Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by u_wot_m8 3400 days ago
There's tape of Merkel telling Zuckerberg to censor migrant crimes on Facebook.
1 comments

Imagine how much more persuasive this comment would have been if you'd just taken a few more seconds add and hand full of links to provide evidence and context to your statement.
Zuckerberg was talking about his opinion that "hate speech" doesn't have a place on Facebook and that they "need to do some work".

Merkel merely asked "are you working on this"?

Somehow Infowars turned this into the following headline:

"Mark Zuckerberg Caught on Hot Mic Saying Facebook Will Censor Anti-Migrant Posts"

Other, more credible outlets said that Merkel was "pressing" Zuckerberg. Like asking a question puts so much pressure on someone.

I for one would like to see headlines like this rewritten, "Saved you a click" style. People often read nothing more than the headline.

Words matter.

Ignoring the blatant lies by Infowars, this still seems pretty bad. Giving Zuckerberg the power to identify "hate speech" and work with politicians on it can only lead to abuse in the long run.
I'm not a fan of hate speech laws personally as a general concept, but Germany does have some pretty strong laws on their books regarding hate speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung). So Zuckerberg may not really have a choice here (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/28/technology/facebook-germa...).
In The Netherlands we have these rules as well. It's forbidden to publicly offend _groups_ of people because of their race, faith, sex or handicap (art. 137c). It's also forbidden to encourage racism, hate or violence (art. 137d) and to publish or even possess publications that do so (art. 137e).
We are living in the Post Fact World where you no longer need to provide evidence or cite your sources.

These days saying “I was given that information.” or “Actually, I’ve seen that information around." is all you need to convince half of Americans of whatever you want them to believe.