[HN Gopher] Meta forced to reveal anonymous Facebook user's iden...
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Meta forced to reveal anonymous Facebook user's identity
Author : skilled
Score : 204 points
Date : 2023-07-31 09:37 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stackdiary.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stackdiary.com)
| ranting-moth wrote:
| It feels like majority of people don't understand what free
| speech means.
|
| It doesn't mean you can say whatever you want without
| consequences. It means you can say it and no-one can prohibit you
| from saying it. But someone can definitely drag you to court for
| saying it.
| veave wrote:
| So like in North Korea? You can also say whatever you want
| there. Of course, there will be consequences.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| You can definitely not say anything you want in NK. You get
| censored at multiple stages.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Censoring is everywhere, even in free countries. The only
| difference is the degree of censoring, and the topics.
| didntcheck wrote:
| > There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom
| after speech
|
| Attributed to Idi Amin
|
| I'm severely confused by people who make arguments like the
| root comment. By that logic I have freedom of murder, since
| I'll probably only be caught and punished after I've done it
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| [flagged]
| qwytw wrote:
| Perhaps, I'm not sure what does this have to do with the
| article, though.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| >No, it's more like in woke left.
|
| Could you explain what "woke left" is? I understand 'left',
| i guess, but reading the rest of your comment i see that
| 'cancelling' [I'm guessing again - censoring?] is what 'the
| right' do too.
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| Certainly:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture
|
| Cancelling is distinct from censorship, because it's
| _post-factum_ "consequences" (i.e. character
| assassination). "Censorship" is usually understood as
| measures that prevent publication in the fist place,
| before the actual speech happens.
| qwytw wrote:
| This specific case seems to be about defamation and (I
| suppose) the right of the plaintiff to know the identity of
| the person who supposedly accused(?) them of something?
|
| I'm not sure what does this have to do with freedom of
| speech. It seems to be right to anonymity or something like
| that, which I don't think is guaranteed in most places?
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| There's a big range of possibilities between censored speech
| in dictatorships and a free speech absolutely not constrained
| by other human rights. In a normal democratic society speech
| is constrained just like every other right. It is strange to
| think otherwise.
| chipsa wrote:
| Free speech is about being able to say unpopular things, like
| that black people shouldn't be slaves in the early 1800s. It's
| not about saying untrue things. The tricky thing about "untrue
| things", is sometimes it's hard to see for certain, like "COVID
| was potentially a leak of a cultured virus from a lab".
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Free speech mostly involves what things the government can do
| when you say things they don't like. I can say the government
| is a corrupt bunch of nepotistic idiots without fearing the
| government coming to my door and arresting me or forcing
| websites to take down such expression.
|
| If I go around this forum posting "chips rapes children"
| everywhere you go and you sue me for defamation, that doesn't
| mean you're against free speech. You have the right to
| protect your good name as much as I have the right to express
| my opinions about you. I this example, you would obviously
| have the ability to crush me in court for spreading baseless
| accusations.
|
| There are troubling threats to free speech, such as the
| incendiary lies spread under the guise of "fake news",
| followed by governments trying to control the wild conspiracy
| theories and endangering our rights to free speech in the
| process. However, you having the right to defend yourself
| against baseless accusations isn't a threat against anyone's
| human rights.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> However, you having the right to defend yourself against
| baseless accusations isn't a threat against anyone's human
| rights.
|
| The key point is that to defend yourself against baseless
| accusations often requires that the accuser be known.
| wvh wrote:
| You can also say true things that do not fall under free
| speech, like publishing somebody's home address. Clearly
| there's some balance to be found in releasing details about
| intimate relationships.
| evandale wrote:
| > Clearly there's some balance to be found in releasing
| details about intimate relationships
|
| Yes and the current laws are adequate enough to address
| this. We don't need to restrict everybody's free speech
| because 1 person published their ex's home address. Stay
| out of my life and my business and punish the people for
| breaking the law. That's not a good reason to take the
| ability to be anonymous away from everyone.
| keiferski wrote:
| This is a fundamental misunderstanding of rights. The right of
| free speech is not intended to allow you to move your lips in a
| certain way and make specific sounds come out. After all, it's
| not as if the ability to speak were somehow prevented by
| government-mandated masks. Humans have always been
| physiologically able to say unpopular things, long before the
| concept of free speech became important.
|
| The purpose of the right of speech speech is to remove certain,
| but not all, _consequences_ of expressing opinions in public,
| i.e., outside of your head.
| defrost wrote:
| FWiW the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
| (1966) 1. Everyone shall have the right to
| hold opinions without interference. 2. Everyone
| shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right
| shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information
| and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either
| orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or
| through any other media of his choice. 3. The
| exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this
| article carries with it special duties and responsibilities.
| It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but
| these shall only be such as are provided by law and are
| necessary: ( a ) For respect of the rights or
| reputations of others; ( b ) For the protection of
| national security or of public order, or of public health or
| morals.
|
| makes no mention of anonymity but does specifically mention
| respecting the rights and reputations of others.
| keiferski wrote:
| Sure, there are nuances. But the original comment implied
| that free speech is about the act of speaking itself, which
| is not true.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Yes. Furthermore, libel and slander are basically not
| protected as free speech.
|
| In the US system at least, you can say whatever you want
| about someone... But if they haul you into court for damaging
| their reputation, you'd better bring receipts that you were
| speaking truth, to the best of your ability and knowledge.
| Not even the US right to free speech extends to spreading
| damaging falsehood.
|
| (ETA, clarification: I should say damaging false _facts_. US
| freedom of speech generally protects a person 's right to say
| that in their opinion someone is an ass, etc. But make
| concrete claims that you hate so-and-so because they did
| such-and-such, and whether they did such-and-such becomes
| arguable in a court of law).
| veave wrote:
| [flagged]
| snvzz wrote:
| I do not see a connection with freedom of speech.
| veave wrote:
| In some countries this would be laughed out of court.
| qwytw wrote:
| How do we know that? Slander is something you can sue
| another person for in just about anywhere(?) and there is
| nothing in the article about what was actually said.
|
| In this case the (allegedly) injured party doesn't even
| know who to sue (besides Facebook I guess..) does that seem
| entirely reasonable to you?
| [deleted]
| JacobSeated wrote:
| I support the idea of anonymous accounts, but they should not be
| available easily to everyone. Perhaps they should start out in a
| sandbox, and of course, monitored more actively for signs of
| abuse.
|
| Other account types should really have a verified identity imo.
| It would drastically limit the amount of abuse.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > It would drastically limit the amount of
|
| People happily spout abuse under their real name on Facebook.
| Seems very naive to think preventing anonymity would curb it as
| much as you think.
| JacobSeated wrote:
| I happen have investigated vast amounts of spam accounts and
| content posted by people engaged in conspiracy theories, and
| in my experience the main propagators of this type of
| disinformation are fake accounts and people hiding behind
| anonymity. Facebook do not even care that they are blatantly
| breaking the community guidelines, and will typically always
| ignore reports of "fake accounts".
|
| If you get rid of the main propagators, other users will have
| very little of this type of content to engage with in the
| first place, and it WILL limit the amount of inspiration
| material other users will be exposed to. We only have this
| problem because of the easy access to social media. It used
| to be dubious corners on internet forums and newsgroups no
| one was interested in, but now everyone is exposed to all
| this grotesque filth.
|
| Many such accounts main purpose is, very conspicuously, to
| spread misinformation, and as such there is no real reason
| why they should be on Facebook in the first place.
|
| I support anonymity when necessary, but as history has
| clearly shown, limitless anonymity will be abused by bad
| actors. If there are no limits in place, then bad actors will
| be able to drown us in a flood of disinformation - this will,
| as is somewhat currently the case, allow conspiracy theorists
| to control the flow of information more easily. Repeatedly
| disproven claims can be repeated in all eternity, and we will
| never move these people's understanding.
|
| Fact checking will not catch everything, unfortunately.
| Currently the AI systems is not fast enough to tag things
| that has already been fact checked, lacks context, or is just
| manipulative. There are consistent ways to post content and
| behave that does not directly spread misinformation, but when
| looked at as a whole, is, actually very clearly intended to
| manipulate people with misinformation.
|
| So, don't reject things you don't understand so quickly.
| johnnyworker wrote:
| A vast majority of really useful things are posted
| anonymously, too. I even remember a time when "don't post
| personal details" was part of the netiquette, with forums
| where you could pick any name, _except_ your real name.
|
| > we only have this problem because of the easy access to
| social media. It used to be dubious corners on internet
| forums and newsgroups no one was interested in
|
| As in, everything is kinda fine, but some people are just
| evil for unknown reasons and spread the lie that everything
| is not fine, and infect others with it?
