Germany Acts to Tame Facebook, Learning From Its Own History of Hate

[Leagon]

No it isn't comparable, cause your analogy is akin to saying Atheism is a religion, to which the retort is that Atheism is the lack of religion, so calling Atheism a religion is like saying being bald is a hairstyle. Religion stipulates a certain dogma and opposes other dogmas, and in the same way those who seek to limit Free Speech want to impose certain dogmas on the populace and want to restrict or oppose other dogmas. Lack of Free Speech and support for restricting Free Speech is actually more apt to being compared to religion, since both want to restrict what people believe and limit peoples' utility to think for themselves.

I lived in England and the MidEast and have been to France many times, and parts of S.E. Asia. The stark difference in having Free Speech and not having Free Speech is evident in all these countries.

Dude, what are you talking about? I feel like normally we have productive conversations, so I'm not sure if my posts are confusing or if you're not reading them right, but we're speaking past each other. I'm not at all discussing the characteristics of free speech. I'm not comparing free speech to religion.

But let's move away from that. You said that a country must have American-style freedom of speech in order to be a free country. Doesn't that seem like a useless definition of freedom? Certainly there are people who have lied in many different time periods or who have lived in many different countries who have felt that they had a free life. Would you argue they are self deluding? Or, perhaps, is it possible to still have a free life even if one doesn't live in a free country?

 

[dontsnitch]

The censorship is not as bad as not consistently applying it.

 

[Leagon]

That really is scary and this point needs to be publicized. How the Euros have been conditioned to oppose their own liberty and freedoms. It is more understandable why MidEastern and Asian don't much care for Free Speech since they are very communal and collectivist minded. But the West has always preferred individualism and protecting the dissemination of ideas over feelings.

I think it's an offshoot of the freedom vs. security dilemma. Europe has historically valued freedom over security. They've also been a continent of almost constant bouts of warfare, culminating in the two largest and most devastating wars in recorded history. I think it is much easier to seek freedom when security is assured (and vice versa). I think the West (not just Europe) is really unsatisfied with their current security levels (whether rightly or wrongly) and is willing to trade some freedom for the time being.

The Middle East and Asia have been fighting for security and haven't really yet had the luxury of pursuing freedom until recently. I think because they have Europe as a model, they're approaching freedom at a much more measured pace.

 

[Fugazy]

This subforum is filled with scared people. Dont matter they wont change anything

Clarify this statement please.

Who here is scared of what?

 

[Leagon]

I, uh Uhh hmm...


I absolutely do not believe i could convince my twitter followers to kill someone...with a time limit or not

Well you're probably not very smart or charismatic. To be fair, you're also probably a good person. Intelligence and propaganda professionals are doing this sort of thing every day, all over the world. Even a very skilled salesman would probably be familiar with how to go about doing such a thing. There's a documentary on Netflix called "The Push" where some pseudo psychologist orchestrates this big experiment where, thorough a series of smaller events, he manages to convince someone to push another human being off a skyscraper. Out of the four times he ran the experiment, he managed to convince 3 of the people to push an innocent person to their death. Mind you, the experiment basically took place over the course of one evening, probably within a window of a couple hours.

 

[Fugazy]

So you're saying Hitler was legally allowed to kill his opposition? Because if his actions were illegal, doesn't that mean the speech of his opposition was protected by law?

I'm sure this is all very simple for your brilliant internet forum mind and you no doubt have a lot of experience implementing such policies at a local, state, or federal level, but for many of us simpletons, this is in fact a recurring difficulty in governance and has been so for several thousand years. Laws are ultimately just words and their enforcement is vital. When someone has used their words to hijack law enforcement, laws no longer mean anything. This happens all the time in countries that have "free speech." With your incredible knowledge, you should go become president of some third world country. Teach them how free speech will lead to perpetual stability and

I'm sorry you are such a lazy person, and a coward.

The ramblings of your first paragraph border on actual retardation. The actions of a historically violent and aggressive totalitarian regime do not determine the legality or illegality of the behaviors of their opposition.

Not only are you are intellectually lazy, you are sincerely stupid and you continue to prove so with each post.

Can you, in all honesty, not percieve the issue with the government jailing or otherwise harming people for their speech, censoring and suppressing speech, and how that behavior is in fact in lockstep with what was Nazi Germany?

You truly are a coward because you are afraid of words.

You truly are a coward because you want the government to tell you what you can and can't say and can and can't think.

Do you think, that for one second, people in oppresive nations do not wish they had the ability to speak their mind, express themselves and seek out differing views and new and different information versus what they are filtered and force fed by their governments? You must understand that freedom of speech is also freedom to disseminate speech and seek speech.

