Fake News - A Crazy German Proposal and Why We Need Censorship Resistance
Fake News in the News
With the recent news that German politicians are going to be looking at laws that fine sites like Facebook for having "Fake News" it seems that politicians are not going to give up on this latest crusade.
An article in Ars Technica quotes an interview conducted with Thomas Opperman (Parliamentary Chair of the Social Democratic Party) in "Der Spiegel" last week:
"Market dominating platforms like Facebook will be legally required to build a legal protection office in Germany that is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year," parliamentary chair of the Social Democratic Party Thomas Oppermann told Der Spiegel, which was translated on Deutsche Welle.
"If, after appropriate examination, Facebook does not delete the offending message within 24 hours, it should expect individual fines of up to 500,000 euros," Oppermann said. The subject of a fake news story would be able to demand a correction published with similar prominence, he added.
There is a translation of the full article here by DW.
Not only are the suggested proposals above patently ridiculous but one must also question what the next step will be.
Will similar demands be made of all websites?
How could a smaller scale website that doesn't have huge resources (like Steemit) possibly meet these kinds of demands from a budgetary/manpower standpoint?
The translated article repeats a very good point that was made by the BDZV (a newspaper association in Germany) in regards to companies like Facebook:
"They should be viewed and regulated like telecom companies which are not responsible for what people are saying into the handset," a BDZV spokeswoman said.
This is a very valid point in my opinion.
Sites like Facebook are not media companies at all. They are platforms on which people share content which may or may not be true.
I think FB is making a grave mistake in it's recent announcements about dealing with fake news because they are accepting responsibility for what people post.
They should never have done that.
It would be like your telephone company trying to stop people lying on the phone.
If you lie to your boss about being sick - does the telephone company need to police that?
If you told your wife you were at the gym when actually you went to the pub instead - should your mobile phone company be responsible for that?
Obviously not - which is what puzzles me about both the political opinions on this matter and the pledges by big companies like Facebook to deal with it instead of pointing out the obviously flawed thinking.
This brings a few more things to mind:
- Will Steemit itself be forced to do something similar in Germany? How could they be expected to fund the 24 hr office etc?
- What is the point of it doing so - even if Steemit blocked "fake" news then it would all still be on the blockchain.
- Most importantly what constitutes "fake" news?
The third point is the fundamental problem here. What is "fake" news?
Who defines fake news? How do they define it and how are web companies and websites supposed to detect it? Will it be done in some sort of automated fashion? What happens with false positives?
Imagine you have a company whose material gets blocked - you could lose a lot of money.
Who pays for that if anyone does?
What becomes of parody, satire and other forms of expression?
I personally think that they are actually very important to normal expression and can even reveal certain kinds of truths that are not normally apparent. I love the Onion, for example, would their material be banned as "fake" news on social media?
The big problem here is that this is all so open to subjective interpretation that it is inevitable that it will lead to stifling of normal debate and natural differences of opinion.
Further some types of material could disappear entirely because some humourless bureaucrat or even worse an algorithm has decided that it has no actual value.
Instead of varying views and opinions we will be left in a situation where there is a centralised "Ministry of Truth" who determine what can and can't be shared.
Anything that doesn't fit in with that will be blocked or deleted. Orwell's "Big Brother" would be proud.
I think if these things do come to pass then as others have suggested before me this will be a big plus point for censorship resistant platforms such as the Steem blockchain.
Even if the German or US government shut down Steemit Inc, closed the website and arrested Dan and Ned - the blockchain would still exist and could not be censored.
That is the strength of having decentralisation in a blockchain.
It might be hard to imagine right now but that may be very important for free speech and free expression in the future.
Anyway what do you think? Will this ever come to anything? Have your say in the comments.
Thank you for reading.
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after this law passes I will joyfully celebrate the fake news report "Facebook blocks Germany"
Lol yes. That would be fitting!
+1 For a ministry of truth! Yes this is exactly what we need. A law that requires that everything always be truthful. Because we've always been at war with East Asia and their propaganda efforts may result in our children growing long hair and listening to rock and roll instead of ministry of truth sanctioned music.
