The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down

[Roar87]

Which is fine and dandy and all that but if its law it needs to be dealt with and its not being dealt with then its an issue.
Unless the law says, well a little hate speech is fine and not that zero hate speech is required as I suspect

Ok, so like every other online platform there is a small amount of hate speech, is there an actual point here?

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

That was a good interview with the BBC, don't think it went as well for the Journalist as it did for Elon though.

He's right about the "hate speech" thing though, who decides what is hateful or not, who is the arbiter, Twitter is a platform not a publisher right so it can't decide on that.

Countries laws decide.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Ok, so like every other online platform there is a small amount of hate speech, is there an actual point here?

Well there was yes before you started a whole round of whataboutism to protect your messiah

In Germany they legally need to enforce the law with punitative fines for not doing so, and potentially they could be banned from providing any service to the country.

 

[Roar87]

Well there was yes before you started a whole round of whataboutism to protect your messiah

In Germany they legally need to enforce the law with punitative fines for not doing so, and potentially they could be banned from providing any service to the country.

If German citizens want a government that bans a social media platform on the basis that someone, somewhere, said some bad words, then I wish them all the luck in the world. I don't think it's feasible for any social media platform to have zero hate speech so I assume Germany will have no social media companies serving them eventually.

 

[Roar87]

Countries laws decide.

It isn't obvious exactly where any given user is though, someone from X country could tweet hate speech at someone from Y country, which countries laws apply? Presumably it would be where the person doing the tweeting is located, so someone in America that has fairly liberal free speech laws could say almost anything they wanted I guess

 

[D.P.]

Well there was yes before you started a whole round of whataboutism to protect your messiah

In Germany they legally need to enforce the law with punitative fines for not doing so, and potentially they could be banned from providing any service to the country.

And the German law has been picked up by the EU, so soon 300million of the richest people in the world will not be accessible by Twitter if Twitter doesn't reinstate their moderation of hate speech

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

If German citizens want a government that bans a social media platform on the basis that someone, somewhere, said some bad words, then I wish them all the luck in the world. I don't think it's feasible for any social media platform to have zero hate speech so I assume Germany will have no social media companies serving them eventually.

So you need to lower the standard to "some bad words" to try to make your case? Lame.
Most of us don't want to see nor have hate speech as acceptable. Some more regressive individuals may like it however.

Edit, I find it particularly ironic you of all people who has complained about some gentle mocking of your name would dismiss hate speech and attempt to lower it and somehow make out like its acceptable.

It isn't obvious exactly where any given user is though, someone from X country could tweet hate speech at someone from Y country, which countries laws apply? Presumably it would be where the person doing the tweeting is located, so someone in America that has fairly liberal free speech laws could say almost anything they wanted I guess

We are back to the same thing, if you want to run a global platform you need to ensure that your platform complies with the law in all the places it operates.
I would argue its not one of those places but both if its a cross border tweet on a global platform.
OR the platform could just, you know, have a local presence that ensured it complied with the local laws.

Or I supposed you could just sack them all because you either 1) don't care, or 2) don't understand. (I supposed they are not technically mutually independent)

 

[D.P.]

If German citizens want a government that bans a social media platform on the basis that someone, somewhere, said some bad words, then I wish them all the luck in the world. I don't think it's feasible for any social media platform to have zero hate speech so I assume Germany will have no social media companies serving them eventually.

Germany doesn't require zero hate speech. They require a published process in place that meets their standards. The hate speech has to be monitored, and pro-actively removed. They have to have open communication channels with the German authorities who can request hate speech to be removed within 24 hours. And all of these have SLAs. It is absolutely zero hate speech, but an effective and open method for minimizing hate speech

 

[dowie]

Which is fine and dandy and all that but if its law it needs to be dealt with and its not being dealt with then its an issue.
Unless the law says, well a little hate speech is fine and not that zero hate speech is required as I suspect

I doubt any social media platform in the world have "zero hate speech", not to mention that's quite a subjective. Years before Elon took over there were terrorists actively recruiting on twitter and plenty of things were said that could be perceived as "hate" speech.