|
| Here's what I think is a bit more realistic, and notice how
| stripping people who already have no privilege of the
| ability to communicate with each other safe from
| persecution sounds in that context.
|
| > "People are angry, frightened, desperate. This is
| actually pre-Trump. 40 years of neoliberalism have left the
| victims of this assault angry, resentful, isolated,
| contemptuous of government. It's in Europe, it's in the
| United States, you see it everywhere.
|
| > That's fertile territory for demagogues who can say "I
| can save you, follow me." It's also fertile territory for
| conspiracy theories. People want some understanding of
| what's happening; they're not getting it from the media,
| they're not getting it from the intellectual classes,
| they're certainly not getting it from the government. So
| they search around for _something_ that 'll explain it. Why
| is this happening to us? That's the kind of situation in
| which you do get conspiracy theories. [..] When you're
| living in an intellectual environment in which there are no
| answers, no coherent answers available, you're suffering,
| you don't see why, you turn to, you grasp on to something.
|
| [..]
|
| > It's happening all over, and I think you can trace a good
| deal of it to the effects of neoliberalism. It had a goal,
| remember: the goal of neoliberalism was the transfer
| decisions, authority, away from the public to the hands of
| private power, and to atomize the population. You'll recall
| Margaret Thatcher, there is no society, just individuals
| tossed out into the market that somehow survive for
| themselves.
|
| [..]
|
| > The first acts, first acts, that both Thatcher and Reagan
| carried out was to demolish labour unions. First move, [in]
| both cases. Reagan went as far as authorizing scabs, you
| know, strike-breakers. Illegal in every country except, at
| times, South Africa. Did it right away. The labour unions
| had been smashed in both countries. Why? Well, it's one of
| the very few ways in which people can organize to protect
| themselves, so we've got to get rid of them. Eliminate
| public schools, but do it by underfunding, don't give
| enough funding so they don't work, then support private
| schools as an alternative. All throughout the society,
| eliminate the means for people to organize, act
| collectively, make decisions. Transferred into the hands of
| private power. And the results are predictable and
| perfectly plain.
|
| -- Noam Chomsky
|
| Erich Fromm pointed that out as early as the 1950s that
| when people have no real part in the decision-making, their
| thinking becomes "kinda empty and stupid". How could it
| not? A muscle _must_ atrophy if you fixate it. If you use
| incompetence as an excuse to strip people of even more
| agency, you get even worse outcomes.
| johnnyworker wrote:
| So no posts by whistleblowers or dissidents, no discussion
| between non-heterosexual or non-believing people in certain
| countries, and so on.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Is there any reason to prefer anonymity to protected aliases?
| I'd say people should be able to post under their nicknames and
| only their lawyers/notaries/trustees should be able to disclose
| their identity in a some lawful procedure. It should not be a
| responsibility of a platform, but there must be someone who
| knows the true identity and can certify the relationship
| between it and the alias.
| wnkrshm wrote:
| Then the alias itself has to be protected though, else
| someone could harm you by impersonating your alias.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Court case here:
| https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/#!/details?id=ECLI:NL:RBDH...
|
| I find court summaries of the Dutch courts to be quite readable.
| Google translate also seems to work quite well.
|
| It should be noted that this is a "kort geding", which i believe
| translates to a "preliminary injunction" but I don't have the
| legal education to say what the differences between the two may
| be.
|
| Some anonymous user claims that the person who started legal
| action committed gross sexual misconduct. The judge ruled that
| there's little evidence to back these claims and that the
| plaintiff is suffering an impact significant enough to warrant
| further action.
|
| It should also be noted that Dutch law considers defamation to be
| a crime (as in, illegal under criminal law), not a civil law
| issue.
|
| This isn't the first time a company has had to hand over
| subscriber information because of libel or slander either. I
| don't really see what the big deal is.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Dunno if this is the case in the Netherlands, but it's worth
| noting in some legal systems defamation is defined something
| like spreading harmful accusations as opposed to spreading
| harmful lies. The intent being that if you have an accusation
| that is true, you settle it in the courts rather than in the
| press, with an angry mob, on social media, or the like.
|
| Since the whether or not the accusations are true doesn't
| factor into such a crime, it can be enforced on the presence of
| harmful accusations alone, which has fairly big implications
| for the sort of social media witch hunts that we've seen
| cropping up in the recent decade.
| jorams wrote:
| The Netherlands has both. "Laster" requires the accusation to
| be untrue. "Smaad" is the broader form that does _not_
| require the accusation to be untrue.
|
| Justifications defined in the law are "necessary defense" and
| "common interest". The second one is specified as "believed
| in good faith that the charges were true and that the public
| interest required the charge." IANAL, but I think this can
| apply to social media witch hunts to at least some extent.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That makes the courts the sole deciders of truth, which is
| extremely bad in all ways.
|
| The press can for example discover and publish evidence of
| corrupt dealings of a politician, while there is a minimal
| chance any prosecutor or court would be interested in the
| case.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Most Dutch would not agree with this opinion.
| jeltz wrote:
| Things like political corruption are exempt from this due
| to "common interest". So, no, that is not an issue.
|
| As a someone from a country with similar law I think it is
| a good thing. Social media witch hunts are not good for
| society and they often fall under our defamation laws but
| people are still allowed to write about corrupt
| politicians.
| metalcrow wrote:
| Have the Netherlands never had a case where the courts
| ruled against the interests of the public? Or favored the
| corrupt system? It seems trivial to imagine a case where
| a rape victim can accuse someone, but the attacker can
| beat the case by technicalities and then silence their
| accuser.
| hobo_in_library wrote:
| That's where the "make the accusation in the courts, not
| the press" rule is most important!
|
| If you have a legitimate accusation to make, prosecute.
| Don't merely complain on social media.
| metalcrow wrote:
| My example was in the case where the prosecution failed
| unjustly. Or are you allowed to talk about a failed
| prosecution and still claim that you believe the
| individual in question did it? Even if so, that also
| poses a problem in cases where the action was immoral but
| not illegal, not to mention if the case cannot be
| prosecuted for financial or other reasons.
|
| It's confusing from a US perspective, where we believe
| free speech is important since it allows the bringing of
| injustices to light. Are courts in the Netherlands
| trusted so much that they leave almost no injustices for
| others to speak out on?
| Arnt wrote:
| Fact finding is part of the court's job. The courts are the
| institution we've established to do that job.
|
| A case has a fact-finding part, then a part where the law
| and precedences are matched to the facts as found, then a
| decision.
| derefr wrote:
| It would be interesting if those were two different
| systems: a system where the outcome is a declaration of
| "what the state believes to be true" being entered into
| the books; and then another system that -- perhaps quite
| efficiently -- can just consume the output of the former
| system, to evaluate the application of law in the
| deciding of punishments for crimes. An "is" system, and
| an "ought" system, per se.
|
| There actually is a very limited "is" system in use in
| common law in many countries -- the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquest (usually:
| "coroner's inquest.") But they're really only used in
| practice to find cause-of-death. A "libel inquest" would
| be quite novel.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| In real life you have corruption and abuse in every
| country that the respective legal systems simply refuses
| to investigate or go after. There is little chance to fix
| a corrupt and inefficient legal system, so at least we
| have the press to inform the population. In many places
| not even the established press, instead whistle blowers
| and citizen journalists. In some places not even that.
|
| Not to speak of that the courts take their merry time, so
| a corrupt politician can be reelected before anybody
| knows of his or her dealings - if it wasn't for the free
| press.
| noirscape wrote:
| "Kort geding" is more akin to a small claims court. A
| preliminary injunction afaict is more of a request to the court
| for the defendant/plaintiff to stop a certain action until full
| judgement has been made.
|
| A kort geding is a civil court with the specific aim of solving
| cases that don't require a full blown legal investigation
| (which can take months).
|
| Usually it's either for urgency reasons (ie. public and obvious
| defamation on public TV need a correction issued very quickly
| to prevent tarnishing someone's reputation) or because the
| matter simply isn't that huge (your neighbor cutting the tree
| on your property down doesn't and shouldn't take a full year to
| resolve).
|
| A kort geding can be escalated into a full legal proceeding if
| either party is unhappy with the outcome however.
| Someone wrote:
| > A kort geding is a civil court with the specific aim of
| solving cases that don't require a full blown legal
| investigation (which can take months).
|
| FWIW (probably not much; legal terms rarely match 1:1 between
| jurisdictions), Wikipedia thinks a "kort geding" is a
| preliminary injunction.
|
| https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kort_geding disagrees with the
| "don't require a full blown legal investigation" claim,
| saying that the primary reason is urgency:
|
| _"Interlocutory proceedings (in Belgium often interim relief
| or refere) is a short-term civil procedure for urgent cases
| that by their nature must be decided quickly. [...]