Big Brother Loves All of US!
Lol exactly!
Crap the sarcasm tag isn't working.
Lol. I don't think it needs a tag!
Very well written. You have really cornered the main issues:
Exactly. Thanks.
Yes and it is a recipe for creating a 1984 style Ministry of Truth.
Spot on. I don't understand why they would give in to such pressure in the first place. Well their loss could be our gain.
I will preface my reply / suggestion that I am a law abiding citizen, and not much of an activist. (that's my wife's job ;-)) So I don't go to protest marches chanting in the street.
I also don't advocate violence as a means to an end.
One thing governments around the world just don't understand about social media, the interweb and the way it is used, is that it enables people to connect instantly, come up with a plan and execute it ON-THE-FLY.
Fed up with censorship? Get your mates, their mates, everyone you can connect to, to get a can of spray paint, go to a government facility (that is not secured) and write the words Censor this! on it.
Make this happen ALL OVER THE WORLD AT THE SAME TIME!
Do it again the next day, and the next, different days different targets, different methodologies, different people.
Start writing your posts in spray paint - bring this material they want banned into the real world - ten feet high.
Then you will see governments shit bricks. Because this could be truly decentralized, uncontrolled activism. No leaders, no-one to vilify, no-one to lock up, no country to invade, no way to shut it down without shutting the whole of the internet down.
Those of us who work in the digital space tend to be agile, flexible, creative. As soon as the dinosaurs in parliament shut one avenue five more are opened. And that is even without going to the ballot box.
Someone, somewhere needs to have a quiet word with those trying to shut down our ability to communicate freely, and show them this scenario.
Once the touch paper is lit and we have retired ten paces, there is no going back. Their control over what we read / watch and how we communicate will be lost forever. All trust will be lost forever. what they saw will be classed as irrelevant by an international population that had just stopped listening to them.
I'm old and I can see this. Young people will take to this concept of ignoring government like ducks to water.
How do you govern when no-one listening?
Great points and very true. I think a change is coming sooner or later.
Indeed.
We live in interesting times. ;-)
Yes and I hope that things do change it is too depressing otherwise as it seems we are creeping closer to 1984 all the time.
Yes, I know what you mean.
I think 2017 will be a revolutionary year in many ways.
It will be the start of many things.
But I don't think the world will sit up and take notice until about 2020.
Things take time.
But I think 2020 is when the world will make a decision about which path to take.
And the problem with choosing the path to freedom is that to get on the path you usually have to go to war for it. (for an abstract meaning of the word war. not just guns and bombs and killing)
My biggest concern is that the world will choose stability - chains, over instability and freedom.
Yes. Let's see what happens and hopefully people make the right choice.
You have great vision, but sadly I think things will have to become far more dystopian before enough people join in.
Sadly, you are probably right.
Awesome article as is always the case from you, @thecryptofiend!
A scary dystopian prospect indeed. Strong governmental regulation and the people's voice silenced. I guess it's a game of wait and see as to how things proceed from here on in but the outlook seems bleak for now anyways.
Great piece, very well done!
Thanks so much mate! Yes the older I get the more it seems like George Orwell was able to see the future.
The problem goes beyond governmental attempts to create a Ministry of Truth. So many people have already been brainwashed by The Narrative that they need safe spaces to protect them from perspectives that don't reniforce their view of themselves as moral and intelligent people.
It is not only a response to government power grabbing, it is a reaction to social media users that can not deal with interpreting facts or even hearing different viewpoints!
Agreed and it is inherently unhealthy for people in my opinion!
Absolutely. When THESE become the poster children for your movement, it's time to get a new movement
I feel bad for the woman in the below picture; she has been brainwashed into hating everyone else for her own decisions.
Lol yes.
There's some common sense logic behind the #fakenews ordeal that is not being discussed here that it would be good to investigate the reason why a law like this can even be proposed.
Free speech in public is protected in many places in the world, and in private it usually doesn't matter much. It's not often said but free speech is a concept in the context of public speech.
