randomly give 24 hours. At least come with an argument or 'standard' if u will (ie. 1 content checker person per 1k posts or w/e).
If the system is good enough for you to make hundreds of billions of some years, yes, you should expend a lot to conform with society's needs.
> You can't ignore the complex design off millions off people streaming millions of text inputs daily and checking it all 100%.
You can't allow a company to have so much power over millions of people just because it is difficult to make it conform and keep working. Guess what, find a better solution. The world is not 1% better with all this live Facebook BS, I'd not give a care if it was all shutdown. It is not a free speech problem if they are exploiting it for their own benefit.
I don't want it to be illegal, because policing it requires the instatement of an automatic censorship framework, that even if it works perfectly, can be trivially re-used for stifling more speech. Not regulating media has bad consequences, but regulating media has even worse consequences. You can't save people from themselves.
Don't mistake my intent here - it would vastly understate the case to say merely that I do not love Facebook. But free speech is the wrong line of attack, because that is something which we have no legal precedent for obliging them to provide, and this lack of precedent has enduring value exceeding what we might in the short term realize from its contravention.
Another core American value is independence of thought and action. We are a nation of grown-ass men and women who do not require a company, a government, or any other arbitrary authority to sign off on the exercise of those rights and liberties which are our common birthright.
So if Facebook chooses not to permit its users to say controversial things, the American response is not to go crying to Daddy to make that mean old mister Zuckerberg be nice, but instead to say: "Well, then, you do just as you please - and be damned to you, because I will go and do as I please." And then, suiting action to word, to set up one's own website, where one may speak as one likes without fear of being suppressed by the ukaze of some billionaire overlord. We do, after all, still have an open Internet. I think it would behoove us to use it.
To that last point, let me reiterate that I have no love for Facebook, and would prefer that such a behemoth, opaque monstrosity - with such an astonishing degree of power to mediate the social interactions of more than a quarter of our entire species - not only did not, but could not, exist. That is far too much power to inhere in any single organization.
Where we differ, I think, is in our evaluation of the most useful method of taking that power away from the organization which holds it now. You seem inclined to prefer that government should do so - an obvious answer, to be sure, but in my view fatally flawed insomuch as that, in taking that power away from Facebook, this government would necessarily gather that same power to itself. (Who else, after all, would you have tell Facebook what to do?)
I would rather see that power, not still further agglomerated into a different monolithic bloc of same, but rather atomized. It seems to me much more in accord with American values that this mass power be broken down and distributed among many individuals, such that each may exercise her rights with the maximum liberty to do so, and none may forbid another from doing likewise.
There are some really exciting projects underway right now to build a framework in which this can happen - indeed, a framework in which nothing else can happen, wherein the construction of a Facebook in anything like its present leviathan form is impossible because it has no apparent benefit to offer. This is a very long-term goal, I freely concede! I may not live to see it bear fruit, if indeed it ever succeeds in so doing. But nothing else of which I'm aware offers a better prospect of upholding those American values which my fellows and I hold so dear.
Social Media giants ignoring local laws, while being occupied with taking over the world truly makes for a great Cinderella story -- but maybe part of growing is also growing up and preparing the business to comply with local laws, instead of waving the "this is so unreasonable" card when you didn't do so for a decade and then eventually get fined for it.
A similar discussion can also be seen with Brexit in the UK: hate crimes have been steadily increasing since the Brexit campaign, and many people have been pointing at the divisive and malicious discourse surrounding that as one of the causes.
So yes, while I agree with you that speech in general should never be prohibited, and I also agree that automated takedowns of content are not desirable (mainly because once that's in place, the algorithms then become the law -- and that is not where I want to be); I also think that companies that facilitate large-scale communication between citizens can not hide behind "free speech" arguments to completely disavow any and all responsibility for consequences of speech on their platform.
You seem to be very convinced of this. Could you please list one or two concrete cases where you think free speech was too limited in Europe and where this limitation led to a poor outcome for society? I think this could make your argument much stronger.
The test for what values we uphold should not always be what has proven to be a good outcome for ourselves or for society.
Your same argument could be used against many human rights. What about torture: can you give me a concrete example of how US torture was bad for society?
Extending your argument from society to individuals, we make the worst tragedies possible. It is an important lesson from the history of Germany itself, in the quote: 'When they came for them, I did not speak, because I was not them. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me."
There is value in upholding human rights on principle.
Once you eliminate free speech in cases where it is convenient, you no longer have a free speech principle.
In Germany the thought police has brought people to court for things such as Facebook groups for people who don't like refugees. Maybe that seems fair to you, but then again a comedian also faced prosecution for a poem about Erdogan. Now imagine prosecution for a poem belittling Trump. It's the possibility of that outcome that we want to stay as far away from as possible.
Besides, it seems difficult to believe a legitimate role of government is to protect you from words, and words alone.