If you aren't trolling, you are a poor, poor soul, and I truly feel sorry for people like you who who seek to be owned, inside and out by a state. You are not a citizen, you are a subject. Behind that internet sass, what a pathetic, scary life you must live.

 

[Islam Imamate]

I'm all for free speech. I love it. But I think the people in this thread have been acting as if it doesn't also present an enormous problem to the stability and safety of some countries.

That's a good point. I love the fact that we have it here in America and its become a part of the core and essence of this country. But maybe not every country can afford to have it. Consider the example in India linked to in the OP where a WhatsApp rumor led to a mob killing seven people. That's a case where fake news literally killed people.

 

[IDL]

The censorship is not as bad as not consistently applying it.

That's the obvious concern for anyone paying attention really. There is a 0% chance it will be applied without political and ideological bias.

 

[Fugazy]

The censorship is not as bad as not consistently applying it.

You can guarantee that the censorship will be applied in a inconsistent fashion. In fact in places like Canada and Britain there are already sufficient examples of these laws being applied in an inconsistent manner.

 

[Leagon]

I'm sorry you are such a lazy person, and a coward.

The ramblings of your first paragraph border on actual retardation. The actions of a historically violent and aggressive totalitarian regime do not determine the legality or illegality of the behaviors of their opposition.

Not only are you are intellectually lazy, you are sincerely stupid and you continue to prove so with each post.

Can you, in all honesty, not percieve the issue with the government jailing or otherwise harming people for their speech, censoring and suppressing speech, and how that behavior is in fact in lockstep with what was Nazi Germany?

You truly are a coward because you are afraid of words.

You truly are a coward because you want the government to tell you what you can and can't say and can and can't think.

Do you think, that for one second, people in oppresive nations do not wish they had the ability to speak their mind, express themselves and seek out differing views and new and different information versus what they are filtered and force fed by their governments? You must understand that freedom of speech is also freedom to disseminate speech and seek speech.

If you aren't trolling, you are a poor, poor soul, and I truly feel sorry for people like you who who seek to be owned, inside and out by a state. You are not a citizen, you are a subject. Behind that internet sass, what a pathetic, scary life you must live.

Lol...this is one of the more fun posts I've read in a while. It's great because of how dramatic it is, but also because you don't seem to know anything about me and yet you have such a clear distaste for me that I feel like you know someone in real life who you presume to be like me and have just poured out your feelings about them onto this forum. Like your third grade teacher or absent father or something.

It's also great because I'm pro First Amendment. Moreso than most on this board. I've actually worked to fight policy that I felt was anti-first amendment. I worked as a journalist for years, lol.

I respect the first amendment, but I don't worship it, and that seems to be the real source of our disagreement. Not only do you believe free speech to be an infallible ideal, you believe it to be above critique. Which is weird because our Founding Fathers, who were all smarter than either of us, spent a lot of time debating these things, lol.

I think this is where I'll gracefully bow out of this discussion because it's clear that this is deeply personal to you. Do your thing, bruh.

 

[dontsnitch]

You can guarantee that the censorship will be applied in a inconsistent fashion. In fact in places like Canada and Britain there are already sufficient examples of these laws being applied in an inconsistent manner.

I guess the answer is that FB is a private company and they are not required by law to be consistent. The actual bias doesn't bother me as much as the denial of that bias does.

Now, at what point do we treat FB like the cable company and not allow them to discriminate? I don't know.

 

[Patrick Carey]

Well you're probably not very smart or charismatic. To be fair, you're also probably a good person. Intelligence and propaganda professionals are doing this sort of thing every day, all over the world. Even a very skilled salesman would probably be familiar with how to go about doing such a thing. There's a documentary on Netflix called "The Push" where some pseudo psychologist orchestrates this big experiment where, thorough a series of smaller events, he manages to convince someone to push another human being off a skyscraper. Out of the four times he ran the experiment, he managed to convince 3 of the people to push an innocent person to their death. Mind you, the experiment basically took place over the course of one evening, probably within a window of a couple hours.

Im rather amazed you are able to take a single study with a sample size of 4 to reach this conclusion.

 

[Leagon]

Im rather amazed you are able to take a single study with a sample size of 4 to reach this conclusion.

It wasn't a professional study, it was a pseudo pop-psych documentary. I only gave this as an example because you clearly aren't willing to read actual research articles. If you were, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

 

[Patrick Carey]

It wasn't a professional study, it was a pseudo pop-psych documentary. I only gave this as an example because you clearly aren't willing to read actual research articles. If you were, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Lol?

