[HN Gopher] European content removal laws are scrubbing the inte...
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European content removal laws are scrubbing the internet of legal
content
Author : rntn
Score : 35 points
Date : 2024-06-13 21:00 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techdirt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techdirt.com)
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| _This analysis found that legal online speech made up most of the
| removed content from posts on Facebook and YouTube in France,
| Germany, and Sweden._
|
| _Of the deleted comments examined across platforms and
| countries, between 87.5% and 99.7%, depending on the sample, were
| legally permissible._
| NeoTar wrote:
| I assume this means "legally permissible in said country"?
| seszett wrote:
| The article or the report don't give a single example of what
| they think was wrongly removed when it was just "general
| expression of opinion".
|
| So I'm quite critical of this kind of platform enforced
| censorship, but I'm not really convinced on this case that
| it's not just a different interpretation of what free speech
| means and what hate speech is between US Americans and
| Europeans, as is common in these discussions.
| o11c wrote:
| The linked PDF source does not back up the article or title. Page
| 19-20, Who deleted the comment - Deletion or Moderation?:
|
| > It is essential to emphasize that identifying the actor
| responsible for deleting a comment is not feasible. [...]
| Therefore, this report treats the three reasons for comment
| disappearance as a single phenomenon.
|
| Or in other words, it counts _all_ removals, and we know that
| moderation _always_ removes based on more criteria than just
| legality, regardless of what those laws are.
| jameshart wrote:
| The obligation on content platforms is not to _allow any legally
| permissible message to be posted_. It is to _prevent any legally
| impermissible message from being posted_.
|
| Moreover, as a business, just because something's theoretically
| legal, if it exposes you to a nonzero risk of being prosecuted -
| _even if you are pretty sure you will prevail_ - you're well
| within your rights to elect not to be the vehicle through which
| that bit of caselaw gets made.
|
| The claim that 90% or so of these deleted messages were 'legally
| permitted' seems to rest on a somewhat untestable hypothesis that
| if these platforms had left this content up, it would not have
| resulted in legal consequences, or if it had, the hosting
| platforms and posters would have been exonerated.
|
| Whether or not to make those gambles with facebook's
| shareholders' money is really facebook's business.
| moomin wrote:
| I guarantee you that if I started filling every HackerNews thread
| with My Little Pony memes, every "Free Speech Absolutist" would
| manage to grasp the point that sometimes you want to remove legal
| content.
| fallingknife wrote:
| But this is missing the issue entirely. Your spammy posts would
| be removed because nobody here wants to see them if they even
| could after the deluge of downvotes. What is happening in
| Europe is that people are posting things that users _do_ want
| to see, but the government doesn 't want people to see it.
| DEADMINCE wrote:
| European content removal laws don't apply outside of Europe which
| means they don't apply to the internet, only a 'version' of the
| internet.
|
| If you live in a country that doesn't let you access the 'true'
| internet, you don't live in a free country.
| interactivecode wrote:
| If you live in a country that doesn't protect you. It's not a
| country, it's just a government sized HOA.
| DEADMINCE wrote:
| Censorship is rarely protection.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Just to note some speech that has been considered illegal in
| Europe:
|
| - calling Muhammad a pedophile - convicted of blasphemy (JFC!)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.S._v._Austria_(2018)
|
| - posting the government's own crime statistics - convicted of
| inciting hate https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/afd-
| politicia...
|
| - a video of a dog doing a Hitler salute - hate crime
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925
|
| So if that's illegal you can imagine how tame the legal content
| that was removed is. There is no freedom of speech in Europe.
| interactivecode wrote:
| Why are you so worried about freedom of speech when you haven't
| even separated state and religion?
|
| Also, Freedom of speech doesn't mean acceptance of hate. Im
| glad that content and people who encourage racism are removed.
| charbroiled wrote:
| > Of the deleted comments examined across platforms and
| countries, between 87.5% and 99.7%, depending on the sample, were
| legally permissible.
|
| Even of the content that's not "legally permissible," it's worth
| questioning what exactly is not permitted. It was mere months ago
| that the EU threatened YouTube for hosting "incitement to
| violence or propaganda for terrorist organizations"--a lot of
| which was actual real footage of massacres that is valuable and
| should not be suppressed in a free society, yet keeps getting
| taken down from platform after platform due to pressure from
| regulators. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37884292
|
| This is a common practice in cultures that don't believe in free
| speech according to the American standard. For example, videos of
| the Christchurch mosque shootings were banned by the New Zealand
| Chief Censor (yes, that's a real title--
| https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/news/news-items/res...).
| Sharing the video can get you arrested.
| https://gizmodo.com/18-year-old-arrested-in-new-zealand-for-...
|
| Surely it's distasteful to keep these sordid videos available to
| and viewable by the general public, but when the government
| prohibits citizens from forming their opinions from stark video
| of real events, it drastically empowers inflammatory rhetoric on
| social media--more legally permissible according to their
| standards--to influence people's opinions instead. That leaves
| society as a whole worse off.
| squigz wrote:
| On the topic of such videos, I do feel like more people need to
| view these things. Not casually, or as entertainment, but to
| get a glimpse of what these events are actually like. I watched
| the Christchurch shooting, and seeing the callousness of it
| all... I don't know, it changes you.
| buzer wrote:
| If the comments were removed due to being presumably being
| illegal (rather than due to company determining they simply don't
| want that kind of speech, e.g. spam) wouldn't it be prudent for
| the platforms to report all instances to the local police after
| removing the comment? If the police determines to not continue
| with the investigation then the speech must be legal and thus
| could be restored and they can adjust their moderation
| accordingly.
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(page generated 2024-06-13 23:01 UTC)