
Germany: Remove Hate Speech in 24 Hours or Face $57M Fines - magicbyte
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/german-parliament-debates-online-hate-speech-law-48368036
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magicbyte
I already submitted a story to an article on the same topic published by the
New York Times [1] which got flagged reasonably because I edited the HN title
to be more provocative in order to point the discussion towards the issue of
free speech. However, I would love to see a discussion here, which is why I am
trying again with another source.

In my opinion, the law is problematic for several reasons:

Deciding whether an input to a discussion is legal is not always easy. There
have been cases where legal decisions have been revised. Furthermore, the
presumption of innocence is removed. As soon as a contribution is accused to
violate any laws, it will be removed.

Before, regular courts without any other incentives than administering justice
would have decided on this kind of issue. Obviously, this does not scale which
is one of the main reasons for the introduction of this law. Still, we cannot
simply outsource the decision on legal questions because the quality of the
outcome cannot be guaranteed at all. There is a reason for judges requiring
university education. What will now happen on social network sites is
comparable to a black box without any insights on the internal process.

The high fines up to $57 million incentivize social network sites to rather
delete content than keep it up. It is reasonable to assume that comments which
are not subject to freedom of expression are only a subset of those being
deleted because of this newly introduced bill. As a result, free speech is
limited.

[1]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/business/germany-
facebook...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/business/germany-facebook-
google-twitter.html)

