[Hong Wu]

I got confused, the new hate speech law in Germany applies to companies like Facebook (4chan has been banned) which is why the fine can get so large.

I shouldn't have to provide evidence for stuff you can find on google, dismiss what you want to...

[Drlee]

@Drlee Is it safe to assume you support bans on sexual harassment in the workplace? What about street harassment?

Well those are two different things. If a boss whistles at his secretary that is harassment in the market place. If you whistle at a girl on the street, should that be illegal? Or is it just boorish but protected speech?

Should blackmail be illegal and if so where should we draw the line between an ultimatum and blackmail? Say if someone hires a PI to follow their spouse around and confirms their suspicions of infidelity with photographic evidence to support it. It seems reasonable to threaten divorce if your spouse doesn't shape up. Is it acceptable to threaten to share the photos with your parents, your parents-in-law, siblings, siblings-in-law, grandparents, 3rd cousins, work colleagues, clients...

I am not sure of your question here. Can you tell me the point you are trying to make? I was not aware we were discussing extortion and blackmail.

[Decky]

I for one an shocked to see the German government not being the worlds biggest fans of freedom or speech, this is something totally without any precedent whatsoever. What sort of quirk of the German character could have caused this? Up till now German governments have been famous across the globe and thorough out history for just one thing and that is their respect for freedom of speech.

[AFAIK]

Well those are two different things.

Yeah that's why I brought it up. It shows how America censors speech in different situations. In public free speech extends to catcalls and lewd remarks, in the office such speech is illegal.

I was not aware we were discussing extortion and blackmail.

At what point does, "do x or I will do y" stop being a legitimate ultimatum and become criminal? Is it fair for a spouse to threaten to share compromising photos if their husband/ wife continues being unfaithful? Is it ok for a PI to blackmail someone with similar photos? At what point does exposing an affair become sharing revenge porn? Where do you draw the moral and legal lines and why?

[Drlee]

At what point does, "do x or I will do y" stop being a legitimate ultimatum and become criminal? Is it fair for a spouse to threaten to share compromising photos if their husband/ wife continues being unfaithful? Is it ok for a PI to blackmail someone with similar photos? At what point does exposing an affair become sharing revenge porn? Where do you draw the moral and legal lines and why?

This is not a free speech issue. It is a criminal or tort. That is not what we are speaking of here. I will give you an example. We have privacy laws in the US. It is not an exercise of free speech for someone to post my social security or credit card number online. It is a harmful act with a definite victim. The example you gave of the PI is not free speech. It is extortion. Revenge porn is an attempt to harm an individual who has a reasonable expectation of privacy.

At what point does, "do x or I will do y" stop being a legitimate ultimatum and become criminal?

Not a good example. If the threat is "stop being a dick or I won't vote for you it is not a crime. If the threat is stop being a dick or I will deliberately harm you it may be a crime.

Is it fair for a spouse to threaten to share compromising photos if their husband/ wife continues being unfaithful?

Fair? This is not a question about free speech. It is a question of ownership. We have laws prohibiting the posting of ANY picture of another person without their permission except in very specific circumstances. And posting those pictures on a site that operates for a profit (such as this one) opens someone (including the site owner) to severe civil penalties. You may not be aware of this but a wife who posts naked pictures of her husband without a model release could be sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars. These are a questions of ownership and not speech.

But your examples are simple diversions from the real point here. The real point here is not some easy question like yours. It is much harder than that. Answer this: When does someone's description of the illiberal practices of Islam pass from free speech to hate speech? That is the real hard question. How forcefully am I allowed to condemn female genital mutilation? When does my blaming Islam for the practice pass from being a political statement to hate speech? Concentrate on those questions. Don't try to trivialize the argument to make your job easier.

[AFAIK]

Maybe those were poor examples. I'll try again. It is possible, in fact it is common, for rights to come into conflict with one another. If I want to hang a Nazi poster on your living room wall, that's a violation of your privacy and your right to privacy trumps my right to freedom of expression in that circumstance. Making people stop at red lights is a violation of freedom of expression that we endure because we prefer road safety.

How does the existence of your personal information in a particular format harm you? Surely you only come to harm if and when someone uses it to commit fraud or identity theft. If you paid for a meal with a credit card and the waiter took a picture of your card do you suffer harm at the moment he took the picture? How so? Surely the harm occurs later when he uses your card for online shopping.

If the threat is stop being a dick or I will deliberately harm you it may be a crime.