|
| Matters that by their nature are urgent are, for example, the
| request to ban a strike or the request to prohibit a
| publication, because it is incorrect and harms the interests
| of a directly involved person."_
|
| I think that's more likely to be true.
|
| (iOS Translation)
| Pixie_Dust wrote:
| So, your Facebook posts are neither anonymous or private.
| arijun wrote:
| I understand the fears people are raising here, the potential for
| abuse.
|
| But on the other hand, what should someone do if they are truly
| wronged by something like this? They lost their job, their spouse
| left them, all because someone decided to slander them under the
| veil of anonymity. Should they have any recourse?
| [deleted]
| renegat0x0 wrote:
| It goes both ways. If you are not anonymous, then every your
| action can be taken against you. I remember a post where music
| companies searched reddit against user comments posted on 2011.
|
| What if you are pro trans people? In 10 years you can be
| prosecuted by it, if a new party is elected. It can have new
| 'standards'. You will not be able to contradict mainstream
| narrative. You will not be able to say anything against
| corporations and governments.
|
| If you will do anything outside of 'boundaries' set by
| companies, governments you will lost your job, spouse will
| leave you, all because you wanted 'a better world'.
|
| On one side of scales is a place of total invigilation, on the
| other is a place with internet trolls. Companies like meta and
| twitter are quite good in rooting our trolls. So the current
| situation is inconvenient, but we can live with it.
|
| If we opt out anonymity then the overall result will be a lot
| worse than the current situation is.
| phkahler wrote:
| [flagged]
| someguy7250 wrote:
| I feel there is a lack of "local" apps to emulate the old town
| sqaure, exactly because nobody wants to moderate and track users
| when a legal issue happens.
|
| If we could make an exception in the law, then it might help
| create more small tech companies in small towns.
|
| I could be daydreaming here, but: What if we make it legal to run
| unmoderated social media apps as long as (1) they are operated by
| a local company with their own software (instead of saas) (2)
| they function with the same kinds of limitations as a physical
| town notice board?
| gcoakes wrote:
| I don't understand. Isn't this already the case in America with
| Section 230? (The original post is about the Netherlands, so
| this is now tangenting.) It's just that no one actually acts as
| a platform.
|
| I'll daydream with you except mine is different. The optimal
| social media in my view is one tied to your real identity.
| Moderation would only be applied under court order by the
| relevant jurisdiction for the view of the content within that
| jurisdiction. i.e.:
|
| 1) American posts content critical of Indian officials. That
| content is restricted by order of an Indian court and no such
| order is additionally given by an American court. It would be
| hidden from view within India but not from within America. The
| inverse would be true.
|
| 2) Indian posts content critical of Indian officials. That
| content is restricted by order of an Indian court. America (or
| any other nation) has no duty to protect that speech and thus
| no claim over it. That content is censored everywhere.
|
| Additionally, everyone would have client-side filters which may
| be _published_. Emphasis on "published" because the publisher
| would be accountable for their words just as much as a
| newspaper within their jurisdiction. Though they wouldn't need
| to say much (i.e.: list of people I [dis]like). Unique identity
| and nationality are the only ones I can think of right now.
| More complex examples:
|
| 1) An American publishes a list of politicians who have made
| inflammatory public statements. They have evidence of this for
| each person on the list and make no additional assertions about
| their behavior. People not interested in such content could
| subscribe to the filter. (I guess people interested in chaos
| could view the inverse.) No court is willing to censor this
| list because their statements are protected speech.
|
| 2) An American publishes a list of men who have committed
| sexual crimes (such as in the original post). They assert it as
| fact not alleged crimes. They include someone who has not been
| proven in a court of law to have committed that crime. They can
| be sued for libel and possibly forced to remove the person from
| the list or reword the list description.
|
| Anonymity between the user and the social media service
| wouldn't exist, but it might between users. The service could
| be mandated by the jurisdiction to unmask or otherwise ensure
| the accused does not fall within the jurisdiction.
| someguy7250 wrote:
| > Isn't this already the case in America with Section 230?
|
| IMO, Section 230 is too relaxed for large scale social media,
| but not relaxed enough for some other applications. It
| basically allowed big tech to mod the public square like
| modding a game, for it to be much larger, to move people
| around into biased groups, and to keep a record of all
| conversations, and train autocomplete bots on them..
|
| I do not want more restrictions on existing apps. My point
| was that I wanted every local community to have their own
| online forum that's only accessible locally (through a RSA
| cert that rotates monthly, perhaps). They can even build
| minigames and cute events for themselves, and that would
| boost local morals and economy.
|
| I think your thoughts on real online identities are
| interesting but I do not believe in either Censorship or
| total free speech. It's like the halting problem: I don't
| think there is a fixed list of rules that can always tell you
| the correct answer (To censor or not).
|
| That's also why it's important for local communities to make
| their own decisions.
| ochronus wrote:
| [flagged]
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| > However, Meta initially responded stating that it did not find
| the posts defamatory and hence would not accede to his request
|
| Oh, that's so very Meta and Twitter and Reddit. I believe they
| return a delayed response only to maintain appearances of some
| human being having had a look at the reports.
|
| What I don't understand is how come a user was anonymous in a
| Facebook group.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Facebook groups have an option to permit anonymous posts, on
| the basis the group moderator can handle the tidal wave of bad
| that will probably happen.
|
| Of course, you're not anonymous on the back end, just publicly.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| "Furthermore, Meta's conditions permit data from users to be
| shared with third parties."
|
| ...I don't know if it has any legal implications, but it sure
| does undercut Meta's ethical high ground, that they will tell
| people all about their users for money in order for them to serve
| up advertisements. The case in question would on the surface
| appear at least as valid a reason.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Go on, then. Go buy some emails from Facebook (not public ones
| like mine that I have listed intentionally public) and show us.
|
| You won't be able to. Facebook doesn't sell emails or
| identifying data.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I don't think you understand. The complaint isn't that
| FaceBook sells data; it's that it gives it freely away.
|
| To literally quote from the Privacy Policy [1]
|
| > We share information about you with marketing vendors. For
| example, we share your device identifier or other identifiers
|
| ---
|
| But this is all irrelvant.
|
| Meta's Privacy Policy makes it extremely clear that they will
| share your data when there is a court order.
|
| > We access, preserve, use and share your information:
|
| > In response to legal requests, like search warrants, court
| orders, production orders or subpoenas. These requests come
| from such as civil litigants, law enforcement and other
| government authorities. about when we respond to legal
| requests.
|
| [1]: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy?subpage=4.subpag
| e.11...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Go get the "username, email address, telephone number, and
| the IP address used during registration and logins". Then
| post here. Since it's free, should be easy.
|
| Talk is cheap, show me the money/code/emails.
| loeg wrote:
| Meta does not share individual user identities and other
| metadata the court is demanding with 3rd party advertisers.
| ajross wrote:
| > it sure does undercut Meta's ethical high ground, that they
| will tell people all about their users for money
|
| I'm sorry, where do you infer that? Meta _literally_ refused to
| do exactly that, and went to court to defend the practice. They
| 're only doing so now because they lost.
| subroutine wrote:
| The word "Forced" here is a bit misleading given Meta faces a
| penalty of just 1k euros per day, up to 100k, if it decides not
| to comply with the court's decision.
| nhinck wrote:
| Do you believe that you can pay $100k to ignore any further
| punishment?
| subroutine wrote:
| I believe $100k to Meta is like $3 to me. If there is
| additional punishment beyond "a maximum fine of $100k", the
| article does not mention it.
| waithuh wrote:
| You need a few million and some vacations to ignore the
| law. $100k is just the initial fee and timeslot for
| potentially pulling out of said country (or do what Apple
| is doing with the UK)
| nhinck wrote:
| Just logically, do you believe that Meta can pay $100k to
| ignore a court order?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > I believe $100k to Meta is like $3 to me. If there is
| additional punishment beyond "a maximum fine of $100k", the
| article does not mention it.
|
| Meta doesn't like judgements against Meta that would open
| them up to more scrutiny from legal institutions.
|
| This isn't about money.
|
| Meta has absolutely nothing to win in not complying with
| the legal request in that _specific case_. Meta never
| claimed to be the champion of anonymity, quite the
| contrary...
| Modified3019 wrote:
| >the Court of The Hague has ruled...
|
| In case you were wondering where such a ruling happened.
| hef19898 wrote:
| In a court in the Dutch city of The Hague?
| elzbardico wrote:
| You need to be very naive technologically to believe it is
| trivial to have an "anonymous" Facebook account. This probably it
| is only possible if you use a burner phone bought cash without a
| SIM card and use exclusively public WiFi hotspots.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| I think the key is "anonymous" from which perspective.
