You beat me by second. 
The BfJ is going to be heavily unpopular, soon. Either because they are not enforcing the law, or because they are.
Of course, they are mostly unpopular already…
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Same in France. The matter (slander and libel) is considered of public importance, so is covered by criminal law (rather than tort law), but the possibility is left for the victim to let it slide or reach an understanding with the author.
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When I’ve tried to look into that stuff it seems to conflate correlation with causation. I might be wrong but it doesn’t seem like proof to me.
Not the 300% increase cited thats for sure.
That’s good, but I thought context covered that. I’ll try to be more specific in general.
Or they are pointing out that there are already categories to which “speech” are already assigned; the laws governing these have little to do with preventing abuse, but do establish formal avenues of accountability when they are abused.
Maybe that’s what hate “speech” needs. If not, why not?
This… doesn’t address the need to impose limits. You may as well say it’s easier to be in business in the first place once your business is huge. You could say this about any cost of doing business. I get that it’s harder now. So what? That doesn’t address the core problem.
Or are you saying that they could only get big because they needed unfettered hate speech to drive traffic and engagement?
That can’t be right.
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Thanks for the info. Are you in Germany? Just curious. Thanks.
Canada has pretty thorough hate speech laws which forbids people from saying malicious things about other people based on race or religion.
While it does act as a filter against egregious attacks against minorities in the media, I’m not entirely convinced it’s effective. All it does is drive the hate underground where it seethes and thrives out of the public eye. With no confrontation about the ideas, it just spreads unopposed among the like-minded. Once a character like Trump comes along, suddenly all this hate speech pops out from under the woodwork and you’re totally unprepared with how to deal with it because you’ve never had to before.
I think I prefer the American style First Amendment (which forbids the government from interfering in free speech) over Canada’s Section 1 (which allows the government to make exceptions) even if it means that people have to face having terrible things said about them. At least then, it’s in the open, and you can set about changing ideas rather than remain ignorant and defenseless when the attacks against you finally emerge.
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More or less. I live there, which means I can spend most weekends in Germany. Travelling for the larger parts of the week. Currently? Switzerland.
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The character like Trump came along in the US with its open and widespread free speech, though, so it might not be as solid an inoculation against such things as you think.
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I think it is very relevant that the legal restriction of hate speech tends to have majority (although not universal) support within racial/religious/sexual minority communities.
Even in the countries that do restrict hate speech, the bigots are not at all difficult to spot. But there is a cultural consensus that it’s better not to have them preaching genocide from the rooftops.
Because the worst case scenario isn’t Trump. The worst case scenario is this:
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Well, put another way, if the US were governed by Canada’s Section 1 instead of the First Amendment, Trump would have ordered that the free press be shut down by now, and he’d have the power and authority to do it. He could also make it illegal to say anything positive about Muslims, Mexicans, women, and any other minorities or celebrities that have pissed him off that morning.
The sword cuts both ways.
I don’t believe it.
I’m not sure why you responded to me as the only point i was making was that @Israel_B’s demands for “proof” were a-scientific. The only place proofs exist, the only place truth can be fully known, is in Mathematics. And that’s only because it is known to be provisional (i.e. “if we assume these axioms, and assume these logical principles (such as modus ponens) then these conclusions must follow”).
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What is your point, exactly?
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I believe that was a misclick on my part. Sorry for any confusion.
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One thing that’s going wrong in our discussion here is that we’re mostly just rehashing well-known cultural differences between Europe and America. We hardly have time for questions like “assuming that European laws were appropriate for the pre-Facebook-era, what can/should be done now that they have become harder to enforce?”
My personal opinion is that I find the German law under discussion dangerous because of how it tries to enforce the existing limits on speech, not because there are limits on speech.
You’re not telling me what you didn’t understand about my point, so I can only try saying the same thing again with different words. I’m agreeing that you can be polite and toxic at the same time. I’m saying you can’t outlaw “toxicity”, but you can legislate “politeness”. We’ve been doing that (to varying degrees) for centuries. So I agree with @Mister44’s calling it “forced politeness”, but I’ve argued elsewhere that I some forced politeness is actually a good thing.
- The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
I don’t see that authorizing a president (or prime minister) to pass laws, and any laws passed by congress or parliament can be struck down by courts if they go beyond “demonstrably justified reasonable limits”.
Likewise, the US constitution, fifth amendment, says “… nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law …”. Claiming that the Candian section 1 would allow Trump to make it illegal to say anything positive about Muslims, etc. makes just as much sense as saying the Fifth Amendment allows Trump to randomly execute people.
Also, while the US constitution sounds like there are exceptions to the right to life but no exceptions to freedom of speech, people are still punished for shouting “FIRE” in a crowded theater, for violating copyrights, for publishing state secrets, for inciting people to murder, etc.
If America ever becomes a true dictatorship, people will find excuses to ban more speech while still maintaining the facade.
Thanks for clarifying.
Not really.
You can create certain laws that disallow flagrant verbal abuse under penalty of fines, etc; that’s not the same thing as ‘politeness.’
True. I meant you can legislate “minimum standards of politeness”, not true politeness.
Say what you mean, mean what you say…
As someone from a different cultural context than mine would say: the jury is out on that
Seriously, I do believe Maas is probably the least competent minister of justice we had in quite a long time. Also, the subject of free speech is not something for political camping politics. But as someone who has been online since the early 90s, I am of the opinion that fines might actually work as incentive for the platforms to implement a new/better method of moderation.
