[HN Gopher] Poland Justice Minister announces online freedom of ...
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Poland Justice Minister announces online freedom of speech bill
Author : andrenth
Score : 168 points
Date : 2021-01-11 20:29 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (polandin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (polandin.com)
| PeterStuer wrote:
| I hope this will be taken up by the EU. Poland on its own is too
| small fry for the social Media conglomerate.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Not if they have any sense, it's completely impractical to
| implement.
| t8e56vd4ih wrote:
| "Ziobro has also announced that he was considering the
| introduction of a law to target language used to refer to
| Poland's role in the Holocaust."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Ziobro
|
| there you have it. what a bigot.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I'm usually don't have a strong opinion but in this case.
| Consider the following hypothetical:
|
| Suppose the Big Tech companies are far-right instead of left.
| Instead of banning racism and insurrection, they are banning
| people calling for higher taxes on the wealthy and UBI. Twitter
| censors posts by supporters and politicians like Bernie Sanders.
| In response, Sanders supporters create an alternate social
| network like a liberal Parler, but it gets removed from the App
| Store and deactivated by AWS.
|
| In this scenario people wouldn't be saying "freedom of speech is
| freedom from compelled speech; you can say what you want but you
| just need to create your own platform / internet; etc." There
| would be legislation drafted aimed at breaking up or regulating
| these near-monopolistic private companies. The argument that
| private companies can censor what they want works with small
| businesses and competitive environments, but not when private
| companies essentially control the #1 means of communication.
|
| To be clear, I _don 't_ believe that violent insurrectionists
| should get a platform. I _don 't_ believe that racists and bigots
| should get a platform. I don't even support this bill because
| it's way too broad. But the amount of people supporting the idea
| that private companies which own the majority of means of
| discussion, can control the majority of discussion and censor
| whatever they want, is crazy. That is not the right reason why
| violent, racist people don't have the freedom to share their
| violent, offensive views.
|
| Remember the articles where we criticized Google from removing
| innocent indie apps from the Play store with a convoluted,
| bureaucratic appeal process - or criticized YouTube from removing
| videos because of gross misinterpretations of the DMCA. If Google
| Play and YouTube didn't dominate so much of their markets than
| those cases wouldn't be issues. But when a company has a near-
| monopoly on a form of communication, it either needs to be broken
| up or lose the ability to regulate said communication to an
| external agency.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Suppose the Big Tech companies are far-right instead of left.
|
| Wait, when did corporate capitalism become a left-wing
| position?
|
| > In this scenario people wouldn't be saying "freedom of speech
| is freedom from compelled speech; you can say what you want but
| you just need to create your own platform / internet; etc." T
|
| Yeah, just projecting a story of how people would act in a
| counterfactual in order to base an argument on it is
| problematic because its obviously quite easy to just assert
| whatever behavior would best suit the conclusion you want to
| draw.
|
| One could equally easily assume that left-wing opponents of the
| action you suggest would, instead of focussing on state
| regulation (presumably, if industry was that much more tilted
| against the left than it is now, through the influence of
| industrial money the government would be even more tilted
| against the left than it is now, which would make the
| government unhelpful in any case), the left would instead
| organize outside corporate communication channels (as it has in
| the past) for boycotts, demonstrations, and mobilization for
| both the interests that were being targeted _and_ against the
| firms that were trying to block them. Of course, in that case,
| the argument you are trying to build on top of your story about
| how the left would behave falls apart.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| > What you really mean is "supposed the Big Tech companies
| became far-right instead of centrist neoliberal capitalists".
|
| This is right. I should've said something like "what if they
| censored progressive reform instead of violence and hatred".
|
| > One could equally easily assume ... the left would instead
| organize outside corporate communication channels (as it has
| in the past) for boycotts, demonstrations, and mobilization
|
| Yes, but one could also assume the extremists are going to do
| the same thing to stage another insurrection. And, under the
| argument that they still have freedom of speech, there is
| nothing we could do.
|
| The point is that people are supporting the current,
| reasonable policy (censoring hate speech and calls for
| violence) with the wrong justification (private companies
| that control communication can do whatever they want). And
| this becomes a problem once the companies decide to use their
| censorship for profit.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I expect this type of regulation to be quickly put into place in
| every jurisdiction that actually believes in the principles of
| freedom of speech. The most salient part of this article:
|
| > Under its provisions, social media services will not be allowed
| to remove content or block accounts if the content on them does
| not break Polish law. In the event of removal or blockage, a
| complaint can be sent to the platform, which will have 24 hours
| to consider it. Within 48 hours of the decision, the user will be
| able to file a petition to the court for the return of access.
| The court will consider complaints within seven days of receipt
| and the entire process is to be electronic.
|
| As an aside: the excuse that private companies are not the
| government and "can do whatever they want" is the flimsiest of
| excuses. If businesses can do whatever they want, then surely all
| of them can ignore pandemic restrictions and open up if they so
| choose. And all the regulations already imposed on other
| privately-held utilities must not matter. And so on.
|
| Clearly big tech companies are the new digital public town square
| and speech that is not permitted on their platforms might as well
| not exist. For people to have a _useful_ right to the freedom of
| speech, these massive platforms do need to be regulated. Perhaps
| niche networks can go their own route but Twitter and Facebook
| are bigger than most nations and cannot be allowed to operate
| without due process.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I'm betting on internet balkanization long term. Even in the
| West, people can't agree on what you can and can't say on social
| media.
| offby37years wrote:
| Agreed. A twist on Conway's Law wherein communication mediums
| will come to mirror political fractures.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's already happened. China is about 1/4 of the internet.
|
| But even without legal barriers, the internet has most always
| been that way, due to language. Most people don't fire up a
| translator to visit sites on the other side of the planet; they
| just use the same sites that the rest of their community does.
| curiousfab wrote:
| Trolling and many other forms of online abuse may not be against
| any law but it is in the public interest to allow platforms to
| remove such content.
|
| This initiative may turn out to be the opposite of what it claims
| to stand for.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Yep. It would be illegal for dang to remove low-value or
| irrelevant posts.
| bilekas wrote:
| What its claiming to stand for and what its intended use are
| not mutually exclusive.
| baq wrote:
| the ruling party has very much in common with the GOP, so much
| so that the default assumption should be that the opposite is
| the intent.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| This can, and IMHO should, be addressed the way HN does it (at
| least by default): content that's downvoted is not visible by
| default, but not actually removed.
| COGlory wrote:
| > it is in the public interest to allow platforms to remove
| such content
|
| This is not always true, and that is the issue. If the
| government is going to, for instance, tell us we can't gather
| on public property, there has to be some way to guarantee that
| a digital commons will remain.
| paxys wrote:
| In what sense is a private commercial website public space?
| __s wrote:
| Let Poland run news.polishcombinator.com where they decide to
| not moderate anything not against Polish law then
|
| Are we going to have dang explain how any post he moderates
| violates Polish law? What about what he's moderating which
| isn't illegal in Poland?
| bzb6 wrote:
| Nobody seemed to care too much here about these issues when
| the gdpr was shoved into the faces of everybody.