|
| It's likely a safe assumption that you are anonymous from the
| other users, which was the original intended functionality.
|
| You're talking about being anonymous from any and all people
| and agencies, and it could be argued that you probably haven't
| gone far enough in your description of how to be truly
| anonymous from even the most motivated person/agency.
| larata_media wrote:
| > "Meta argued that Facebook users should be able to express
| criticism, even if it is severe and anonymous."
|
| It's interesting to see Meta taking the opposite stance in this
| argument when they've been so instrumental about suppressing
| criticism deemed misinformation by the CISA, DOJ, FBI, NIAID,
| CDC, etc...
| cuttysnark wrote:
| > Meta faces a penalty of one thousand euros per day, up to a
| maximum of one hundred thousand euros, if it fails to comply with
| the court's decision.
|
| Well that settles that, then.
| kleton wrote:
| The Hague? Don't they usually stick to serious war crimes?
| Vinnl wrote:
| The Hague is a city in the Netherlands ("Den Haag" in Dutch).
| Admittedly it's a bit of an unconventional name for a city, so
| I can understand that it might be interpreted as just a funny
| name for the International Criminal Court, which is seated in
| that city as well.
|
| (It's also the seat of the government, so you'll also see
| sentences like "The Hague says..." in the media that actually
| refer to the government.)
| didntcheck wrote:
| For reference, this is known as a metonym. It's most common
| with places, but AFAIU the term also covers things like
| referring to execs as "the suits" or "upstairs" (if they are
| based up there)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy
| dragonelite wrote:
| Only if you're a non western country :p.
| hef19898 wrote:
| One of the other courts in Den Hague... Or do you think the
| only court in D.C. is the Supreme Court?
| anon7331 wrote:
| If they wanted to be anonymous they shouldn't be using Facebook
| or any Meta property.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Meta faces a penalty of one thousand euros per day, up to a
| maximum of one hundred thousand euros, if it fails to comply with
| the court 's decision._
|
| As a purely business move, should Meta just play this as a
| principled stand, and eat the fine?
|
| If there's any negative reaction chatter, maybe it's on one of
| their platforms, in which case it's engagement?
| jsnell wrote:
| No.
|
| First, why in the world do you want Meta to get into a habit of
| ignoring the law of the land?
|
| Second, fines for non-compliance to court orders are not one
| off events. The fine is set with the purpose of compelling
| action. If the action doesn't happen, higher fines will follow.
| neilv wrote:
| I don't want them to ignore laws; I'm just asking out of
| curiosity, and given Meta being who they are.
|
| As a purely business move, can Meta increase brand goodwill
| by publicly resisting for awhile?
| ShamelessC wrote:
| They answered you already.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| In general, I don't think "The American company thinks it
| can flout a European court decision" is actually going to
| increase brand goodwill in the market they care about
| increasing brand goodwill in.
| NVHacker wrote:
| "Forced" is a strong word given that the maximum penalty for non-
| compliance is 100k.
| shashashasha___ wrote:
| I don't get it. what are you suggesting? that meta would break
| the law on purpose just because its 100k fine?
| NVHacker wrote:
| I'm quite sure Meta would never break the law on purpose. I'm
| pretty sure that on the multiple fronts where they are
| breaking the law, it can easily be explained by some sort of
| misunderstanding. And the fact that they are benefiting a lot
| in those cases must be just a giant coincidence.
| progbits wrote:
| Any publicly traded company will sell you out for way less than
| that.
| redkinght99 wrote:
| [flagged]
| stef25 wrote:
| Not really relevant to the conversation. Zuck now probably half
| the planet's details
|
| > I've never once believed that Meta would honor / fight for
| anonymous accounts of any kind on their platform.
|
| The way I see it is that they are honoring anonymity and they
| are being compelled by the court to release personal
| information after initially refusing to do so.
|
| The problem is with the courts, not with Meta. Ideally they
| should just eat the 100K fine.
| qwytw wrote:
| > The problem is with the courts, not with Meta. Ideally they
| should just eat the 100K fine.
|
| Is it that straightforward? You can slander anyone and/or
| reveal their private information without the 'victim' having
| no recourse whatsoever besides complaining to FB?
| stef25 wrote:
| Billions of people are online often showing the worst
| versions of themselves. That doesn't make it ok but chasing
| down every potential slanderer on Facebook just seems like
| something that should be very low priority for the courts
| in question.
| qwytw wrote:
| So do you believe defamation laws should not exist at all
| or that they should not apply to anything publicly
| published on Facebook?
|
| Obviously courts should consider severity and other
| factors but factors like damage to reputation, other
| damages etc. should be the deciding factor on whether a
| court would accept the case not whether it's published on
| Facebook or anonymously.
| cnity wrote:
| There are a lot of illegal things you can do without being
| found out, and victims have no recourse then either. Should
| everyone be under surveillance 100% of the time just in
| case?
| qwytw wrote:
| > under surveillance 100% of the time just in case
|
| No, but this seems completely tangential to what is
| discussed in the article. If understand it correctly:
|
| - Person A anonymously published some supposedly
| defamatory information about person B on platform X
|
| - Platform X knows who person B is
|
| - While it's not determined that the information was
| indeed slanderous* the court compels platform X to reveal
| the identity of person A.
|
| - Person A sues person B in civil court etc.
|
| This does not seem to be at all unreasonable to me.
|
| *only thing I'm really concerned about is that while
| obviously (given how legal systems work) you can't
| determine whether it was slander or not without both
| parties, the court should still try to determine whether
| the accusation is at least somewhat valid before
| compelling the platform to reveal that person's identity.
|
| Of course some could say that eventually this might lead
| to situations where governments would restrict/ban any
| platform which allows users to post without revealing
| their person details to the platform (and well Facebook
| already does that on their own). That would of course be
| terrible..
| cnity wrote:
| I urge you to consider the downsides of celebrating the
| compulsion of a platform to reveal otherwise anonymous
| information: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/uk-
| online-safety-bill-...
| qwytw wrote:
| Why do you think I'm celebrating anything? And again, it
| seems mostly tangential to the matter at hand.
|
| I think it's far from ideal that Facebook and some other
| platforms force you to reveal your identity. However once
| they have, I don't see how can it be unreasonable for a
| court to able to compel them to reveal the identify of
| one of their users in certain cases.
|
| I don't see how Online Safety Bill is related? It's not
| like the identity of anonymous posters on FB is E2E
| encrypted and requiring an order from a court to reveal
| it is not exactly the same as 'screening of all user
| content'..
| redkinght99 wrote:
| I think the current CEO is very relevant to a company.
| Leadership comes from the top.
|
| "Ideally they should just eat the 100K fine." , I don't see
| that happening with their current leadership; a half-fought
| court battle for PR sake seems on brand though.
| naillo wrote:
| Good motivation to build or support platforms where this can't
| even be a possibility, i.e. without phone number authentication
| or other identity revealing steps as part of authentication.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| Done: https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-
| systems/blob/master...
|
| You would need a warrant to extract the messages/identity
| directly from a person's computer as there is nothing otherwise
| to obtain.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| I'm having trouble seeing this being a major thing in a decade
| or two. To me it looks more like we're running towards more
| control in the name of stopping hate. ID verification to access
| internet and social media seem more likely. Sell it as a way to
| stop pedophiles on social media, kids from accessing
| violent/nude content, and people from posting hate. We don't
| have anything to hide, right?
|
| Even if a platform wanted, the laws will prohibit it by
| requiring user knowledge.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> We don't have anything to hide, right?
|
| Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing.
| guwop wrote:
| i think 'in the name of stopping AI agents' is much more
| likely to be what sells this. perhaps hate spread by AI?
| pawelmurias wrote:
| Left rampant AI agents can drown a platform with a deludge
| of advertising shit or hate or woke crap.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Well there's plenty of platforms like that, but they're often
| used by people with shady intents. Anonymity has a tradeoff
| like that.
| dncornholio wrote:
| I love this outcome. User disrespects another users privacy by
| posting anonymous, so they get their privacy invoked. All systems
| nominal.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| [flagged]
| arijun wrote:
| The plaintiff is not anonymous.
| dale_glass wrote:
| There's anonymity on Facebook? Don't they have a real name policy
| still?
| tyingq wrote:
| To the degree they bother enforcing it. I still see lots of
| vanity accounts people create for their dogs and cats, for
| example.
| adamckay wrote:
| There's a feature where you can post to groups anonymously,
| still using your real account, rather than creating a new
| account with fake data to make you appear anonymous.
| gcoakes wrote:
| There's a dead comment sibling to this one talking about how
| group admins can see through the anominity. I don't
| understand why it is dead. It wasn't even rudely stated. Is
| it just flat wrong, or did it cross some unknown social
| boundary by pointing out a fact? Was it edited posthumously?