However there are many caveats to this right in most places, such as hate speech, inciting crimes, slander, etc. The Facebook fake news debate is located in this area. Because statements on Facebook, Twitter, etc. by private persons are considered public speech, they are generally subject to the same laws, and there are a few cases of people being convicted of crimes as a result of one or more posts on social media. So there is a precedent to so called censorship on these platforms based on a judgement of potential or actual harm to other people.
All of this applies to privates persons. But there are even more laws which apply to publishing media companies. Facebook ostensibly is a media company, because they are positioning themselves as one, exactly as you state they made a mistake in doing. They're kind of morphing into a content provider for news, not an unbiased message board that just hosts messages. These days large proportion of content on Facebook is not posted by private individuals but by companies, and all companies are regulated by various laws.
It is this kind of content which it is proposed which should be regulated. The fact that Facebook offers paid-for promotion, curration by its propritary algorithms, etc., I think it has become to be seen as primarily in a business relationship with news companies in particular, and it is felt that some of the burden of public interest which is subject to news media should be subject to Facebook too. I would also speculate that anti-monopoly sentiment must also play a factor in the interest of governments about the role of Facebook in their jurisdictions.
So to use your example, if a telecoms company promoted those auto-call taped messages from companies that told falsehoods to the public, they would be investigated in a similar fashion.
Now, I may have given you the impression that I agree with this, but I certainly do not. 😬 I think that a better approach would be to post public warnings, not on particular content, but in general. For example, it is a commonplace requirement for hazardous areas to be plainly signposted, for food with an associated health risk to be labelled differently, or cigarettes to come with warnings. For the last example, there is a scientific consensus that smoking is harmful, and yet they are still available. Whatever you think of why that situation exists, is does, and we are free to ignore those warnings.
Maybe fake news is harmful for your "information diet", maybe it's not. If the governments of the world, Germany in particular, think it is harmful, they are within their power to do something about it. The proposed law in Germany would be completely disproportionate, and I would be surprised if it gets enacted into law. A prominent warning would be better.
Again, personally I think that people vote with their feet and that Facebook would suffer if people completely lost trust in their all seeing "news feed" filter. I think better systems are required. I'm not that interested in being spoon fed content by a filter, or told what is fake news, but I am interested in the idea of curation, which is central to Steemit.
I would like to close by expressing my shock at the unanimous distaste for the idea that something can be false!? 🙀 I am not a dog on the internet and this can be proven (I won't prove it though 😉). It would be false to say I am. I don't think anyone should be fined for saying I am a dog, but it doesn't make it any less false. Can we agree that some statements are not true? As Neil deGrasse Tyson is quoted as saying
Great points.
I think you misunderstand. The problem is that not everything is a black or white issue, particularly when you have two or more sides in dispute.
Not everything can be reduced to facts and even if it could there may not be any actual person or entity in possession of the actual facts or evidence to back them up.
I think the worry is that this will be used to stifle debate rather than check what is factually correct.
Yes but I would rather come to a decision myself about the truth of a particular matter than leave it up to an algorithm or someone who works for Facebook to decide.
Thanks, I appreciate you reading my response. I agree, it's not a black or white, and somethings are disputed. Some things are less so, and in my own thinking I like to try and differentiate between the two (most of the time 😊). I think knowing what you know, but being open to challenge is the best path. I'm very pleased to find a lot of that here.
I'm particularly interested by the idea that not everything can be reduced to facts. I think that anything which shows that property in a significant way falls outside what "news" is. Comedian Bill Hicks famously poked fun at the depressingness of the news with the following counter news story:
It's funny because though we'd like it to be news, it's not about the facts of what happened, it's about a real experience. Arguably much more interesting though 😂
Very true. I love Bill Hicks:)
Generally speaking censorship is not healthy and in this case it is obviously a control propaganda scheme.
Hopefully people will not accept or support it, then it won't work or places like Steemit will become in high demand, and thus inspire more progress in similar ways.
Yes exactly. Thanks for sharing your thoughts:)
Great points! Steemit arrived just in time.
Yes very true.
Shared on twitter
Thank you:)
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