Oh, it's far worse than that.

Bigots and racists can continue to spout their ignorant shit wherever they like as long as their utterances aren't "illegal" (a term the press release uses no less than 21 times). But as you may know, hate speech and harassment aren't necessarily illegal actions.

So we have all the freeze peach outrage available over a resolution that, in true European Commission style, is destined to have no visible effect whatsoever.

You seem to be ill-informed about the situation with the far right here. It's not specifically about refugees at the moment, but about Muslims, and the fact that the vast majority of the refugees are Muslims.

Criticising the refugee situation is fine. I'm personally no fan of myself how Merkel has handled it here in Germany. She's done a piss-poor job of it. But the far right has exploited it to incite hatred against Muslims as a whole, portraying all Muslims and refugees as rapists, spreading untrue stories about rapes and attacks (see the story about the girl from Berlin-Marzahn) and inciting attacks on refugee homes and refugees (hence the numerous arson attacks over the past year).

I agree with you that democracy is about conversation. But that conversation must be about truth. If one party manipulates the truth and then hypocritically deflects criticism by throwing around accusations of conspiracy theories, that party has no place in the democratic system. Allowing such populism only undermines democratic principles.

Oh, I don't know. Lutz Bachmann did eventually get convicted for incitement to hatred for his Facebook post, although he ultimately only got what amounted to a slap on the wrists by the courts. There are plenty of court cases against holocaust deniers in Germany, most recently and prominently against Ursula Haverbeck. There have been plenty of convictions for hate speech in the UK based on gender. So these would automatically fall under "illegal".

All the EC has done is mandate that these tech companies act in accordance with member states' individual hate speech legislation and hold social media site responsible for the posts of their users. Of course, the bar defining hate speech varies from country to country.

And yet international community is still trying to converse with Russia. :-)

But the question arises whether there is such a thing as ''hate speech'', and who is to regulate what is and isn't ''hateful''. They're not giving us proper definitions of what they're going to be taking down and why, and accepting that today in the name of silencing hate speech may come back to bite us in the ass later down the line.

Again, non illegal speech whether ''hateful'' or not is allowed. People have the right to hate, and the right to express it but not the right to act on it. Striking that down with fear mongering about spread of racism or sexism is not a solution to the ultimate problem that hate can be directed towards any group and not just genders and races. Education is what is needed here, but no one will agree about what the facts to be taught are, even though telling the truth is all that is needed.

The State could be lining up those bigots and racists and putting a bullet in their heads execution style, and you'd shrug and mention the fact that the government was wasting money on ammunition. My point? At least those racists and bigots are honest about their hate. Your shroud yours in the cloak of tolerance and 'the unity of community.' As if progressive, humanist absolutism should be an end in its own right.

Someone getting called a cracker, nigger, faggot, queer, spic, lesbo, dweeb, or retard doesn't affect me... because I am only any of those things if I BELIEVE IT TO BE TRUE. STICKS AND STONES, kids. Looks like we're going to have to go back to fundamentals. The complicated play-book ain't workin'.

You fucking idiots are allowing multi national corporations literally tell you how to think and what and what not to say. It's amazing to watch this unfold. The last dying embers of sane, rational, freedom loving human beings left on planet Earth. Helped in no small part by the arrival of the information super highway and mass social media. In some dark hole in hell Edward Bernays is jerking off to this shit.

"Hatred" and "hate speech" are two different things. There are people I hate, sure, and I can say that I hate them and call them all the names under the sun, but I can't go around calling them paedophiles or levelling other false accusations at them. or refuse to give them a job or serve them as customers simply for being black, Jewish, Muslim or female. You may "distrust" people of a given gender, race, religion or colour, and that's your good right, and nobody's saying that you have to converse with them on a social level, but you do still have to treat them with relative human dignity.

