
Can Germany Fix Facebook? - imartin2k
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/germany-facebook/543258/?single_page=true
======
AlphaGeekZulu
I think, what is important to understand in German law is, that you are not
prevented from uttering your opinion. You are rather prevented from claiming
false facts.

Let's take the example of the photo of Angela Merkel and the Syrian refugee,
mentioned in the article. If you publicly declare, that the person on the
photo is a terrorist, and the person is not, you are clearly breaking the law,
because you are damaging the persons reputation with arbitrary false claims.
If you mention something as a fact, which you cannot prove, you are held
responsible for the consequences of the claim and you are prevented from
repeating the false fact.

If you would declare "There have been rumours, that the person on the photo is
a terrorist", the legal perspective is completely different. Because there
obviously have been the rumours this is not a false claim. It now depends very
much on the context. If it was known to you, that the person is not a
terrorist and you declared the fact of the rumours, but in a way, that it
nevertheless makes the person appear as a terrorist, you might be breaking
law, but this now depends very much on circumstances and can only be deciced
individually in a court case.

Saying "I completely believe the person is a terrorist, even though there is
no prove" would most likely be covered by freedom of speech in Germany,
because the claim is not presented as a fact, but an opinion. There are limits
here (you cannot hide abuse and revilement in an opinion), but interpretation
is extremely generous in those cases and makes, in my eyes, the biggest
difference to systems like China.

I am completely fine with this approach. I think that a proper differentiation
between fact and opinion is the key for a healthy social discourse.

How would anyone be able to defend himself against false claims, if any
utterance of whatever was covered by free speech?

~~~
Vinnl
Your example is interesting, because 'terrorism' is a rather ill-defined term
- i.e. some people refer as 'terrorists' to what other people refer to as
'freedom fighters'. When is the former making a false claim?

~~~
AlphaGeekZulu
There is some legal definition for "terrorism" in german criminal law (do not
ask me the details, but there is a difference if an act of murder was a
terroristic act or not - it has to do with intentions, means, motives, acting
alone or in a network and so on). So there is some factual definition.

A quote like "They call him freedom fighter, I call him terrorist" is clearly
an opinion and yes, it makes a difference whether you use the word in the
sense of a legal definition or an abstract concept or a hyperbolic metaphor.
The level rod is dignity.

~~~
Vinnl
My point wasn't that there isn't a definition somewhere that is clear, but
that people very often use it in different ways - whereas I don't think we
want to treat all these people in the same way.

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Tomte
That's a really good article.

And you cannot reiterate enough that our laws regarding free speech were
_heavily_ influenced, if not outright imposed, by the Allies, and foremost the
United States. This is one of the few articles out there that explain it.

~~~
Barrin92
And as a German citizen I am thankful for them. The concept of dignity has, in
my opinion, an important place in our society and cannot become obsolete in
the digital sphere.

To address one point in the article, I find the deflection of responsibility
on facebook's part alarming. Imagine a scientist letting a wild chimera loose
on the population, would we not hold them accountable? Companies like Facebook
are getting rich off the infrastructure they provide, they are responsible for
the consequences of the technology they put out into the world.

And also notably, in the digital space they have acquired the size of nation
states, and even that might be an understatement. Facebook is essentially the
policeman, the firefighter, the inkeeper and the landlord all at the same
time. As well as the sole administrator.

~~~
mschuster91
> Companies like Facebook are getting rich off the infrastructure they
> provide, they are responsibility for the consequences of the technology they
> put out into the world.

I call this "externalization of costs". Private companies skim off the profit
and leave the costs to society - be it in construction with the ÖPP (public-
private-partnership) or "lease back" scams, or with social media where the
victims of mobbing/nazis and police have to suffer.

~~~
krona
You are implying that people who use Facebook are not free agents who can
decide for themselves what their impact on society should be.

~~~
WillReplyfFood
They are not. If the public plaza is private, you have only the option to not
participate and be a social outcast or to bow to the allmende-renteers laws.

------
amelius
“Can you delete your profile completely?”

I want the ability to continuously erase everything I do on Facebook, except
for the last N days, where N is a fixed number chosen by me.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
I wonder why we use these services if we aren’t satisfied with how they work.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Facebook does one thing that no other service can duplicate: it has all of my
friends on it.

~~~
JoshMnem
Arguably, that's one of the problems with Facebook. Not all of one's contacts
should be in the same conversations together.

~~~
throwawaysml
Didn't Google try to solve that with circles. I never used Facebook or any
other "social network", so I'm probably unaware of some details, but I read
about circles when Google+ came out and it sounded like a solution for exactly
this problem.

~~~
JoshMnem
I think they got the idea of circles from Diaspora.

The WWW works best when used as intended: decentralized communities that
encourage people to be creators rather than consumers.

Instead of Facebook, participate in independent online communities around your
interests (for example, forums).

Instead of chat apps that attempt to envelop everyone you've ever met into
monolithic walled gardens, use SMS and email.

Instead of Medium, learn how to create your own independent blog with
something like Metalsmith, Hugo, or Hexo.

