Beginning from Jan 1, 2018, Germany introduced a new law called NetzDG that essentially imposes censorship on the social media and makes them responsible for policing and deleting unacceptable views despite freedom of speech guarantees by article 2 of the German constitution (Grundgezets). As a person of strong conservative/libertarian views, I find this extremely disconcerting and believe that, as a leader of Europe, Germany is going down a very slippery road.
There are a whole bunch of things wrong with this law that was pushed through the Bundestag in a very short time by a socialist minister (Heiko Maas). The first thing it does is doing away with due process (having things decided by a court of law) by empowering a private party (facebook, twitter etc) to decide on what is offending material and delete it within a day after somebody raises an objection. It also imposes draconian penalties of up to euro 50 million for failure to comply. Previously the fines were on the order of 250,000 euros. No wonder, the social media have not only not objected to this freedom of speech issue, but have essentially agreed to do what the government is asking them without objection and are already deleting thousands of posts. In one report as many as 66,000 per week. And it will almost certainly get worse. Facebook executive, Sheryl Sandberg, has said that they have already hired 10,000 deleters and will hire another 10,000 by the end of the years. And what kind of people are they looking for? According the media reports on the two existing FB deleting facilities (Essen and Berlin) the people hired get only a bit better than minimum wage, which means that they are far from being the sharpest tools in the shed. How are these poorly qualified folks going to make the highly complex and subjective decisions on what to delete is a question I'd like to have answered. No wonder, the highest circulation German daily, Bild Zeitung, already calls this law a 'sin' against the freedom of speech and is calling for it to be overturned.
The really interesting question is why was it introduced to begin with. Knowing who Maas is, it is difficult to escape the impression that this law was introduced because of massive disaproval of Merkel's migrant policies, particilarly on the part of the new opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD). Bild, for instance, claims that the law will make martyrs out of AfD politicians. I'll give you just one example of what has already happened. On Aug 18, 2017 a district court in Munich sentenced journalist Michael Stuerzenberger to six month in jail for having posted a black and white picture of the notorious anti-Semite, Haj Amin Husseini , then Mufti of Jerusalem, shaking hands with Hitler. This, the court opined, meant "disseminating' Islamophobic propaganda and "denigrating Islam."
If NetzDG, in my view, is really bad for Germany and European democracy beyond, it is without a doubt good for the steemit community. Nothing like that could happen with our decentralized and blockchain-based community. With the backlash that the politically influenced social media are already justly reaping, an apolitical platform will sooner or later run rings arouund them.
I'd like to hear especially from people with opposing views.
Wish I could do you the favor of disagreeing with you, then :D
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Maybe germans should stop voting for that cunt, Merkel. I don't know how many times she should be chancellor before they realize that it is her that's ruining EU, and basically creating a fourth Reich. It appears that our views are not opposed on the free speech issue, so can't help you there...
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