Comment by u_sama | Hacker News Reader

Comment by u_sama | Hacker News Reader

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You claim EU hate speech laws protect vulnerable groups. But 96% of Jewish respondents in Europe experienced antisemitism in 2024 despite decades of anti-negationism and hate speech laws . Antisemitic content online increased thirteen-fold in German during the pandemic, the laws don't work and the censorship of the information just makes it more attractive. Yet these laws remain, which means they're not actually about protection but as control.

Look at how they're actually used. France criminalized calling for BDS, claiming to protect Jews. Lithuania banned advocating for same-sex partnerships under a law claiming to "protect minors". Patriot act was about "protecting". Same protective language. Different targets. The "vulnerable people" you claim to protect become the prosecuted.

Germany proves it even more, a 74-year-old woman was fined thousands of euros for criticizing Germany's immigration policies on Facebook. Germany's authorities prosecute individuals for online speech, with 17,007 hate crimes recorded in 2023, a significant increase from 8,585 in 2019, and most of them are about political disagreements not true hate. There is a whole NGO-state industry whose work is just to stop "misinformation" which just means non-state approved information. The government claims the NetzDG law protects vulnerable immigrants. Instead, it criminalized criticism of immigration policy. Once you grant the state power to define "harm," it becomes a tool against disfavored politics, not protection. And these same tools will be used by the opposite side another day, just like Trump is doing to protect the Jewish Zionists but instead it is to censor universities and immigrants.

Parent is clear about their point, which is that the two laws have opposite intent, regardless of corruption or abuse like you're focused on.

Laws not being effective as written, not being enforced well, or even being used as weapons are all important, relevant problems that are core to the reality of governing people.

I think this is worth talking about but I don't think this is a refutation of the parent or a valid "both sides" argument.

You are missing that the intent is to censor the scope of acceptable discourse, the justification given can have different paths (protect, kids, protect migrants, protect trans people) but the intent itself is the same. The laws are effective and their objective is to censor speech and behaviour, the fact you agree with the censored speech doesnt take that the state deems some speech deserving to be censored. The issue is that democracies go in a oscillatory manner and the speech you deem bad will some day became part of the institutions, and then they will have the same power to censor what before was allowed.

That's why I said "at least in spirit". Sadly it's true that these laws can, and are misused. But if the spirit of the laws was followed in full - an anti-hate speech law would be beneficial for society, while an anti-gay law would never be beneficial, that's the difference.

> But if the spirit of the laws was followed in full - an anti-hate speech law would be beneficial for society

This is magical thinking. Giving the state power over speech is a bad idea in reality. Put functional hate speech laws into that same category as Star Trek post-scarcity and transporters: things that might sound neat, but are currently impossible and have no path towards becoming possible.

>an anti-hate speech law would be beneficial for society

Reading this on Hacker News of all places makes me sick. "Hate" is not illegal and who even defines what is "hate"? Do you also support Chat Control because "it's a good law in spirit"? That's the definition of a "useful idiot".

>"Hate" is not illegal

It is under anti-hate laws. That's the point of the laws.

>Do you also support Chat Control because "it's a good law in spirit"?

I don't support chat control because I don't think the ability of the state to monitor private conversations is good in spirit. However, prosecuting people who spread hatred in public spaces and media is beneficial - this has nothing to do with chat control.

Anti-hate laws are a veiled attack on free speech. If you accept the premise of hate being quantifiable to raid people's homes for sharing their opinion online you're arguing in favor of oligarch-led public partnerships between surveillance capitalism and an authoritarian state.

Anti hate laws are a curb on the genocidal origins of our species. It is atrocious and causes a lot of suffering.

The issue lies with the fact the word "hate" is too vague. If a minority calls someone from the majority "a dirty white pig" it is not considered hate in France, if someone from the majority calls "a dirty brown pig" there is more grounds. This creates an assymetry where depending on your position in society the same action can be considered hate or not. A trans person can be hateful towards hetero-normative people and get away with it, not the other way around according to the law. Both are the same action, same spirit, same "hate" only 1 is truly protected. In this case victims are not being protected by the law and the same hate-speech laws creates an inverted hierarchy dynamic. Another funny fact is due to the anti-hate speech spirit of people like you they keep increasing in scope and purpose, and that feature (not a bug) makes it so eventually ideas you agree with will become forbidden under the banner of 'protection' and only countries who have extreme protections like the US can keep true freedom of speech.

You conflate that one case with all the other thousands as if they are all like hers when you have no evidence of that. They crimes reported increase could also be bc of the rise of militant far right hate groups and certain social media platforms actively pushing their message by tweaking their algorithms..

Ok you have to defend your claim, not only fatal "far right" attacks have decreased in Europe since 2008 but the count is inflated by new laws that count hate speech and online offenses as "far right". Another issue is countries like Germany treat all "anti-semitism" attacks as far right, independent of the origin of the perpetrator. Thus a a Muslim spitting on a Jewish person is treated as far right when an Islamist attack is not counted as such.

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