| __s wrote:
| Lots of people were wary of the GDPR. But "don't track
| our population" is streets ahead of "don't moderate
| content"
| bzb6 wrote:
| When the livelihood of those business depends entirely on
| their ability to track their users to deliver better ads,
| I would say that's so much worse than letting
| conservative people express themselves freely.
| crististm wrote:
| If gathering in public space is gone we have bigger problems
| than wifi not working.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| It will be great for spammers.
| d33lio wrote:
| Unless you're a group that the gov't doesn't like?
| tokai wrote:
| "Under its provisions, social media services will not be allowed
| to remove content or block accounts if the content on them does
| not break Polish law."
|
| Sooo hop on a topic specific group. Get my off-topic posts
| removed. Being off-topic is not a crime in Poland. Get my
| shitposts reinstated.
|
| The bill better be more specific than the article is.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I think it would be better if internet went not in the
| direction of removing stuff but in the direction of providing
| users with tools to avoid the content they don't wish to engage
| with.
|
| We shouldn't rely on security through obscurity when it comes
| to dangerously stupid ideas.
| intended wrote:
| Cant work.
|
| If you are in the super market buying food, and people are
| giving out free trials of crack cocaine -> addiction city.
|
| You can very regularly see Nazi apologia which is so dressed
| up and benign sounding. "Teach the facts", "did this really
| happen" - the debunking of which requires access to people
| used to debunking it.
|
| The same rule applies to a variety of topics.
|
| Simply put, the average person is not prepared for lawyer
| level rhetorical devices in the wild.
|
| So either we remove content like that, or we live through
| whatever disasters a world of reality distortion creates.
| Most likely the survivors of that world will simply lock down
| the news down hard.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > "Teach the facts", "did this really happen"
|
| So... you're literally calling for censorship of political
| discussion.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > Simply put, the average person is not prepared for lawyer
| level rhetorical devices in the wild.
|
| Maybe we should figure out how to educate people to prepare
| them?
|
| Can we really build our safety on our ability to keep
| stupid people ignorant of stupid ideas?
|
| I think that's the kind of security through obscurity that
| is currently failing us so hard. Stupid people are finding
| stupid ideas anyways, sharing them, building upon them.
| Trying to keep them away from stupid ideas is like trying
| to keep your body perfectly germ free. You can't really do
| that. Not in the long term. You are better of figuring how
| to boost your immunity.
| Karunamon wrote:
| _> Simply put, the average person is not prepared for
| lawyer level rhetorical devices in the wild._
|
| This boils down to "censorship is okay because people might
| believe the wrong thing", and down that path be dragons.
|
| It's _incredibly_ paternalistic. It is not your job, nor
| the government 's, to protect people from
| reading/thinking/etc. the wrong things.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| I presume that depends on _who_ removes these posts. If the
| posts are removed by group owners or moderators who are not
| affiliated with the social media service itself, I think that
| should be totally fine according to that law. It 's the social
| media service itself that's not allowed to do that.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| How big does a group have to be before it's a social network?
| iso1631 wrote:
| So dang wouldn't be allowed to boot any technically legal
| posts on hacker news, or ban people?
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Regarding the majority party of the coalition which he is
| governing with.
|
| _The party has caused what constitutional law scholar Wojciech
| Sadurski termed a "constitutional breakdown"[58] by packing the
| Constitutional Court with its supporters, undermining
| parliamentary procedure, and reducing the president's and prime
| minister's offices in favor of power being wielded extra-
| constitutionally by party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.[46] After
| eliminating constitutional checks, the government then moved to
| curtail the activities of NGOs and independent media, restrict
| freedom of speech and assembly, and reduce the qualifications
| required for civil service jobs in order to fill these positions
| with party loyalists.[46][59] The media law was changed to give
| the governing party control of the state media, which was turned
| into a partisan outlet, with dissenting journalists fired from
| their jobs.[46][60] Due to these political changes, Poland has
| been termed an "illiberal democracy",[61][62] "plebiscitarian
| authoritarianism",[63] or "velvet dictatorship with a facade of
| democracy".[64]_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_Justice#In_majority_go...
| jariel wrote:
| This comment misrepresents the situation by failing to indicate
| that the 'Constitutional Crisis' started _before the current
| Law and Justice government took power_ by the previous
| governments anti-constitutional actions of trying to appoint
| Constitutional Court judges ahead of the end of their terms.
|
| For a summary of events: [1]
|
| Imagine if Barack Obama / George Bush decided to go ahead and
| punt some SCOTUS members ahead of the end of their terms,
| because they were afraid they were going to lose his upcoming
| elections? Imagine what what the consequences would be.
|
| 'Law and Justice' , after having won elections came in and did
| some nasty things (which you point out) and were sanctioned by
| the EU for it, however, it's hypocritical that the group that
| initially broke the law on a very fundamental issue were not
| also sanctioned.
|
| I don't remotely support any of this, but it's important to
| consider that this didn't just happen out of thin air.
|
| This 'free speech' bill is an interesting political issue, I
| wonder how much of this is pointed at the local population, or
| how much of it is trying to obtain some populist goodwill in
| other EU nations ... or if it's trying to gain some kind of
| 'moral high ground' leverage in their current 'issues' with the
| EU.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Polish_Constitutional_Cou...
| user982 wrote:
| _> Imagine if Barack Obama decided to go ahead and punt some
| SCOTUS members ahead of the end of their terms, because he
| was afraid he was going to lose his upcoming elections?_
|
| Imagine if Barack Obama had Supreme Court appointments
| blocked by Republicans on constitutionally flimsy grounds
| that were immediately ignored when the Trump administration
| was in identical situations.
|
| Would any "nasty things" done by a future Democrat
| administration then be laid at the feet of this original
| malfeasance, forevermore, or would it be misrepresentation
| not to mention it?
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| > This comment misrepresents the situation by failing to
| indicate that the 'Constitutional Crisis' started before the
| current Law and Justice government took power by the previous
| governments flagrant anti-constitutional actions of trying to
| appoint Supreme Court Judges ahead of the end of their terms.
|
| It was the Constitutional Court, not Supreme Court. Also, no,
| not really - that didn't start the crisis in any reasonable
| meaning of that word. In a correctly functioning democracy
| that would simply be blocked by Constitutional Court, and
| that's in fact exactly what happened. The problem started
| when currently ruling party replaced not only the extraneous
| judges, but also those judges who were lawfully supposed to
| be appointed by previous government. Of course the
| Constitutional Court deemed that unconstitutional, but that
| didn't stop the ruling party at all, and the rest is history.
| jariel wrote:
| "Also, no, not really - that didn't start the crisis in any
| reasonable meaning of that word."
|
| The entire world disagrees with this.
|
| The issue, in public, is very clear - actions by the the
| previous government in the summer of 2015 were declared
| anti-constitutional, and later actions highly undemocratic.
|
| There is no doubt that this was the 'start of the crisis'
| by any objective measure.