|
| Edit: And, when I refresh it's not dead... I don't understand
| this system apparently.
| sgift wrote:
| > Edit: And, when I refresh it's not dead... I don't
| understand this system apparently.
|
| If enough people vouch for a dead comment it goes back to
| normal. That's probably what you saw.
| [deleted]
| bananatype wrote:
| Just to add to this. If the anonymous post was made on a
| group, the group administrators could still see it. So it's
| only anonymous for the rest of the (non-admin) group members.
| naillo wrote:
| Sidenote, I love how clean and readible this site is. No popups,
| just clean and well written text in the middle.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| The huge title banner with the redundant snippet and the Meta
| logo of the unnecessary margins could use some dieting--the
| black-on-white body of the article cuts of at "identifying data
| of an anonymous Facebook user" for me, incongruously even
| earlier than the dark-gray-on-black snippet above it. Otherwise
| it's pretty nice, yes. (Is it weird that I think text.npr.org
| mostly looks better than the main npr.org?)
| Keirmot wrote:
| And as a bonus it supports RSS
| barrysteve wrote:
| We really need a separate digital wilderness for single men to
| blow off steam.
|
| Making the old online hitching posts (like facebook, google,
| video games, ect) family friendly, or else! then a lot of
| disaffected young men are going to be venting their lack of
| financial/dating success somewhere else.
|
| Are we just going to dump these people out onto the streets and
| hope it all works out politically?
| burnished wrote:
| Where are you pulling this from? The article does not discuss
| the nature of the messages in any way.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The available summary of the preliminary injunction doesn't
| mention the messages themselves, but it does state that the
| plaintiff is being accused of (sexually) transgressive
| behaviour by the posts they want to see removed.
|
| It's possible that this is just some abusive asshole using
| the court to clear their name. It's equally possible that the
| accusations are all made up and that the person who posted
| them has a grudge against the plaintiff for rejecting them.
| We have no real indication either way, other than that the
| judge believed that there is a chance the plaintiff is in the
| right.
|
| Either way, I think it's fair to assume something went wrong
| during a date. I'm not sure what the rest of the parent post
| is referring to.
| jeltz wrote:
| There does not have to have been a date though. The story
| could have been made up by someone who just saw his profile
| on some dating site and did some creative writing based on
| that.
| snvzz wrote:
| I don't see any connection to the topic at hand.
| garblegarble wrote:
| I'm sorry but this is a terrible take. This isn't people
| venting about bad dating success, this is people (who
| understand the importance of privacy, since they post
| anonymously) posting personally identifying information and
| _pictures_ of people they feel have wronged them romantically,
| like it 's some sort of product review and not another human
| being.
| detourdog wrote:
| We have the space already we just have to move the and build
| infrastructure. The nonsense is all commercial based. There is
| no need to know anything about visitors to a site unless you
| want to make money.
| sebow wrote:
| I feel like some of the discussion about anonimity here is kind
| of misplaced. Just because illegal activies can be done under
| anonimity shouldn't mean anonimity should be banned aswell(in
| order to "prevent illegal activities"). That's one of the worst
| things that can happen(and it's somewhat happening already), and
| if I'm not mistaken this could also be interpreted as illegal and
| unconstitutional in countries/places where there is such thing as
| a "right to (>and not<) associate"(and it's various forms).
|
| And I'm sorry for the upcoming little rant, but whoever thinks
| they're anonymous while using a Meta(or any Big Tech platform,
| really) product is an idiot, tech literate or not. Not even
| places like 4chan have true anonimity, depending on the place &
| jurisdiction we're talking about[remember the case of the guy
| making a call to violence(illegal) that got arrested]. The
| 'traditional' web is not anonymous at all:not only the underlying
| protocol(s) is/are inherently not anonymous by design, but you
| add insane surveillance and you can eventually crack anything.
| Even things like TOR/others are not truly anonymous, and the US
| regime proved that if they want to find you, they will, assuming
| they have jurisdiction.
|
| Coming back: I don't quite get why people talk about free speech
| in this context. Not only S230 is a broken f&ckfest but we're
| also talking about a non-US place. What's more hilarious is that
| even if we would have talked about the US, defamation (w/ calls
| to violence & other speech not protected by 1A) is still illegal.
| JacobSeated wrote:
| As I already discussed in my own thread, there has to be limits
| to people's anonymity online, because otherwise you are just
| allowing the bad actors to control the flow of information, and
| thereby also shift opinions simply by the sheer volume of
| information they post. This is the classical behaviour of
| conspiracy theorists. E.g. The "evidence" presented in
| Pizzagate. It is bassily a flood of non-evidence intended to
| overwhelm and drown meaningful facts and discussion.
|
| Anonymous accounts should not be disallowed entirely, but they
| should be observed more actively for misbehaviour, including
| things such as spreading of miss- and disinformation and
| manipulative content. Sometimes individual posts does not
| really spread misinformation, but when you look at the bulk of
| the content it becomes clear that they are actually engaging in
| the active spreading of disinformation. This brings me to a
| very important point: anonymous accounts should be clearly
| marked as being anonymous. They should therefore not allow a
| profile picture.
|
| Disinformation can also be in the form of suggestive or
| questioning material. E.g. Sharing a piece of misinformation
| and writing "interesting?" or "I really hope this is not
| real?". If such behaviour is consistent, then it is usually
| because that account is used to re-share disinformation, and if
| the account has nothing else of relevance. E.g. Does not have
| any authentic connections outside of this "conspiracy" network,
| then obviously it has no authentic purpose on social media.
|
| So while anonymity is important to defend, we also need to
| identify the bad actors that abuse it. For this there are some
| behavioral patterns that are easy to identify, and this could,
| to some extent probably be automated already now.
| sebow wrote:
| Yeah, sure. But in my honest opinion even if you were to
| outlaw anonimity you would still have these problems. I would
| go as far as to say that things would be actually worse,
| because those bad actors would actually confuse and
| mis/disinform people even more.
|
| In the last 15-20 years the internet became less and less
| anonymous, and yet those problems still exist and they're a
| central issue. While it's mostly a correlation and definitely
| not a causal factor (because internet adoption was non-
| existent back then compared to now, amongst others), it still
| begs the (rhetorical) question of why the pressure against
| anonimity.(See past and current abuses in this regard by
| governments/empires/etc). I'm semi-jokingly talking about a
| conspiracy here, because i've used both anonymous and 'very
| verified' platforms, and most of the time the misinformation
| happens on the latter. This is especially true since the
| facebook days, because the platform itself gives the vibe of
| credibility (alongside the user/entity posting it).
|
| Trying to combat misinformation in this way is and will
| remain a cat&mouse game because there will always be actual
| bad actors which will try to impersonate/immitate the good
| ones. Put it like this: you have the same people walking on 2
| streets: on the first one they hear Biden/Trump/Macron/etc.
| saying a fake thing, spreading misinformation; on the next: a
| random hobo saying the same thing. Which one will have the
| worse impact? While I'm not sure there have been done such
| studies/experiments, past "anecdata" tells me the influential
| person successfully fools a higher percentage of those
| people. While you could say "but once exposed, he's
| recognized as a fraud" and that's entirely true: we then
| return to my point of people trying to impersonate/fake
| credibility or grift the issue by saying unquantifiable or
| things that just cannot be entirely fact-checked (without
| projecting or speculation): those actors do more damage
| because they appear credible.
|
| I fully agree though that there are certain aspects that need
| to have a 0 tolerance policy (CP and similar things) even
| when anonymous. And with regards to flagging anonymous users
| as such: would be interesting if any social network tries to
| make the experiment of having semi/fully anonymous modes:
| because honestly that would be just one of the few actual
| solutions to combat polariation on social media: by
| encouraging more free & honest discussion (even if there's
| 90% chance it becomes less civil).
| tgv wrote:
| It sounds like the court considers facebook a publisher. Which is
| true in the everyday sense, of course.
| mnd999 wrote:
| If he went on the date with them you'd think he might already
| know their name. If not it probably wasn't a good date.
| devsda wrote:
| May be he believes that his date went well and so the person
| who posted those comments could not have been the same person
| that went on the date with him.
|
| He might be trying to figure out who else is making those
| comments.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Sure, but he probably wants to be able to prove to a court that
| he's accusing the correct person?
| MertsA wrote:
| That kinda lends credence to the notion that the post really
| was just libel. If it was true and more than just a one
| sentence diatribe then the plaintiff wouldn't have needed to
| bring Meta into this suit. I don't really see what they would
| possibly get out of this unless they really had no idea who
| this was that posted about them.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| How would they sue person X for libel if they couldn't prove
| that the libelous post was created by person X?
