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RE: Germany Goes Full in on Internet Censorship

in #life7 years ago

Thanks for posting @calaber24p. It does sounds like this law is badly though through and its implementation could do a lot of harm. It could be easily twisted for dubious reasons.

Facebook has been notorious for prosecuting sexual content and not moving a finger when it comes to racism, for example. It's very likely that hate speech will be interpreted equally frivolously.

On the other hand, it's also clear that freedom of speech is being used to defend hate speech where it shouldn't be. It's all matter of how we interpret that law and it's a bit of a double bind.

Some people on the internet are very sensitive and label many things that are clearly not hate speech as such.

People often seem over sensitive when you are not in their shoes. Saying someone is over sensitive or overreacting is a common way for those more privileged to silence minorities.

Here in the UK we have a culture where people will never openly call you a nigger for example, but will make a big deal about a Nigerian employee getting a better pay. Instead of talking about bloody foreigners you will hear debate about immigration.

When such racist talk is wrapped in politically correct language, there is no way to challenge it. Calling someone over sensitive, is an easy way to dismiss them without providing a good counter argument. I see people doing this all the time when they are being called out on their racism, especially when their racism is expressed in a nuanced way.

The key word is here is “might” because there is a fine line between disagreement and hate speech.

Perhaps the debate if we shouldn’t allow more Muslims into our country or not, is just a matter of different opinion. However, people actually die as the result of anti immigration rhetoric being taken seriously. It isn't treated as hate speech only because the outcome doesn't immediately hurt British people. We clearly have double standards when it comes to free speech If this new law was introduced here I am sure that it would be interpreted with similar inconsistency.

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