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In a coordinated campaign across 14 states, the German police on Tuesday raided the homes of 36 people accused of hateful postings over social media, including threats, coercion and incitement to racism.
Most of the raids concerned politically motivated right-wing incitement, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office, whose officers conducted home searches and interrogations. But the raids also targeted two people accused of left-wing extremist content, as well as one person accused of making threats or harassment based on someone's sexual orientation.
"The still high incidence of punishable hate posting shows a need for police action," Holger Münch, president of the Federal Criminal Police Office, said in a statement. "Our free society must not allow a climate of fear, threat, criminal violence and violence either on the street or on the internet."
The raids come as Germans are debating the draft of a new social media law aimed at cracking down on hate speech, a measure that an array of experts said was unconstitutional at a parliamentary hearing on Monday.
The measure, championed by Justice Minister Heiko Maas for passage this month, would fine Facebook, Twitter and other outlets up to $53 million (50 million euros) if they failed to remove hate speech and other forms of illegal content.
The left ladies and gentlemen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @04:23AM (3 children)
Its funny, this site is ostensibly for free speech. So how can they ban a shitposter and maintain their values. Also, the person is obviously capable of getting around IP bans so it isn't even possible. Don't feed the trolls is the only thing that can be done, obviously being downmodded upsets their sensitivities so take solace in that.
But this isn't a government site, it is a community of techy nerds. Should we implement such riles? They already ban people for certain infractions so it is possible. Perhaps codes of conduct would be better than letting society get to the point of legislating against offensive speech.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday June 26 2017, @08:06AM (1 child)
Not really. The mods-to-website-size ratio is high enough that they could just delete the individual comments. Or, if we're terrified of censorship, perhaps have them auto-hide and tagged as spam, so they can still be viewed if people go the extra mile.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 26 2017, @10:17AM
There are no "mods" in the sense that you're thinking, just admins. There are five of us with systems access enough to delete posts and only two that check in daily. Contrast that with our 200K or so hits a day and you'll see one reason why we're not even going to consider it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday June 26 2017, @11:27PM
"They" can't. And if they could they shouldn't.
But an "ignore" capability would be really nice to have (I'm not shooting the messenger because I don't like the message, I may even LIKE the message; but some messengers really need to be ignored).
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.