No but it Bloody well affects us Aussies saints Row 4 AU edition while everyone else got the NORMAL edition we got the best parts cut out namely the Rectifier thanks to our ACB and we can't get Hotline Miami 2 AT ALL!!

It's 300,000 Syrians, and for the record, Syrian Muslims are actually the lesser issue. Syrian society, despite the dictatorship, is actually a comparatively secular society much closer to western ideals than most Middle Eastern nations. Iraqis are fairly benign too. The biggest problems come from the Balkan countries, the Maghreb states, Eritrea and Nigeria.

And contrary to seemingly popular belief, the crime rate among refugees is actually consistent with that of the native population, and sexual violations account for less than 1% of all crimes committed by refugees.

Sources: Statistics report of the German Federal Criminal Bureau, UNHCR

Now I know how this goes from here: the far-rightists here will start going on about how the Police is lying and corrupt and working at the behest of a dictátorial government so the police report can't be right, and how the UNHCR is somehow a left-wing stooge, or all of these reports are somehow a left-wing conspiracy. Typical denialism of the far right - every fact that doesn't agree with them must be a conspiracy. This is why I just don't enter into these kinds of discussions with them. But these are independently collected facts. Any discussion beyond this point must acknowledge these facts or the discussion is over.

Fighting hate speech is, sadly, a necessity. It indeed comes fairly close to censorship, but the discussion places in much of Europe are getting to the point where bringing in the ban/censor hammer is the lesser evil.

Openly racist and hate-inducing statements - things like "Only white people have the right to live in Europe" or "All refugees / muslims should be shot on the border" - are becoming common in the comment sections on many EU political news sites, and more and more people are getting convinced that it's actually perfectly fine to spout crap like that. I don't think anyone is happy that this kind of censorship has became a necessity, but, it definitely is a necessity.

Which makes the 200 million, the 26 million and the 2 million "estimates" nothing but absurd exaggerations not given to "make a point", but to spread FUD.

But it's useless to debate the refugee crisis here. That's not the topic of the thread, that came in via the interjections of detractors feeding on the comments of the disproportionately outraged – those who see "cultural marxists", "political correctness" and "Social Justice Warriors" at work and tend to use a heap of similarly Daily Stormer headline approved enemy concepts.

We were talking about the European Commission publishing useless guidelines for the removal of illegal content from social media platforms and the subsequent eager nodding of the social media monopolies. We have now arrived at a completely different topic, and I see that as a sign that everyone, even the most outraged freeze peach advocates, have in the meantime understood the meaningless symbolism of the resolution in question. Back to the safe haven of being outraged about the scandalous conduct of war victims you've never met, I guess. :|

No one e.g. forces twitter to host hate speech, and if they chose to actively remove that content, legal as well as illegal, actually no one's free speech rights would be infringed upon. You spray paint a swastika to someone else's wall, you don't get to cry censorship when it's removed.

Nothing like this will happen though. German facebook will remain the meeting place of neo-nazis, as illegal as their babble is over here. And the entirely legal Christian-narcissistic hate speech of one Milo Yiannopoulos will remain on twitter as well, though he'll get suspended once in a while. Not on the basis of said resolution though.

Yes, yes, but what if you identify as a part of a group, can you then turn and talk shit about them? Courts ok with that?

Another example. Look at Milo. He's gay and according to a bunch of students he's spreading hate-speech. Courts aren't touching him. Is that because he's gay and jewish? If he was a woman, well he'd be untouchable, right? He's pretty much made of teflon as it is.

I don't subscribe to the idea of hate-speech or hate-crimes, a crime is a crime and the definition of a hate-crime adds nothing.

In fact I feel a lot safer when I can hear the nasty things being said, to know who spreads them and what they are saying and being able to respond. Because those who hate, they'll say it even if it's forbidden, they'll just whisper it to their comrades instead of speaking out loud.