Another example is democracy. Just because you support someone's right to vote for, and you know a few people will go vote for fascists, it does not mean you support fascism as a human right.
Once you eliminate speech just because you disagree with it, you begin the process of allowing the most powerful to determine that criteria for their own benefit.
I know you don't want to be insulted, or let other people be insulted, but it's a dangerous responisbility to give to government to make them arbiter of what speech is acceptable.
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/07/man-jailed-for...
edit: more examples from some other European countries http://www.euronews.com/2016/04/15/beyond-a-joke-7-countries...
"We need more freedom of speech, not less. The US is miles ahead of us in this respect. Here in Europe, we're missing that fundamental value of "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it". Instead, it's more like "I disagree with what you say so I'm going to try to get you arrested for it"."
Therefore my example is germane and quite a clear example given your question.
Here are more examples (again Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, Spain):
http://www.euronews.com/2016/04/15/beyond-a-joke-7-countries...
In the US, the offended person would have to sue the offender for libel or defamation. The State would not be bringing charges because this is not a criminal matter; it is a civil matter. Nor is it so obviously defamation or libel, as you suggest.
The lese majeste law is not a matter of the King suing the offender. It is a matter of the Dutch state pursuing criminal prosecution.
It is important to understand that this is, for now, a matter of a chilling effect. I don't claim that I would be put in jail or fined for my opinions, but I definitely do feel a risk of some authority possibly investigating me. And that is enough to make me not take part in the debate. And I do not see my positions being openly discussed in public, even though I know from private conversations that many, many people hold the same views. This is something that moderates on the other side seem not to understand or believe, because they do not face it.
This has lead to a number of poor outcomes for the societies in Europe. Most importantly there are possible approaches to solving the situation that have not been seriously explored and evaluated (e.g., Australia style migrant centres outside the EU). As a result the European response has been uncontrolled, inefficient and hugely expensive. I believe many more people in real need could have been helped, and many lives saved, by an approach that was not based on accepting unlimited numbers of migrants into Europe.
The second important problem is that it drives the disenfranchised moderates towards the extreme. If you feel like your voice is not heard in the debate, it becomes more likely that you will demonstrate with a protest vote for an extremist.
Personally I am absolutely against this law. Even if you accept the idea of hate speech laws, surely they should be enforced by the courts, not by Facebook?
There is no law in Germany preventing you from voicing your opinion against immigration. We're talking about legally enforced censorship not about media bias. Having said that, I do agree with many things you say, I just think they are not directly relevant to the discussion.
Could you please read my second paragraph. I'm aware the is no law against voicing my opinion on immigration (I'm not against immigration, I'm an immigrant myself). However, I am absolutely not going to publicly voice my opinions because I do not want to risk someone interpreting some part of my point out of context and investigating me for hate speech.
If I recall correctly, the Swastika is banned in Germany, even though it's a symbol with many meanings in many cultures. This means people can't express certain aspects of their cultures, visually, simply because the NSDAP chose to use the same logo. Context matters, you know.
Finally, I heard a law in Germany is about to get passed that is going to make large social networks program bots that automatically ban content based on whether it may contain hate speech or crime. Good satire will disappear from much of the German internet.
Exactly, and that's the reason why you can use the Swastika as much as you want in Germany when the context makes clear that you're not using it for political purposes. These silly strawmen arguments do not help the discussion.
This mostly agrees with the text of the law, which appears to include a provision translating to "... shall not be applicable if the means of propaganda or the act serves to further civil enlightenment, to avert unconstitutional aims, to promote art or science, research or teaching, reporting about current historical events or similar purposes."
Reporting on the law suggests that the purpose is much stronger than simply avoiding its political use, but also to "avert social habitation". In particular, it appears that its use in, say, a video game would in fact be illegal, as Ubisoft assumed with its 2014 release "South Park: The Stick of Truth".
We need more freedom of speech, not less. The US is miles ahead of us in this respect. Here in Europe, we're missing that fundamental value of "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it". Instead, it's more like "I disagree with what you say so I'm going to try to get you arrested for it". Eg Dutch xenophobe politician Geert Wilders got dragged into court twice! (ridiculous, and also countereffective because guess what it did for his ratings)
This sort of stuff is much worse, however. Given the 24 hour deadline, the only way Facebook reasonably can implement this is automation. A computer program determining whether my post is hate speech or satire? Seriously? Computers can't even tell the difference between a puppy and a cupcake. Why does anyone think this is a good idea?
A long time ago I used to hang out on an IRC channel that banned "bad words". The bot was very enthusiastically tuned with conservative American values. There was a user called "War^" but "war" was a forbidden word. Talking to him got you kicked out, mentioning him thrice got you banned.
Obviously, the solution there was simple: leave the IRC channel and never come back. But I'm not sure people will feel they have the same option for their favorite social media.