Exactly. It may be a crime. If someone divorced their spouse that would harm the spouses reputation, it would harm their relationships. If the divorce was justified by exposing compromising photos of the spouse having extramarital sex that would be even more harmful. Would warning the cheater in advance, giving them an oppourtunity to continue the relationship and warning them of the consequences of future transgressions be criminal in your view?

But your examples are simple diversions from the real point here. The real point here is not some easy question like yours. It is much harder than that. Answer this: When does someone's description of the illiberal practices of Islam pass from free speech to hate speech? That is the real hard question. How forcefully am I allowed to condemn female genital mutilation? When does my blaming Islam for the practice pass from being a political statement to hate speech? Concentrate on those questions. Don't try to trivialize the argument to make your job easier.

Did you see the post I made earlier about the president of Iran? No one acknowledged it so I pursued a different line of discussion. Anyway, I'm going to bed now. I'll try to respond to your questions tomorrow.

[Drlee]

Making people stop at red lights is a violation of freedom of expression that we endure because we prefer road safety.

No It is not a violation of freedom of expression. Running a red light has nothing to do with expression of ideas/opinions. Again. Go after the hard questions not trivial examples. That is, after all, the question before us.

[One Degree]

great posts @Drlee . hate speech is simply the suppression of opinions not held by the current moral elitists.

[AFAIK]

Still no acknowledgement of my earlier post. Why are you only going after the easy stuff @Drlee?

If hate speech were made illegal would it be illegal to report that the leader of Iran made a speech calling for Israel to be, "wiped off the map"? Would that be exempt due to newsworthiness and if so why are world leaders allowed to inflame religious hatred but not Jane Nobody with 6 followers on Twitter?

If I was running a social media company and was obligated to remove illegal comments within 24hrs I'd just ban discussion of certain news topics because it is too much work to read every comment, delete half of them, justify those deletions to users, get criticised for leaving x,y and z up, get fined for missing something, etc, etc, etc.

Should Ahmadinejad be banned from facebook? Should videos, transcripts and news reports about his speeches be banned when it contains a wrong think? Denial of the holocaust is illegal in several countries. If a public figure were to post holocaust denial to social media should that evidence be removed from public view? Should the author be allowed to defend themselves publicly or should we use secret courts so that no one mistakes the argument it was satirising holocaust denial for holocaust denial?

How is it that the 1st amendment guarantees the right to peacefully assemble and express political opinions unless it inconveniences anyone? 1400 Occupy protesters were arrested for blocking traffic on a bridge in NYC even though traffic has no constitutional right to flow freely and had been blocked from the same bridge a month earlier to film a Hollywood movie.

I get the impression you believe in absolutes and that something either is free speech or isn't free speech. Could you explain how sexual harassment is legally protected speech on a street corner but criminal in a workplace? The exact same words used in different environments get very different receptions in a court of law. The point I'm driving at is that rights aren't mutually exclusive and when they come into conflict something has to give.

Movies are censored by legal bodies in most countries and a secretive cabal passes voluntary recommendations in the US. Age restrictions are considered to be a form of commercial censorship by many in the industry since movies rated 18 or R have smaller markets and smaller profits.

The USA banned a misogynistic rap song that sexualised women once. Police lobby to have songs that denigrate them banned. Just recently a band had to go all the way to the supreme court to convince the trade mark office to register their name, which contains an ethnic slur.

When does my blaming Islam for the practice pass from being a political statement to hate speech?

That's a very vague question. Could you give me some examples to work with?

How forcefully am I allowed to condemn female genital mutilation?

Exactly equal to the level of force you condemn male genital mutilation with. Otherwise you're being sexist and hateful.

When does someone's description of the illiberal practices of Islam pass from free speech to hate speech?

I don't think it does. I may consider the tone hateful if there's a lot of vitriol. I'm skeptical of making that criminal to say. I may be open to requiring larger social media platforms to remove it with fines if they fail to meet targets of removing x% of hateful posts within y hours.

[ThirdTerm]

I got confused, the new hate speech law in Germany applies to companies like Facebook (4chan has been banned) which is why the fine can get so large.

This new German law shows how Angela Merkel is frustrated with Facebook's inaction to remove anti-refugee groups from the website. Merkel is ruling Germany like an empress now and she can pass any laws to enforce her will. She has the power to block Facebook from Germany like 4chan, if she chooses to do so.

