>We have a society where we can air discussions about topics like this
If anything, cases like this demonstrate how quickly that can change when you soften surveillance and free speech laws. Look at Turkey. Turning a democracy into a dictatorship took only a few years.
The German government, too, is working on establishing a massive censorship complex. How can you tell it's censorship? They don't bother going after the people who make supposedly illegal statements. Instead, they pressure social networks directly to make the statements disappear without any legal process.
Right now, many people are cheering, because it works in their favor, but they're too shortsighted to realize that it'll eventually be used against them, too.
Note that I'm not even saying that certain statements shouldn't be punishable, but in a democracy, there must be a legal process for each and every case. When opinions or money decide what should be censored, it stops being a democratic process.
Sure the German justice goes after people making unlawful postings and entire specialized police units are being established. Charges and successful verdicts regarding internet posts are nothing new at all. However, going after the posters (and even just identifying them) takes a long time. Much to long compared to the speed postings get shared.
It's not the German justice going after it, that's the point. Why would they? They're not looking to punish anyone, but simply make unwanted statements disappear.
Right now, they've appointed a private organization (Arvato) that belongs to the Bertelsmann group, which has a strong lobbying branch and is very close to the government.
So basically, a private corporation is allowed to run its own show on all ends and it'll only get worse when they turn this into a law.
How do you explain the countless penalty orders and verdicts over internet posts that were issued in the last thirty years then? People were punished for internet posts that are against the law and will continue to be punished for internet posts.
Arvato was contracted by Facebook to enforce their own terms of service and comply with the law. They are free to contract any company they like to operate on their platform. It's not the government that chose Arvato.
If you think that law is the result of lobbying alone you haven't followed to large public debate that happened over this topic the last year at all.
And please refrain from name-calling. This doesn't make your arguments look any better.
The Arvato team was appointed by Facebook after the German government complained and pressured them into deleting hate speech, without further explanation what exactly that is. They now want to turn that pressure on social networks into law.
Like I said:
>Right now, many people are cheering, because it works in their favor, but they're too shortsighted to realize that it'll eventually be used against them, too.
The problem is that hate speech is the most generic term ever and can be used (and already has been used) to censor anything.
>People were punished for internet posts
Yes, I mentioned that, but they didn't start an investigation against all authors of deleted posts. Millions of posts and pages with millions of followers were deleted without any legal repercussions. If the post is not enough concern to start an official legal investigation, there's no legal ground to delete it.
You are defending censorship. Saying you sound like a government shill is putting it very nicely.
If anything, cases like this demonstrate how quickly that can change when you soften surveillance and free speech laws. Look at Turkey. Turning a democracy into a dictatorship took only a few years.
The German government, too, is working on establishing a massive censorship complex. How can you tell it's censorship? They don't bother going after the people who make supposedly illegal statements. Instead, they pressure social networks directly to make the statements disappear without any legal process.
Right now, many people are cheering, because it works in their favor, but they're too shortsighted to realize that it'll eventually be used against them, too.
Note that I'm not even saying that certain statements shouldn't be punishable, but in a democracy, there must be a legal process for each and every case. When opinions or money decide what should be censored, it stops being a democratic process.