[buckbova]

> Now the German government is considering legislation that would allow social networks such as Facebook to be fined up to 50 million euros if they don’t remove hate speech and fake news quickly enough.

As an American I can't imagine being arrested for speaking my mind about a race or religion whether it's considered hate speech or not. It's just unfathomable. Thanks to our forefathers for putting free speech on such a pedestal and our government for upholding it for 200+ years.

This can't end well shutting people up like this.

> German police raided 36 homes over social media hate speech

https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/22/german-police-raided-36-...

[tpush]

Different cultures, different laws, different values.

I know Americans mostly are very absolutist when it comes to free speech and its limitations. However consider that other countries do have different priorities or a different understanding of freedom and/or how to preserve it (see positive vs. negative freedom).

Restrictions on speech do not necessarily turn a country fascist, just like any restriction on general freedom.

[sgift]

Germany learned the hard way that letting people "speak their mind" does not always lead to great outcomes. The Weimar Republic actually had the things you wanted, it even allowed parties to be part of the parliament while wanting to eliminate the Republic. The result was Nazi Germany. We decided against repeating this. Different histories lead to different results.

[pluma]

I think the disagreement is that Americans (and Brits, and possibly other countries deriving their legal traditions from the Crown) generally consider speech merely expression.

Expressing your hatred is not what's illegal in Germany. Inciting violence and hatred is. It just so happens that certain ways of expressing yourself also incite violence and hatred.

Saying "I hate Muslims" is in itself not necessarily a crime in Germany. Saying "All Muslims should be killed" on the other hand is a direct call to action, asking people to commit a crime and thus directly attacking public order and human rights.

It's similar to shouting "fire" in a theater: it's not illegal because it's expression, it's illegal because it aims to mislead people into thinking there's a threat to their life and to act on that fear (i.e. cause a panic as people run for the exits).

It's also no different from the adage "one person's freedom ends where the freedom of another person begins". You can express yourself all you want, you just have to consider how that affects other people (and not so much in the sense of "I am offended" but "You are right and I will go and commit the crimes you're asking me to").

EDIT: FWIW, Germany has "freedom of opinion" and "freedom of expression" in its constitution. But it also strongly defends not just the rights of individual humans but also of "human dignity". Most laws are ultimately derived from that.

EDIT2: Also keep in mind that the US in some cases takes it so far that _giving people money_ is considered a form of expression and therefore protected speech. This would never fly in Germany because "expression" doesn't automatically cancel out everything else.

[Houshalter]

The Weimar had lots of extremist parties on both the left and the right. It just as easily could have gone communist as fascist. Part of the reasons the Nazis were supported was because they were anti communist. Somehow I doubt modern Germany is just as hard on extremists on the left though.

The people being silenced aren't necessarily anti-democratic either. The Nazis were pretty clear they wanted to eliminate the republic, as you mention. Not just people upset at immigration policy.

[dmichulke]

The problem here is that Nazi Germany also disallowed people to "speak their mind".

So if you say free speech caused Nazi Germany, I might as well say: Lack of free speech let Nazi Germany (and even more so the Holocaust) go on for such a long time.

So is limiting free speech really the solution? I think we're setting a dangerous precedent.

[pluma]

The status quo is that we're not Nazi Germany. The status quo is therefore that we're at the risk of becoming Nazi Germany.

This is the case in modern Germany as much as it is the case in the US or the UK.

The German answer to that is to look at what allowed us to become Nazi Germany last time and to avoid that.

Some of the resulting limitations are questionable (e.g. the parliamentary 5% hurdle), some are not (e.g. treating incitement of violence and racial hatred as a crime).

If you rally a crowd, step on a podium and tell them to "gas the Jews" or "kill all white men" or "hunt down and murder Edward Snowden", you're facing jail time. Because you're intentionally motivating people to commit serious crimes. Whether you're Joe Blow or a major politician.

FWIW I do disagree that censorship is the wrong solution although many politicians in Germany demand it because it's an easy win. Deleting incitement may stop the hatred from spreading but it doesn't address the cause. Even worse: it hides a crime and interferes with criminal investigations.

Social media companies' response to meeting the legal demands in Germany is to either block content preemptively or to basically give you a button that lets you opt into not seeing it. That doesn't follow the spirit of the law, let alone the letter of it.

[dmichulke]

I mostly agree with your points and just want to note a few things:

> The status quo is that we're not Nazi Germany. The status quo is therefore that we're at the risk of becoming Nazi Germany.

