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Tick-tick... boom: Germany gives social media giants 24 hours to tear down hate speech

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

It appears to me at least that many people have lost sight of the fact that freedom of speech is one of a number of fundamental rights, each of which has the same or at the very least a comparable status and priority. In the EU in general, and Germany in particular it is often necessary to BALANCE these rights against each other in cases where equally relevant rights are actually in conflict with one another. In the US this balance does not appear to enter into the political and social arena. The simplest example is that the freedom of speech is a constitutional right, but the right to privacy is not. In the EU however privacy is a constitutional right, which means that the right of free speech does NOT TRUMP the right to privacy, so you cannot legally violate a person's right to privacy on the basis of your right to freedom of speech. In the end the final instance is the constitutional court, and quite frankly the German Bundesverfassungsgericht has a pretty good record in protecting fundamental rights in that country.

In this particular argument however the simple point is that the law now makes it clear that the same laws that have applied to print and broadcast media in Germany for decades, ALSO apply to social media and that the time is coming to an end where FB and others (twitter ??) can ignore these laws with impunity. The new law now brings accountability and liability to focus on FB which has so far delighted in obstructing the process of law in the most reprehensible manner ... by simply making it impossible to enforce and allowing even the most evident violations of laws against incitement to violence, among others, to hide behind a smoke-and-mirrors screen.

I myself have no sympathy for those who wish to hide behind a veil of anonymity while inciting violence and hatred against minority groups and individuals. Make no mistake, the offences that are being protected in the social media would lead to quick prosecution if the same comments and hate-speech was published in printed media. Why should FB be protected against this any more than any of the printed media ?

As I said in the introduction, it's about balancing fundamental rights and finding a socially acceptable final outcome ... a matter for the judiciary which in my view is alive and healthy in Germany even though it is not perfect by any means. Our US readers could do worse than understand and acknowledge that EU and German law and their respective constitutions DIFFER with respect to which rights are enshrined and protected by the constitution and the courts. In Germany there are good historical reasons that this is so and in my personal view that is a good thing.

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