You are citing sources that have nothing to do with your original statement.

Everyone knows of the Milgram experiment and similar variants.

To even pretend like an authority figure assuring you that you won't be held liable is the same situation as someone like trump posting anti Iran tweets (as an example) is just wildely dishonet.

And then to pretend i am not willing to look at the research. Lol.

 

[Fugazy]

I guess the answer is that FB is a private company and they are not required by law to be consistent. The actual bias doesn't bother me as much as the denial of that bias does.

Now, at what point do we treat FB like the cable company and not allow them to discriminate? I don't know.

I agree with you on the denial of the bias.

And those are good questions.

 

[AVX]

This stuff isn't isolated to Germany. The same politics applies more in an empire sense, so expect to see attempts to role out the same agendas across the EU, and elsewhere.

'Hate speach' is the blanket in which the powers behind it have chosen to push forward, because it is such a vague concept and tends to confuse people.

At the end of the day it's a way to enforce politics and ideology to serve empire and it only really goes in one direction.

This is exactly right. It's pretty ironic that Germany chooses to use a fascist approach from the lessons it learn from its fascist past.

 

[Fugazy]

Lol...this is one of the more fun posts I've read in a while. It's great because of how dramatic it is, but also because you don't seem to know anything about me and yet you have such a clear distaste for me that I feel like you know someone in real life who you presume to be like me and have just poured out your feelings about them onto this forum. Like your third grade teacher or absent father or something.

It's also great because I'm pro First Amendment. Moreso than most on this board. I've actually worked to fight policy that I felt was anti-first amendment. I worked as a journalist for years, lol.

I respect the first amendment, but I don't worship it, and that seems to be the real source of our disagreement. Not only do you believe free speech to be an infallible ideal, you believe it to be above critique. Which is weird because our Founding Fathers, who were all smarter than either of us, spent a lot of time debating these things, lol.

I think this is where I'll gracefully bow out of this discussion because it's clear that this is deeply personal to you. Do your thing, bruh.

And amid that debate the founding fathers decided it should be the 1st ammendment, before all others.

You've cheapened the discussion, moved goal posts and taken pot shots throughout our conversation. You've made awful and almost inexplicable jumps in your logic and you've shown you aren't equipped to have the discussion, and now you want to tuck and run.

I suppose it's easy for you if you've got no sack in the way. What you call "gracefully bowing out" everyone else in this thread sees as a spastic failure.

 

[Leagon]

Lol?

You are citing sources that have nothing to do with your original statement.

Everyone knows of the Milgram experiment and similar variants.

To even pretend like an authority figure assuring you that you won't be held liable is the same situation as someone like trump posting anti Iran tweets (as an example) is just wildely dishonet.

And then to pretend i am not willing to look at the research. Lol.

What sources am I citing?

I'm not talking about the Milgram experiment, though I'm glad you're aware of it.

Are you saying that there is no research to suggest human suggestibility? Do you think police interviewers have no special training to get people to confess? Do you think school teachers aren't any better at controlling crowds than random people off the street? Do you think propaganda is useless? If human behavior didn't have a degree of predictability and malleability, how would the field of psychology exist?

 

[Leagon]

That's a good point. I love the fact that we have it here in America and its become a part of the core and essence of this country. But maybe not every country can afford to have it. Consider the example in India linked to in the OP where a WhatsApp rumor led to a mob killing seven people. That's a case where fake news literally killed people.

Thank you! I don't see what's so extreme about the position that free speech can sometimes be problematic, but there are people in this thread acting like this is the first time they've ever heard arguments against free speech. America, a country with free speech, has still had the Salem Witch Trials, Japanese internment camps, multiple rebellions, and a full civil war.

It is strange to me how people can believe that free speech is so powerful that is must be protected, but then somehow also not powerful enough to create problems of its own. I don't understand where that belief system comes from.

 

[Patrick Carey]

What sources am I citing?

I'm not talking about the Milgram experiment, though I'm glad you're aware of it.

Are you saying that there is no research to suggest human suggestibility? Do you think police interviewers have no special training to get people to confess? Do you think school teachers aren't any better at controlling crowds than random people off the street? Do you think propaganda is useless? If human behavior didn't have a degree of predictability and malleability, how would the field of psychology exist?

......You cited a netflix video which was a variant of the Milgram experiment.

I am not going to bother addressing the rest of what you wrote, since you lack the integrity to admit you took a Milgram esque experiment completely out of context. Not worth my time.

I will say that on other topics you usually are very rational. It is weird to me that on this thread you take the approach of "of course speech cant be totally free" when in others I've heard, more or less, "of course germany has free speech"