|
| It doesn't matter how much we may not like certain 'current
| authorities' - History is History - people should stop
| trying to rewrite it to suit their narrative. Suppressing
| these unfortunate events is not going to help anyone's
| cause in the long run.
| space_fountain wrote:
| So in keeping with the law at the time (well the law they
| passed), they elected 5 justices to replace up coming
| vacancies. Later it was ruled that 2 of those nominations
| were unconstitutional (I think because they were for justices
| who's terms expired after the new legislature was seated),
| but the newly elected Law and Justice government refused to
| seat any of them and elected their own slate of 5 justices.
| When the constitutional tribunal refused to include those 5
| justices until the dispute was resolved, rather than back
| down the new government raised the threshold to conduct
| business so that the new justices would have to be included
| and even worse chose to interpret a clause requiring a
| majority to mean a supper majority and gave themselves the
| power to remove justices.
|
| The constitutional tribunal ruled this new law
| unconstitutional, but because that ruling was not made under
| the new rules introduced by the again according to them
| unconstitutional law the new government ignored it.
|
| It's one thing to pass unconstitutional laws and quite
| another to pass unconstitutional laws and refuse to listen to
| listen when you're called out on them
| jariel wrote:
| This is all fine and good - but the previous governments
| 'changing of the law' governing Judicial appointments, and
| then controversially 'stacking the court' to _14 out of 15_
| appointments in their favour, is clearly the first salvo in
| a constitutional war.
|
| There is no doubt.
|
| It doesn't matter that 'we don't like the jerks in charge'
| or that 'they've done bad stuff' - the fact is the crisis
| was obviously initiated before they came to power.
|
| Much like pretty much everyone here hates Trump (I
| certainly do), but he was unfairly castigated in the press
| with the 'Mueller investigations' which de-facto absolved
| him of any Russian shenanigans. It doesn't matter that he
| lies about election results - he was not colluding with
| Russians.
|
| If either side in in the US tried to pull what the previous
| Polish government did - it would set off major events,
| possibly conflict, worse than what we're seeing today for
| sure.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Well Obama did ask Bader-Ginsburg to step down when democrats
| had control of the senate (I think she'd only had cancer once
| at the time), but I guess you're referring to something
| stronger than just asking judges to step down.
|
| I feel like the US Supreme Court nomination system only works
| through a combination of frequent changes of power and most
| judges believing in the system and following the unwritten
| part of the constitution, and that the US example isn't
| really a good one to copy in other democracies.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| What happened is roughly this: in Poland's Constitutional
| Tribunal (which is as close of an equivalent of US Supreme
| Court as you can get in a country with a civil law system),
| the judges are not elected for life, but only for fixed
| term. As the term of the elected government was coming to
| an end, so were the terms of 5 of the justices in the
| Tribunal. However, two of these terms ended within the
| elected government's term, and three after it ended. As a
| result, the ruling party (PO) had a clear right to nominate
| 2 justices, and hardly any right to nominate the other
| three. It decided to nominate all 5 nevertheless.
|
| The party that won the subsequent election, PiS, refused to
| recognize any of the 5 justices nominated by PO, and
| nominated 5 of their own. What happened afterwards you can
| read in the Wikipedia article.
| didibus wrote:
| Did both of those things happen through some loophole? Or
| does the elected party just has the right to kind of do
| whatever they want unstopped?
| anonunivgrad wrote:
| You're only really a liberal democracy if the ruling elite can
| coerce private actors to take the repressive actions instead of
| doing it officially. You must also allow your civil service to
| be an unaccountable branch of government controlled by the
| professional managerial class and unresponsive to the commands
| of elected leadership (unless they're from the correct side).
| Furthermore, you must allow lawyers to use the judiciary to
| rewrite laws to suit their political preferences (e.g. your
| Constitution must be found to guarantee the right to gay
| marriage, an idea laughable to people who wrote it and to
| everyone until 15 years ago). Finally, you must protect all
| classes of people from unjust termination and unwarranted
| denial of service except for everyone whose political views
| align with the wrong half of the country. Thank God we live in
| a real liberal democracy.
| bigfudge wrote:
| Gay marriage has a popular majority in the UK and Ireland in
| both polls and referenda. Is it that different in the US?
| Interpreting old documents is hard, and where there is
| silence or substantial ambiguity it seems right to err on the
| side of popular opinion.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Gay marriage had a popular majority in favour before it
| became legal (though obviously a popular majority doesn't
| necessarily mean much in the US system.) Compare this to
| interracial marriage which was not approved of by the
| majority of the population for many years after it was made
| fully legal across the country .
| courtf wrote:
| This lays out the timeline of the shift in popular
| opinion for gay marriage:
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/117328/marriage.aspx
|
| Here's polling on interracial marriage:
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-
| blacks-...
|
| Interracial marriage became legal nationwide in 1967 with
| Loving v Virginia, but wasn't approved of by the majority
| of Americans until 1997.
|
| Edit: I only add this to support the the comment replied
| to.
| runarberg wrote:
| Can we really trust polling data from the 60s?
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Thanks for the stats. I guess I was a bit wrong in what I
| wrote above.
| courtf wrote:
| I think you got it right, just wanted to provide some
| supporting data, even if polling is a little fuzzy.
| drocer88 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition
| _8
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > where there is silence or substantial ambiguity it seems
| right to err on the side of popular opinion
|
| If "it seems right" is a good way to run a country, why do
| we even have laws?
|
| I don't think abusing silence and substantial ambiguity is
| a coherent approach to legislation. If something important
| in the law is ambiguous, the correct approach in my view is
| to make it unambiguous by the usual legislative process.
| dmurray wrote:
| > Is it that different in the US?
|
| It's certainly different from state to state.
|
| Most cases that reach the US Supreme Court aren't about
| whether X is good or bad (let's say X is abortion or gay
| marriage) but whether X is so good that the Federal
| government should compel states to allow it, or so bad that
| it should compel states to forbid it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Most cases that reach the US Supreme Court aren't about
| whether X is good or bad (let's say X is abortion or gay
| marriage) but whether X is so good that the Federal
| government should compel states to allow it, or so bad
| that it should compel states to forbid it.
|
| No, most of them aren't about good or bad, which is a
| policy judgement generally reserved for the political
| branches, at all.
|
| Its about whether X or Y is consistent with the law
| (including, as the paramount law, the Constitution of the
| United States.)
| rayiner wrote:
| 7 of 27 EU states have a constitutional ban on same-add
| marriage. The EU Human Rights Court has not stepped in to
| overturn those bans: https://eclj.org/marriage/the-echr-
| unanimously-confirms-the-.... In 2016, it held unanimously
| that the European Convention on Human Rights doesn't
| protect same-sex marriage. In the EU countries where it has
| been legalized, that was done by statue.
|
| In the US, those issues are handled through court cases,
| regardless of where public opinion stands. For example,
| elective abortions (without health risks or something else)
| in the second trimester or later is very unpopular in the
| US and the EU. Only about a quarter of people think it
| should be generally legal after the first trimester:
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/235469/trimesters-key-
| abortion-.... That matches up with the law in most of the
| EU, where the limit for elective abortions is 10-14 weeks.