| ed_mercer wrote:
| Now I know why you should never use your real email and/or phone
| number when signing up for a service.
| benterix wrote:
| True, but not enough:
|
| > The court's ruling mandates Meta to disclose key identifying
| information, including the username, email address, telephone
| number, and the IP address used during registration and logins.
| piokoch wrote:
| No longer doable, at least in Europe, you can't buy per-paid
| phone card without showing you government ID. And I believe you
| will not be able to create Twitter (that is, X) or Facebook
| account without being forced to provide something more than
| email. I've tried, and account was immediately lock until I
| provide more credentials (gov id or phone number).
|
| All of this is to fight child porn, as always, although, unlike
| normal people, those who earn on child porn can make that
| additional effort to find some homeless person, drug addict,
| etc. and get sim card activated.
|
| So we are where we are with lack of privacy for regular people.
| Maybe one day governments will realize that not only them have
| access to all of this information, foreign intelligence too,
| which make much easier to recruit/blackmail spies and in the
| end, shattered privacy costs much more than imaginary child
| porn fight.
| marcjuul wrote:
| Why do you think this is the case across all of Europe? You
| can definitely buy SIM cards in vending machines in Denmark
| still.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Can you actually use them without activation? Last time I
| tried getting one I was required to activate it using
| NemID/MitID before it would actually work.
|
| If they do work without activation could you please
| enlighten me on who's selling these, it not one of the
| major phone companies, nor is it Lebara. Lycamobile maybe?
| weberer wrote:
| There seems to be a trend on HN to assume every country in
| Europe has the same laws. Confusingly, most of these
| comments come from people living in European countries.
| Foretump wrote:
| [flagged]
| LegitShady wrote:
| Thanks chatgpt
| qwytw wrote:
| > No longer doable, at least in Europe, you can't buy per-
| paid phone card without showing you government ID
|
| I'm in Europe and I can go to any supermarket and buy a
| cartload (depending on stock) of pre-paid cards without
| having to show any ID to anyone. They also work in any EU
| country.
| em-bee wrote:
| in which country?
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Registration happens nowadays when activating the cards,
| not when buying them. But it depends on the country, and
| sometimes even the provider.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| There are many networks in many European countries that
| do not require any form of activation to use their SIMs.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| Why is it news that Meta has to answer to a subpoena issued by a
| court in a country they operate in legally?
|
| I was under the impression that this is routine.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| Because people don't understand free speech. They confuse the
| right to anonymity to "do whatever I want as anonymous".
| imgabe wrote:
| There is no right to anonymity. The government requires every
| citizen to identify themselves in various ways for paying
| taxes, voting, receiving benefits, registering for the draft,
| etc.
| tjoff wrote:
| There sure are, just because some parts of society requires
| identification doesn't mean all do.
| imgabe wrote:
| Just because something doesn't require it doesn't mean
| it's a right.
| Pyramus wrote:
| There is no (general) right to anonymity, but there is,
| at least in some Western countries, a right to privacy.
| Pyramus wrote:
| No, almost all parts of society require identification,
| you could say it's a fundamental principle (Western
| democratic) societies are built upon. Your freedom is
| based on me being held accountable to respect it.
|
| Anonymity is protected in special situations such as
| elections, communications, whistleblowing etc.
| evandale wrote:
| > No, almost all parts of society require identification
|
| Do you have a source on that? I can think of FAR more
| parts of society that don't require identification than
| parts that do. It feels impossible that "almost all parts
| of society require identification" in a world of infinite
| possibilities.
|
| I put some pants on 10 minutes ago without identifying
| myself. Then I left my house without telling anyone. Then
| I walked down the street and never had to identify
| myself. The mall I visited didn't require ID. Finally,
| the McDonalds I went to accepted cash and I didn't have
| to prove who I am.
| thakoppno wrote:
| Presuming what you claim in the last paragraph is true,
| maybe it's a fun thought experiment to ponder how much
| anonymity you've pierced. How many other people in the
| world today did as you have done? Now constrain by people
| who post on hn.
| evandale wrote:
| Why would my last paragraph be false?
|
| Which one of these activities do you think I'm lying
| about and required ID?
| tjoff wrote:
| No idea what your angle is but if you break the law any
| expectation of being anonymous goes out the window. But
| that is an voluntary act.
| indymike wrote:
| > There is no right to anonymity.
|
| Sometimes a right must necessarily exist for another right
| to function. Anonymity must exist to allow freedom of
| political speech, which is the most important kind of free
| speech. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone ever argue that
| people have a right to be anonymous all the time, but only
| in context of other rights, and often this is quite narrow.
| Some examples: political press, political speech, voting
| (that I voted in the Us is public, my ballot is anonymous).
| imgabe wrote:
| Anonymity is not required for free speech to function.
| indymike wrote:
| There are points where it is, particularly political
| speech.
| Pyramus wrote:
| Yes there are some points where it is, e.g. elections,
| whistleblowing, witness protection etc., which goes to
| show that in general, in Western democratic societies,
| anonymity is not a requirement for free speech.
| criley2 wrote:
| Speaking of "not understanding free speech", in America
| (where Meta is) free speech exclusively refers to our Bill of
| Rights and the limitation on government to unfairly suppress
| your speech, specifically your political speech.
|
| It is completely unrelated to a private citizen interacting
| with a private business in the eyes of American law, American
| business and Americans ourselves. The only free speech issue
| here from our perspective is "Is the government illegally
| restricting Meta's corporate right to free speech?" And no,
| making Meta identify a user is not a violation of their 1A
| free speech rights to us.
|
| If you're speaking of a totally different European legal
| concept, it might be helpful for you to identify that.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| arzig wrote:
| Export the free speech is a red herring. The underlying
| issue is whether an aggrieved party can compel certain
| kinds of discovery to respond to libel (which has never
| been perfected speech). Prime were just able to be libelous
| with impunity because ... the interwebs...
| criley2 wrote:
| Libel - Another legal concept that varies dramatically by
| region.
|
| In America, proving libel is extremely difficult and
| requires you to demonstrate real damages.
|
| So in this case if it were American, unless the aggrieved
| party can demonstrate monetary damages, under American
| law there is no libel as we do not consider "hurt
| feelings" or "damaged reputation" to be libel. So in
| America we would demand that the offended party
| demonstrate that they have been financially harmed before
| we unmask the anonymous individual to fully investigate
| and adjudicate the claim.
|
| If you're discussing libel under a EU or European nations
| context, it could be helpful to identify _which_ version
| of libel law you are referencing, because this case from
| an American 's perspective is no where near our extremely
| high bar. (And, as a side note, under American law all
| international libel convictions are automatically
| unenforceable here, to prevent tourism to areas who do
| not require sufficiently high bar)
| jsnell wrote:
| This is a case in European courts between European
| entities. Why do you think it's helpful to bring in
| American concepts, and then complain about how the
| European ones are different?
| criley2 wrote:
| 1. Meta is a multi-national based in America.
|
| 2. I am not complaining at all.
|
| 3. In fact, I am replying to someone complaining that
| folks "don't know what <$GENERAL LEGAL TERM WITH REGIONAL
| DIFFERENCES> means" and I'm explaining: you're on an
| American website whose readership is majority American,
| talking about an American business, and you have the
| audacity to claim "people don't know this <HIGHLY LOCAL
| LEGAL TERM>?". And so I'm explaining WHY Americans would
| be confused by the seemingly low-bar for libel or
| confusion around free speech.
|
| This case may be European courts and entities (and I
| asked for location specifics as the concepts can often
| vary country by country in Europe), but this website is
| not a European website and it's absolutely normal than
| Americans are here discussing this.
| Tainnor wrote:
| > whose readership is majority American
|
| As far as I know, there are more Americans here than
| visitors from any other country, but the majority of
| people is still not American:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35568123
|
| I feel like American readers are sometimes guilty of
| assuming everyone else is also American and understands
| their references, but the world is a bigger place than
| that.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| > _So in this case if it were American, unless the
| aggrieved party can demonstrate monetary damages, under
| American law there is no libel as we do not consider
| "hurt feelings" or "damaged reputation" to be libel. _
|
| Based on my poor understanding of US law, I think you are
| mistaken. _Defamation per se_ recognizes that certain
| statements are so damaging to one 's reputation that
| proving damages is not required. From [1],
|
| > _In an Alaska Supreme Court case, a woman accused a man
| of assault, battery, and false imprisonment, and he
| brought a claim against her for defamation. The court
| explained that because the statements imputed a serious
| crime, the man was not required to prove the damage to
| his reputation and emotional distress._
|
| The case discussed in the article includes accusations
| that the plaintiff films women without their consent,
| allegedly in a sexual context (although that's redacted
| so I could be wrong). That could totally fall under
| category 1 of Defamation Per Se.