The reason the EC doesn't define "hate speech" is because it isn't defined at a European level. This is wholly and solely the mandate of the individual member states. In the UK for instance, hate speech is defined by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 along with relevant case law. Germany defines hate speech under Sections 130 and 131 of the German Criminal Code. France does so under Article R624-3 of the Penal Code. They're all different. And so on and so forth.

Those are the standards by which "hate speech" are judged in this case. I think France does it best to be honest by applying the standards of "defamation" to hate speech. The simple statement isn't punished, but rather the (intended) effect.

Not offering employment and calling them pedo is covered in other laws like anti-discrimination and defamation. Very little to do with speech / expression.

So if the definition for ''hate speech'' is the anti-harmful communication laws of the member states, what exactly is this order telling tech companies to do? They don't have a definition to work with. Seems it is a call for a unified stance across the EU according to the article. I guess its in the hands of judiciaries and social media employed blockers.

That's funny, because I usually only hear from politically correct feminazis when some neckbeard shitlord starts whining about them.

It's like two herds of chimpanzees constantly throwing feces at each other, covering the entire internet with the resulting shitstorm. I can't wait until both sides finally grow & shut the fuck up.

Look, the point is that modern Europe is based on the democratic ideals that regardless of race, gender and beliefs, every person is equal before the law, has equal rights and responsibilities and is only judged by their actions. Of course, since the beginnings of these principles in the French Revolution, it's taken time to evolve. The enshrinement of men and women and people of different races or religions as equals in law only came about over the course of the 20th century. Society in general is slowly catching up. We're not perfect - we still pay women less on average, still look upon people of colour with limited suspicion (whether subconsciously or consciously) but the idea is that everyone is equal in terms of what they are and are only defined by what they do. It's an unachieveable goal but still the ultimate aspiration for Europe. Hate speech is pretty much defined as any attempt to incite popular uprisings to upend these principles by establishing a singular religion, race or gender (orientation) as the supreme absolute.

Hate speech, by the way, is a form of defamation. That's the point. It's defamation of a given race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

After all, Europe has had a bad tendency to let popular uprisings against people of specific races or religions turn into nasty dictatorships, know what I mean?
This.

Yeah I know its a democratic principle. I know its the best one to follow. Some methods to it just seem to me to be meaningless trash people use to show off their anit-xxxxism. I'm just warning against witch hunting, especially when words like ''hate speech'' are thrown around at random by media and believed without skepticism by many people. This can lead to a blind uprising against people as well.

Inciting violence may be an element of hate speech. But I'd like to argue that such a work isn't even necessary or concrete enough to use. Its an abstract used by many to brand things they disagree with. There are many people who use it with broader definitions than you.

Legally, defamation of a group does not exist. Only defamation of for-profit companies that are legal persons for loss caused by sharing of information. A race or religion cannot be legally defamed against. That's the principle, anyway.

This kind of "meaningless trash" was how World War II started.

You know about the "Beer Hall Putsch" that acted as the precursor to WW2? Beer halls at that time were basically the Facebook of today: people would go there to rant about political and social problems that they really had no idea about. The Nazis spent their early days there ranting against the government and Jews before they organised to attempt a coup.

The point was that Hitler knew very well that "speech" and propaganda were more effective tools than force and disregard for the law. Hitler gained power - initially legitimately I might add - through populism, propaganda and skilful manipulation. 20 years later, six million Jews were dead.

So honestly, it's important to nip this kind of incitement in the bud before it gets out of control. Hate speech has already brought us close to a precipice right now that I hope we're not too late to step back from, but it needs more decisive action than has been taken to date. And frankly, I'd rather take these mild and reasonable limitations on freedom of speech over the risk of a dictatorship that summarily executes people for openly criticising the government in public forums.

Never again.

Pull that fence post outta your ass and pick a side. You're already covered in feces. Might as well throw some back. I say enjoy the shit-abyss.

Shitisms (hard truths ahead, shit meisters)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R8At-Qno_o

As long as he doesn't kill the younglings, the music is inappropriate.