| (As I recall, the UK is the exception at 24 weeks.)
|
| The US constitution doesn't say anything about abortion, or
| anything that could really be construed to be about
| abortion, but the Supreme Court has interpreted it to
| protect abortion up to viability, usually 22-24 weeks. So
| the Supreme Court has interpreted the constitution, which
| says nothing about abortion, to create an abortion right so
| broad France or Germany's or Denmark's abortion laws would
| be invalid in the US.
|
| The topping on that cake is that the US is that the US is
| the most religious developed country in the world, more so
| than countries like Poland.
|
| Which is why Supreme Court appointments get so heated here.
| anonunivgrad wrote:
| You can't really defend the US Supreme Court's actions on
| gay marriage from any legal viewpoint other than "because
| five justices said so" and "what are you gonna do about
| it." Popular opinion is not the talisman of judicial
| interpretation. If the public wants its way, they can vote
| for it. For what it's worth, the public did not support gay
| marriage until after the federal courts made it a fait
| accompli. E.g. In a referendum, _California_ voted to _ban_
| gay marriage in 2008. What the federal courts in America
| did is overturn the standing will of the people as it
| existed in the laws of the majority of US states.
| courtf wrote:
| There's a straightforward argument for gay marriage based
| on bans essentially being discrimination based on sex:
|
| A woman may marry a man, but a man may not.
|
| Chief justice Roberts made this point during arguments in
| obergefell v. hodges.
|
| And you're incorrect about the timeline. Gay marriage was
| approved of by a majority of Americans somewhere around
| 2011-2012. The supreme court decision was 2015. See my
| other comment in this chain for polling data.
| eropple wrote:
| What "the federal courts in America" did is state that
| the rights of other human beings are not up for a vote.
| anonunivgrad wrote:
| The Supreme Court is not a tribunal on moral philosophy.
| It's tasked with interpreting the law, no more and no
| less.
|
| And in fact, it was up for a vote. Except the vote was of
| 9 people with lifetime tenure.
| pacificat0r wrote:
| A similar stupid law was proposed by a Romanian minister some
| years ago but with the goal of stopping you calling people
| (basically ministers) idiots on website comments.
|
| They eventually realized it's not enforceable and it just
| created some fuss.
|
| The reason that died as it started is because there's no way
| how such a thing ever work or be enforced. Does it not matter
| where I host my site? What can Poland do about my website
| hosted in UK (or any other country)?
|
| At worst this just destroys any hosting services that operate
| in that country.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Yep the government has for a while been dismantling any
| opposition by stacking the courts, replacing critical state
| media, attacking journalists and so on. The support for this
| kind of law is actually just consequent because social media is
| the platform that lends itself most to riling up a mob.
|
| It's simple majoritarianism, rallying a hyper-loyal voter-base
| and disadvantaging scholars, intellectuals, scientists and so
| on.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Oh no, a right-wing conservative government is worried about
| censorship of their homophobic ideology. boo hoo
| busythrowaway22 wrote:
| As someone hiding behind a throwaway account in an effort to
| avoid doxing and harassment, and getting my more _legitimate_
| online presence removed due to hysterics:
|
| I welcome the _idea_ of this change. Though I think it is wrong
| the way it is implemented. I do not speak Polish, and maybe
| perhaps the Polish law is more nuanced than the article
| describes.
|
| There should be a law that says you cannot produce a unilateral
| terms of service (you know, the shit everyone skips over when
| they sign up for a website to get their data harvested) that says
| your account can be terminated at any time for whatever reason.
| It should be a bilateral agreement:
|
| I agree to follow the rules of your service You agree to not
| arbitrarily remove me from your service
|
| There are dozens of examples and minutia to digest that have lead
| us to where we are today. Voices are being silenced because
| feelings are too easily hurt. Misinformation too easily spread,
| and egos too easily bruised. People are specifically being
| targeted for hearsay, and because they lack a megaphone in the
| Court of Public Opinion, they lose catastrophically with real
| world consequences.
|
| Hiding behind monopolistic corporations with snide remarks about
| "private platforms can do what want" is genuine cowardice. For
| right now you are nothing more than a jester, and one bad joke
| away from your head rolling off, gleefully oblivious of your own
| downfall.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > I agree to follow the rules of your service
|
| You have to be careful there, too, though: Amazon is claiming
| that Parler (to use the most currently relevant example) _did_
| violate their terms of service, because their terms of service
| are so vague and broad that they can be used to apply to almost
| anything.
| methehack wrote:
| I found this Emily Bazelon article from the nytimes really
| thoughtful. It's about free speech laws and disinformation
| campaigns.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/free-speech.html
| goldcd wrote:
| Right wing, nationalist leader decides to create law that would
| prevent his posts getting removed by the platform owner for
| violating their ToS, unless actually illegal under national law..
|
| Can't help but wonder what recent deletions he could possibly be
| thinking of..
| __s wrote:
| This article is from December
| goldcd wrote:
| Then I'll raise my beer in admiration, to this slightly
| smarter and more forward thinking right-wing, populist,
| nationalist :)
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| It's miraculous to see someone fight this hard for our human
| rights.
|
| No man or woman has the right to take away your freedom of
| expression.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| Have you ever been in a restaurant? Yes, they do.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| > In the event of removal or blockage, a complaint can be sent to
| the platform, which will have 24 hours to consider it. Within 48
| hours of the decision, the user will be able to file a petition
| to the court for the return of access. The court will consider
| complaints within seven days of receipt and the entire process is
| to be electronic.
|
| It seems like this is not a burden for Facebook but requires
| manual work from the court.
|
| Imagine if Facebook gleefully takes down anything / everything &
| forwards the petitions to the polish court. It is zero cost to
| them after the initial engineering and now they are absolved of
| moderating Polish FB.
| ayende wrote:
| The court would start handing out 2.2 million USD per offence
| very quickly. Even at Facebook scale, that will hurt
| devwastaken wrote:
| Freedom of speech is also freedom from compelled speech. This
| kind of law means the government can compel any private party to
| speak what they want and punish them for not doing so.
|
| This is also demonstrably damaging to the effected party. It
| costs money to host content. Forcing a business to host content
| costs them - is poland going to fund this? No.
|
| If the polish government has a problem with it then they should
| make their own government backed social media platform. Not
| violate people's rights.
| brightball wrote:
| I'm curious about freedom from compelled speech in the US.
| bzb6 wrote:
| It would be compelled speech if I pretended my racist tweets
| are the official stance of Twitter. I don't see how keeping
| them up is forcing Twitter to say something when they are just
| moving bytes around.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Freedom of speech is also freedom from compelled speech."
|
| Uh, aren't for example nutritional labels a form of compelled
| speech?
| pavlov wrote:
| Yes, exactly. It's a very restricted and strictly formatted
| form of compelled speech on specific products. Like other
| limitations on free speech, it exists because lawmakers have
| judged the benefits to be greater than the downsides of
| limiting manufacturers' free speech.