German lawmakers have passed a controversial law under which Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies could face fines of up to €50 million ($57 million) for failing to remove hate speech. The Network Enforcement Act, commonly referred to as the “Facebook law,” was passed by the Bundestag, Germany’s parliamentary body, on Friday. It will go into effect in October.

Under the law, social media companies would face steep fines for failing to remove “obviously illegal” content — including hate speech, defamation, and incitements to violence — within 24 hours. They would face an initial fine of €5 million, which could rise to €50 million. Web companies would have up to one week to decide on cases that are less clear cut.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas and other supporters of the bill have argued that it is necessary to curb the spread of hate speech, which is strictly regulated under German law. But digital rights activists have broadly criticized the law, saying it would infringe on free speech, and that it gives tech companies disproportionate responsibility in determining the legality of online content.

“Experience has shown that, without political pressure, the large platform operators will not fulfill their obligations, and this law is therefore imperative,” Maas said in an address Friday, adding that “freedom of expression ends where criminal law begins.”

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/30/1589 ... law-passed

[MistyTiger]

I understand this too. But when it comes to oppression I believe we not only have the right but also the responsibility to speak out against it. Do we have real power to change things? I think we do. The West's most important power is economic. For example. If the US banned Saudi people and money from our markets unless they stopped mistreating gays I am pretty sure that would change. Look at the very subject of this thread. The US is being forced to give up some of its deeply held beliefs in exchange for access to EU markets. I am offended by that but then I do not own an internet company contemplating loosing a market of 510,000,00 people. So we play by the rules.

Good points. Money overrules justice and morality in many cases, so sad.

On the contrary. We just saw a candidate for the presidency tell people at his events that if they were to beat up people who opposed him he would pay for their defense. And what did it get him? Elected. Elected by the very same unthinkably unintelligent people who failed to see the danger in this way of acting.

I think that Trump is an exception to the rule. He has 2 things that most people envy: loads of money and fame. Just one of those elements contributed to his getting away with all the ugly comments he made against women and minorities and it is truly upsetting and disgusting. It is like his prominent status in society makes everything he does so excusable. What the hell is wrong with this world when dishonesty is lauded and women who argue are degraded and told to shut up?

We just saw an election where deliberately false reports were a technique. This is not new. Politicians have planted false stories and accusations for hundreds of years. But today there is an unregulated venue for this kind of thing that not only allows access but puts it up for sale. During the election, on this very site, advertising popped up that was this exact thing. Deliberate falsehood in service of a political goal.

On one hand, I hate that Trump brought up "fake news". On the other hand, there is a lot of "fake news" out there because people can buy reporters or buy media outlets to "spin" the facts.

Censorship has become vastly more difficult and complicated that could ever have been imagined when I was a kid. As dangerous as free speech is, I believe that now, more than ever, we should be trying to preserve it.

I do not like censorship. However, I wonder if we can handle so much free speech. This generation has gotten more wild and more unashamed than in your heyday. People seem to be less aware of the damage that their speech can render on others, it is like they are numb or they lost their conscience somewhere. I feel like there are those that do not fully appreciate or understand free speech and how it is a special privilege. Special privileges should be used wisely and carefully but some are just careless with how they use this privilege.

[Drlee]

I get the impression you believe in absolutes and that something either is free speech or isn't free speech.

Not at all. Go back and read my posts. I gave specific examples of both. I even posted some comments illustrating the difficulty.

Could you explain how sexual harassment is legally protected speech on a street corner but criminal in a workplace?

Certainly. The guy on the corner is annoying. The boss is in a position of power over the employee. The consequence of the two examples are vastly different.

The exact same words used in different environments get very different receptions in a court of law.

Yes. There is no law against being rude. There is a law against sexual harrassment in the workplace. The difference is obvious.

The point I'm driving at is that rights aren't mutually exclusive and when they come into conflict something has to give.

That is why we have courts of law, lawmakers and voters.

How is it that the 1st amendment guarantees the right to peacefully assemble and express political opinions unless it inconveniences anyone? 1400 Occupy protesters were arrested for blocking traffic on a bridge in NYC even though traffic has no constitutional right to flow freely and had been blocked from the same bridge a month earlier to film a Hollywood movie.

Are you somehow laboring under the assumption that I favor hate speech laws? I DO NOT FAVOR HATE SPEECH LAWS, I thought that was obvious from what I posted. My personal opinion is that Facebook should turn off Germany.