 

[StriderX]

It isn't obvious exactly where any given user is though, someone from X country could tweet hate speech at someone from Y country, which countries laws apply? Presumably it would be where the person doing the tweeting is located, so someone in America that has fairly liberal free speech laws could say almost anything they wanted I guess

Odd for someone bending over backwards for the Saudi's to care about puritanical laws in one country but not another... btw the 'free speech' right in America is currently in the process of banning books, so that's not the safe haven you think it is.

 

[Roar87]

Germany doesn't require zero hate speech. They require a published process in place that meets their standards. The hate speech has to be monitored, and pro-actively removed. They have to have open communication channels with the German authorities who can request hate speech to be removed within 24 hours. And all of these have SLAs. It is absolutely zero hate speech, but an effective and open method for minimizing hate speech

Okay, so I suppose it's down to Elon whether Twitter wants to comply with that or not. He'll need to do a cost-benefit analysis on whether employing the staff to comply with Germanys hate speech laws is worth it and then act accordingly.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I doubt any social media platform in the world have "zero hate speech", not to mention that's quite a subjective. Years before Elon took over there were terrorists actively recruiting on twitter and plenty of things were said that could be perceived as "hate" speech.

I think you will find it wasnt me that mentioned zero hate speech it was Roar.

All I said is its based on the local law, and thats what they would likely enforce.
How and what enforcement cuontries take will vary, what they would do in cases of persistent breaches would probably be based on who was getting backhanders

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Okay, so I suppose it's down to Elon whether Twitter wants to comply with that or not. He'll need to do a cost-benefit analysis on whether employing the staff to comply with Germanys hate speech laws is worth it and then act accordingly.

He will. Like microsoft etc have been forced to in the past.
Doing business in europe tends to come with europes laws and the fact that they tend to be more public focussed than corporate focussed is something every CEO of a US company will have come across and had to deal with even if it feels "anti profit"

 

[StriderX]

Oh also most countries are going after these platforms for one thing or another, for instance the UK with it's ridiculous online safety bill... it's not unusual, it's the norm and more of it is coming.

Twitter cannot survive in this environment, simple as.

 

[Fuzz]

News flash : words aren't violence.

 

[wesimmo]

Okay, so I suppose it's down to Elon whether Twitter wants to comply with that or not. He'll need to do a cost-benefit analysis on whether employing the staff to comply with Germanys hate speech laws is worth it and then act accordingly.

He should do that, but there's very little evidence he even thinks about things before pandering to the weak minded.

 

[StriderX]

No but they are potentially propagative of concepts that lead to violence, else terrorists would stop existing when the last one died.

 

[Roar87]

He will. Like microsoft etc have been forced to in the past.
Doing business in europe tends to come with europes laws and the fact that they tend to be more public focussed than corporate focussed is something every CEO of a US company will have come across and had to deal with even if it feels "anti profit"

Obviously arresting people for rap lyrics is an example of laws that are "public focused", and definitely not an example of laws that were created by people who don't really use or understand the platforms they're in charge of regulating.

 

[Werewolf]

It isn't obvious exactly where any given user is though, someone from X country could tweet hate speech at someone from Y country, which countries laws apply? Presumably it would be where the person doing the tweeting is located, so someone in America that has fairly liberal free speech laws could say almost anything they wanted I guess

They don't require zero hate speech, but do require the companies to have a system in place to respond to complaints, and in Germany a specific effort has to be made to stop stuff glorifying Nazis from being shown to anyone inside Germany or who has their location set to Germany. At the moment Twitter has accounts with people reciting Mein Kampf and is refusing to do anything about it.

Twitter used to have those systems in place, and it used to work pretty well, Facebook etc have such things in place and they work well enough to stop the it from becoming a legal issue.

Now can you tell me what has changed since Musk took over, fired almost all the non programming staff, and all the local staff in most of the world whose jobs were to understand what the local laws required and to follow them? (not to mention most/all the people who could speak those local languages, and were in named positions for legal contacts).

I know it's going to be hard to pin point what has changed in the last few months but give it a really good think and you might manage it.


These aren't new laws in most cases, they're laws that the likes of Twitter as it was went into the countries to do business with an understanding of what was required and processes in place to ensure at least the legally required minimum effort was put in place to follow them. So they weren't considered "too expensive" or "too hard" to follow given the amount of business that could be done in those countries.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

News flash : words aren't violence.

They can incite it though.