|
| Now imagine a law that forces anyone with a website who ever
| had an unmoderated comment section to host and display those
| comments forever. That's the Polish law. Isn't that on a
| completely different level of compelled speech?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Yeah, I know, and yet someone downvoted me for saying so
| o_O.
| hinkley wrote:
| Consumer protection laws are written in blood. You can't
| leave arsenic out of your ingredients list any more than I
| can call myself a doctor and tell you to start eating roofing
| tar.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Yes, I agree, I was only reacting to the OPs claim that the
| government cannot compel somebody to speak in a certain
| way.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| All warning or informational labels are forced speech.
|
| But, it's worth remembering that people used to do things
| like add morphine to products without labeling it. Most
| countries limit free speech when it can harm others directly.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Yes, definitely. If the impression from my comment is that
| I disagree with this kind of obligation, I expressed myself
| in an unclear way.
| devwastaken wrote:
| As all laws there are limits to its use. Nutritional labels
| are comprised of factual content to the product. The
| government can't force political or other government opinion
| onto it. Or at the least politically fueled labelling should
| not be allowed. For example forcing a company to host images
| on their cigarette packs. This should be unconstitutional.
|
| General opinion especially political is protected, or at
| least is meant to be. People can make political products, but
| they have to be factual in their contents.
|
| This isn't very related to the issue of social media - the
| posts are from other people including the government. You
| can't compel a company to host your opinions. You could
| compel them to list factual information about its
| content/origin though.
| rvba wrote:
| This is all done so political trolls can spam freely before
| elections.
|
| Imagine this site -> trolls come and promote a certain party
| (guess which) - and mods cannot delete it. It doesnt matter that
| this site is about hackernews, or some other website is about cat
| pictures -> you still cannot delete the political spam.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| That kind of "law" is idiotic at its core, you'd move it to
| archive section under a layer of 10 links to access it as
| compressed zip with aggregate of 10k other comments created
| around that time?
| ayende wrote:
| And the court would say that this is the same as removing it
| Courts are not programs, they are used to people trying to
| get by on technicalities. That rarely works
| chroem- wrote:
| HN has turned into a complete authoritarian echo chamber because
| all dissenting opinions have been banned. After years of using
| this website, I'm disgusted by what it has turned into. Go ahead
| and ban me, I don't care anymore. I'm not coming back here again.
| lagadu wrote:
| An far right government being authoritarian, quelle surprise.
| ttt0 wrote:
| If authoritarianism means that people can freely speak their
| mind on the internet, then let so be it.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| Only free speech that doesn't violate polish law. Is that
| what you want?
| ttt0 wrote:
| That doesn't make any sense. What is that even supposed to
| mean? Yes, Polish people have only the free speech that
| doesn't violate the Polish law. Some people might think
| that the laws could be more strict or more relaxed, but
| this is just how it is.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| The worst kind of authoritarianism, where the tyrant protects
| the rights of the people, at the cost of rights of the (mostly
| foreign) corporations.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| You clearly have no idea about PiS. They started off their
| cadence with pardoning criminals from their party and
| dismantling the constitutional tribunal.
| [deleted]
| tathougies wrote:
| I am glad Poland is doing something, but I'm not sure I like this
| bill either. This is just censorship by another name.
|
| I think we need to make a distinction -- as the US Supreme Court
| did -- between large, publicly held corporations and small
| closely held corporations. In Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court said
| that only closely held corporations (those held by a small,
| definable number of people) had freedom of religion and
| association. That is their justification for why Hobby Lobby did
| not need to provide BC coverage. Because it was owned only by one
| small family, forcing them to take the revenue (which they own)
| to pay would directly violate the religious beliefs of that small
| number of people.
|
| On the other hand, Amazon does not have freedom of religion,
| because Amazon has thousands of shareholders with no universal
| religious inclination. A fundamentalist christian owner of Amazon
| stock cannot reasonably ask Amazon to stop paying for birth
| control.
|
| But, I've only thought about this for a few hours. I'm interested
| in what other policies can be implemented to serve both the
| rights of hosts and the rights of content creators.
| jariel wrote:
| Legitimacy aside - purely from a political perspective - this is
| pretty smart.
|
| Poland is at odds with the EU bureaucracy over a bunch of things,
| and 'Freedom of Expression' is definitely a populist issue a lot
| of people can feasibly rally behind.
|
| Whatever the reality is, the optics are good.
|
| It puts the EU in a position of having to 'defend censorship' (or
| at least detractors could say as much).
| timeon wrote:
| > a lot of people can feasibly rally behind.
|
| I do not think that is the case. 'Free speech' is not new topic
| in EU, but most people who are talking about it are neo-nazis.
|
| This proposal is obviously dictature of free speech.
| jessaustin wrote:
| True free speech is correct speech?
| jariel wrote:
| So I think you just proved my point:
|
| "This proposal is obviously dictature of free speech. "
|
| ? That seems pretty 'newspeak' to me.
|
| They are making it so that anyone can post anything unless
| it's literally against the laws.
|
| And somehow this is 'authoritarian' or 'dicature'?
|
| Because it seems just the opposite.
|
| My point was, they're going to put the EU in an awkward
| position with this - just as you've put yourself in a little
| bit of an awkward position by trying to imply that 'freedom
| of expression' is 'dictature'.
|
| Now - I don't really like these guys one bit - but - the law
| seems at least superficially very reasonable.
|
| We're all super suspicious because this came from 'the bad
| guys' - fair enough, but it is what it is.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| Note that polandin.com is site managed by TVP, Poland state
| propaganda TV station.
|
| Recently, they compared Capitol invasion by aggressive mob to
| legally elected opposition in Polish parliament.
| https://twitter.com/tvp_info/status/1346927489902211073
| rektide wrote:
| I made a giant 50 foot tall pile of doo-doo sculpture, and I
| insist the town square host it in perpetuity, because to not do
| so would infringe upon my "free speech".
| newbie578 wrote:
| As previously several people commented, big tech shot itself in
| the foot by banning everyone they don't agree with and
| suspiciously acting in the same time (Twitter and Facebook).
|
| I don't know what they expected, other politicians saw how much
| power platforms hold and they are not going to sit still and wait
| for it to happen to them.
|
| Jack Dorsey is not an elected leader, and he has no right to act
| as the jury, judge and executioner.
|
| I for one welcome this kind of bill, I am sad that this brings
| the balkanization of the internet, but it is inevitable.
| effie wrote:
| Jack Dorsey doesn't control Twitter now.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Jack had every right, it's his website. He pays for it, so he
| gets to decide what appears on it. The same would apply to
| anyone else running a website. This is not a new idea.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| But he doesn't own Twitter. He's a representative of the
| shareholders. And TWTR is down 6.5% today on the news. So
| clearly this decision wasn't in the interest of Twitter's
| actual owners.
| ben_w wrote:
| We don't get to see the world where he didn't do that. For
| example, let's pretend his lawyers warned him that TWTR as
| a company and himself as an individual could be held liable
| for any future riot organised on Twitter. That would be
| worse than 6.5%, surely?
| jdsully wrote:
| Jack only owns 2% of twitter, further Twitter is a public
| company. We subject public companies to higher standards than
| closely held ones because ownership is broad and diluted.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| >Jack Dorsey is not an elected leader, and he has no right to
| act as the jury, judge and executioner.
|
| This type of rhetoric has gotten absurd. Jack Dorsey is not
| executing anyone.
| qertoip wrote:
| This "justice" minister is responsible for _essentially removing
| independent courts_ from the Polish legal system. The judges in
| Poland are forced to rule as requested by the government. This is
| by far THE worst shit show since the fall of communism in Poland
| (1989).