But the Germany example is perfect. Free speech advocates would say this:

In a free speech environment the people who object to hateful speech would, A) not read it or B) stop participating in Facebook thereby causing Facebook to make a business decision.

But what Germany did was ban speech and rather than go after the person making the offensive remarks, blamed the people who gave them an audience. This is really frightening. They made Facebook responsible for the bad actions of everyone who posts there.

You asked why Iran's president can post the most hateful things possible and it is news but it is not news when you or I say it. Very good question. The problem is that we have a small group of people deciding what I am allowed to see and hear. I object to that.

Misty said: I think that Trump is an exception to the rule. He has 2 things that most people envy: loads of money and fame. Just one of those elements contributed to his getting away with all the ugly comments he made against women and minorities and it is truly upsetting and disgusting. It is like his prominent status in society makes everything he does so excusable. What the hell is wrong with this world when dishonesty is lauded and women who argue are degraded and told to shut up?

What is wrong with American women? 60% of the white ones voted for him. Are they that stupid? Or do they simply not find what he said offensive. Frankly I have no problem making decisions for women. I am an older white male and I was raised in a society that thought that it was my job to do so. I am confused by women who did this and have lost all respect for the "woman's movement" in America for keeping its mouth shut and not taking to the street. I can only conclude that if you are a white woman there is a better than even chance that Trump is your man.

On one hand, I hate that Trump brought up "fake news". On the other hand, there is a lot of "fake news" out there because people can buy reporters or buy media outlets to "spin" the facts.

There is no "the media". Right? There are a wide variety of media forms and outlets and not all are for sale. And the opposition has money too. Smart people like you and I know there is fake news because we visit a variety of sources and can see it. Most people don't visit one. Fox News is sold out. Rasmussen polling is sold out. Britbart is sold out. We know that. But we also know the ones that do not appear to be sold out.

I do not like censorship. However, I wonder if we can handle so much free speech. This generation has gotten more wild and more unashamed than in your heyday.

Very true. I did not have a venue to find a support group for every antisocial attitude I might think up. If a young person today thinks it would be fun to oil his body, paint obscenities on his chest and dance naked in the moonlight, there is a group that will tell him that he is just fine.*

The dark corners of the Internet are very dark indeed. We do not know the effect of it yet. I share your concern. It may well be that to some extent radical Islam is right; that the West has gone too far down the rabbit hole. We'll see.


*Yes Decky I think you are fine. I did not specifically mean you.

[thermf5]

But the first sentence juxtaposes free speech and hate speech. But those two are fundamentally different in my mind. Free speech should be positive but hate speech is just...hateful and should be illegal.

The EU is waging a war on "hate speech" but is the US just allowing "hate speech"?

As someone from a diverse background, I am totally against hate speech. I stand against the haters, the ones who said I wouldn't make it because they thought I was dumb, hated the whole "me chinese me so dumb" rhyme.

I don't see much being done about hate speech in the US.

free speech is any thing both negative or positive hate speech is just a word fascists use to try to get people to saport censorship

[MistyTiger]

free speech is any thing both negative or positive hate speech is just a word fascists use to try to get people to saport censorship

Ummm no. Hate speech is not a fascist construct. You and all the other hate speech deniers have never seen the hate and you do not understand it. Please spare us and do not assume to know about something that you do not know about. Thank you.

Sent from my Nexus 10 using PoFo mobile app

[thermf5]

You are new here. Welcome to POFO.

I do have to let you know that these kinds of threats will not be tolerated. This is both for your protection and for our own for hosting your comments.

Never, ever, threaten a user again, even if it's an abstract threat of violence of someone else doing something to a user.

For as heated as we can get here, we are a community, and there are standards. I'm as much of a barbarian as we get, but we are not savages here.

-TIG Edit

[Pants-of-dog]

when a parent reazes a child there fascist.
when any one rules over anyone there fascist
....

Please read the forum rules.

[mikema63]

Welcome to PoFo, the private platform where you don't have freedom of speech where that speech conflicts with our rules, which you should review.

rules

Rules 2 and 5 should be of particular interest to you.

[thermf5]

Welcome to PoFo, the private platform where you don't have freedom of speech where that speech conflicts with our rules, which you should review.

rules

Rules 2 and 5 should be of particular interest to you.

then ban me because i do what i want

[MB.]

Lmao thermf5 is for real. Welcome to pofo.

[The Immortal Goon]

Then call me St. Nicholas because now you've been Jabez Dawes'd.