This is not a binary thing, in a democracy there will always be a number of people who think the state is insert arbitrary negative adjective here

So there will always be people who feel threatened (if only in some aspects) by the state, no matter if it's Nazi. And these people want to protect their rights such as free speech, and IMO rightly so. So avoiding becoming Nazi Germany is not enough, you need to avoid even aspects of it such as wars on foreign soil or surveillance of civilian communication, both of which are present today and were in the 1940s.

Limiting free speech is just another aspect that adds to the list of becoming Nazi, hence my 'no'.

> If you rally a crowd, step on a podium and tell them to "gas the Jews" or "kill all white men" or "hunt down and murder Edward Snowden", you're facing jail time.

IANAL but I think this is covered by penal code already [1]. Now hate speech is bad but it'll only convince the ones who are already "close to being convinced". That probably doesn't include you and me, and I personally prefer to know who are the idiots around than to have them shut up and only later realize who they are when they commit an actual crime.

As a side note, it matters even today whether you're a politician (if only in the US) [2]

[1] https://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/241.html [2] https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7829062249374105...

[teacup50]

Nonsense!

Germany banned Hitler from public speaking in the 1920s; all this did was give Hitler more notoriety, and the NSDAP more propaganda material to work with.

Nazi Germany still did not emerge through democratic processes; they failed to gain a parliamentary majority despite years of street/voter harassment. Instead, they subverted democracy by exploiting a civil liberty loophole in the Weimar Constitution.

If anything, the rise of Nazi Germany demonstrates why such loopholes in protections for civil liberties are so fundamentally dangerous. For a more modern example, look at how "hate speech" laws in Russia are in fact used to silence political dissent.

[coldtea]

>As an American I can't imagine being arrested for speaking my mind about a race or religion whether it's considered hate speech or not.

Yeah, you might just get fired from your (unrelated) job over an internet mob storm.

[philovivero]

Admittedly, that's bad, and pretty devastating.

But I think compared to having the gestapo kick in your door, take you away in cuffs, and no-one sees you for 90 days is just a little more egregious.

[cr1895]

Gestapo? Really? That's being needlessly hyperbolic, and somewhat ridiculous considering the raids concerned support for National Socialism. In the instance you presented no one was arrested.

"The operation focused in particular on the German state of Bavaria, where according to police sources, a secret Facebook group had posted messages glamorizing National Socialism, which is illegal in Germany."

http://www.dw.com/en/german-police-launch-mass-raids-over-on...

[WaxProlix]

I'd love to see how quickly an ISIS recruitment rally would be squashed in any city in the USA with nobody shedding a tear over the abuse of freedom of speech.

[JBReefer]

The ACLU famously defended the KKK's right to have parades/rallies. Both have a pretty good history of killing Americans and saying horrible things.

This country exists because of freedom of speech and press, and it really does matter to us.

[vkou]

America has historically cared very little for the Americans the KKK killed. Judging by the commentary that arises whenever BLM is mentioned, it still doesn't.

[watwut]

To be fair to ACLU, they have good record defending speech no matter who talk. The did care about civil rights groups speech as much as KKK.

[eehee]

When BLM is mentioned, I often see people criticize their methods, the underlying ideology of some members and their claims to truth. I have never seen anyone not care about black people being killed.

There is, of course, a possibility that I'm living in an opaque filter bubble and that the racist hordes are just outside. If I am, please pop that bubble and show me the truth.

[teacup50]

"Those Demanding Free Speech Limits to Fight ISIS Pose a Greater Threat to U.S. Than ISIS" (The Intercept):

https://theintercept.com/2015/12/29/those-demanding-free-spe...

[skocznymroczny]

Unfortunately that's the reality for Western/Northern Europe right now. In countries like Germany or Sweden, speaking against other people on Twitter/Facebook, critizing immigration policies can get you ostracized, fired from your job and even taken into custody for 'hate speech'.

[beedogs]

As an American, I'm perfectly happy with what Germany is doing and wish Americans were less absolutist about free speech.

[throwanem]

As another American, I'm happy you are free to express that opinion, and also happy so few share it.

[tnzn]

From the very begining of free speech theorization, limits such as hate speech were mentionned, just saying.

[Natsu]

Mentioned how? In which countries? In the USA, 'hate speech' is simply not a category of unprotected speech under the 1st amendment as it's understood today:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-...

An example of a category that is not protected in the USA would be death threats or false & defamatory statements.

[throwanem]

I'd like to see a specific citation here, please.