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Gab is made by Polish Guy. Here is article he wrote about social
| credit score, its implications, and how Visa is blocking him and
| his family.
|
| https://news.gab.com/2020/06/26/social-credit-score-is-in-am...
| jacquesm wrote:
| This looks good at the surface, but given the current Polish
| government I would not be so sure that it is created with good
| intentions in mind. Let's wait for how it is applied before
| deciding if this is a good or a bad thing.
| goldcd wrote:
| I don't think anybody thinks this has good intentions
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This does not compel social media to follow Polish law throughout
| the world. It only means that social media should be able to
| filter content per country as they should anyway because what's
| legal and what's illegal varies from country to country.
|
| An example, which often pops up: Denying the Holocaust falls
| within free speech protected by the 1st Amendment in the US. On
| the other hand, it is a criminal offence in many European
| countries.
|
| It may not matter if you have no legal presence in countries
| outside your own but the FAANG have legal presence in most in not
| all Western countries at the very least and must follow the laws
| of these countries.
| notahacker wrote:
| But in this case, the country isn't demanding FAANG censor
| stuff illegal in Poland for Polish audiences (which I'm sure
| already happens to a degree), they're arguing they should be
| punished for removing anything which _isn 't_ illegal in Poland
| (if a Pole objects). And I doubt Poland has laws against
| trolling or spam...
| offby37years wrote:
| As a country that has suffered the turmoil of both Nazism and
| Communism, it would be wise to heed their direction. They know
| the smell of tyranny all too well. The proverbial canary.
| baq wrote:
| The same Justice Minister wants to take away the right to
| refuse a ticket from the police, so don't be so quick in your
| judgment.
| the-dude wrote:
| What does that even mean, refusing a ticket?
|
| If I refuse a ticket in NL, I will still get the fine-notice
| in the mail.
| baq wrote:
| you can take the issue to court instead. if you're win, you
| pay nothing, if you're wrong, you pay the fine and court
| expenses - or whatever the court finds wrong at the same
| time. accepting the ticket means basically confessing that
| you're guilty. the idea is that policemen are wrong
| sometimes and refusing the ticket gives you an out; it
| keeps the police honest. with the new law you could in
| theory get a speeding ticket for walking and it'd be up to
| you to prove that you haven't done it.
| the-dude wrote:
| If I take the issue to court, I can either prove I didn't
| do the 'crime', or argue there is insufficient evidence.
| But police officers testimonies carry a lot of weight, so
| that is not a fruitful path.
|
| It is still unclear to me what you are exactly saying.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| Currently when you don't accept ticket, no penalty is yet
| applied, and police needs to file court case against you.
| Proposed changes make it that ticket can't be refused and
| penalty is always applied, but it can be afterwards
| appealed to the court. This is less favorable as it
| shifts court process burden from police (they need to
| prove you are guilty in the first place) to you (you are
| appealing already applied penalty).
| jdsully wrote:
| The new process seems equivalent to Canada and the United
| States. I agree its less favourable though.
| the-dude wrote:
| Has been like this for 'overtredingen' ( minor offences
| like jaywalking, speeding, running red lights ) in NL for
| decades.
|
| _Wet Mulder_ for those interested.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| Yes, this proposal taken alone might seem benign, but
| people are riled up about this because context matter:
| many of the pandemic restrictions are unlawful, because
| they are either introduced in decrees issued by prime
| minister instead of laws passed in parliament, or
| infringe on freedoms guaranteed in constitution without
| introducing state of emergency. As such, many courts are
| throwing out cases brought by police about violating
| pandemic restrictions. Proceeding law changes about
| refusing tickets now, just feels like blatantly like:
| "Oh, they are not accepting tickets based on unlawful
| regulations? Let's make it harder to refuse ticket!"
| the-dude wrote:
| I understand the change is unwelcome.
|
| For us an appeal is just a letter to the public
| attorney(?), which will either result in them dropping
| it, or a case, all of which you can do yourself.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| Do people in Holland protest when their government tries
| to shift some bureaucratic burden to the citizens, when
| it was previously on the professionals paid by the
| citizens' money? Well, Polish people seemingly do mind.
|
| I got a ticket, I'm sure I'm innocent: -
| old way: police "organizes" the court appointment, I wait
| - new way: I "organize" the court appointment, police
| waits
| dudek1337 wrote:
| This government is heading into a tyranny. And most of voters
| are happy with it, sadly.
| gedy wrote:
| This is a valuable and reasonable opinion, and does not deserve
| the downvotes.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| This government has learned from that time, but looking at
| the state of TVP and these "tematy zastepcze" they seem
| rather fond of Goebbels' methods. Paint "the west" as the
| enemy to your "great traditions" and use the wedges like this
| law to distract people from creeping towards
| authoritarianism.
| alacombe wrote:
| > ... creeping towards authoritarianism
|
| Because all the shit going on in the US isn't ?
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| I don't see how it's relevant. Would you be fine being a
| kulak in Soviet Russia being scheduled for execution
| because at least the Japanese are currently organizing
| mass murder in China as well?
| perardi wrote:
| _They know the smell of tyranny all too well._
|
| Yeah, because they've been the ones cooking it up.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/world/europe/eu-poland-la...
| jpomykala wrote:
| Zbigniew Ziobro is one of the worst polish politician
| guscost wrote:
| If you are wondering where all of this is headed, read "Snow
| Crash" by Neal Stephenson.
| ben_w wrote:
| It's a good book, but really, I don't see even the slightest
| connection between this and any of the plot points.
| guscost wrote:
| No, not the plot! _The setting_. Really fun story though.
| praptak wrote:
| This actual rationale behind this is to protect bigots from
| getting kicked off social media for hate speech against LGBT
| people.
|
| Article 256 of the Polish criminal code makes it illegal to
| incite hatred based on religion, race or nationality but not
| sexual orientation.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Go to your HN profile and turn on "showdead". This is how the
| entire internet would now look like.
| tester756 wrote:
| [18.12.2020]
| baybal2 wrote:
| An important note. Recent events had nothing to do with that.
|
| I almost jumped at the idea of Poles having having to "thank"
| Trump Donald for that.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| Sounds like a good way to get your service absolutely soaked by
| spam and off topic posts. Without proper moderation public social
| channels will just degrade into noise.
| JaggedJax wrote:
| This was my first thought too. Does it make it illegal to
| remove spam content?
| wbl wrote:
| So now Fetlife and Facebook need the same picture policy? Can't
| imagine that going well.