|
| [1] https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-
| injuries/w...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This is the right take on it.
|
| The era where you could fax ASCII art of a gun to someone
| without the Feds following up is gone. It was perpetrated
| not on any kind of justice theory of the power of the
| anonymous actor, but on a power inequality: governments
| hadn't caught up with what the technology enabled, so
| individuals using new technology could out-maneuver
| enforcement.
|
| That is no longer true for most Internet users. The tools
| are in place for mass-surveillance and mass-enforcement.
| Governments can take down a website, governments can
| black-hole a DNS entry, governments can honeypot someone
| into trying to trade Bitcoin for criminal activity,
| governments can jail citizens indefinitely until they
| cough up passwords, and governments can require a
| corporation divulge privately-held information on penalty
| of loss of corporate privileges (including ability to
| exist).
|
| The "golden era" of the Internet was a latency hiccup,
| not a new world order.
| cnity wrote:
| This position is a slippery slope to a world where true
| anonymity is made illegal. Your confusion is more subtle and
| arguably more dangerous: that anonymity can make certain
| illegal actions easier does not mean that anonymity should
| not exist.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Who the hell ever pitched _Facebook_ as "truly anonymous"
| in the first place? And how is it news that Facebook
| responds to legal subpoenas? This story is 'dog bites man',
| why does it even exist?
| detourdog wrote:
| True anonymity is not illegal. To be anonymous don't reveal
| your identity to anyone on line. If you do that you are not
| sharing your identity with anyone to get a subpoena.
|
| Apple is trying to keep your identity secret on your device
| so that they cant verify anyone only devices.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > True anonymity is not illegal.
|
| I'll use the exact same kind of argument to make the
| opposite point:
|
| Facebook answering a legal subpoena isn't illegal.
|
| > To be anonymous don't reveal your identity to anyone on
| line.
|
| They are not anonymous from Facebook perspective.
|
| There is no "right to anonymity" on Facebook, no more
| than there is a "right to free speech", the user accepted
| all the TOS when they signed up. Even the GDPR doesn't
| grant any right to "anonymity", however the platform
| cannot use identifiable data however they like, but you
| bet legal data subpoenas are not covered by the GDPR.
| ipaddr wrote:
| They could/would be anonymous if they hide their identity
| from facebook as well.
|
| Are we punishing those who wish to remain anonymous but
| do not have the technical ability to do so. Is there a
| right to anonymous in the EU?
| detourdog wrote:
| I agree Facebook answering any subpoena is legal for
| Facebook. Facebook doesn't get to argue the validity of
| the subpoena. That is the job of the defendant.
|
| Exactly I'm not sure of your point. If an organization
| gets a subpoena they turn over what they know. If they
| don't know they can't hand it over.
|
| I don't think you are making the opposite point but I
| will try to be open minded. From my perspective we agree.
| qingcharles wrote:
| No-one is saying that anonymity itself is illegal, just
| that if you commit a crime expect "them" to try to unmask
| your anonymity using legal process.
| detourdog wrote:
| My point is simply if nobody has any information worth
| subpoenaing that is privacy.
| phkahler wrote:
| Not sure, but you might be confusing anonymity with
| privacy. I'm all in favor of privacy, but keeping your
| identity secret while doing stuff in public (or on some
| internet forum) is not really a matter of privacy. There
| may be a few cases where anonymity is warranted, but often
| it just enables bad behavior.
| cnity wrote:
| It's the realities of enforcement that concern me. If you
| say (as it appears you are implying though I may be
| wrong!) "we don't really need anonymity online, so we
| should enforce verifiable identity in all online and
| public interactions" then you open the door to
| (potentially tyrannical) government involvement of all
| internet services. For example, the government now
| dictates how you handle authentication. You can no longer
| use a simple email + password usage of a public service.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You can't have both.
|
| If anonymity isn't allowed why can't advertisers track
| you in the EU without your consent.
|
| What privacy are you in favor of? Identities should be
| private when in public? Until someone requests it and
| then it goes into the public record?
| subroutine wrote:
| What is "true anonymity"? The law is fairly clear that you
| cannot engage in illegal activity whether acting
| anonymously or otherwise.
| cnity wrote:
| The inability to monitor all illegal activity is a trade-
| off we accept as a society to maintain the right to
| anonymity. You'd rather we sign that right away for some
| supposed guarantee of safety? A guarantee made by the
| synthesis of your government and your corporations?
| subroutine wrote:
| Nothing of the sort. I think anonymity is a privilege
| that is granted and can be enjoyed while engaging with
| society or online however anon chooses, up to the point
| where anon's actions breaks the law.
|
| edit: In the case described here I am especially
| unsympathetic for anon as they chose to defame someone's
| real life identity. In this incident there was no
| proactive monitoring by gov/law/inc. as you so fear.
| Instead the wronged had to hire private council and prove
| the defemation in court a priori. Even after proving the
| impact to their character the judge's ruling is only
| tentative, giving anon an opportunity to present facts
| supporting their claims (and if you read the judge's
| statement closely, had anon presented evidence, there
| would have been no basis for the defamation suit and no
| need for unmasking). And even if there is no facts and
| anon legit defamed the person, anon may still evade
| justice given the paltry noncompliance fine Meta would
| have to pay. So let me ask you, would you like to live in
| a world where someone could baselessly and maliciously
| accuse you of rape or other defaming acts without
| consequence?
| cnity wrote:
| It's a classic fear vs freedom dichotomy. We are both
| being a little intellectually dishonest, and should
| perhaps frame the question a little differently. To
| answer your question:
|
| > would you like to live in a world where someone could
| baselessly and maliciously accuse you of rape or other
| defaming acts without consequence
|
| Yes, if the alternative is that I can be held criminally
| liable for hosting a web forum that doesn't require some
| form of government enforced ID system. How could it be
| any other way (genuine question)?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > It's a classic fear vs freedom dichotomy
|
| Thats a false dichotomy. Many kinds of freedom actually
| result in less freedom. A society where you are free to
| sell youself into slavery is less free. A society where
| 10 year olds are free to work in the coal mines is less
| free. A society where you are free to ignore legitinate
| court orders is less free because people will turn to
| vigilante justice instead.
| subroutine wrote:
| > How could it be any other way (genuine question)?
|
| The alternative is how things currently work. Meta is not
| being held criminally liable here, and people are allowed
| to use the platform anonymously so long as they do not
| engage in criminal behavior.
| merth wrote:
| or they don't trust the system and want to stay anon to
| exercise their free speach
| hef19898 wrote:
| That depends on the country so, e.g. the situation in the
| Netehrlands is quite different from the one in Russia. As
| is the "system".
| shadowgovt wrote:
| In that case, they should probably not use the system while
| trying to stay anon. The system will not work in their
| favor, and Facebook is definitely part of that system.
| merth wrote:
| anybody could be part of the system knowingly or
| unknowingly. so the best is to always stay anon and trust
| nobody. all of the system should be designed bullet proof
| anonymity just like apple does, even if apple wants to
| can't read messages.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| That's a very different thing. End-to-end encryption
| stops Apple from reading messages on its own initiative,
| but if you discover that someone with a particular phone
| number is sending defamatory iMessages, Apple can still
| tell you who that person is. (Even the idea of a phone
| number being anonymous sounds kinda silly, even though
| it's no structurally different than a Facebook user ID.)
| yxre wrote:
| Subpoenas are for criminal cases. It looks like this was a
| civil matter.
|
| A better comparison would be the Twitter user that was tweeting
| Elon Musk's jet flights. This was before twitter was purchased,
| and Elon Musk was not able to get the court to order Twitter to
| hand over that information.
| [deleted]
| Maxion wrote:
| Subpoenas are not a legal instrument in Europe. Europe also
| uses civil law, not common law, so there's no criminal, civil
| divide like there is in the US.
|
| In Europe, police usually have a right to request information
| from companies and people. This is codifed into law, there's
| not necessarily any legal procedure for how it needs to
| happen.
|
| There are some standards on how inter-country information is
| requested.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Subpoenas are not a legal instrument in Europe. Europe
| also uses civil law, not common law, so there's no
| criminal, civil divide like there is in the US.
|
| There absolutely is in many European countries. The divide
| is just along different lines than in US.
|
| https://www-librededroit-fr.translate.goog/quelle-est-la-
| dif...
| Fnoord wrote:
| > Europe also uses civil law, not common law, so there's no
| criminal, civil divide like there is in the US.
|
| Agreed, except that Ireland en England are part of Europe.