Etc.

~~~
closeparen
>Instead of Facebook, participate in independent online communities around
your interests (for example, forums).

Replacing your actual social network with anonymous internet strangers leaves
you in a much worse position on the axes on which people usually criticize
Facebook. Facebook may be a poor substitute for meatspace interaction with
your actual community, but your connecting with your actual community is
surely more important than connecting with internet strangers.

>Instead of chat apps that attempt to envelop everyone you've ever met into
monolithic walled gardens, use SMS and email.

SMS is a spectacularly low-quality monolithic walled garden. Email is
federated in theory but in practice is almost always Google. Both systems have
the uniquely privacy-hostile property of being in cleartext by default and in
the overwhelming majority of real-world usage.

~~~
dTal
>SMS is a spectacularly low-quality monolithic walled garden

How do you figure? I can communicate with SMS to anyone in the world, on any
mobile provider. Seems pretty federated to me.

~~~
closeparen
Ever tried to get an SS7 connection?

Sure, you can rent access from Twilio, in the same way that you can rent
access from Facebook. It’s extremely unlikely that you could ever become a
full participant in either network.

~~~
dTal
Okay, so there's a high barrier to entry. It's pretty hard to become an ISP
too. That doesn't make either a walled garden.

It's not so much about whether I personally could federate with the network,
as it is about whether some reasonably large number of other entities could. I
don't have exact numbers, but it seems there are 1000+ phone providers
worldwide.

------
derekmhewitt
Good article, was informative.

Germany isn't the only country considering laws like this, and companies with
large online presences need to find some way to get a handle on the user
created content they're propagating. The fact that it's open season as far as
what users post is going to eventually lead to the companies doing the
propagating: Facebook, Google, etc, being the ones called before the state to
answer for it. This ultimately isn't fair and is terrible for business, but
the situation we have right now isn't fair either, especially to the
individuals who are being slandered with no recourse.

~~~
spc476
It's legal in my country to mock religious figures like Jesus, Moses and
Mohammad. In other countries it is illegal to do so. If I post an image
portraying Jesus, Moses and Mohammad as lovers (admittedly it's in poor taste)
to MyFaceGoogleLinkedSpaceBookPlusIn, does MyFaceGoogleLinkedSpaceBookPlusIn
have the legal authority to delete my post since it _might_ be seen in a
country where it's illegal?

~~~
danbruc
That's obviously a complex problem that emerged because the Internet on itself
does not respect traditional juridical boundaries and I doubt that there is
already any general consensus on how such things ought to be handled. But in
your example it seems reasonable to me to just block the post where it is
illegal. If it is illegal in the home country of
MyFaceGoogleLinkedSpaceBookPlusIn or if making the post were illegal in your
home country, then deleting seems appropriate. In reality things are probably
even more complicated, if something is illegal may for example depend on where
you are when you are doing it but may also be tied to your nationality and be
independent from where you are. Or think about companies operating from
several countries.

~~~
humanrebar
> But in your example it seems reasonable to me to just block the post where
> it is illegal.

From a technology perspective, that's a _much_ harder problem than it sounds.
To the degree it's even possible, it's a good way to make sure that social
networking gets consolidated into the hands of a few companies and that never
get challenged. Or that social networking breaks back up into country-specific
sites, making the "world-wide" part of the WWW more of a technical possibility
than a practical reality.

~~~
germanier
Sure, it’s probably impossible to have this block 100% effective. However,
this is a bad excuse for giving up trying at all. Even the simplest technical
measures will stop most people.

Also, the discussed German law (which I'm not particularly fond of) addresses
the problem you raised: it only applies to the largest companies giving
startups enough time before needing to solve these issues.

~~~
humanrebar
It's still regulatory capture, but you're probably right about the small
company exception. The biggest effect is probably to make it easier for a
German social network to thrive over a foreign one looking to move into (or
stay in) Germany.

So, again, it's probably going to reinforce information bubbles as places to
share thoughts and ideas will stay tied to a nationality and/or small.

> ...this is a bad excuse for giving up trying at all.

I think _all_ of Western Europe is struggling with information bubbles as
surprising election results have been happening one after another. Is it
"giving" up to not double down on that phenomenon?

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riptidethrwy
Some of the Disqus comments at the bottom of that article illustrate the
complexity and prevalence of the problems.

Of course, The Atlantic, and many other websites continue to tolerate massive
troll operations in their own comment sections, for the same reason that FB
and Twitter do.

------
saagarjha
> They also made fun of his firm’s no-frills website.

You don't need a cool website to practice law.

------
jimmywanger
This reminds me of Google vs. the Chinese government.

The government wanted heavy censorship for certain forbidden targets. Google
picked up their toys and went home, and let the Chinese discover the joys of
VPN.

If that's what Germany wants, Facebook should pack up and leave, and make
people use a VPN to access Facebook.

Every time you give censors the ability to arbitrarily determine what's ok and
what's not, the ability always gets misused by the government, in my
experience.

For instance, compare and contrast the results shown for Tiananmen square in
Baidu vs. Google. It's even forbidden to show relevant results for June 4th -
most Chinese people get around that by searching for May 35th.

If you can control the present, you control the future. By forbidding speech
that is not currently fashionable, you open the floodgates.