| DenisM wrote:
| That might be the wrong way to go about it, but I sympathize with
| the sentiment. If you pretend to be a public square you must act
| like a public square.
|
| As it happens the US Supreme Court is also sympathetic -
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama
|
| Now many here already raised an obvious objection - someone
| tending to a small blog should be able to police it. That is
| sensible. So I suppose we need to find a good way to draw a line
| between a private club and a public square.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| This will continue happening around the world. Who knew -
| sovereign states don't want American megacorporations deciding
| what ideas are appropriate?
|
| Prepare for massive Balkanization of the Internet.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| That is sort of inevitable. Remember the cartoons mocking
| Muhammad?
|
| It is not as if there is a worldwide consensus on whether
| mocking him is even legal. Some people consider it a crime
| worthy of death and others their natural right. You can't get
| much bigger polarization than that. Compared to the Cartoon
| Question, differences between R and D are not that big.
| nkohari wrote:
| You say that like it's a bad thing. The web used to be much
| less centralized than it is today, and not to its detriment. If
| we're talking about breaking up the physical Internet, that's
| clearly bad, but having alternatives to the
| Facebook/Twitter/etc monolith would be a clear net-win.
| root_axis wrote:
| This is a dishonest line. The internet is federated, they don't
| have to use websites created by American megacorporations.
| paganel wrote:
| > websites created by American megacorporations
|
| Where's the money for creating non-American websites?
|
| Yes, I'm still bitter after 10 or so years that the local
| business directory website/start-up I was working on got part
| of its data copied by the up and coming Google Places. We
| folded, of course, Google Places "transferred" its data to
| the whole Google ecosystem. I was telling my boss at the time
| "they can't let Google do this, is theft", they let Google do
| that, and then some.
| jessaustin wrote:
| I don't find this dishonest at all. Not everyone in USA
| agrees with the Great Suspensioning. Why would we expect
| everyone in Poland to agree with it?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| What is a lie? I think it's highly unlikely that Facebook and
| Twitter will be used worldwide in say, 2040. They had first
| mover advantage, but as it becomes easier to create a social
| network _and_ the law catches up, I'd expect to see a lot of
| local /regional alternatives.
|
| If the EU said tomorrow, in 1 year we are banning Facebook
| and launching our own version, what can Facebook do about it?
| [deleted]
| daliusd wrote:
| Oh that's stupid. Companies will end up with some creative
| solutions - if it can not be removed it can be made hard to
| access. Honestly it looks like stupid people in power are sad
| that their antiLGBT posts are removed.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I get your point, but there's a middle ground here that I feel
| countries should rightly be able to defend, instead of letting
| Silicon Valley American companies unilaterally decide their
| fate. LGBT advocates in America have become extreme, even
| floating ideas like giving all children puberty blockers
| (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/transgender-
| activist...) while other countries like the UK are recognizing,
| rather sanely, that there is no way a minor can give consent on
| puberty blockers
| (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/01/children-
| who-w...). These days, you'd be labeled a "transphobe" for
| suggesting something so obvious in the US, and your posts would
| be deleted from Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/whatever. So I can
| see reasonable reasons why other countries and their citizens
| would want to retain local control on allowed/disallowed
| speech.
| sudenmorsian wrote:
| > Jones, however, told the Washington Examiner that she is
| not advocating for all children to be put on such
| medications.
|
| > "I was not making an argument that all youth should be
| given puberty blockers. This was not an actual proposal, and
| it is not something I advocate or endorse," Jones said.
|
| > "This was an argument that claims of trans youth's
| unreadiness to give consent to puberty blockers, if followed
| consistently, lead to the conclusion that all youth are
| likewise not ready for the experience of puberty itself.
| Because that conclusion is absurd -- again, this was not
| something that I advocated or endorsed -- the argument that
| trans youth can't consent to puberty blockers is faulty,"
| Jones added.
|
| With all due respect, in this situation you're claiming that
| a fringe view in the US (which even the alleged proponent
| says was not an actual proposal) is the accepted norm, and
| that anyone who objects is called a transphobe. That's not
| the case at all.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| My main point is something different. I'm saying that
| things have gone so far that people express extreme
| suggestions like that one, and along with that extremism
| they are less receptive to _any_ discussion or research
| challenging their narratives. For example, I 've seen
| concerned parents and organizations push back on policies
| that let children secretly consent to puberty blockers
| without notice to parents. I've literally seen posts
| discussing this get deleted from Facebook or Instagram, due
| to activists mass reporting them. The practice of banning
| "wrongspeak" that doesn't align with favored groups/causes
| is very real and it is a big problem.
| blfr wrote:
| _Companies will end up with some creative solutions - if it can
| not be removed it can be made hard to access._
|
| Courts usually don't like to be jerked around like that. Sure,
| there are always loopholes, and it's difficult to tell whether
| authors will have the tenacity to keep patching the law but
| Ziobro's party (very surprisingly, I mean even their supporters
| barely believed this) managed to really clamp down on various
| VAT evasion schemes.
| tester756 wrote:
| I don't think you'd have easy time arguing in the court if you
| did something like that
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| I think geoblocking Poland would be easy enough.
| tester756 wrote:
| I wouldn't cry if fb, twitter, insta and so on were
| unavaliable in Poland
|
| I think that would be step to the right direction
| mirekrusin wrote:
| You mean geounblocking Poland.
| H8crilA wrote:
| I am wondering how will this version of the e-court function in
| practice.
|
| The existing e-court is an amazing tool for removing the most
| obvious cases from the system, and the way it works is that any
| party can at any time raise objection, which can literally be two
| words - "I object" signed mr. X and the case falls back to
| regular proceedings. Then of course most cases finish without
| such an objection and voila - the system gets extra magical
| throughput. The power of defaults.
|
| Looks like they want to not have the fallback here? Otherwise it
| is certainly impossible to resolve a case in 7 days.
|
| Might not matter in the end as corpos will likely just comply.
| [deleted]
| mabbo wrote:
| > Under its provisions, social media services will not be allowed
| to remove content or block accounts if the content on them does
| not break Polish law.
|
| This is kind of insane.
|
| So if I offer a free website- a private company operating as I
| like- I would be forbidden from removing content from my own
| website that I don't like because the person who wrote it- again,
| not a paying customer- wants it to be there. Not only does that
| person have free speech, but I have to foot the bill for them to
| promote their free speech.
|
| > does not break Polish law
|
| This is the real key piece. Poland's government can just ban
| saying anything that goes against their own viewpoints. Now their
| supporters can't have their comments removed, and their
| detractors will.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > This is kind of insane.
|
| It's _especially_ insane because Polish law is not a superset
| of every other country 's law. If a web site is forced to
| remove content because it violates a law specific to the
| country the site is based in -- boom, now they've broken the
| law in Poland.
| _Microft wrote:
| Nitpicking: you would want it to be a _subset_ of every other
| countries' laws for that as it needs to be the intersection
| of all laws to be compatible with all of them at once.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| Social media is heavily balkanized along language borders.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| You're right, there's no way this could reasonably enforced.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| But to determine if something is legal or illegal sometimes
| takes years, doesn't it?