|
| Also (and I'm not sure on this part) in The Netherlands we
| have WvSr aka Sr (Wetboek van Stafrecht, criminal law) and
| there's privaatrecht (aka burgerlijk recht, civiel recht).
| Subpoenas would be vordering(srecht). Government issue
| these as well, but it seems to fall under civil law.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > Europe also uses civil law, not common law, so there's no
| criminal, civil divide like there is in the US.
|
| Yes, there is a civil/criminal divide, this is not so much
| related to being civil/common law
|
| (and just because this is HN, see the graph at the bottom
| of the page for a French example - though they call it
| civil and penal jurisdiction https://cours.unjf.fr/reposito
| ry/coursefilearea/file.php/105... )
| [deleted]
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Apples and oranges.
|
| The Twitter user is pseudonymous at best, and was posting
| objectively true data, publicly available, regarding a
| notable, public person in these United States.
|
| The FB user in TFA was anonymized by group membership, and
| posting allegedly defamatory and untrue information about a
| private person.
| anon373839 wrote:
| No, this is false. Subpoenas are most definitely valid and
| enforceable in civil actions.
| Simulacra wrote:
| Because generally companies like Facebook, fight these lawsuits
| tooth and nail.
| trepanne wrote:
| It is news to me that websites can so easily be coerced to fork
| over user data by private citizens prosecuting fairly petty
| civil actions. Is this about par for the course in European
| jurisprudence, or a high water mark for right to due process in
| the digital age?
|
| The first order effects seem pretty benign, even salutary - but
| I'm not sure the court really thought through all the
| implications here.
|
| Is the Dutch legal system inviting themselves to become a party
| to every single he said/she said drama on Facebook?
|
| What will Facebook need to do to extricate themselves from such
| an odious entanglement?
| ABCLAW wrote:
| >Is the Dutch legal system inviting themselves to become a
| party to every single he said/she said drama on Facebook?
|
| Legal action is very expensive. While vexatious litigants
| exist, the total volume of legal proceedings being commenced
| is not particularly large.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| So, access to the court system is limited to those with the
| income to defend themselves. Is this a good thing? Or, is
| there a fund setup for people who need to sue/defend
| against a suit for defamation?
| tantalor wrote:
| > so easily be coerced
|
| It's a court order!
| mellosouls wrote:
| _fairly petty civil actions_
|
| If you're the person having their reputation smeared by
| anonymous cowards it maybe doesn't seem so "petty" as you
| dismiss.
|
| This seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do; have the
| person slandering somebody anonymously brought into the light
| where there is a level playing field in which they can
| present their case.
| vonquant wrote:
| I'm not sure it's creditable that enough credence is being
| given to these anonymous claims in a private group to be
| impacting this person's life. Seems more akin to a slapp.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| How many careers and lives were ruined by the anonymous
| "Shitty Men in Media" list?
|
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/ugly-battle-over-shtty-
| media-m...
|
| Some cases were probably well desreved, but anonymity
| allows easy score settling and revenge.
|
| There's no recourse against an anonymous accusation,
| there's no way to defend yourself, and there's no way to
| prove you are innocent.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > news to me that websites can so easily be coerced to fork
| over user data
|
| I like how websites are special. Like no-one ever says "I am
| shocked that a hotel provided information to the police about
| a guest wanted for murder"
| ArchOversight wrote:
| > fairly petty civil actions
|
| Just because this would be a civil matter in your
| jurisdiction does not mean it is a civil matter under Dutch
| law where this lawsuit is from.
| bparsons wrote:
| This court ruling seems entirely reasonable. If a trillion
| dollar corporation is profiting from someone spreading
| malicious lies about you, it seems logical that the victim
| has some legal recourse against both entities.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| It would be just as reasonable if it was a smaller money-
| losing corporation.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Slander and libel are criminal offences in the Netherlands.
| If a crime had been committed against someone, they should
| have the means to seek justice.
|
| Normally, you wouldn't need Facebook to disclose any names
| because Facebook isn't anonymous 99% of the time. There are
| plenty of anonymous and pseudonymous forums that would be at
| risk and yes they too have to follow warrants should the
| court decide against them.
|
| If Facebook wants to stay out of such cases, they should
| either leave the jurisdictions where such warrants are
| possible (so planet earth, probably) or they should enforce
| non-anonymous posts so plaintiffs can sue each other without
| involving a court warrant first.
| cmilton wrote:
| > If Facebook wants to stay out of such cases, they should
| either leave the jurisdictions where such warrants are
| possible (so planet earth, probably) or they should enforce
| non-anonymous posts so plaintiffs can sue each other
| without involving a court warrant first.
|
| How do you propose they leave?
|
| Why is the responsibility on Meta to make sure users in a
| jurisdiction don't sign up for their service? Surely some
| of this responsibility could fall on the user.
| Zak wrote:
| I don't like the idea of extraterritorial jurisdiction.
| For example, if Iran wants to prosecute the operator of a
| website hosted in Amsterdam for featuring images of women
| without hijabs, no other country should cooperate with
| them.
|
| That's not what's happening here. Facebook has a Dutch
| subdivision (Facebook Netherlands B.v.) and an office in
| Amsterdam. They're absolutely subject to Dutch law. They
| _could_ leave, but the EU means that they 'd be subject
| to this kind of order from a Dutch court unless they left
| the EU entirely, which would make it harder for EU
| companies to pay them for advertising, hurting their
| profits.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Extraterritorial jurisdiction is becoming increasingly
| common. If a person commits a crime in a foreign
| jurisdiction they are convicted, and then when they
| return to their homeland they are once again convicted
| for committing a crime abroad.
|
| I know the UK and USA definitely do these prosecutions
| regularly, even though both countries would throw a hissy
| fit if Iran started prosecuting every tourist who visits
| and was known to not wear a headcovering outside Iran.
| cmilton wrote:
| >That's not what's happening here. Facebook has a Dutch
| subdivision (Facebook Netherlands B.v.) and an office in
| Amsterdam. They're absolutely subject to Dutch law. They
| could leave, but the EU means that they'd be subject to
| this kind of order from a Dutch court unless they left
| the EU entirely, which would make it harder for EU
| companies to pay them for advertising, hurting their
| profits.
|
| I agree that they are subject to the laws of the
| countries they operate in. I do not agree that a company
| should own all of the responsibility in making sure no
| Dutch citizens access their services. The idea that the
| internet would be different depending on where I access
| seems anti-internet.
|
| When your business model relies on user data to generate
| profits, you have to collect it and that makes it
| discoverable.
| [deleted]
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| Leaving probably means not having offices there, not
| selling ads there, not recruiting users there, and not
| hosting anywhere near dutch jurisdiction,
|
| But they can't play it both ways.
|
| They have an office in Amsterdamm, they control a large
| part of the ad market in the Netherlands, and probably
| host there or nearby on EU soil.
|
| They can't seriously expect to not be subject to dutch
| law.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Why is this surprising? If someone accuses of you a crime
| anonymously, you need to know their identity to sue them for
| damages. Otherwise, anonymity becomes a license to libel.
| btbuildem wrote:
| One, because it's a civil case not criminal, and two, because
| it's Ireland aka FAANG tax haven. They can't exactly up and
| leave from Ireland.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Also- if someone is making accusations, you should have a right
| face your accuser and address them.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I read it differently
|
| > Meta faces a penalty of one thousand euros per day, up to a
| maximum of one hundred thousand euros, if it fails to comply
| with the court's decision
|
| Only 100K to completely ignore the court's ruling... Easy.
| demindiro wrote:
| This precedent definitely won't be abused. Or at least most
| people here seem to think that?
|
| I wish the article would go into detail what exactly the
| "transgressive behaviour" is, because now it is unclear to me how
| far I can take criticism that is either directly or indirectly
| linked to an individual.
|
| For example, what if I have an extremely poor experience with a
| seller? Does it matter if this seller is a business or some
| random individual getting rid of 2nd hand items? What if the user
| being criticized is also anonymous?
|
| In any case, I shall be using throwaway accounts more frequently
| just to be safe.
| starkparker wrote:
| From the top-voted comment, the link to the case. Point 1.1
| ("De zaak in het kort"):
| https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/#!/details?id=ECLI:NL:RBDH...
|
| > A Facebook user has made anonymous statements in Facebook
| groups about dating, accusing [the plaintiff], among other
| things, of having the intention to use and then dump women, of
| being a pathological liar, and of secretly recording women. Two
| images of [the claimant] have been placed with these
| statements. [the claimant] argues that the allegations are
| untrue and intimidating and that he suffers considerable
| (reputational) damage. [the claimant] wants Meta to remove what
| he considers to be unlawful messages. In addition, [the
| claimant] wants Meta to provide him with information about the
| identity of the anonymous Facebook user and about any other
| groups in which this user has made these statements.
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