~~~
stevenwoo
On the one hand you have a point about China's actions, on the other hand, you
are comparing Germany to mainland China as equivalent threats. As an American
I would trust most countries in the EU with stuff like this over even my own
country given the direction of the USA. This is all opinion and I'm not
criticizing your view, just disagreeing, but I would hazard a guess from the
wording of the last sentence the worry is about Orwell's 1984 dystopian future
coming true when the bigger problem is that the problems in Huxley Brave New
World is much closer to reality (even given the current autocratic/far right's
non ironic use of doublespeak across all countries and forms of government).
Germany already bans Nazi imagery and wording in many forms except for history
purposes and they seem to be fine. We already have problems in the USA where
now nonviolent political protestors are being prosecuted by the federal
government and officials are encouraging people to commit violence against the
protestors in spite of the protestors having the First Amendment to back them
up - statutory limits or freedoms are not magic that make things right.

~~~
jimmywanger
I appreciate your response. Just one thought:

> statutory limits or freedoms are not magic that make things right.

You're right, they're not, we have to fight for them. But if the laws are on
the books, you have at least some recourse given an independent judiciary.

Hate speech and marginalizing other groups is such a maddeningly vague
category that either everything falls into, or nothing does.

I don't know if you can tell, but I'm highly individualistic and freedom
oriented. The fact that there's an ill defined law on the books that can be
enforced with no recourse raises my hackles.

Just like the beef I have with the TSA and the "no fly list". You can't figure
out why you're on the list, and there is no real way for you to get off the
list. I think due process is the most important thing. Sunshine is the best
disinfectant.

------
mk89
> the spread of symbols belonging to unconstitutional groups

Cool, so an ideal "group of people who wants separation from the state" would
also be banned? (Let's say like the Catalan party which is going on since
years...)

> But what makes content “manifestly” illegal is left up to human

The least biased would be to have 1 person from each political party to assess
these things and reach an agreement.

EDIT: downvoting without comments... come on guys, you can be better than
this.

------
expertentipp
The joke is young people don't use Facebook anymore. Those most interested in
policing and shaping it seem to be German internet-clueless politicians and
activists in their 50s and 60s. Meanwhile half of web/IT jobs on German market
require React.

~~~
esarbe
I don't understand what you want to say. Your points don't seem relevant to
the issues the article raises. Care to elaborate? Thanks!

~~~
ubernostrum
I figured it was some new variation on the ancient Slashdot meme of "In Korea,
only old people use (insert name of technology)..."

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eighthnate
The promise of the internet was that it would be free and open to all ideas,
thoughts and discussions. The hope was that it would raise the rest of the
world to american ideals of liberty, free speech and right to assembly.
Instead, we are dropping ourselves to the lowest common denominator. Rather
than the outside world bettering themselves with free speech, we are instead
lowering ourselves to the anti-free speech levels of germany, china, saudi
arabia and russia.

We are to stifle free speech because of "human dignity"? That's what dictators
say. That's what extremists say. Theo Van Gogh was stabbed to death over a
short film that insulted the "dignity" of muslims. North koreans kidnap or
kill people because their "dignity" is insulted. Following that logic, aren't
neo-nazis human? Don't they deserve "dignity"?

It isn't facebook that needs fixing. It is germany. What germans, chinese,
saudis, russians, the extreme liberals and those who are anti-free speech
don't understand that free speech is a necessary component of human dignity.
You can't have human dignity without it. It is an essential characteristic of
human dignity.

~~~
camillomiller
>Following that logic, aren't neo-nazis human? Don't they deserve "dignity"?

Banning them from insulting other people’s dignity and threatening their
safety is not diminishing of their dignity.

~~~
eighthnate
Sure it does. Depriving people of speech is diminishing their dignity. Even
better, depriving people of reading books they want or even wearing clothing
they want is diminishing their dignity.

> Banning them from insulting other people’s dignity

So you support banning anti-nazi speech right? All the speech attacking and
insulting nazis should be banned right? Because it's wrong to insult people
right?

~~~
camillomiller
I believe in the German principle of a proactive defense of democracy. There's
only one option to be used against neo-nazis, and it is to silence them. No,
they won't grow bigger because of that. You would certainly think this is
anti-democratic and paradoxical. Well, it's not, because I'm defending
democracy from the people that would destroy it, so in the end, I don't
fucking care: they deserve no right to spew the kind of hatred they spew. We
have a duty to stop them, because they're dangerous to society. And fucking
NO, you can't extend this line of reasoning to other forms of contrarian
speech, so don't even start. It's true only for neo-nazis. That's it.

tl;dr: I'm sick of neo-nazis.

~~~
nostromo123
>> And fucking NO, you can't extend this line of reasoning to other forms of
contrarian speech, so don't even start. It's true only for neo-nazis. That's
it.

Yes, you can -- antifa is just as dangerous as neo-nazis, and they have to be
stopped. Period.