In my country people are generally very anti-Israel, bordering on anti-semitism in some cases. I'm firmly a supporter of Israel and have repeatedly answered the haters here, but if they were hiding it, I could do very little - I probably wouldn't even realize how widespread the issue was.

That's another thing people don't understand about "free speech", that it is that it only relates to compulsion by the state. Many private enterprises have their own (usually reasonable) codes of conduct that can limit what employees and customers may express in and outside of the business. If your shit is deleted from Facebook because Facebook didn't like it, that's not a violation of free speech. If I bring my employer into disrepute by making controversial statements and I'm fired for it, that's not a violation of free speech.

Actually I expect that the government and FB will eventually crack down on it and that most of the far-right groups will relocate to VKontakte. Good luck on getting them to comply with any such codes of conduct.

What if a lot of those FB accounts are V-Männer and the BND is convinced that FB is the perfect tool for nazi group surveillance? Especially considering Facebook's wonderful cooperation in the past? :)

Wow... I can't believe I'm being lectured on civil discourse and intelligent argumentation by someone who calls those he disagrees with "feminazis" - and seems to insist I'm one of them, even after I have very clearly spoken against them. The "acting like you're more mature than me means I'm more mature than you" is just icing on the irony cake.

You and your perceived enemies are just mirror images of one another, two angry extremist minorities feeding off of each other's outrage. Clearly I'm no better - a better person would just ignore this entire shitstorm and wait for it to blow over. I guess all I can do now is prevent embarrassing myself further with this discussion (if "I know you are, but what am I?" counts as one) and abandon thread.

Straight from my newsfeed as it illustrates the topic:

http://www.bfmtv.com//societe/deux-mois-ferme-pour-un-tweet-raciste-contre-christiane-taubira-979866.html

So for those who don't speak French:
The guy wrote a tweet against the former French Minister of Justice comparing her to a monkey (she's black) and he got two months of "effective" jail time (meaning he will have to really stay behind the bars). Note: a former politician did the same before on Facebook (actaullay making a photo montage of the Minister) and got nine months of "effective" jail time but is in the current process of appeal.

Do you think it's adequate? Do you think he/she should have deserved more jail time? Would you have preffered an "alternative" punishemnt like "free work" in a refugee center or so? Or just deleting/banning their social media accounts?

PS: That's why I try to stay classy when I bash our former Prime Minister on Twitter :o)

Yes, if I were American I would be scared about what might happen in 20-30 years time when those college students with all their "no platforming", "safe spaces" etc. identity politics nonsense are in positions of power. These people are America's future "elite" after all...and their mindset seems to be shockingly authoritarian and intolerant.
Personally I think jail for something like this is a travesty of justice...just another sign how extreme "antiracism" has become.
A hefty fine would be ok though.

Given that my knowledge of the case is limited, I'd take my opinion under reserve about this, but I'd agree that jail time for Pasqueille is probably a touch harsh here. I agree with morolf that a hefty fine would have been adequate. Seems that his intent was just to insult and offend her directly as opposed to rile people up. I might be wrong though.

The tweet in question - "Taubira you are an ape and you will be one all your life the piece of shit that you are" - comes across as more crude than a deliberate attempt to defame her. Still, it was in a public forum (people tend to forget this when attacking people over Twitter) and therefore the criteria for defamation were met.

Leclère's nine-month prison sentence is more than justified though. She deliberately and actively tried to incite racial hatred among her followers and as a member of the Front National has a strong history of doing so.

Jail time for criticizing a public official? Unbelievable..

But he didn't "criticise" her though, did he? He insulted and defamed her. There was no "criticism" there, no reference to her policies or actions. Just the simple fact of her being black.

So do yourself a favour and stop making this look like this is some kind of attempt by a despotic government to suppress critics. You're only embarrassing yourself.

There were no reference to her being black. It's still ridiculous to get jail time for it. A fine, okay but not jail time.