| offby37years wrote:
| There is a distinction between website and the quoted "social
| media services".
| perardi wrote:
| Really?
|
| What if I have a blog with comments? That is a website that
| involves social interaction. If I remove a comment on there,
| that is "removing content".
| thebouv wrote:
| Really? Define it then.
|
| Facebook is a website by all technical terms.
|
| Where is the hard defined line between social media services
| and a website?
|
| What is a website that hosts a forum?
|
| What is Discord?
|
| What if I run a WordPress website with the BuddyPress plugin?
|
| What about comments on my blog articles?
| ben_w wrote:
| A while ago, I got a lot of flack here for suggesting that
| github _wasn't_ a social media website.
| scotty79 wrote:
| You could discriminate by just listing names of the
| platforms that this law is intended for or go by number of
| (polish?) users.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| There is not even a draft of this law available, so you can't
| be sure.
| franklampard wrote:
| Is HN a social media service?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Put another way: In the US at least, r/jailbait didn't actually
| break any laws (well, maybe some individual posts did, but the
| whole idea of that subreddit was essentially to ogle underage
| women/children but in a way that was not explicitly illegal).
| So with something like this law _all_ social media sites would
| be forced to host the equivalent of r /jailbait.
| root_axis wrote:
| Actually, r/jailbait was removed as a reaction to the FOSTA
| laws which explicitly carve out an exception to section 230
| for content that could be considered related to sex
| trafficking, so in this sense it actually did create a new
| legal risk compared to other non-sex related subs.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yes, as afuchs said, FOSTA wasn't passed to 2018, and that
| forced things like craigslist personals to close.
| r/jailbait was closed many years earlier in response to an
| onslaught of negative media attention.
| afuchs wrote:
| I thought that subreddit was banned because of the negative
| media attention that it received. Wasn't that years before
| SESTA and FOSTA were passed?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Yes, the timing matched with the negative media
| attention, similar to the removals of a few Trump
| subreddits recently.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Wikipedia says 2011. So yes.
| [deleted]
| protonimitate wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, and at the risk of sounding ignorant, but I
| don't understand how a Polish law can be enforced on a
| company/service/piece of hardware under US (presumably, but
| could be any other) jurisdiction.
|
| At the end of the day, the data is sitting on a piece of
| hardware _somewhere_ , isn't the "owning" place the one that
| dictates what laws can be enforced on it?
| CalRobert wrote:
| Who mentioned the US?
| protonimitate wrote:
| No one.
|
| > (presumably, but could be any other)
| anonunivgrad wrote:
| If you want to do business in a country, then you have to
| follow the laws of that country. Polish courts would enter
| judgment against the company for violating Polish law,
| premising their jurisdiction on the activities of that
| company within their borders (e.g. accepting payment in
| polish currency, selling ads to polish businesses, charging
| for polish views/clicks). They can then seize the company's
| property in Poland to enforce that judgment. They can also
| introduce that judgment in foreign courts to do enforcement
| actions there. Those foreign courts would examine the
| validity of the Polish judgment (e.g. by reexamining
| jurisdiction) before issuing orders to enforce it.
|
| There's nothing novel about this. This is how civil judgments
| are enforced across borders every day.
| protonimitate wrote:
| Makes sense, thanks.
| paxys wrote:
| It can be enforced in a lot of ways, including fines on the
| company's operations in the country, charges against local
| employees and banning the site from the country's ISPs.
| dharmab wrote:
| IANAL but as I understand it, most governments will consider
| something to be in their jurisdiction if the user is within
| their jurisdiction, even if the server is not. See GDPR,
| which applies to all EU citizens globally- even one residing
| in the United States using US web services.
| disabled wrote:
| GDPR outside the European Union only applies to European
| Union based companies (headquartered in the EU).
|
| Otherwise, it is limited to internet traffic from people
| within the European Union.
|
| This rule was unclear in the beginning of the law
| implement, but there have been high court rulings clearing
| up the confusion.
|
| See this, for example " Google wins landmark right to be
| forgotten case":
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49808208
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Have the EU been able to impose GDPR penalties on an org
| with no staff or assets and no representation in the EU?
| kennywinker wrote:
| Yup, under this law a post mentioning true facts about nazi
| collaboration in poland during ww2 would be illegal.
| d3ckard wrote:
| Out of curiosity, which facts do you mean?
|
| The law is stupid of course and an attempt to fight for their
| point of view(that is: xenophobic, racist and intolerant),
| but history is a subject rather widely discussed in Poland
| with all the sides being represented in media.
| stretchcat wrote:
| There are some who like to call Nazi death camps _' Polish
| death camps'_ because they were located in Nazi occupied
| Poland. This, of course, is frowned on by Poland. It is
| seen as a way of blaming Poland for Germany's crimes, while
| the people who do it play innocent and claim they are
| merely stating 'true facts' about the locations of the
| camps.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/"Polish_death_camp"_controver
| s...
| cygx wrote:
| Note the last part of that article, though[1]:
|
| You're also not allowed to refer to camps like Zgoda or
| Jaworzno - which were labour camps operated by poles on
| behalf of the communist regime - as 'Polish concentration
| camps'.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Polish_death_camp%22
| _contro...
| kennywinker wrote:
| https://time.com/5128341/poland-holocaust-law/
|
| > The bill was proposed by the country's ruling Law and
| Justice party (PiS) and calls for up to three years in
| prison or a fine for accusing the Polish state or people of
| involvement or responsibility for the Nazi occupation
| during World War II
|
| The law has since passed, tho it was later amended to
| remove the prison time portion.
|
| Now I am not a lawyer, nor am I polish, so I don't know
| what the situation is on the ground - but I believe the law
| makes repeating much of the contents of this wikipedia page
| illegal
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_German-
| occupi...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| No one sensible is accusing "the Polish state" or "the
| Polish people" of being involved with the Holocaust, and
| the Wikipedia page itself doesn't state anything like
| that. The law is aimed at hateful idiocy like talking
| about the supposed "Polish death camps", as opposed to
| the tragically real _Nazi_ death camps in _Nazi-occupied_
| Poland.
| centimeter wrote:
| Mentioning true facts (mostly falsehoods, but also some true
| facts) about WW2 is already illegal in Germany.
| jdanp wrote:
| The second part is reminiscent of how "net neutrality" is
| pitched in the United States. I've never felt that definition
| was true net neutrality due to the reason you outlined.
| kevin_b_er wrote:
| This is the true point of it. Anything they don't like is
| banned, anything they like is compelled.
| DataSceince123 wrote:
| facebook can simply pull out of the nation
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Like they sing in Poland, Jebac PiS.
|
| Note that PiS is actually pronounced piss, which must be some
| kind of divine providence.
| jwieczorek wrote:
| This isn't Reddit.
| disabled wrote:
| Hahaha, a lot of people who are Slavs or of Slavic descent
| know exactly what you mean, universally. The first word is
| known well across Slavic languages, the second is an acronym
| for Poland's far right ruling party.
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